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Hello and welcome to the storied human today. I'm talking with Larry Jordan, a former investment banker. He's now a follower of Jesus with a Zen practice, and he just published a wonderful book called The Way. The book received a 2024, Nautilus Book Award. He practices an open hearted, open minded, non religious spirituality, and we're going to dig into that later. The way integrates religion and science and reconciles eastern and western world views, confirming with the mystics and the scientists that everyone is related and everything is connected. Jim Palmer, who wrote the foreword to the book, said, if you read only one book to guide your deconstruction and reconstruction process, this would be the one to read at age 52 Larry quit his job, sold his house and committed to a life of service along the way, he traveled the world and had some powerful experiences. He says, My journey transformed me. I read over 1000 books, and I had some powerful experiences, baking in a sweat sweat lodge, chanting to Shiva, meditating in a Zendo and whirling with the dervishes. He wrote his book after his adult children were wondering what happened to you.
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Larry says My life is more joyful and meaningful now. I cry more, I laugh more, I have more friends and deeper friendships.
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We'd love to hear more about all of that. Welcome Larry. Very happy to have you on the storied human thanks. I'm delighted to be here. I've been really looking forward to the conversation.
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Me too. So we really like to know someone's origin story and how they got to the point where they were able to make such a big change like you did.
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Okay? Well, I was a raised Catholic. I was conservative Republican. I worked in the investment banking business, very transactional. Only got paid if I closed. So I learned how to close and, you know, I had a pretty good life to the extent that I kind of thought, you know, this is maybe in my 40s and 50s. My parents are still alive. Still are today, I'm still married to my wife of 44 years. I have two grown children that are launched. I have three grandsons. I have good health, I have some security. I'm not I came to the realization, you know, my taking hand is really strong. My giving hand, you know, not that strong, because I was preoccupied, as most people are, with work, family, you know, community, life and so a bunch of things happened, kind of in in midlife, as I'm as I'm sort of wondering, you know, what's next for me?
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And first of all, you know the the planes hit the towers on 911 and I sort of thought, You know what? What is that about? What kind of religion sends airplanes into towers? And I started reading about Islam, not because of a spiritual interest, just because of a political interest, really. And I discovered that Islam is mostly a beautiful religion, and Muslims are mostly beautiful people, and there's a few fundamentalists, just like there's fundamentalist in every religion that gives the religion a bad name. And I was just especially interested in the mystics of Islam. And these are people. Mystics are people that go looking for a genuine experience of ultimate reality.
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And I thought, Well, why aren't there any Christian mystics? And of course, there are. And I was a Catholic, so, you know, I heard about him a little bit, but not as much as I should have. And organized religion sort of crowns on the mystics.
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You know, it's like, Hey, this is not a do it yourself program, you know, if you think you've had an experience, talk to a priest and make sure it's a Catholic experience. And it doesn't work that way. I was on a a committee for my bishop of my Catholic Diocese, and I saw some disturbing stuff, you know, I I saw that the church was all oriented around priests, and that, you know, women and LGBTQ people were marginalized, and they were doing a fundraising campaign, and they were creating a trust. Of course, I'm in a transaction business. I said, Why are you creating a trust?
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And they said, well, we want to protect the money from other uses. And I immediately understood what he was saying. I said, Are you trying to protect the money from priest settlements? And he said, Yes.
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And I also realized in Catholicism, there was a split between really conservative and really liberal Catholics, and this guy was very conservative.
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So I realized, you know, I don't even know. That much about my own religion, but I did think it's been around for 2000 years.
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There's 2 billion people that believe it. There's a book. I mean, what could go wrong? And I really thought I was going to confirm, you know, everything that I was taught in church. So I just started reading. And it's like, I tell people, I don't just read the whole book. I read the whole shelf, you know, and if I find something, we'll read about that. And so we philosophy and and theology and the natural sciences. And as I looked at Christianity and sort of held it up to the light, I realized, first of all, a lot of things that we think are unique to Christianity really appear in all the different religions.
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It's called the perennial philosophy. I realized that a lot of things that are fundamental to Christianity, Christianity and this is things like original sin and the Trinity and substitute atonement, those are theories.
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You know, it's not in the Bible that there's three persons in one God. It was a theory that developed in the three hundreds.
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So I thought, Wow. Well, I mean, that's kind of basic stuff. And then I saw what was happening with the abuse crisis and LGBTQ, and I just thought, I think this thing's gotten, you know, way off track. And I tell people, it's like somebody that went to roast marshmallows and accidentally burned their house down. I mean, I'm standing in this, you know, pile of rubble that these used to be my beliefs.
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Where do I go now? You know what?
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It wasn't your home anymore.
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Yeah, a lot of people just say it's not my home anymore.
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Yeah, um, now at the same time, you know my work again, it's very transactional. I was doing, you know, 68 hour weeks, I was on the road four nights a week.
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I really didn't feel like I lived in the place that I got my mail. I thought, you know, I wonder if, if I can just quit.
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And I was really inspired by the story of the rich young man in the Bible says, but what do I do to attain salvation? Jesus says, well, follow all the commandments. That sounds very, you know, Jewish. He was Jewish.
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He said, we'll be a good person.
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That sounds kind of Catholic.
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Well, that was the original, you know. And the guy said, yeah, yeah, I do all that. I do all that. And Jesus said, Okay, well, sell all your stuff and follow me. It haunted me, and I felt like, you know, I got this big old giving hand, and this, it's never been used. So maybe it's time for me to to redirect.
