Rob Bell
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That everything you are working and striving for, you already have. That so often we're working, sweating, clinging, grasping, striving to feel worthy enough. And the fundamental good news, what's called the gospel, is the announcement that you're loved exactly as you are. You don't have to do anything. You're already a daughter of the divine. You're already a son of the divine.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
You're already in. There's this great line in the story of the prodigal son where the father says, you are always with me and everything I have is yours. It's interesting when you talk about, well, what do you think about God? I think in images, I think in lines, I think in pictures, and I think in like dialogue, like you are always with me and everything I have is yours.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
So all of the stuff that we do to feel like we measure up, that we're worth, it's all been taken care of. You're fine. Now, in response to that, let's make some stuff. Let's do something. Let's go do something. But then we're coming from a different place. And we're not doing this to prove something. We're not doing this to earn something.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
We're not doing this to somehow scratch some itch or stroke some part of the heart that desperately has been beaten down and doesn't know anything. You're okay. In all of your not togetherness, you're all fine. All the ways you've made a mess of it. It's okay. It's okay. All the ways we've screwed it up. Yeah. It's okay.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, although I say that in light of how people really suffer. Right, of course.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
You've got food. So I've seen too much of the world. You're in Hollywood.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, I'll tell you. The inner dialogue that says... Push, push, push. It's not enough. You're still learning. You're still... You do an interview and later I'm like, what did I answer it that way for? And that voice that always wants to be like, see? See? You don't have it. You don't have it. You don't have what it takes. You seriously want to play this game? Come on. Who are we kidding?
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Instead of, I'm here. How much fun is this? This is a gift. You get to receive it. There is a wonder and awe to existence. And the struggle for me is when you lose that and you feel entitled, you feel like, yeah, yeah, that's nice. But you know, the real world, no, the real world is a place where you can have wonder and awe. Yeah. That's, that's like, that's every day.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That's so sitting in silence and The practices that sort of take me back to center. We're here. We're breathing. It's another day. Let's try some things.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, I probably started... six years ago surfing a ton because and at first it was like oh this you know if you have some time what a nice hobby what a lovely sport and i know that the surfers who listen to you will know what i'm talking about and then it turns into something something similar to oxygen where it's it's like practice
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And I was actually doing this event with a legendary Buddhist teacher. And I was talking about surfing. And then I was like, but I probably shouldn't say anymore because I'll just start gushing. It doesn't sound right. And he's like, oh, you mean moving meditation? I was like, you have a word for this? He's like, yeah, yeah, that's a moving meditation. What you're describing is a meditation.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
But if I try to sit still on a couch or a cushion, it's not going to go well.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
and like not yesterday morning morning before last this pod of dolphins is in the water in the lineup and they're coming in among us and they're jumping all the way out of the water like this and they're coming like me to you so you almost like curl your toes in a touch just because they're like playing and the dolphin isn't like I'm a dolphin it's just being a dolphin and it just every time it does something to you there's something that happens yeah where was this
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Santa Monica or what? Yeah, North Venice, South Santa Monica, right in that stretch.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Oh, yeah. The other day at Topanga, there was a nice big whale went through.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That's a little scary. A whale is another category of experience. You're never like, oh, a whale. And I've now seen whales for a number of years and close. One time, Kristen and I were stand-up paddling, and a whale went under her, surfaced between us, and then went under me.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah. But inspiring and crazy. Well, it's interesting. It is like a terror that is benign. it's not going to hurt you, but it's also like the size of your house. Oh my gosh. And that's what strikes me about this is we have good things, friendly things, nice things in our lives that we're used to.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And then we have things that are terrifying to us, but rarely are those two things the same experience. It's both terrifying and good. Like rarely do you experience that in the water and then in the water with this like blowhole sound.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I saw a great white shark breached the other day at Sunset Point no way and I had read that they were at this spot that I really like when you were surfing yeah and this guy next to me I was like I wonder if what I saw I just saw so I look over at the guy next to me and he's like Did you see that? I was like, yeah. And he's like, I had heard there were great whites out here. You stayed?
