Conversations on the Unknowable
Opening Minds, Opening Hearts Podcast Season 3 Episode 6
with Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser
Episode Title ~ Conversations on the Unknowable
“In reflecting on this season, I'm struck by how dialogue and shared silence reveal a universal language of connection. It's a humbling, transformative journey—and we're only halfway through!"
- Mark Dannenfelser
As we take a moment to reflect halfway through the season, we're struck by the rich dialogues we've been having. Our guests have shared such profound insights, and it's been truly transformative. We’re delighted you can join us as we explore the many ways these conversations have reshaped and deepened our understanding.
What's been particularly special is how accessible our guests have been—spiritual leaders who are deeply respected yet share their wisdom with such warmth and openness.
We also took some time to reflect on how most of these wisdom practitioners were influenced by Thomas Keating, the significance of Centering Prayer, and the importance of being open to different spiritual traditions. Our conversation highlights the beauty of silence as a universal language and the incredible journey of understanding through not knowing.
“Humility opens the door to true dialogue and deeper contemplation."
- Colleen Thomas
In this episode we explore:- The themes explored so far and reflect on the value of silence and openness to dialogue in understanding spiritual truths.
- Our reflections on engaging with unfamiliar traditions and express our gratitude for the willingness of our guests to share their wisdom.
- What to expect in the latter half of the season, the exciting guests lined up, and an expansion of the topics we'll be exploring.
To learn more about the founding theological principles of Contemplative Outreach, visit www.contemplativeoutreach.org/vision
- Visit our website: www.contemplativeoutreach.org
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- Check out our YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@prayerofconsent
Season 3 of Opening Minds, Opening Hearts was made possible by donors like you from the community that is Contemplative Outreach and also a grant from the Trust for the Meditation Process a charitable foundation encouraging meditation, mindfulness and contemplative prayer.
This episode of Opening Minds, Opening Hearts is produced by Rachael Sanya 👉🏽 www.rachelsanya.comOpening Minds, Opening Hearts Podcast Season 3 Episode 6 with Colleen Thomas and Mark Dannenfelser Episode Title: Conversations on the Unknowable Colleen: Hello, everyone, and hello, Mark. How are you doing? Mark: Hi Colleen. I'm doing good. And hello to everyone else out there. Colleen: If you're still listening, we hope you are because we've been having some really good conversations. Unfortunately for this episode, it's just me and Mark. Mark: Yeah, it's unfortunate, for you and for us, maybe. I don't know. Colleen: Yeah. Mark: It's a little strange to know if anybody is listening. It could be just us talking to ourselves. Colleen: And if that's all it is, that's fine. Mark: I enjoy talking with you. Colleen: I enjoy talking with you, too. We need no audience just like the Snowmass folks, we don't need an audience. Mark: No, it's not that we don't care about our audience. We just don't need them. Is that what you're saying? Colleen: That is exactly what I'm saying. Mark: But we're happy, if you're listening, we're happy you are. Colleen: We are happy if you're listening and we're really happy if you've been listening to the last several episodes because we were so delighted to be engaged in these conversations. We've been learning so much and there's been such a rich dialogue with all of our guests. Mark: Oh, totally. I've really been inspired certainly, this first half of the season and we are only halfway through too, but the breath of guests that we have and the depth of what they're sharing is, for me, personally inspiring and moving. I hope that's true for others as well. Colleen: Yeah, hopefully so. We said that we wanted to be students this season and in a lot of ways we have been. What we're calling this is a mid-season reflection. We've talked to Netanel and Cynthia and Mirabai and Jim Finley and, these are just, for me, like rock stars of contemplative spirituality. So to say I've taken the posture of student is to say it lightly. I'm surprised, in listening back to the episodes, to be honest, that I even had a follow-up question, or even anything to contribute to the conversation. Mark: Yeah. Talk about fake it till you make it. We're talking to people who are steeped in this and have made a whole life of this. We have in our own little way done that too, but these guys are highly respected in the field. Not in that way that's elitist, and that's the other thing that's really impressed me - how accessible all of our guests have been so far, even though these people were very highly regarded and well known. Colleen: Yeah, they're not showing up for us, by the way. What they are showing up for that we've learned over the past two seasons is people just love and respect Thomas Keating so much, they really do. Mark: That's the other thing that's impressed me too, is each guest has this kind of affection for and respect for