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I can sit here and do more bond issues, make more money, buy a bigger house, get a nicer car, you know, wear more expensive clothing. Why?
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You know, right. I call that somebody's Is that all there is moment. Oh, exactly right, exactly right.
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And, you know, everyone thinks, Well, I don't know if I have enough. And I thought that too, but, you know, I've traveled all over the world, and the average person makes $2 a day.
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Something, wow, is enough for you, you know? And, and what if you quit? It doesn't work out.
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You gotta back to work. I didn't resign in disgrace. I wasn't fired with enthusiasm, you know, I could always go back, and if I had to go back, I'd be working, which is what I did, if I didn't quit. So now another lesson, and people say, Well, you were kind of this investment banker. I'm sure you were making a lot of money, and I was but, you know, I tell people, Look, I sold a 4000 square foot house and moved into a 1600 square foot condom.
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After that, I went to take care of my infant grandson in San Antonio for a year, I lived in 1000 square foot apartment. You know, then I went to Africa, and I was teaching school when I lived in a dorm room with my wife, you know, and my wife got sick, and we can talk about that. It's an interesting story with a moral, um, my wife got sick, and I was sleeping on the floor, concrete floor of a rural hospital in Ghana. And, you know, I had to look at myself and say, you know, I mean, I'd rather be in my 4000 square foot house than on a concrete floor, but I'm really living the same life. And the point is, I cut my life in half, and then I cut it in half again. I cut it in half again. So anybody says, Well, I can't do it. I say, Well, look at how you're living your life, and can you cut it in half? And most people can. And I say, you know, and I wasn't really somebody that ever did anything extravagantly. So basically, I took the rich young man heart, my wife and I quit our job, sold our house, moved into this condo, and we started volunteering, and I mean teaching school in Africa, taking care of my grandson, driving veterans to VA. I've done 1000 tax returns for low and moderate income people. I just, I just was exposed to all kinds of people that I've never met before that I always sort of smugly thought, well, if they worked as hard as me, you know, they could have done what I did.
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Oh, yeah. I think a lot of us think that, yeah, it's not true.
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You know, you meet people. Old in homeless shelters that they live in your neighborhood, or they used to, you know, you live successful careers now they're destitute because they had to take care of of an ailing parent or a dying child. And so I just realized, you know, people are people, and yes, I worked hard.
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I didn't get anything undeservedly, but I got some breaks. You know, I was able to do what other people were not able to do. So as I'm reading, I had a good friend who who said, You really need to look at the Eastern religions. And at the time, it sounded very boring. I thought, I don't know whether they even believe in God. They they do. They believe in a personal God? What's God if he's not a person? So I started reading, and I suffered at one point, and I'm somebody that could live 50 years, and I didn't really suffer, like most people suffer, but I had something happen in my personal life that was really difficult, and all of a sudden, the Eastern religion, because Bucha, was all about avoiding suffering, and now that I'm suffering, I'm thinking, well, this is really sticking with me. And back in church, they told me, Jesus is with you. God has a plan. You suffer now, but you'll be rewarded in heaven. It didn't help it didn't help me. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, Buddhism helped me. And the Eastern religions are very different than the Western.
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There's a in the Western religion, it's all about personhood. I'm a person. God's a person. We have a personal relationship. In my career, I'm going to work for personal gain.
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I'm going to work towards my personal salvation. I have as a citizen, personal responsibility. And the east, it's like, what's a person, you know? What you think is a is your chemistry, it's your conditioning, it's your experience. It's a little bit of something happened. So something else happened. You didn't really control it. And there's an exercise in the East self inquiry. Who am I? And, you know? So I say, Well, I'm a retired guy. Well, you weren't always that. Well, you know, I'm a volunteer. You weren't always at, well, I'm a grandfather. You weren't always that. Peel away all the layers, and who are you?
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And in the West, we peel away all the layers, and we have something we think is a soul.
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And then the east, some folks need say, Well, no, you really don't have anything below. You know, you just have the same, you're making the same stuff that everybody and everything else is made of. And I saw this wonderful sense of oneness in the Eastern religions that I think is really missing from the duality of God's up here and I'm down there, and yeah, and so I'm reading about the mystics, and when the mystics have a peak experience, a transcendent experience, as a Catholic, I thought, Well, that'll be cool.
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All the Popes will be on one side, and all the saints will be on the other side, and the three persons are going to be up front, and there's grandma and people that have transcended experiences in all cultures at all times, it's not like that.
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They sense the oneness. They see things on a granule level. They don't know where their hand ends and where everything else begins. And they have a sense that everything is okay, right here, right now. There's no place else to go. There's nothing else to do. You were always part of the whole, just in a real great description, yeah, I've had moments of that. Just moments. Yeah, that's so wonderful.
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I say most people do, most people have moments, and some people have experiences. And they say something like a third of the people have had experiences. I have an interesting story about that.
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I'm an intellectual guy. I read all the books in the library, and I'm reading something and all sudden, reading about the mystics, and I slam and shut and I tell my wife, you're not going to believe what I just read. And she's a very intuitive person, and I'm explaining the mystics, and there's a tear rolling down the cheek, and she says, I have had that experience. I didn't know what it was. I didn't tell anybody. I didn't think it was spiritual. I just thought it was something very special, but I had a mystical experience. And so, you know, I'm a believer.