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Of course. Oh, my gosh. All the other people, you know, if you want to paddle in, that's fine. It's just more waves for us. Exactly.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, last year I finished a world tour. End of November and I was kind of cooked. I'd been to a lot of cities. And so I needed like, okay, I need to like reset the whole thing. So I was like, okay, first thing I'm going to try to do is each day I'm not going to enter screen land till late in the day. So I just named it screen land.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Um, and I'm going to work with, I'm going to take pen and paper with me and I'm going to just listen because my work is creating things. I make things and then share them. And then there comes this end of a season when I have to like cook it all up again and I have to stop talking. Um, So that was probably the end of November I started. I would spend the first part of the day in silence.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I'd go surfing and then I would just sit with pen and just note what was going on inside of me. And I wouldn't check any phone or email till like after 4 p.m. Really?
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
By the way, when you do this, email takes you a tenth of the time. Because one of the things about email is you're like, I don't know, should I do this? Should I not do this? When you have spent the first part of the day simply listening to who you are and what's happening, there are all these things that are coming at you that you're burning all this energy trying to figure out.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
But when you're coming from a different place, you're like, oh, of course I do that. Or no. No. And how many things come our way that our nose, but we're not at full power, strength, whatever you want to say, clarity. Yes. And so how many times you'll like sit on it and then you'll sort of... A lot.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And then you're like, you realize later you said yes because you don't want the person to think less of you. You want them to like you. And then you regret doing it when the time comes you have to do something. And then you're doing it. You're like, why is this? This is because last February I was tired on a Thursday and I said yes. So...
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
As I began to think through, oh, the more time I spend away from Screenland, when I do enter Screenland, I'm able to see Screenland for what it is. And that's not my path. I'm not to do that. And letting that person down is the only path forward. So let's just let them down. Right. And I also was struck... That it wasn't like we went a couple of weeks and then it was like, oh, good. I'm rested.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Let's go back at it. The interior is infinite. See, for many people, the universe, does it just go on forever? Does it just push on forever? Could you just travel if you had a ship and you could just go and go and go? So exteriors, we're comfortable with the idea that it's infinite. Or maybe there's a door that Jim Carrey goes through at the very end. But interiors are infinite.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
So, and you'd find this fascinating, because you do speaking.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
It got like December, January, on a random day in January, sitting there. I would remember some event the previous July where I was standing in line after doing an event and somebody plugged in and wanted something or took something or, you know, that feeling when people want a piece of you and I would become aware of it. Oh, that was actually a deeply draining, troubling interaction.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
But in the moment, we got to keep going. Here we go. And I didn't spend time thinking about what that was. And that's in there. It's like we store. They talk about a pain body. We store all these experiences we have and we're carrying them around. No wonder a relationship can be hard to sustain. This person isn't even aware of the stuff they're carrying around.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And this other person has got a world of wound, desire, pain, hurt, loss. And then they're trying to connect when we often aren't even connected with what's happening inside of ourselves. So now I'm like four or five months in to this. You're still going every day. And now my day is completely backwards from what it used to be. I used to wake up. turn on the email, and then it's like, here we go.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And now I'm like, it'll be there. It'll be there when we get to it.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Most emergencies aren't. And... You feel more productive? Oh, wait. Oh, 10 times more. Wow. And... that you...
