so we're live i'm here with aiden aiden how's it going what's up dude nice to see you nice to talk with you as always this is uh my first oops what's going on this is my first stream in a while so i may end up messing something up but we can always fix it as we go along it seems like it's working i'm sure you'll figure it out yeah you always do i'm gonna let you lead everything because every time i try to i'll take the lead i'll take the lead so uh tell us a little bit of what you've been up to uh working working yeah yeah yeah yeah working and uh uh i stumbled into uh a rosary group today for the first time in uh uh no well no so i mean so i've been going for walks uh when i'm too lazy to do any kind of like formal exercise i do the old liar i'm just gonna get up and go for a walk and i can kill two birds with one's down i can say my prayers and i can also like not feel like a fatty and today i was like if i'm gonna cut through the church that i go to the parish should i go to because it's only like a mile or two down the road and so i was like oh if i see father there i'll just i'll just be like confession and then like hit him up for it but instead i saw a whole bunch of older women will say walking into the church don't want to offend anybody there but i'm like what are these what are these gals up to and i'm like looking at the billboard or not the billboard the um like the board they have there with like all the confession and mass times and this lady walks past me and i quickly ask her about confession for the day and uh and then she's like we're about to say a prayer we're about to do a uh monthly prayer meeting for um uh like a rosary against abortion and i'm like oh i'm like i'm already praying my rosary can i join you and they're like yeah come on in so it was just me and uh a bunch of a bunch of gals and i joined them for really terrible music um and uh and a rosary and a divine mercy chaplet and um they were all like super thrilled you know they're like talking to me about stuff and we're like they're just really cute really generous people yeah and how how much time did that take to do the rosary and the divine mercy mean okay the road like the rosary at our church takes 20 30 minutes and then divine mercy chaplet is sneezed and it's accidentally finished you know that's that type of thing i only do the quickie three o'clock prayer the one prayer i don't even do that dude i i literally deviate nothing anymore for my rosary i just pray that because i'm just like i just uh that's the best i mean mass and the liturgy of the hours is supposed to be the best but yeah you know but i mean if you're gonna pick if you're going to prick a prick if you're going to pick a prayer pick a pack of prayers then i think the rosary is right up there because it contains the our father which is the best prayer hail mary hail mary's second best prayer glory be you know all these all the best i i see it that way that's kind of why i do it i also do it because um it seems like the best way to introduce any any regular tom dick or harry into contemplative prayer um which is like the coolest aspect and the most underrated aspect of the rosary everybody talks about it like from a meditative standpoint but not so much a contemplative unless they're conflating the two words for one another yeah and of course the rosary is meditative because you're supposed to think about you know the mystery of the mysteries that you're praying but then um they kind of like leave it at that and it becomes very fixed on the formula which involves meditation but in true prayer the progression is supposed to be from meditation then to contemplation and and nobody ever talks about like what does that look like when you're using a tool like the rosary and so lately my time has been kind of praying that more to then see what that would look like because um you know saint john paul ii assured everybody that like no this is a legitimate this is a legitimate path to contemplation but um every source that i see that corroborates that basically says well yeah it is a legitimate source of contemplation but it's better to pray one decade really well than to pray the whole thing and really you should spend some time each day uh in pyramidal prayer and do all the stuff that saint teresa of avila and all the stuff that saint john lacrosse taught us and which i value that but at the same time i don't fully believe it because i'm like well all of the apparitions that have occurred have always said like pretty much one consistent thing and that's pray the rosary it's not pray the rosary and make sure you follow the words of saint teresa of avila and saint john of the cross and um and so not only that but as a dude who tends to like uh make things a little too complicated i'm like well i don't really i don't want to do a bunch of things i kind of want to just hyper focus on one thing which is very inclusive of a big body of work um then you know uh have to like spend my time like well gotta do a little this and a little this and a little of this and it's like i don't really i don't feel called to that but what do you what do you think about that well i think i'm thinking