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And so then I'm also reading about the science, and there's a great book called The Tao of physics, T, a, l, I've read that. Okay, well, then you know where I'm going. You know, that's a wonderful book, yeah.
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And, and this physicist says, you know, the table is not as solid as you think it is. The air is not as empty as you think it is. We think about space and time, but it's really space time. We think about energy and matter, but it's really two sides of the same coin. E equals MC squared. We can if two particles, particles are entangled, and you separate them, and you change one the other changes instantly across infinite distance. Einstein called it spooky action at a distance. And you know, we're not observers of an external world. We're participants in a world. And for instance. If a scientist shines an electron microscope at a particle, it moves, you know, we change outcomes just by observation.
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And there's the famous double slit experiment, where is is light a wave or a particle? I don't know. Let's roll out the particle machine. Oh, it is a particle. Well, just to be sure, let's wave roll out the wave machine. Oh, it is a wave. So there's all this ambiguity, but the underlying message of the Eastern religions and the mystics and the quantum physicists is everyone is related and everyone's connected. And so I'm at the point late in my journey, I thought, well, I have this kind of esoteric spirituality now I only know one thing. I don't hardly believe anything. I'm sure there's no home for me. I'm sure there's nobody that that practices what I practice. And I bumped into a guy named Ruben habito, who's a former Jesuit priest who studied in Japan in the 70s. And all the Jesuit priests in Japan in the 70s studied Zen. So he's no longer a priest, but he's still a Catholic and he's a Zen teacher. And I said, Well, I gotta find this guy. Where is he? Well, he's in Dallas, Texas.
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He lives 20 minutes for me. So I found him, and I said, Well, look, I don't want a bunch of doctrine. He said, We don't have a bunch of doctrine. You know, we're all about objective evidence and subjective experience. And there's a Zen patriarch years ago who said you don't have to seek for truth.
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Just let go of your beliefs.
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It's there to find. Don't make stuff up. Don't speculate. If you ask a Zen master, is there a God who knows? You know, we can't. We can't. What is it?
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What does it take to be saved? I don't know. Are you? Are you living here and now? Are you really present here and now?
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Say, Well, what you know? Where do I go after I die? All the things that I used to lay awake worrying about as a Christian just sort of evaporates like, you know, I'm here now. I'm living my life. I understand connection and relationship and oneness. And somebody says, Well, I can't believe you spent 20 years, you read 1000 books, you baked into sweat lodge.
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That's all you came up with. And I say it's all I mean, it's very profound. And if you think we're all related, we're all connected, you don't do anything to anybody else that you wouldn't do to your husband, your son, your brother, your neighbor. You don't without being political, but there is a political message in the book.
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If you think like I do, and I live in Texas, a lot of people don't. Lot of people think like I used to think. But if you think like I do, you don't ban Muslims, you don't build walls, you don't marginalize LGBTQ people, you don't separate families, you don't take away their health care. And so just with that one, uh, commandment, and it's not so different than love your neighbor as yourself.
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I tell people. Somebody said, Wow, I don't know your way out there. Well, I'm kind of where Jesus ended up. Yeah, I'm not comparing myself to Jesus. I'm just saying that that was his message, the goal. You're not that far away, right? I remember one. I forget where I read this. It just kind of blew my mind that I've read it two different places, that Jesus really was a Taoist and that he tried to adapt his message so that people would understand and use parables. But when he said, Love your neighbor as yourself, he really meant, love your neighbor as yourself, because he is yourself and he it's a deeper thing that he was trying to communicate. And I think what he said, I am the way Taoist really point to the fact that that's what the Tao means, right?
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And there's a there's a quote that starts my book, that's a Buddhist quote that says, to study the way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to remove the barrier between self and other. So, so the way somebody says, well, and mostly from a in the east, people say, What a great name for a book, that's what the Bucha talk about. That's what the in the west they say, Well, that's what Christianity was called before it was called Christianity. But I hope this book is not the one way, right?
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So, well, it is the one. It's just a very big road. It's a big way following Jesus. Yeah, most of the way you're following Krishna and Bucha and Lao Tzu. I mean, yeah, it's that you're supposed to live now, there's a lot of paths up the mountain, like they say, there's a lot of paths up the same mountain. And what I really hear in is that you learn to deal with your ego, because we're so. Ego obsessed in the West, and you learn to let that go. Because I was thinking when you were talking about, Do I have enough? When you were, you know, considering, like, maybe changing if we're living in our ego, we never have enough. And I used to be there, I used to, you know, you can't have enough money, and you're always worried you can't have enough status, you can't have nicer, nice enough clothes. It's this hamster wheel kind of thing. And what I admire is that you were able to get off of that. I also am intrigued that your wife was with you like you were in agreement. I think that's huge.
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It doesn't always happen, and there are many because one person moves in one direction, the other person doesn't move, and they move the other way.
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I think it's lovely that you were able to do it together.
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Yeah, and she's very like, I say, she's intuitive. She just has a basic goodness about her and, and I tell people, she got there the short way and I got there the long way.
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She understood. Yeah, I understand. Plus, you were obsessed with providing. You know, men are obsessed. I mean, it's hard on men. They're, they're expected to step up and work hard and provide.