the work of Thomas Keating and a deep connection to who he was and to him and his work. And that's a lot of what we're doing this season, is it not? Where we're hearing from other people, but we're seeing the connections back to Thomas and the Centering Prayer movement and the Contemplative Outreach community. Colleen: Yeah, and I think we're seeing, too, in their affection for him. It's very timely with Cynthia's book that's just been released, right? Because she's titled this The Making of a Modern Day Mystic. And for me, my studies of contemplative Christian spirituality did begin with Father Thomas. But also this mystical tradition harkens us back to people like the people that we think about as mystics, like John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila. So, to be welcoming Thomas Keating into the canon of mystics in this way is pretty profound. Mark: And then to have somebody like Cynthia Bourgeault who in her own right is part of that as well in terms of her own teaching. But to have her be pointing to Thomas Keating's work and saying, yes, he belongs in this tradition and he's a significant figure in it. It reaffirms what we know by experience in terms of the practice itself, and reading some of his stuff but, It's much bigger than that. I benefited from him, she's saying, he belongs in that lineage. Colleen: And he truly does, especially as, for me, this season so far has been a deepening of my education. I almost want to say, of the tradition of Christian spirituality, because we moved, as we talked about in our first episode, you and I, we're swimming in these deeper waters of Christian non-duality and, that has been the actual real living practice for me. I'm still slow reading Reflections on the Unknowable. And you know what happened that's actually fascinating is that I got stuck on one chapter, and I've been reading it daily, like a daily reflection. It's so deep that it's like reading Teresa Vavola's interior castle. I can't move on to the next dwelling. Mark: Right? Stuck in one dwelling. Which I think is wonderful. You know actually, because I've experienced a similar thing too, where, and there's a difference for me where, I can read things almost I consume, the next series on, I don't want to name any of the..... Colleen: Any one of the platforms. Yeah. Mark: I'm just like consuming it where what you're saying sounds like, no, you're sitting with that and absorbing it and it's different than like, Oh, just give me more of that and that's great. And this, I think, comes through in our guests, too, as they talk. They have gone deep into this. It's not just like what's, the next shiny object that I'll talk about. Colleen: It reminds me of Mirabai in her episode talking about, how she's sitting surrounded by all of the sacred texts and she's read every single one of them. There's this living in the practice and the tradition, and it can last for a lifetime. And now, at this point in Mirabai's life, I think she said she's in her 60s now, she's letting go of the sacred texts. And finding the holy and the sacred in these more ordinary moments that those texts aren't doing it for her anymore, but she has walked through them all and probably many times and now has arrived at this place where, oh, all things are sacred. Mark: We've heard that in our guests. This first half of the season, we've heard a similar thing. You go deep into your own tradition, and deep into the practice, and it actually opens you up. There's more fluidity and flexibility in seeing that in other practices, in other traditions. And, Mirabai said that you can visit an ashram in the Himalayas or kneel in a church pew to connect to the spirit or examine life's big question. You can get there in different traditions. So there's no one true church idea. It's like, no, if I'm true to my tradition, it's going to open me up to see Spirit in throughout. Colleen: Well, it makes me think you know, how we say there's, one true God. Or is it like Father Thomas writes later, God is all in all. I'll share this quote cause this comes from the chapter in Netanel's book that he edited actually, which is a transcript in a way, a creative transcript of the Snowmass dialogues. It's not a transcript of an actual conference that they had, but it's designed to reflect the experience that they had in being together with everyone. And in this chapter, Father Thomas is saying they called this chapter The Gates of Unity. He says, there are thousands of religions in the world, all of them different, and none of them can convey through words what is beyond. But, perhaps by discussing our personal experiences of that beyond, we can come up with a common vocabulary for the human experience of approaching the ultimate, and with that common vocabulary, perhaps we can achieve a measure of unity that will spread just a little peace in the world. Mark: And that was the term they came up with, wasn't it at the conferences that we talked a lot about? So far in the first half, this Ultimate Reality. We asked Netanel about that, and I loved what he said that, regarding that Ultimate Reality, he said, you could even drop the Ultimate and just call it Reality. This is embedded. We all have concepts of Ultimate Reality or what we might call God. But he's saying, fine, but, it's life