about now uh name and the leper getting healed with such an easy cleansing wash yourself seven times in this ordinary water or whatever and it's just like he was complaining it wasn't sophisticated enough and i think it's it's the same with a lot of uh devote catholics they want that level of sophistication to justify their righteousness and all that sort of thing but i think for humility's sake it's all about um recognizing the mercy of god and how easy it is to go to heaven and that's part of the punishment of hell is realizing how easy it would have been to avoid hell and i'm reading a lot of saint alphonsus liguri i don't know if you know him who's she yeah yeah yeah so that he's emphasizing a lot the uh just the bare minimum sort of uh essentials of the faith like uh love of god to love god to pray god to give you the grace to love god more and more and and i'm always asking for that one yes it's tough it's a tough one it's a tough one it's a tough one and uh you know i tell god you know i love you but not as i should not as much as i should please help me to love you more help my unloved that's one of my favorite prayers help i love you help my own love or my lack of love uh but the other thing emphasizes uh saint alphonsus is uh perseverance in the faith so that as you age if you age but as you approach death at whatever age uh that you're not overcome by temptation because of the despair that comes because satan and his demons are allowed to show you the gravity of your sins and how close you are to death and how little time there is to do good works and to repent and that's sort of the final battle right what do you think that that despair looks like because they always talk about falling to that despair is that like just like jerking it or is it like you know is it something like uh is it something less concrete than that because can you could you expand on that i don't want to answer the wrong way um you know like like falling to despair at the end everybody says oh there's always that like you're attacked by by satan and demons towards the end of the life and like an unrelentless uh type of assault but it's like okay so what does losing that fight look like does it look like committing like doing another sin or does it look like apostasizing or does it look like um just like simply just laying there and despairing you know because like because like despair is always one of those sins that i've seen where i'm like you know people like it's mortal and i'm like is it really because i i feel this i feel despair yeah you know all the time but like to feel despair versus despairing like you know i don't really like the ambiguity well i i uh i have some practical experience over the past two years of uh falling from grace and falling into mortal sin and um it's really really ugly and the to pass the night with the hope and the prayer that you'll survive to the morning to go to confession i mean that's i've lived through that over the pandemic a couple of times and uh it's horrible it's a horrible horrible feeling that oh my god i've offended you and i may not live to go to confession and i know if if i have perfect contrition i know that i'm already forgiven but is my is my constriction perfect i've never i've never felt like my contrition was perfect i've always felt like my contrition was imperfect i guess they call that attrition and uh i mean it all comes down to putting your faith in god and your trust in god and your confidence in god and the mercy of god um but i'm just i'm just trying to explain the the despair of um [Music] like the feeling that you're in hell already like you are damn you are damned right well and like saint faustina described that feeling when she um during just certain moments of dark night of the soul and i think padre pio's described that feeling and like so i feel like that's a natural like is that a natural part of the christian life or is that um not natural in this context because you did something to warrant that feeling or or do you know what i'm saying i think i think that if you're what i'm getting from saint alphonsus is if you're a sensitive christian who has the grace of your even if you're in mortal sin you have the grace to have the faith to cooperate with god and to go to confession and to get back in the state of grace there's a certain there's a certain point in time where you've used up all your sins and then you no longer have that impulse oh my god i've offended you and please forgive me and please allow me to go to sacramento confession as soon as possible get this off my chest get back in the state of grace like that's the feeling i've always had when i fall into mortal sin since my confession excuse me since my conversion in 2009 i've always had that feeling like oh my god get me back in the state of grace please let me live long enough to get back in the state of grace but at a certain point saint alfonse says if you continue to abuse the mercy of god there's comes a certain point where you no longer get that panicky feeling you no longer get that feeling you're just like all the other atheists or lukewarm christians that you meet who say well sin is not a big deal sin