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Well, you know another thing, when you talk about marriage, I'm, I'll always be grateful that when I said to my wife, and I told her twice, I had a job, one time, I mentioned it briefly in the book, that it was just destroying me. I said, I have to quit, you know. And I was making all this money, I didn't know what I was going to do. I was going to go out on my own. And she said, Well, let's do that, you know. Let's do that. And then when I said, you know, well, I didn't say, we just decided we were going to retire, we decided that there was something more out there. And I try to, I try to inspire my kids and people of their age that you know, if you if you plan right, and if you think right, and if you save, and if you cut your life in a nap, if you need to, you can do this. And there's another way. You don't have to work until you're 80. There were a lot of people in my business they couldn't quit, because how could I leave X amount of money on the table or get ready to quit? And their wife says, Don't quit. I like to go to need I like to drive Alexis, you know.
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And I'm just so grateful that my wife was a true partner. She trusted me, you know, I mean, but she has the same question, well, is it enough? And I saw, nobody can know, but I think it's enough. And you know, part of, here's another lesson, I guess part of what gave me the confidence to do that is that I took risk all my life, you know, I, I thought, you know, the people that build wealth, they build wealth in the stock market. I need to understand the stock market, and it's not that hard to understand, but you have to make some mistakes along the way, because that's the way. And so, you know, by the time I was 50, I'd made a bunch of mistakes. I've Resolved never to make those particular mistakes again. And, you know, it gave me the confidence to say, you know, with this amount of money and this amount of years, I'm probably going to be okay. And and my wife, you know, confidence rubs off. And if you, if you're really convicted that this is going to be okay, and your wife says, You know better than I do, but you haven't been wrong so far, you know. And I'm again. I'm just so grateful that that I married the person I married, that she grew with me, and that she was, yeah, was the partner the whole way. There was a time when I left the job the first time she was the breadwinner. You know, she she had been a stay at home mom. She went back to work. We went on her insurance.
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Not everybody would do that.
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So you're a true team. Yeah, tell me a little bit about when she got sick. You were in Ghana.
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Oh, yeah. So one of the things we decided to do was go to Africa, and there was a volunteer program where you could work in hospitals and schools and this kind of thing.
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We went to Ghana because it's the first democracy in Africa, and it's nominally English speaking, and it's not like going to Somalia or something. I didn't want to take my wife to Somalia. We got there, and it was very rustic. And, I mean, we were really not prepared for that. And so dirt roads, no industry. You know, people operated what you might think of as a bait shop. There weren't really big office buildings or anything. There was subsistence farmers and fishermen and the like. So if there's no industry, there's no tax dollars, if there's no tax dollars, there's no services. So there was really poverty there, like I have never seen. Wow, yeah, I had a little bit of culture shock. It disturbed me so much. I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. And about a week into it, I finally started kind of come back to myself. But I was shaving. I was back when I shaved. I was shaving, and I saw I looked myself in the eye in the mirror, and I thought, Oh, there he is again. It was like seeing somebody from high. Village you haven't seen a long time. And I, I don't know if I physically had changed, or if I was so out of myself that I, I wasn't totally aware, but I, I sort of, I sort of lost my sense of self a while. So that's behind me.
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Everything's going well. My wife gets a bug bite. Now, nobody dies of a bug bite in Arlington, Texas, but people die of bug bites and gone. So we went to a hospital. Friday afternoon. Her arm had swelled up like the size of a leg. There's 100 people waiting outside the hospital.
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What are all these people waiting for the doctor? When's the doctor? Get here Monday? So this doesn't work. So we had some, you know, people that were running the program there. So we'll get you to the Regional Hospital to few hours drive pumping dirt roads. We get to the hospital, no doctor. Well, where's the nearest doctor? You can try the other hospital. So there's two Cuban doctors there on a medical mission, and they said, Well, we're going to, I'm going to give you IV antibiotics, and we might do surgery. My wife's a nurse, and she's like, I really don't want to get surgery from a Cuban doctor in a rural African hospital. She's She knows, yeah, so the care was not good, and the situation got worse. And I called the Traveling Space company, and I don't know if those people even answer the phone. I mean, you write a check and nobody use it. I had to use it. And I said, Hey, I'm in Africa, and I'm afraid my wife is going to die. I'm in this rural hospital, not getting good care. Situations worse. They said, I tell you, what can you get yourself to the capital of Ghana? I said, Yeah, I have transportation. I said, Well, go on in and go to this hospital.
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It's the best one in the country. They'll know who you are. Know who you are. Whatever money you spend will reimburse so I'm I'm in a worse situation than that. I have $20 in my pocket now I left, I left thinking I was going to the local hospital. Now, you know, four hours from home, and I got nothing, and my my credit card doesn't work in the machines, and because of all the fraud and after, when you go to the city bank, you go to the top floor, the biggest building in Accra and say, I have a passport and a bank account number and a Visa card, I'd like to get my money.
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And they say, can't do it. So I had this existential crisis that, you know, I have always been able to talk my way out, think my way out, pay my way out. Nothing works here. There's no one to talk to. I don't have any money. I'm helpless. Oh my gosh. So so I did find a hotel that would it was catered to tourists that took my Visa card, so I stayed in a hotel that was exactly a mile from the hospital, exactly a mile from the shopping mall. When you check into the hospital, they say, Well, you gotta get your own food and your own sheets and towels. Wow, everything. Yeah.