itself. It's like we might say you know, God is love. That's a big thing. Love. Colleen: Yeah. And then, we'll even see too. So far, I want to say this because it's going to be a bit of a transition in the episodes to come but, so far, everyone that we've talked to has in common the practice of Centering Prayer. Jim doesn't call it Centering Prayer per se, but I know because really my practice of Centering Prayer in community really began with Jim's community in Santa Monica. Mark: Jim Finley. Colleen: Jim Finley, yep. So Centering Prayer so far has been a foundational practice for the guests that we've talked to, and I think that speaks to Centering Prayer as a universal practice because while, so far all of our guests, practice Centering Prayer, they do not all identify as Christians. Mirabai doesn't identify as a Christian. Netanel doesn't identify as a Christian. And yet they all practice Centering Prayer. And then we'll see in the episodes to come, these guests, with the exception of one, are not Centering Prayer practitioners. They come from different faith traditions. But yet, when we ask everyone about this common vocabulary, Ultimate Reality, there is some common way of understanding this Ultimate Reality, too. Mark: And the practice part, 'cause they really affirm that in these dialogues at Snowmass. Contemplative and meditative practice was critical. It wasn't the whole thing either, so one of their points of agreement. Discipline practice is essential to the spiritual light, yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one's own efforts, but the result of an experience of oneness with the Ultimate Reality. And to me, one of the things I've come to so far in the season is what you were saying, all of our guests, if they're not practicing Centering Prayer, they're very familiar with it and are all affirming the significance of that as a practice. I'm coming to an understanding that Centering Prayer is not the be-all, end-all, it's that Centering Prayer and Thomas Keating, and others who put that method together I think really just tapped into that universal thing that we can all recognize whatever tradition we're coming from. And so, it's not like you have to practice Centering Prayer. It's that Centering Prayer is so recognizable and so relatable for so many people because it is tapping into that. It's an access point to that greater thing, whatever you call it. And Netanel said that we may need - when he was talking about spiritual practices - we may need different tools at different times. Colleen: I loved that. I also loved when he talked about being inter-spiritual and the need then to have an inter-spiritual practice. It's like practice is also a common language. I like this language that Pema Chödrön uses. She was one of the guests at the Snowmass conferences. I think the first one, maybe the first one only. You can fact-check that. I highly recommend Netanel's book, The Common Heart there are chunks of wisdom all throughout it from all of these different friends of Father Thomas who gathered over the years at Snowmass for these conferences. But Pema Chödrön talks about practice and tradition as vehicles, and she says contemplatives share the same ground of experience and use their particular vehicles to go beyond a limited perspective. And she's saying the purpose of life is to go beyond limitations and that the point is not to depend on a perfect belief system, maybe we could even say a perfect practice, but to move beyond dogmatic limitations, “...to avoid limiting,” she says, “the experience of reality.” In some ways practice, our tradition, as she says, is a way of assisting us to connect with wisdom. But then the pitfall is that we become limited by our vehicle, by the tradition, or maybe even by the practice itself. And the whole point of practice is to open, open, open. Mark: You see that in the mindfulness where I do some of my work. In mindfulness, the research with that because they look at what happens, when you're doing these kinds of practices, and there is an opening, It's clear, at least in the brain, that it's this more connecting, this kind of wider view. We call it having a nonjudgmental attitude which is a broad term for not limiting everything too well. I like or I don't like, or I know who this person is or not, but not having that narrow view which you do need if you're going to make judgments to turn left or right at a stop sign, but to open it up, and it seems that these contemplative practices and meditative practices have that in common, whatever the particular is. Almost to the point where it then doesn't need to even include the practice, even though we need a practice. It's what they agreed on, in that principle. You need a practice to cultivate that. Colleen: Yeah, but they also said it's not essential. Mark: Right. Colleen: And they also said you need a practice, but it's not essential to spiritual experience. Is that the term? Mark: Yeah, that spiritual attainment is not the result, and it's not the result of just doing a practice like the effort of our own practice. What you were saying, which is important to have that so that we have structure and we have a way to work with it, but it's not the thing. It's the finger pointing to the moon to use an overused saying, and this is the other