god is merciful and whatever and you just you don't you don't feel it you're not on fire anymore and you don't have that contrition so is it natural or unnatural i'd say it's not natural i'd say it's a grace it's a grace to feel that um that sort of holy anxiety that so yeah the holy panic but despair in and of itself in the technical sense is a sin so we have to have the hope like i mean when i was passing some feverish nights waiting to wake up and go to confession over the past two years i just kept praying um it doesn't feel like there's hope but i'm going to put my hope in your mercy god i'm just going to put my it's just like a hail mary literally a hail mary right i do not feel good but i'm just going i don't have a choice i've got nothing but this hope in your mercy so uh that's a grace right that's a grace and uh i mean it's it's it's a self-inflicted tragedy right and there are saints who do not sin not even venial sin for i mean some of them don't even do venus but um they still undergo the dryness the darkness and all this sort of thing that's a much holier exercise than what you and i might uh go through because of our our willing blindness our willing uh pride like our obstacle obstinacy and sin and saying yeah well god uh i'm sorry i don't choose you right now right now i choose short-term pleasure or whatever it is whatever that might be yeah i always wonder um because i i've experienced the same things that that you experience but i always find that i'm always in gray areas or where like my sin is just so pervasive that i'm just like oh what was it does that count you know so yeah you know i try not to even go to those areas anymore where i get panicky because i'm just like you know what i can't i can't worry about it because then i'll just obsess over it and that typically it ruins like my receptivity to the sacraments then too yeah because i know that the devil really like eeps in so i'm like like do i receive confession today or receive communion today and it's like yes you absolutely do and then if you can't get to confession before go after and let them know like hey i don't know like i'm never in a good head space to do that yeah and i just cover it that way because i know that satan is always trying to mess with me in the best way possible and well you know always be like that confession didn't count or that communion damned you or um you know it's kind of like like if you're in a crowd of people and you see attractive looking people and you're like looking around um just because you're a human being and you're looking and then you see somebody that happens to catch your eye and then it's did i look at them because i wanted to or did i just look because i turned my head and i don't even like with that stuff i just don't even engage the conversation i don't even like if that dialogue starts to occur or that inner monologue starts to occur rather sure i shut it down i just ignore it i'm like i don't care if it was me if it wasn't me i have the the ability to commit that sin and if it wasn't me okay cool you know what i mean and then i live in peace and i back away from it because it's just like i've actually been thinking about that in another way like the way that we use our brain and the way that like meditation affects the brain and like the state that we're kind of supposed to live in where we're like disassociated with like the thoughts that we have so that we can step away and say like i don't aiden doesn't have to be that thought and even if aiden did think that thought like okay you know move on to the next one and jesus is merciful and he's gonna you know he's gonna take care of that whether or not you know um i was the source or or just the person receiving um but but that kind of makes me think of um you know back to the like to the stuff about the rosary i know you're you're a daily rosary um uh practitioner yeah yeah um now do you i'm gonna ask you a little bit about your your prayer rule with the rosary do you how much of it do you pray every day do you put do you do five or fifteen or twenty i i do uh five okay how long have you i know that you're very steadfast you you've probably been doing that like every day right yeah i've skipped a few days on purpose during the pandemic just because my faith life has been suffering but lately um i'm emphasizing like there are certain practices that i'm not doing anymore like um i have are you where are you are you aware of the can you see on your screen this yes i can live with christ yeah it's the missile so the the daily readings and their uh the lives of the saints in a very cursory form in the back okay the saints uh i love reading that yeah every day but right now i'm not in the habit and i'm sort of i'm making a compromise where i say okay i'm going to pick and choose my favorite devotions and i'm going to do those and when i rebuild my strength then i will give myself another that because i do enjoy it it's like there's it's one of my most enjoyable devotions is the daily readings and the lives of the saints it's one of my favorite devotions but for whatever reason it's just like i can't handle it like i'm just not spiritually strong right