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So, so I'm I'm lugging back and forth all the food and bedding and everything from from the shopping area to the hospital, and then going back and crashing in the hotel. And so my wife is getting good care now, not care like you would get here, but she was stabilized. We're ready to go. And so our our guide comes to pick us up. I said we're going to the airport. I hope he goes, No, we're going back to the jungle. My wife is she's up for it, and I'm not, because I've already crashed a few times, and I just looked this guy and I said, I'm not used to this. I'm very exposed here, like I'm not alone. I can't think my way out or talk to my way out or pay my way out. I need to find a way to get some of the money that I have in the United States to Ghana, in case this happens again. And this young man, who's about 30, I never forget it, he looked me in the eye, and he said, don't need to understand your problem. Your wife is full of antibiotics.
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She's not, she's not going to get sick, you know, to where you're staying in the dorm room, and your stuff is there, and we provide your food, and we'll get you the airport in a couple weeks. What exactly are you worried about? And you know, I felt about this big wow, shamed.
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I said, you know, I'm, I don't know. I don't know. You know, let's, let's go back to the jungle. And, you know, I thought about it. All those people in those hospitals, all the people that were hosting us in the program, all the other volunteers, some of them drop what they're doing and found a way to get four these are people we've known for a week. Found a way to to the capital of Ghana to check on us. And one of them said, I'm just going to keep, you know, putting my Visa card, which works, into an ATM, until you have enough money. And it's like, you know, I. I don't know if you want to call it, you know, God or fate or karma or the universe, but there was a bunch of help there that I had been receiving the whole time that I just didn't even recognize. And so, like I say, I was ashamed and humbled. I learned an incredible life lesson. I thought, you know, if I'm ever in a position like this again, I'm going to have to remember that. I'm going to have to get over this fear, this sense of control, this has really been a learning experience for me. So fast forward, 10 years later, we go to Ecuador, to the Galapagos Islands, and we're on a boat with only 100 people, and one of them has COVID, then two of them have COVID, then oh no, oh no.
00:30:47.140 --> 00:31:31.640
So we get back to land, and this is when you still had to test to get on a plane, and my wife has COVID, so we have to stay for for five days, and then I have to test and I have COVID, so we have stay another five days. So we're 10 days in a hotel room in Ecuador. Now, when the when the cruise ship dropped us at the at the hotel, they said, okay, good luck. We're we're gone. Hope everything's works out for you, and everyone else is standing there like deer in the headlights. And my wife and I, since we were veterans at this point, said, Okay, we'll wait.
00:31:27.380 --> 00:32:44.799
Where you go? How am I going to get a hold of a doctor? How am I going to get my prescriptions filled? How am I going to get my flight rescheduled? How am I going to get to the airport? You know, you can leave, but before you leave, I need to see my way out of this sense of mine that I would not have had before and and the sense of you have resources, you know, use them, you know, yeah, to do it by yourself, but you have to do it and stuff. Yeah, that's so interesting to me. You were so that first story when you when you realized you were humbled in Ghana, you you were just so used to being the person who had the extra money always, you know, ready for an emergency. You were the you were the man, right? You were the guy that was untouchable, yeah? And that makes total sense, but what a lovely lesson to learn, yeah, to be humbled in that way. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, when I think back on it, I mean, it worked out fine. It's to go through. But like I say, the resources were there. There was lots of help, people that I knew or didn't know at all. You know, they were there when we needed them. So it was some really great lesson.
00:32:45.759 --> 00:33:12.299
So when did you first think about writing this book? Because this book sounds amazing. I can't wait to read it. I actually ordered the Kindle version. Oh, good. Okay. Well, thank you for that. Well, my kids, you know, said, Geez, what happened to you as you were describing and I said, Look, I I couldn't, this was a throwaway comment. And I said, I couldn't tell you, since, I mean, I'd have to write a book. You need to write that.
00:33:06.180 --> 00:33:21.920
And two things. One, you know, I, I'd read all these books. I hadn't taken a single note because I didn't know I was going to write a book. Um, but, you know, they convinced me, no, there you have something to say.
00:33:22.519 --> 00:33:57.160
And like I did, and I felt like, you know, my kids are not going to read 1000 books. They're not going to bake in a sweat lodge, they're not going to teach school in Africa. But, you know, I learned some things that that they should know, and maybe other people should know, if there were read my book, you know, it's it's okay. Now my grandsons. It's dedicated to my grandsons. And when the book came out, I opened the first page, I showed it to him, and my little six year old grandson says, Oh my gosh, I'm famous.
00:33:50.019 --> 00:34:32.480
I'm in a book that that was that meant a lot to me, too. And then this thing, you know, we haven't talked about my family of origin, but okay, my parents are still very much in the situation I left, and they really didn't understand what I was doing or where I was going and and they were felt challenged. They were angry that I was taken off in a different direction. They were somebody that says, Well, you know, we're not going to talk about politics or religion. And I said, Well, we can do that, but that's a very superficial relationship. I mean, yeah, with my friends and with my family.
00:34:32.480 --> 00:34:58.000
And, I mean, if you want to talk about the weather, I guess, I guess we can talk about the weather. And then my dad asked me one time, well, are you writing a book? And I said, Yeah, well, where is it? It's, were you going to show to Well, I don't know. I wasn't going to inflict that on you. You don't like to talk about this stuff.
00:34:52.300 --> 00:35:23.000
I'd like to see it. And he read it very carefully. I. He gave me a lot of constructive criticism, and at the end, he said, I know you better than I did before he wrote the book. I feel closer to you since you've written the book, and I understand you know the arc of your life now in a way that I didn't before. Wow.
00:35:16.739 --> 00:35:31.880
And so before the book even came out, it just was. It's transformative for me. I got my first box of books. My son said, you're an author now? I said, No, I'm a writer.