thing that I really noticed in the conversation with our guests and what came out of the Snowmass Dialogues. There was a strong sense of unity and friendship. Everybody there seemed to comment on that. So it's like, oh, I can see across boundary lines or people from different faiths or people I might not even associate with. Now I can be in union with and communion with. They all mentioned that. The commonness. Colleen: Yeah. I want to go back to what you were saying though, too, about the narrowing versus the opening, because when we look ahead to the episodes that are coming up right with our guests who are from the Buddhist tradition, from indigenous contemplative practice perspective, Sufism. It's interesting because– and this kind of bugs me a bit, but there's just such a sincere openness in these folks from other traditions that I wish was easier to attain within the Christian tradition. In some ways it's like, as Howard Thurman would call it, this growing edge of this movement to a Christian non-duality is so important so we're able to expand, widen, and not constrict and become so content in just our own known world. For me, the grace with which the guests that we talked to in the upcoming episodes was just so profound. The willingness to engage in what I considered at times to be silly questions around how to understand a personal God, an impersonal God. But I just learned so much from their openness and, also, one thing in particular with Kaira Jewel Lingo –we'll hear from her in the next episode, but her story about practice on that retreat that she went to, I think it was more just like a personal retreat that she took if I recall correctly, but her experience with the tree, Mark. Mark: Oh yeah. Colleen: That's openness. Mark: And that's oneness. It becomes one then because it's not separation, and I forget who said it this way, but non-dual, in some traditions. In other way to say that is not too, non-dual, and that means it's not just, me and you or my religion and all other religions, it's something else, or this particular practice. And then those practices over there, it's that it's all part of the same somehow, without losing the individual and Cynthia talked about this a lot too. That we can have– I guess Marabai did too. We can have a personal God and we can have this universal God too. It's not mutually exclusive to have what we feel like as a one-on-one or personal or individual God that we see. But then that is not limited to that, too. That God is ultimate in that sense. He can't be limited by a concept or a belief system. Colleen: Yeah. It will be so good for you all as listeners to continue on this journey with us, with the guests that we have coming up, and really experience what we can only get a sense of what was modeled at the Snowmass conferences where all of these practitioners were present and learning from one another sharing stories. I have a better sense now of how it was that they learned the value of dialogue, the value of friendship, and just a general kind of trust to share openly, without assuming knowledge of another's tradition either. And that's been really important to me in the season, just the willingness to show up, not being an expert. And this has been a challenge for Mark and I because in the past two seasons, we've been talking a bit more about something that we know. We practice Centering Prayer. We know Centering Prayer. We know those foundational teachings of Father Thomas. This season, we found ourselves talking about things that we know a lot less and in a way, I was really amazed to see how Spirit shows up in these conversations. Cause I really don't know. I'd still say I don't know much about Buddhism. Mark, you know more than I do about Buddhism. I really don't know anything about Islam, which surprises and kind of embarrasses me because it's such a growing population of folks in the U. S. and around the world that practice Islam. I'd love to know more about it. I did learn a lot more about it. And really, I've never spent much time with people who practice a native indigenous spirituality. I had some sense of the values, like, yes there's a sacredness of the earth and some type of veneration of ancestors and a more inherent value of communal ways of being that are in contrast with my Western kind of formation, me, myself, I values. But it was just enough to show up in a spirit of receptivity and in a spirit of friendship and connect. Mark: I’m finding it more accessible and what you were saying about not knowing, I think feel that too. And I'm becoming more comfortable with that when I'm not always very comfortable with that. That's also what we hear that concept of not knowing and not being so assured of my position or my belief that it's not porous, it's not flexible, it's not open. I think that even about as we're looking back on the Snowmass Dialogues, that what we're doing is also very current. We're not just back in the past thinking about that or as important as those were and have set,us up for our conversations this season. It's also a present-moment conversation. It's a dialogue that continues. And that's partly what we're doing. We're not just reminiscing about that time. We're actually finding our way through that right now. How do we talk to people from other traditions? How