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go to applepodcast.com slash Oprah's MasterClass.I'm Oprah Winfrey.Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.Taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now. Barbara Brown Taylor is one of America's leading theologians.
She's an Episcopal priest who was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in 2014.She holds a Master's of Divinity from Yale and has written 13 thought-provoking books on spirituality.
Barbara spent 15 years as a parish minister, five of them as the head priest for a thriving congregation.When she made the decision to walk away from the pulpit, she says it opened her up to explore life's big questions.
She wrote about the life-altering experience in her critically acclaimed memoir, Leaving Church. A lifelong spiritual seeker, Barbara is now a college religion professor who looks for the sacred in the most unexpected places.
Her book, Learning to Walk in the Dark, challenges believers and non-believers alike to probe the shadows of our lives and to embrace darkness in all its forms.
So you wrote a book about leaving the church, and your book is really about learning to walk in the dark, which really struck me as fascinating, because so many of us fear the dark.
And not only do we fear the dark, you say we live a solar spirituality.Tell me what you mean by that.
Solar spirituality for me is shorthand for any kind of religious faith, Christian or otherwise, that teaches me to stay in the light and flee from darkness of every kind.And it doesn't really define that for me.
Emotional darkness, theological darkness, physical darkness, what kind are we talking about?But full solar spirituality wants me to ignore the dark places in my life, get out of them as fast as I can, and to avoid them if possible.
OPRAH WINFREY But I thought, you know, until I read this book, this is why this is so fascinating, Super Solars, that we're still evolving and growing in our knowledge of our spiritual selves.
And this book introduced me to another way of being with the dark.Because I'm one of those people who has feared the dark, the dark side, darkness.Don't let it get too dark.Come in before dark.
And every aspect of that, particularly emotional darkness, you want to run from it.Instead, you say you are espousing that we embrace it.That's why learning to walk in the dark is the title, that we embrace the darkness. What a concept.
It's half your life, whether it's day, night, or your emotional life.But it seems to me I have spent a lot more energy trying to manage and avoid that time than I have wondering what might be there for me.
My shorthand is I think probably the places I least want to go are the richest places for me, the richest treasures hidden there.
So you're saying that this whole, really, obsession that we have with being in the light, you know, I call all of the owners the carriers of the light.
What I want to do with this network is drop pieces of light into people's life because I don't want to bring darkness.But you're saying we should embrace it.
Why?I think in some ways, you and I could have a long conversation about what we mean by light and dark.What do we put in those folders?OK.
It's just, when I examine my experience as a human being, it's a lot of the places I would call the places of unknowing.If you say, what do you mean by a dark place?A place of unknowing.Either one, I entered voluntarily.
I traveled to another country.I became a parent.I don't know how to do this.I don't know how to be in Beijing.I don't know how to be a mother.Involuntarily, my doctor calls me and says, are you sitting down?I have some bad news for you.
Or my father dies involuntarily.For divorce. Or your kids get into trouble.All these unknowings that we get plunged into.And because we don't know what we're doing, we think we've just failed.This is defeat.
We need to get out of this as fast as possible.Handle this.Move back into the light.And all I'd like to say is just take three breaths.Three breaths to be in this place of unknowing.And feel your way around and see if there isn't somewhere in here.
I don't want to feel my way around, because it's scary.
I know.And if we continue to live responding out of fear, I just don't know how big my soul would be the size of a pea if I never did anything.I try to do one thing that scares me every day.
Because that's what real courage is, is being scared and taking action anyway.
You have to practice courage.So how else are we going to practice it? OK, so you're saying sort of roll around in it.Take three breaths.Just three.
OK, so the next time something happens that's scary, no matter what that is, how big or small, that puts you into the dark side.
Because, you know, Marianne Williamson said in her book, Return to Love, we're either moving in the direction of love or moving in the direction of fear.When something shows up in your life that causes that fear to rise, take three breaths.
in the moment that it shows up.
And then what?I do a little critical thinking. I think about, how did I learn to be afraid of where I am right this minute?And then all of my fear is, is like a blue flashing light saying, there's something here to pay attention to.
So you want to go to sleep, or do you want to look?And it seems to me more and more, insofar as I'm able.And believe me, there are times when everything in me says, run, and I run.There's something in me that knows when it's too much to handle.
Instinct.Instinct says, run, run.
OK.So this is the question.Is the divine? presenting itself in the darkness.