00:35:33.440 --> 00:35:55.719
An author is someone who sells a book, a $20 bill out of his pocket. I get emotional. Thing about it. I said, Congratulations, you're an author. It just like I say, it really transformed me the book.
00:35:50.320 --> 00:36:01.619
I tried to get it done, you know, with a publishing house, and it's just too difficult to book to my son says, lots of people would like this book.
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:05.219
Nobody would expect to like it.
00:36:01.679 --> 00:36:05.219
Nobody would go looking for it.
00:36:05.219 --> 00:36:13.980
And if they went looking for it, they wouldn't know where to find it. So it's been a real challenge. But I got a book I got a Book Award, the Nautilus Book Award, that's so wonderful.
00:36:14.579 --> 00:37:20.420
I got a ringing endorsement from Jim Palmer, who wrote the forward, who's who's kind of a big guy in my small circles, and I just somebody said, Well, you know, writing a book is not just about writing. It's about marketing. Well, I was in the transaction business, so I leaned in. I said, You know what, all the shit out of this book. Typical self published book sells about 200 copies. I had that many sold, really, before it came out. Wow, once it came out, I started doing free promotions and download the Kindle version free, and it's unlimited, so somebody with Kindle Unlimited can get it free, because it's not about making money. To me, yeah, I didn't leave a big time job to my way as a writer and make you know, yeah, so, so I've given a bunch of today. There's almost 8000 books out there. How I get calls and emails and letters like people that say I'd like to meet you.
00:37:17.280 --> 00:38:01.320
Are you? Are you anywhere near me. I have met people in groups that are going through sort of what I went through and and I've become friends with people that I've met online. I mean, really good friends who travel together and this kind of thing. So, yeah, the book's been a blessing every way that it could be. I love it. I love how it happened, too. I love how you you naturally seeded your mind with 1000 books like that was all in there, and then you had those experiences. So the that's a strong base for a book, you know, I bet some people thought it came out of nowhere, but I see it as like a really natural evolution of your journey.
00:38:02.639 --> 00:38:23.719
A result of your journey, the book was so important to me. I My wife hates when I tell this story, but I have to tell you there, I'm about halfway through the book, and I'm starting to see what it's turning into. And people that don't write, I see a book and I think, oh, a guy wrote a book, you know, and that's just the book that he was supposed to write. Well, there is no book that you're supposed to write.
00:38:23.719 --> 00:38:36.500
There's there's a blank piece of paper, and it could turn into 1000 different books. And there are so many decisions about content and tone. And should I say, Is this too much? Is this too little? Is it too strident?
00:38:32.780 --> 00:40:17.940
Is it too weak? Do I project authority, but also humility and and I was about halfway through it, I thought, Damn, this is, I don't know if it's a good book, but it's it's the best book that I could write, and it's a better book than I thought I was going to write. And so good. It became a motivator for me. And I told my wife one time, I'm afraid I'm going to get in a car accident or something. The guys in the ambulance can say, I don't think you're going to make it, and I'll just grab them and say, I have to make it. I still have a book. My wife said, Well, don't worry, you'll get to a point where I'll be able to finish the book 40 if you get it. So about the sixth or seventh, I wrote a lot of dresses, but she read everyone on. So did my kids, and at one point she she would say this, that she basically said, You can die now I can finish your book. But it gave me a certain piece, because I just felt like, Man, I really have something to say. And the advantage of not having a bunch of notes, most people write books, they take a bunch of notes, connect the dots from one note to another. And I wasn't like that. Mine was like, What do you want to tell your kids about your journey? And it was consciousness. I I started at the first page and ended at the last page, and I told the story, and I I interwove my personal life into my exploration. It's not. Angry or judgmental. It's not preachy or speculative. It's written in a way most people say that was really a clear book. I mean, I'm astounded that you covered everything. You covered and quantum physics and Eastern religions. You know, in a way that's understandable.
00:40:18.179 --> 00:42:13.860
You pulled it in because the the basis of your book is your story. And we know, you know, the podcast you're on is called the story of human story is so important, and it's the structure of your story. That's how people, human beings, have always learned that way. So you intuitively told your story, and then you pulled in all these things that you learned, but they fit. And I love how people are connecting with it. That must feel so good. Yeah, and it was deliberately user friendly. It's, it's one of some pages. It's small chapters, it's small paragraphs, it's short it's I kept when people would read it, they say, I don't know what that word is, because it would be jargon that I picked up in a, you know, PhD dissertation somewhere, you know. So it's very clear. And I've had an educator tell me, you know, this is a, this is a very visually, this is an easy to read book for people that like to read, you seem to understand, really, readability, yeah, yeah. And I really, I have a friend who's a musician, and he he does three minute songs, and he sells them for 99 cents. And if you pay 99 cents, you can listen that song as many times you want, in the shower, mowing the lawn, driving, reading a book. A book is different. A book is, you know, 399, for an e book, 5099, for a paperback. It requires a four or five hour investment. And my book, you don't read it while you're watching a ball game. You just read it while you're not doing anything else. So I'm so grateful for somebody that was interested enough or curious enough to pick up the book that time. So I felt like I owed that guy, you know, and I didn't just have footnotes in it because I attributed all the quotes. And I thought, anybody wants to find out where that quote came from, they can go look at it. This is a general market book. This is more like a series of essays.
00:42:10.139 --> 00:42:25.820
There's an annotated reading list that says, here's 30 books that were helpful to me, and here's 30 words about why I liked each one, and then there's this really good with three questions for 20 chapters or so.