do I understand my own tradition as it relates to that? And that's very exciting for me and it's very invigorating in a way, and especially when I can recognize Christianity and Buddhism and vice versa. That you hear similar ideas if you're not caught on particular words or belief systems. Colleen: Yeah. It's interesting. There's this strong impulse to know and to understand. When I think about even the educational system, it's all based on comprehension. That really doesn't serve us well on this path. There's that St. Augustine quote that I love, that says, “what you understand isn't God.” Mark: Yeah, I don't understand that quote, but yeah, and there's a freedom in that. Colleen: There is. Mark: Merton said that too. Thomas Merton said that too, when he's talking about being beginners. He said that if you think you know from the beginning, you'll never come to know anything. Colleen: And isn't that a Zen Buddhist thing too, the beginner's mind? Mark: Yeah, beginners mind and it's just not knowing. Again, not that we don't know anything and we're not saying that. But not being so secure in that, that we don't realize that there are other ways to come at that or to think about that. This is why I think in those dialogues when it came to practice and when it came to conversation - and Netanel told us about this - how they came to valuing silence. That was the common language, not all the words and the concepts and kind of duking it out. It was that let's begin in silence and as he said they practiced silence first. And then they spoke from that silence about the various aspects of their traditions and everything else that kind of came in. But that silence is the universal language. Colleen: Yeah. It's the silence, not the liturgy, not the text, which, we can get really hung up on in Christianity. That liturgy, the scripture, the prayer book. I love it all too. I love all of it. I love a good liturgy. Mark: And then we don't have to get rid of that. It's not about that, right? It's just saying that's not saying all of it. And that's in the early text, in the Jewish text, anyway. The creation myths talk about in the beginning, there was just a vast openness and then God speaks into that. But we Christians would say another name for Jesus is the Word made flesh. He speaks out of the silence, if it's a he, not a he, and then there is creation that comes from out of that silence. There's a lot of openness there. A lot of spaciousness there. Colleen: I'm also thinking of another way that God reveals something profound to us through scripture when Moses has his encounter and says, essentially who are you? And, God's just like, I am. Mark: How's that for a non-dual statement? Yeah, I am who am. Okay, next. Colleen: But it's like the possibility in that. There's so much room and space in that for a concept of God. That's what resonated. What made me think about that when you talked about the creation story too, right? That in this void, the immense possibility and creativity that came out of that nothingness. I really need to remember that. Mark: Suggests that's the fertile ground, that's the ground and that's the place where we're working in that place and our guests are working in that place, on this opening up to something that's so much bigger, broader, spacious than we can even imagine. Which itself is a concept so, I'm just happy for us to be able to be in this place. This position where we get to have these conversations and that we're still having them. We have a whole 2nd half of the season. Colleen: Yep. And I'm so grateful to just to harken back to how we started this conversation that there's so much affection for Father Thomas, that we reach out to people and they say, sure, we'll schedule a time to talk with you, because that's definitely all Thomas Keating. Mark and I– before we started recording this episode, we were playing around on social media. We have no followers. They're not saying yes. These guests aren't saying yes to having a conversation with Mark and I. I'm grateful to be a space holder for these conversations and really, especially in Mirabai's episode felt just the spirit of Father Thomas with us in that moment as she reflected so lovingly on her time with him. Keep listening. Mark: Yes, Colleen, I look forward to our second half and I'm so grateful to be sharing this time with you. Special time and being able to just talk about and reflect on what's so essential really for us in our life, and then that we get to talk to these guests and do that together as fumbling as we do sometimes (or I do anyway) still wonderful to be able to share this with you and with all of our listeners. So I'm looking forward to– Colleen: And, with the Contemplative Outreach community too, grateful too for everyone who donates to Contemplative Outreach and for our grantors, Trust for Meditation Process, you know? There's just a lot of support for this Opening Minds, Opening Hearts podcast. We hope you'll hang in there with us just a few more episodes and then before we know, we'll be back talking about what are we going to do for season four. Do we have anything left to talk about? Mark: For now it's enough to look forward to the second half of season 3. Colleen: Yes it is. Mark: And we hope to see all of you there. Colleen: Bye everyone.