Oh, yes to me.I don't know about for anybody else.Oh, yes to me.
You know, I always felt this. I always felt that the darkness was in direct proportion to how far away you were from the light.The light being the center of yourself, another word for it, or the light being where God abides.
So for me, the darkness is always, whenever I start to feel the darkness, I think that means I need to get closer to God, which is the light.Or some light source.Or some light source.
Because in order for me to remove the darkness, I've got to bring light into it.Not to sort of wallow in the darkness, not to embrace the darkness.I can accept it.I can say, I'm in a dark place right now.Why am I in this dark place?
Well, I think it's, for me, it's always in direct proportion to how far I am away from my connection to what I believe to be the source of all things.
So you tell me how that's... Well, see, I wouldn't, because you've just given me your dictionary, your lexicon, your experiential record of darkness.And I wouldn't do a thing with that.
If you and I had the rest of the afternoon, I would probably ask you about some night you were sitting out under the stars, and for a while you looked at them and you got a stomach upset, just thinking about where am I in anything this vast.
And then if you took three breaths, there was a moment in which you thought, I am a flea on the back of some gigantic thing.And at this moment, I seem to be being embraced.I don't know if it ever goes there for you. But there are times all the time.
And so that's a kind of tunnel.
I cannot ever look up at the sky at night and not be in just wondrous awe about how I fit into the bigger picture of all of that.
I think that's an experience of darkness. See, so does that belong in the folder?Well, in my lexicon, and what about, you've had some delicious times in the dark with some lovable person.Yeah.That belongs in your darkness file.
You have been, at some point or another, faced with a situation, mine was my father's death.I thought it would be the most awful, dark experience of my life, and it was.And in the midst of it, there was a dazzling, breathtaking clarity
of knowing there was no place else I should be than there.So there are tunnels through these experiences.
So what you're saying is, oh, I just had an ah-ha.It was not quite an ah-ha.It was an ah.Not the ha part yet, but it was an ah.So what you're saying is this culture that we live in,
all over the world, not just our culture, but has labeled darkness as a bad thing.And conditions that all the time.And conditions it, you know.So black is bad and white is good.Darkness is bad.Light is obviously bad.
Spirit is good.Body is bad.Heaven is good.Earth is bad.Sacred is good.Secular is bad.A lot of division.A lot of division.Duality.That I don't think is helpful.And it's not true to human life.
In 1997, after five years as the first woman priest at Grace Calvary Church in rural Georgia, Barbara Brown Taylor left her growing ministry.Although she no longer has a congregation, she remains an ordained Episcopal priest.
You remember the first time you stood at a pulpit?
I think I remember the first pulpit.Mostly it was trying not to faint, you know, and trying to control the knees.So I was a really, I'm not a natural public speaker.But you left your church.
I did.Wrote a whole book about leaving your church.And make the distinction, you left your church, not the church.Yeah.
Why did you leave?Every time I tell this story, it's a little different, because every year I tell it from a different perspective.But I think the truest story is that I went to a little church I loved.
I think they liked me well enough, and things worked.They were brave enough to call a woman minister to a little town in rural North Georgia.
And they were fascinating people, because in a little town, if you don't fit anywhere else, you go be an Episcopalian, because that's just the grab bag of weird people.
So it was a love affair, but it meant that we grew, and it was a tiny church that's seated 82, and before long, our growing size became a problem.
And I think I couldn't see a way to lead the congregation forward without a building program and debt and things they didn't want to do, so instead I left. and went to teach college, which was a dream I never thought I'd be able to pursue.
What do you love more, preaching or teaching?Oh, I think I love teaching more.I think it's a huge privilege to be with mostly people in their late adolescence, early twenties.
They're trying out their lives, and the college classroom ends up being a lab for trying things for them, and to be able to be part of that is terrific.You know, those who come in,
Having never been allowed to ask a question, I want them to ask every question they've ever thought of.
Yeah.I have a lot of girls in college, and you're teaching at that age, and you're right.It's a laboratory for learning and life.
And I say, what a wondrous thing to not to know where you're going and to be able to actually figure that out, to have the opportunity to figure it out.True.
Yeah, I think we'd like life to be a train.You know, you get on, pick your destination and get off.And it turns out to be a sailboat.
And every day you have to see where the wind is and check the currents and see if there's anybody else on the boat with you who can help out.But it's a sailboat ride. And the weather changes, and the currents change, and the wind changes.