00:42:26.780 --> 00:42:54.820
You know that are that that people are supposed to be able to digest the book? It's perfectly designed for book clubs, and it's been that's going to say, I read about I read that on your website. Let's mention your website so I don't forget, because I'll put it in the show notes. But I like people to know it's Larry Jordan, author.com and your book is available on a lot of sites, Amazon included. Yeah, is there any other way you like people to reach you, or anything else you'd like people to know?
00:42:56.019 --> 00:43:55.719
A couple things. It's it's also an Ingram Spark. If you're at a at a library or bookstore, they don't go to Amazon, because you just don't do that. So so it's, it's in a distributor where, if you go into your independent bookstore, and I'm a big supporter of independent bookstores, great, we can get it for you. I have an email address. Larry Jordan, author@gmail.com I love to hear and I learn from people. People call me and say, Have you ever heard of this author, or have you ever explored this concept or something in the book triggered on. So I love people that have learned a little from the book. And I also have a blog at Patheos, which is a website for all different religions. And the title of a blog, and I'll explain that as you might be right. Because again, I I know one thing. I if I have beliefs, I hold them really loosely. I had a friend visit me. I go to Crestone, Colorado, which is described in the book. They have all these spiritual centers.
00:43:55.719 --> 00:44:29.059
That's where I had a lot of my experiences. A friend of mine came to see me. He's a medical doctor. A long time friend, fraternity brother was in my wedding, and he's fundamental Christian. And he said, Tell me about your book. I got about three sentences. He said, No, no, I think the Earth was created 6000 years ago. I think the dinosaurs and everybody but Noah died in a great flood. And I said, Wow. Well, I said, we're at 9000 feet above sea level.
00:44:24.199 --> 00:44:32.179
Did the water get here? Where did all that water come from?
00:44:29.059 --> 00:45:17.400
Where did all that water go? Did all those kangaroos doggy paddle from Australia to the Middle East, take a 40 day cruise and paddle all the way back? I mean, why do we have dinosaur bones and human bones in totally different places? And then I said, this is the really important thing. But I wasn't here 6000 years ago. I wasn't here 13 billion years ago. You might be right now. That is a wonderful way to either end a conversation. Conversation or start a new one, yeah? And a bit of a barb in it, because the person says, Well, of course, I'm right. And then they think, Well, I think I'm right, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. I always tell people, Look, all religion is culture, all theology is speculation, yeah, so it's just a little bit that anybody knows.
00:45:17.400 --> 00:45:28.880
And there's a whole bunch of things that they believe, but they sometimes believe him so strongly they think they know him. So I told my friend, you might be right. And then I leaned in and I said, your turn.
00:45:25.099 --> 00:46:30.380
He said, What do you mean? I said, Well, tell me I might be right. I mean, it's a small concession. You weren't here 6000 years ago either. He said, I can't do and I said, Well, I knew you can do it. I love you. There's no hard feelings. But I think you can appreciate that. You know, from somebody just said, you might be right. You're not able to say the same thing to me. It's pretty arrogant. You know, it's pretty arrogant. He goes, Yeah, I know. Sorry about that. We're up on the mountain, and he had this experience of, oh my gosh, you know, there's a there's 1000 foot cliff. I can see 50 miles that way, and 50 miles that way and 50 miles that way. There's all this beauty, and this is just one small part of this immense, infinite, eternal universe. And so he came down the mountain with me, and we're sitting there having scotch and cigars, and we're looking at the mountain, and he's, you know, conversation we had the other day. I said, Yeah, he says, You might be right. Oh, I love that.
00:46:30.860 --> 00:48:16.139
And it was just, nobody had to say, Oh, I win, I win. Or you lose, you lose. It was just, this is what I think, this is what you think. We both give each other enough grace to say you might be right? Yeah, you know, you know what I like about that the gentleness. There's a gentleness when you go through everything you've gone through, and there's no need to, like, slam somebody or one up somebody, you're just gentle about, you know, you might be right. I like that, and there's a humility too, because, yes, mind changing my mind, I have changed my mind more than anyone I know, and more dramatically than anyone I know. So I love to, I love to change my mind I don't really know. I mean, older I get, the less I'm sure about what I know. And that's a lovely feeling. Also, something happened to me about maybe 12 years ago. I just had this, um, I don't know, thought thinking about God and the person, the neighbor, one of our neighbors, is fundamentalist Christian, and I was just thinking, you know, she's, she's lovely, and what she believes is really nice, and she treats people well, and, but I just had this thought that it's all it's all right, you know, God is much bigger than that. And I just got this image of just this huge Creator Source, kind of like, because I'm a Star Wars person, I like that concept that, you know, the DAO is like the force in Star Wars, and that God, you know, God, or the universe, however, people talk about creator, is bigger than all of that. And so we don't know. And you have to be comfortable with not knowing.