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
taking good care of yourself which is not rocket science is the best way that you serve others and how you just start giving little pieces of yourself away and then wonder why you feel like a shell and it feels selfish and it feels counterintuitive and it feels like oh you're just but it's actually the best way that you give yourself to the world is you begin by whatever practices habits routines rituals actually hold you together
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, that's the thing right there.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, what's interesting about your, yeah, I'm not really at the beach every day, but I would begin with your wife does want you fully alive. And she does want you at your best. Right. So let's start there. Yeah. That might look different.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Yeah, but I don't. I don't spend any more like surfing. I don't spend any more time surfing than most people would spend going to the gym or something. Right. Um, and like my wife went back to graduate school.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
So, um, our eight year old and then our 16 year old and 18 year old, I like step into some Mr. Momming, but even then I get more done than I used to simply because you're taking care of yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Which, and that's been a long, slow evolving, just learning how to,
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That is a fantastic story. I would go to the poorest places in the world and interview people. What do you want? What do you need? What burns in your heart? I'd start there. I'd start with those who the system isn't working and feel left out and at the edges. I would always, you always go, you go looking for the divine. You start there. And then I would interview scientists and artists.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And then I would go interview farmers about the earth. I would interview people. What do you see? What has been your experience? Tell me about your pain. Tell me what helps. Tell me about your wounds. Tell me about your healing. Yeah, I would not write it as an abstract. I can't believe I even bought into your premise. I just realized I actually took your question seriously.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Any guy who takes your question seriously should be questioned. But I would begin not with abstract intellectual ideas. I would begin with sweat and blood and wealth and poverty and strength and weakness. I'd begin there. I'd read that book.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That's where I'd start. And I would edit it together in such a way that you might, in reading those stories, think, something's going on here. Something's going on here that I could be a part of. That's how I do it.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
That seriously, no one has ever asked a question like that. That's a good one. Yeah, it is. That's a bizarre one. I can't believe I. I think it'd be a powerful book. Actually, probably all my books are at some level me trying to. Answer that question. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
There's this interesting line in the, I point to this, but there's this interesting line where Jesus says, you'll do greater things than these. And it always strikes me, I wonder if there was a Jesus who came back, I wonder if he'd be like, why are you guys still talking about me? My whole point was that you'd go out and do it.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I actually think some of the Bible writers would be like, why do you keep repeating me? Thanks, fair play, appreciate it. But the goal was that you would carry the story forward. And help the people in your time and your day, yeah. Right, right. The goal would be that you would learn what you could from what we went through, but then new metaphors, new images.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
Like, for example, artificial intelligence. This already you have people saying, hey, hey, wait a second. Not all progress is progress. This could come with all sorts of things attached to it that we might be really wise to just watch carefully. Well, this is new technology. This is new fire.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
so how will it be used what will it do what will it say about what it means to be human yeah um these are all the very questions that we're asking now which the i mean they're talking about iron they're talking about stepping out of a cycle of despair all it's all the same sorts of questions yeah i don't think i asked you this question on the last time so i'm going to ask it to you here and this is called the three truths oh wow okay i think i asked you this one before no because i started asking i think after you came on you've written how many books now
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
The first truth would be use the fine china. Because when Kristen and I were married, I learned that you register for two different kinds of plates. There's the everyday plates. And I was just watching this as a dude who couldn't care less about any of this. And then you register for this fine china.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And the fine china is basically these boxes of really nice plates that you haul around from apartment to apartment that you use once or twice a year. And when you do use them, like don't break them, take good care of them. And when I went through a bad burnout a number of years ago, like crashed, hit the wall, didn't know if I could work again. I sort of started to get back on my feet.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
I started serving my boys breakfast on the fine china because we only have today. So we're going to use the fine China because we're feasting because we have no guarantee of tomorrow. So the first thing I'd say is use the fine China. Second thing I would say is forgive everybody for everything. And that doesn't mean condone what they did. It doesn't mean brush it under the rug.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
It just means you have to take part in a larger flow of forgiveness because you hold on to any of that bitterness for anything anybody has done to you and it will eat you alive. You will drink rat poison and then wonder why the rat isn't dying. So forgive, forgive, forgive. And then the third thing I would write down is everything is spiritual. It's all connected. It has infinite depth.
The School of Greatness
How To Cultivate Inner Peace In Uncertain Times
And don't ever think that all of this isn't related to every other part of it. Everything is spiritual. And that's where the wonder and the awe and the mojo and the juice and the joy comes from. Those are three things.