It's not a train ride.So that's the hardest thing I've had to accept in my life.I just thought I had to pick the right train.And I worked hard to pick the right train.
And darned if I didn't get off at the end of it and find out that was just a midway station.
I think that's a beautiful metaphor, actually, of the sailboat.And you have to check where the wind is.And sometimes, the waves are rocky.And sometimes, they're smooth.And some days, storms come.And that's a beautiful metaphor.
So some patience with that is good.Yeah.If you think of your life as a sailboat, that's really good.Yeah.That's a tweetable moment, I would say.
Oh, good.I'm glad.Tweet, tweet.
Barbara is the best-selling author of 13 books, including Learning to Walk in the Dark.I love on page 75 where you say, what if I could trust my feelings instead of asking to be delivered from them?
What if I could follow one of my great fears all the way to the edge of the abyss, take a breath, and keep going?Isn't there a chance of being surprised by what happens next?Better than that, what if I could learn to stay in the present instead of
letting my anxieties run on fast forward, which we talk a lot about that on Super Soul Sunday, is just being in the present moment.In this moment, I'm OK.
Instead of letting your mind rush to what's going to happen, worrying about what if, what if, what if, in this moment, I'm OK.All is well.
Yeah.Sure.And to fast forward is to fast forward into the unknown, and then next comes the anxiety attack.
So how do we learn to embrace the dark, darkness, dark emotions in our lives?
You know, I think, because this all came up for me when I moved from the city to the country, and I was locking my car door.And I lived nine miles from the nearest town that had one stoplight.Nobody but raccoons were going to break into my car.
And I was taking a flashlight everywhere I went.And it took about six months to realize these were city behaviors, that I could begin to explore country behavior around the dark, which is actually where the title of the book came from.
That cured me of a lot of things that were ailing me, speed, multitasking, grabbing thing at a glance.And I thought, if this is true walking outside my front door at night, might this also be true at the emotional level, at the spiritual level?
So you took the physical, and you turned it into the metaphysical for yourself.Literally, you're saying, I'm walking around with a flashlight.I'm locking my doors, and there's only raccoons.I'm doing all this behavior, learned behavior.
from being in the city and what I've been taught about darkness, then you consciously said to yourself, how else am I doing that with emotional things that are happening?
Sure.And the emotional was pretty easy.I'm a big reader, though, and it always helps when somebody names something for me.And I got a great big fat book called The Anatomy of Melancholy. Whoa.And it was written a long time ago.Spare me from that.
Oh, you really don't want to.But I did find out, that's a good word for me, is I have a high propensity to melancholy.And whatever that's about, my cure for melancholy was to quick get back to my yoga class and start watching comedies.
and to get out of my melancholy as quickly as possible.And while I was working on this book, I very carefully boundaried it.But I thought, no, I'm going to take 30 minutes a day to be melancholic and to see what my sadness is about.
What is it I'm sad about?
Yeah, but how much is too much?Because I think this is a fine line we walk here.So I can be with my sadness or my regret or my whatever, you know, what I'm talking about.But how long can I be with that before
you know, it becomes destructive or detrimental to me.
Oh, I think most of us learn warning signals, and some of them are widely publicized.When your job, your relationships, or your health begin to suffer, it's really time to get some help.Yeah.And then I have physical signals as well.
So I think each of us it would serve us well to have some idea of what our danger zones are.
So what I hear you saying from learning to walk in the dark is not to run away from, you know, because we've been so trained.And I, you know, tell myself, keep your vibration high.
That's your number one goal in life is to keep your vibration high, stay positive.And so the minute a negative thought comes in or I start to feel blue, I try to, you know,
move myself to literally a higher way of thinking, a higher vibration, so that I don't have to feel that darkness.Yes.And as you say, we spend a lot of time, our culture has a tendency to run away from sadness.
What you write about sadness is the best thing to do when sadness has your arms twisted behind your back is to sit down with the saddest child you know and say, tell me about it.I have all day.Now, I read that.That's on page 86.
And, you know, I have a school full of 300 girls who all come from, you know, some very traumatic backgrounds.And there's a lot of sadness.As a matter of fact, three girls lost their parents in one week.
So when you say sit down with the saddest child you know and say, tell me about it, which I have done. The tendency for me, and I know a lot of other people who are listening and watching, is that you want to be able to do something.
So just to sit in the sadness and to say, OK, I'll sit here, and I'll be sad with you.That's hard, because you want to fix it.You want to do something.You want to make it.You want to bring some light.