now even though i enjoy it right so i can waste two hours doing stupid godless mindless waste of time stuff but i've decided not to do this spiritually strong enough right now so i just do my rosary i do my morning prayers my evening prayers and i do my spiritual reading at night before bed which is in bed with my kindle i just read st alphonse's library that's it so i'm cool i'm missing out on the 15-minute uh thing and it's just sort of like i don't know i'm like saturated to the point where i'm i'm i'm struggling so much spiritually that it's like it takes everything i have just to uh like for example i don't uh i don't go to mass on sunday and i have because you can't right because i can't because i can't it um and i feel a bit bad about that but i don't even watch it on the internet because i hate watching the mass on the internet right just like you read it just like i i would love to have sex but i'm not gonna sit there watching porn it's not the same thing sorry it's correct so i'm not gonna do that to me that's pornography like if i'm like looking at it's not really an interesting last stream but i mean to watch a mass on television to me is like doing confession over the telephone it's just it's just makes me sick like i just don't like what about confession over face time i've never tried it and i don't know if it's uh it's not like this is it i don't think it's i don't think it is no but i just cried it just creeps me out that the world the world meaning satan wants to push us into metaverse and all this sort of stuff and are you joining no you should be a duck i see you as a guy that's my nickname my wife calls me ducky does she really yeah that's weird that i put my finger on the pulse didn't even realize so so what the bottom line is is that you're i pray the rosary i don't pray it nobody prays it well um that's not the same well the saints pray maybe maybe maybe they i mean saint teresa of uh lissie didn't pray well she often talked about how poorly she played it yeah yeah she was cool in that way that's the only thing i really liked about her um is that she was just like man i hate it i hate it i'm bad at it i'm like yeah that's cool you know thank you um okay so you pray you do like five decades you do your five decades a day i do it on no i'm i'm confessing to you again i do it on now i'm in the habit the bad habit of doing it on my bicycle on my ride home from work dude i i find that like taking prayer in and out of different contexts is real it's real yeah it's really important because it like prayer is supposed to be like as flexible and malleable as we are yeah it's not compartmentalized yeah yeah why i mean like kieran kieran um has his prayer rope in his hand all the time and like he's just heinous so he'll like you know facetime me on the toilet he has his prayer rope in his hand and i'm like dude probably praise that while while he's like dropping a deuce he does by the way so but what's wrong what like if you really sit and you think about it like why would that be an issue i pray yeah i pray every time i go to the bathroom number one or number two i always pray actually so that's my dad yeah oh yeah it's like it just it's a it's a very focused uh moment right so um plus uh it's like a good time to think about uh health because a lot of health issues have to do with your toilet habits and like your digestion and stuff like that so it's a good time to think about like as i age maybe i'm gonna have problems with my gastrointestinal system or whatever it's a good time to think about health and to pray for better eating habits like it's all connected with uh gluttony too sure so there's a lot there's a lot to pray for while you're taking the dump or dropping the kids off at the pool as they say indeed indeed um well uh speaking of food habits are you to do anything with food for lent when's lent starting don't know in that pathetic i don't i know i have no clue okay let's google it hold on let's see april 14th wait that's what no march 2nd okay really nice we got a month that we don't have to do anything lent begins on march 2nd sweet man that's great so yeah i'm going to try to uh cut out cheese and maybe sugar sugar is what i'm going for and the only reason why i'm saying that is so people could hold me accountable for it because i'm really addicted to it yeah so yeah yeah yeah what about hit little hidden sugars like i'm gonna allow myself bread and i'm gonna allow myself fruit because i'm not going crazy but like any pre-packaged nonsense i'm not really gonna do like those little packets of sugar like right yeah dude now me and i like wake up and i like crave sugar i'm like in anticipation of lent what do you mean you're craving yourself no no no no i just i i naturally i eat too much sugar yeah yeah and uh all the time and by i mean i don't even say that like in a ho ho ho i eat too much sugar i mean i have a legitimate food addiction to sugar and it's so bad like the maybe two or three years ago i i did a ketogenic diet oh and um when i was quitting sugar um everybody told me that i wanted to bite their heads off i was like really like like super moody and aggressive but like i wasn't i was