00:48:12.900 --> 00:49:59.860
And so for me, that was a real turning point. It's like, well, yeah, there's a place for all of us there the It's interesting you phrase it that way, because I use those words in the book. I talk about God from the personal, a personal God and the universe being impersonal. But after I wrote the book, I sort of thought, well, you know, if I had to do over again, I would, I would just talk about ultimate reality, which is a neutral term, um, it may be personal. I don't think it is. It may be supernatural. I'm not even sure that it is, you know, we used to think that thunder and lightning was supernatural. We used to think that plants had souls. We don't think that anymore, you know, so, so is something that we don't understand? Is it supernatural, or is it just something natural that we don't yet understand? I've had some really good point atheists who say, I just don't like this idea of spirituality. I say, Well, I think I mean something different than you think. I mean, yeah, I think there's an ultimate reality, and you can call it God. You can call it Brahman, as the Hindus, do? You can call it the house a Dallas, do? You can call it void or emptiness, as the Buddhist do. It's to me, it's the same thing. Yeah, it's supernatural or not. So when I talk about spirituality, I'm talking about connecting to something bigger. And there certainly is something bigger, and people when they have that peak experience, and mysticism is just a way to access that aspect of ultimate reality that's always there to tap into that. Yeah, and I was going to mention that it is kind of fascinating that the they're studying, the more they study science. What used to seem like magic, right, is really just science we didn't understand and it most closely.
00:49:59.860 --> 00:50:10.440
I. Would say that physics and what they're discovering in physics most closely matches Taoism out of all the religions, Taoism describes how the universe works. Which I love?
00:50:11.760 --> 00:50:14.760
Because I love Taoism. I love I love the simplicity of it.
00:50:16.199 --> 00:50:27.679
Yeah, and I can't wait to plow into your book, because I think we need somebody who has that bigger view and comes from a place of acceptance? You come from a real place of acceptance?
00:50:27.920 --> 00:51:08.400
Yeah, one thing that's helped me in this recent political climate, you know, you I know a lot of people that don't think the way I do, and and we've tend to be very, very rigid, very set in our beliefs. And I tell people, you know, where did we learn that beliefs are more important than facts? We learn that in church. Wow. Where did we learn that people that have our beliefs are good people and people that don't have our beliefs are bad people? We learn that in church. And so I've, I have consciously, in the last year or so, taken this asking questions you might be right into the political realm too.
00:51:08.400 --> 00:51:46.119
Then I'll go to breakfast with a bunch of guys. There's conservatives you can be, and they'll make some really strident, absolute statement, and I'll say, Why do you say that? And it's, it's not a offensive question, and I'm not trolling them, because, again, I could change my mind. People in an adversarial situation or something that could be adversarial, they make it adversarial because they don't ask questions. They say, Well, let me tell you how it is. And you know, I've just, I've just not. I've learned not to do that. I don't do it politically.
00:51:43.239 --> 00:51:46.119
I don't do it spiritually.
00:51:47.619 --> 00:52:12.539
But I do think, like I say, that there is a natural, there's a natural way to live your life, if you think about things spiritually the way that I do. So you know, I I say, Well, look at I agree with you, it doesn't conform to my spirituality, but you might have different spirituality, or you might not care if your politics conforms to your spirituality, but I do.
00:52:12.539 --> 00:52:24.079
That's, that's the only reason that I would, that I would care about and, you know, I've done things on my own. You know, asking questions is the minimum wage, a a higher minimum wage?
00:52:24.139 --> 00:54:27.199
Is it good because more poor people get more money, or is it bad because it it hurts small businesses and it crowds out the profit margin and investor you know, I can understand both sides. So I just want to understand, I just want to know the facts. Yeah, and when you look at it, the answer is, it depends exactly that's so good. And, you know, so often I've I said to my friends, who are, you know, on another part of the spectrum, I understand like, I'll start where we understand, like, we're both afraid of something similar. We both recognize a problem. Their approach to solve it is different. But I like to meet in that middle and say, I get you. I get what you're afraid of. I fear it too. You know, whatever it is, I've even, I've even conceded, you know, somebody told me, you know, Barack Obama is the worst president that ever lived. And I said, Well, I don't know. I said I voted for him once, I voted for the other guy once. I was a little disappointed that maybe he didn't do everything that I thought he could have done or should have done. But why do you say he's the worst? I said, Well, he sent all that money to Iran. I go, Well, I don't know the situation as I understand it. He was sending them back their own money. He wasn't sending my money to Iran, but I'll give it to you. I'm gonna agree with you, that was a terrible idea. What else did Barack Obama do? That made him the worst president that ever lived, and they didn't have anything, yeah, and so, you know, I think they went away from that conversation thinking, yeah, maybe I, maybe I overstayed it a little bit, because you were, you weren't confrontational back see, it's like a magic bullet, right? When you're just calm and you're, you know, you really are. You're inquiring. It's it sets a tone which I think we are sorely missing. Well, if there's not anything else that you want to share with us, I'll wrap it up today and say a big thank you to you, because I think you put something out in the world that people really need.
00:54:28.039 --> 00:54:59.920
Well, thank you. I hope so. That was the that's what I want to do, and I've enjoyed the conversation. And you're, you're doing good work here. I mean, it's important that people hear other people's stories and and maybe learn some of the lessons so they don't they don't have to sleep on the concrete floor of a hospital in Africa too. To get a little personal, I feel that is tough. I'm that's a tough way to learn. I feel honored that people share their stories with me, and I'm really glad that I'm able to to hear them, to provide a platform for.
00:55:00.000 --> 00:55:13.559
Of them, because it's been a wonderful, unexpected part of my life. I'm a writer, okay, and I have no idea why I started this podcast, but 87 episodes later, I'm really enjoying it. So thank you for contributing.
00:55:14.099 --> 00:55:16.380
Thank you. It's been it's been great. I've really enjoyed it.
00:55:16.920 --> 00:55:17.519
Me too. Oh,