You do.I was just reading Maya Angelou last night, and she said, people will not remember what you said, and they will not remember what you did, but they will never forget how you make them feel.How you make them feel.
And I think that is what I more and more try to concentrate on.When I'm with the saddest child I know, sometimes, depending on the child, just to say, oh, baby, oh, baby.And even a shared tear can be what that child remembers.
So I always think about giving people permission to feel what they're feeling and not having to do anything.
No.You've been a spiritual seeker, really, nearly your entire life.All my life.And you call yourself a detective of the divine.What have you learned from your years of searching?
that no package I devise for the divine lasts long.I think the packages have been valuable because I've learned the Christian package very well.
And from that, largely because I teach world religions, I've become very interested in other packages, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu.
So tell me, you now really take the time to honor the Sabbath.Why is that important to you?
I do the things that I know give me life that I otherwise never take time to do.Read a whole book, cover to cover.Cook a fabulous supper, simple, for some friends.
I think that's a really important question for all of us to ask and to try to put yourself in the space of what is giving you life? What is giving you life?
Yeah.I know there's a question you always ask, is what is saving your life right now?
It's a great question, and it has to be asked almost every day.It shifts.It's not the same thing.It's certainly not the same thing year to year.How would you answer that question?Right now, right this minute?
I am a woman of a certain age, and I've been very productive in my life.And the ordinary is calling to me like it has never called to me before. I think what is saving my life now is cooking the organic produce my husband hauls up from the garden.
It is the slowed down, ordinary things of life to have a friend.The life I've lived is not conducive to friendship. And if friendship isn't a spiritual practice, I don't know what is.
So this moment, what is saving my life now is Sabbath, while I practice what it means to be human on the days I'm not being productive.And I don't want to give up the productive days, but the ordinary is calling me.
But isn't that what we're all here to do, really?And I think you say that, I remember reading that in leaving church, that all of the experiences, the dark ones, the light ones, are really all here just to help us to embrace our humanity more fully.
That it's all just about trying to be more human.
That's my definition of what it is to be, yeah, a person of faith, even.I know that's not enough for most people, but the major religions all talk about what it is to be human.That's hugely important to me.
And I stick fully human in there because there are all kinds of ways to be human.And there are plenty of days I want to be less than human.Right.And days I'm tempted to be more than human.And to be fully human is a nice in-between.
Another thing you write about is artificial light, things we use to numb ourselves when we can't tolerate dark feelings, like?
Like, I think I steal this notion from someone, but I can't remember who, spiritual bypassing.There have been things I've been taught that when anything gets too dark, I can use some religious teaching, some Bible verse to get out of there fast.
Quick, quick, turn on the lights or leave that room as quickly as possible. And there are people who do spiritual bypassing.
I wouldn't mess with them for the world, because some students in my classes are dealing with things I've never dealt with, and the spiritual bypassing keeps them alive and keeps them afloat.So my job with them is to leave them alone.
But there are others who are lazy, and I can see them hanging on to things that won't even bear their weight anymore.And it's time then maybe to say, What are you avoiding?What are you so afraid of here?What do you so not want to look at?
Because it's likely to be some huge part of the human experience that will bring you into communion with a lot more people, but you want to bypass it.You want to go straight to Easter.
You know, you want to go right around Good Friday in Christian tradition.And there are parallels in all the others as well.But I'm not sure there's a way.
We use the phrase the dark night of the soul to describe a time of spiritual crisis. And anybody who has ever had a dark night of the soul knows that is a deep, dark space there.
That phrase comes from the 16th century monk, John of the Cross, who spent 11 months in a dungeon.And you say that this dark night of the soul was really a love story.
He said it was.He said it was.And that was such a surprise to me.He saw it as the way that his illusions about God were stripped away, and he was left with the pure love of God alone, with no benefits, absolutely no benefits.
He was thrown in a dungeon by his own brothers, I think largely for working with a woman, Teresa of Avila, but he would not obey his superior's orders to stop working with her.So everything that had brought him life that far had been taken away.
And he experienced his dark night as a purification a burning away of everything unnecessary.And there's quite a lot of sensual language in that book and not a lot of language about religion, which is pretty interesting.
So the dark night for him was not what he thought.
So the dark night of the soul is a space in which we can learn the most about, or maybe, perhaps, we have the opportunity to grow in every way, spiritually, emotionally, correct?
I think so.And anyone who doesn't want to read a 16th century monk can read Gerald May, who has also written on this subject, and so has Thomas More.I think it's really good to have a guide, because this is a reframing of Dark Night of the Soul.
No one I know prays, please, God, give me a Dark Night of the Soul.I am here waiting.Nobody, nobody prays that one.
But I do think there are people who have reframed that so that if I find myself in one, I can go to some guides, to some sages who have told me ways I could live with that and maybe even work with that in ways that would be transformative.
Paula Coelho was on earlier this season, and he obviously talks about the personal legend and the alchemist.You're a priest-author-professor.Do you think we can have more than one calling? I do.
Anyone who's a parent and works outside the home has a couple callings.
That's what I say.You have a call.You don't have to worry about what your calling is if you're a parent, because that is definitely the big one.You're bivocational, whatever you do if you're doing that.
You're absolutely right. And so I have relational callings.I have professional callings.I have a number of different callings.And I also think it's possible to be called away from things I have been called to in the past.
But I've been powerfully called to some things and just as powerfully called away from them.So I think that's important, too.There are goodbyes as well as hellos in our callings. Ooh, I love that.
Because a calling doesn't have to be for a lifetime.
No, because we're constantly evolving.You're constantly moving forward.Right.
And if it has to be for a lifetime, we're failing all the time, right?Because we've ditched that calling to pick up on another one.
Wow.How do you say we best hear the calling?
See, if I had a formula, here's what I think.We can hear the calling.There is a message, but it's folded into your life, and it speaks to you in your language.
And so all I can say is don't ever give up hunting and listening, because it will speak to you today.And I highly resist formula, and I highly resist three things or five pieces of advice, because I just don't think lives act that way.
It's a sailboat ride. It is.It is.So how can we hear the calling?Listen.
Yeah.Pay attention to your life.And enjoy the smooth sails while they're up.
Yes.Yes.And then enjoy the storms if you live through them, because they'll make the best stories later.They'll make much better stories.
Oh, and it makes that smooth sail feel so good.It does, doesn't it?Where would we be without them all? Life is a sailboat.
You know, this is a really good point because I just got an email from a friend who, you know, has two children and a husband and emails me from time to time.And today's email was, I feel like something bigger is calling on my life.
I want to do something more.And I know a lot of people feel this, you know, that Being a mother to your children is the most sacred thing there is.
I don't think there is anything more sacred than that, than bringing life into the world and being able to nurture and support that.And just in her email today to me, she was saying, I feel that there's something bigger, bigger, bigger calling me.
And I get so frustrated. with people who think that their life has this big calling, when all around you are ordinary moments and experiences that could be extraordinary just by your love and attention.They are.And they are the life changers.
And those are the real life changers.And so if you're not willing to look at the little stuff,
It's so true, and I think sometimes that I have no argument with greatness.I'm all for greatness.I'm all for it, too.But I think to be focused on greatness may be a way of avoiding living the life that you are presently being given to live.
In other words, it's why I resist the journey metaphor sometimes. that spiritual or religious people use, I'm on a journey.If I'm on a journey, it's all about the destination.I'm not there yet.I'll be there one day.
The train will pull into the station.But I'm really interested in the walking.I'm really interested in the companion on the road.I'm really interested in where I'm standing right now.So I have no argument with greatness.
But if that becomes an excuse for dismissing my life now, because I haven't found that great purpose yet, that's a waste of a day, if not a life, I think. So what is the soul?All I know is that the soul bears my scent, S-C-E-N-T somehow.
It has fingerprints on it.The spirit may be not.The spirit may be a large thing that blows in and through and out the other side of me.But the soul bears my identity in some way.It has my scars.It has some version of my scars.
It is not up in the sky somewhere. It is intertwined with my physical life on earth, people I've loved.
And to you, the soul and spirit are different?
They are different.And that's just in my dictionary.But in my dictionary, the spirit has a capital S. And it is greater than me.It inspires, leads, talks to, aids my intuition, pushes me, pulls me.But the soul, S-O-U-L, is much more my creation.
My choices shape my soul. It is smaller or larger day by day, depending on what I feed it, how much air I give it.But that feels more of small S. What's your definition of God?Oh, that's not fair without about two weeks' notice.
But isn't that a great question?It is fantastic.Well, I always ask students that.Whenever we start a religion class, I'll say, what do you mean when you say God?Say God, yeah.And they just blank faces.But what I mean when I say God is some
Beyond my conception, divine consciousness, the space between the stars, that is also the space between you and me, that is liquid and alive with possibilities.It is not an old man on a cloud.OK.
So you just said the space between you and me.Is it also the space that is you and me?
Yes.Yes.It is.I think I might, at this point, be sort of maybe Indian in my thought, but I did see one of your former guests who talk about being a cup of God, and that is very much my sense.
And that's what I mean in Christian terms when I say seeing in the face of the other, a face of God, is I do believe it is the space within.Skin's kind of an illusion.It's hugely important, but at some point in the best moments,
The me escapes my skin and is embracing... Skin's just a costume.It holds things in nicely.Nice costume.
It is.So how do you define spirituality versus religion?
For me, religion is the compendium, the treasury of wisdom that a religious tradition has pulled into a treasury.Stories and hymns and sacred texts and lives of saints and heretics and terrible mistakes that the tradition has made.
And so religion is the treasury of a tradition.Spirituality is the individual hunger or lack of the individual energy toward to what use will I make of those treasuries?
I sometimes think of religion as the trampoline, but spirituality is where I'll go.What does that look like in practice in a life?How is that lived out?
Well, that's fantastic as an answer.So what's a lesson that's taken you the longest to learn?
Let me count the ways.I love that.That I will never be all that I want to be.I will never be as intelligent, as erudite, as learned, fill in the blanks, as I want to be.And what I am will turn out to be enough.
That was one of my great lessons from Maya Angelou.I remember being in her kitchen and her saying to me, what you don't yet get is that you alone are enough.
Yeah.You alone are enough.That was her gift to me.That was her gift to me.
What do you think happens when we die?I wish I knew.I'm supposed to know.Yeah, you're supposed to.I'm supposed to know.And all I know, no, I don't know anything.
So if learning to walk in the dark is learning more and more to accept there are places of unknowing, then what happens after we die is a huge place of unknowing for me.There are enough people in my life whom I respect who tell me there's something.
and even they can be vague on the details.But that seems to me ultimately extremely faithful.I think of that as the most faithful agnosticism there is, to say that whatever happens after death is so beyond me.My brain is not big enough.
I love hearing people talk about what they think.I do not know.And it seems enough to make that the giant trust walk.The world needs.Finish that sentence.The world needs. We're so distracted.
We're so concentrated on something else out there in the future, being someone else, looking some other way, doing something else for a living, having a better house.
And that seems to me what the world needs now is people willing to stand on that red X under their feet and say, what is the best that I can make of this situation right now?I believe. I believe in the goodness of the human heart.
For all I have been taught about people's inherent corruption or sinfulness, for all I have been taught about the dangerousness and badness of the world, I believe in the goodness of the human heart.
And I believe that every day, in a thousand ignored ways, people are acting redemptively in each other's lives.And we're not paying as much attention as we could to that.
Oh, my greatest joy is seeing my Jack Russell terrier when I get home, because he is happier to see me than any other human being.I know that's a small joy.But you haven't met him.And if you had met him.
I know what that's like.I have an English cocker, Sadie, whose entire body moves when I walk into the room.She becomes a wave when I walk into the room.So I know what that's like.Compassion is.
Compassion is the willingness to laugh with others when they laugh and weep with others when they weep and a lot in between.So for me compassion is to, it's literally to suffer with, but I think that's also to suffer joy with other people.
It is for me empathy, clear and simple.I think empathy is the most important human capability.Darkness is?Darkness is a place of unknowing where I'm out of control and I may be vulnerable to danger and I may be vulnerable to divine revelation.
It is the place where I am least able to protect myself and therefore may be most open to being transformed.Light is? Light is sometimes blinding.Sometimes it is too much for me.So light is warmth when I'm cold.
Light makes the food grow that I want to grow, but light can also be too much.Light can be burning.I experience being burned by light.So I prefer my light balanced with darkness. And I love twilight and sunrise the best.I like the liminal times.
I'm fully in the present moment when... I'm fully in the present moment when something happens that gets past my intellectual net and affects my whole physical being.Fabulous food, an unexpected scent,
the drift of a song on the air, an overheard conversation, anything that escapes the net of my rational frontal lobe and affects me physically so that I get a head-to-foot experience of what it is to be here now in this body.Thank you.Thank you.
I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation.Thank you for listening.
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