just a little bit less of being at work than i typically am but um i could literally like when i would walk into a store like you'd smell candles like i could smell the sweetness of the candle i could smell the sugar and food i had massive headaches for weeks it was really awful very unpleasant experience so it's a poor taste of the despair that comes at your death indeed you're attached all your attachments come back to haunt you they do so you're supposed to get rid of them little by little now yeah it's supposed to be a very practical undertaking you know or it's like oh yeah pick this work on this and just progressively like you know you know cut out trim the fan cut out the stuff that you don't need in your life and you're supposed to then keep it keep it going but oh yeah yeah i mean like if you think about it so like can you imagine if you like let's say you pick caffeine right you decide that you're gonna break your caffeine addiction after you're for lent and then you do successfully do it and then the day you know easter hits and you're like big cup of joe like which is what everybody does i mean we all do it but then like you think about you worked so hard you broke an addiction you probably dealt with a lot of pain and like suffering to break it and then you're just like let's do that heroin again you know like to celebrate like nobody does that when it comes to alcohol or drugs so why do we do it yeah you know that's a good point so that sounds like you're kissing goodbye to sugar forever and ever not even a little bit no that that's why i hate food because food is so there's no way to properly behave with food because it's you know it's a necessity you can't avoid sugar your whole life you need carbohydrates the human body um is made to run on them so it runs on duncan in america i don't know about canada runs on tim's what's tim hortons it's the dunkin donuts of the north do we have it in america or is it just strictly canadian no i would be surprised if it didn't bleed over because it's just so dominant here north of the border like how could it not bleed over like you would need like one of trump's walls to keep it out that's true but they're taking those down okay i don't know i thought that um well everybody's complaining about immigration and um uh blaming it on trump i don't know wall going down wall coming up something i stopped i stopped following trump ages ago but well he's not the president anymore so you don't have to follow but uh so you heard about speaking politics politics you heard about uh canada i'm wearing my only canadian shirt tragically hip i don't like the tragically hip but it's got a canadian flag on it um you heard about the trucker's convoy the freedom convoy 2022 i saw the um clip that you sent me and i was like that's a lot of lights that's all i really registered and then i just kind of put two and two together so am i let me try to guess here so it's a community of not i'm not gonna use the word anti-vaxxer because i don't like that word but a community of people that are um against the current narrative um that are trying to protest it and the news is trying to somehow portray them as a very um niche um group very small group fringe group yeah of the racist misogynist uh white supremacist or whatever and xyz yeah well anybody that would look at you would be like there's no way that guy's a white supremacist it's a well-kept secret yeah i mean i you i i know and i know better too but you just look like you're going to roll out a yoga mat and like yeah yeah you know yeah and then you'll see me try to touch my toes and be like no it's got zero flexibility that's okay you don't need to be able to do that but but uh no the uh i'm surprised you haven't heard more about the uh freedom convoy because it's sweeping the globe it's like it's r it's inspired the aussies to try another trucking strike like another trucking convoy uh protest i've not heard it it's inspired a bunch of different people all over the world to use the truckers or for the trucks truckers themselves to stand up for freedom from government overreach like the basic idea is uh it's pretty ridiculous if you read their manifesto like they have a manifesto like they're going to ottawa they're in ottawa now they're going to lock it down and they're not leaving until either the whole government resigns the entire government from trudeau all the way down so you try not to laugh or and or just remove all mandates all mandates mask social distancing business closures uh passports vaccination mandates of any kind like remove all of them so those i think that's ambitious i think those are unrealistic objectives and it's a bit laughable and it kind of undermines the whole thing because you're just like come on that's immature to expect that but but people are but people are getting behind it just like just with the idea that it's just like a snowball kind of effect it's like hey we thought we were like a tiny fringe movement and that's what trudeau said we're a tiny fringe movement but actually people are coming out supporting vaxxed and on backs are coming out because they're against the mandates they're against the overreach by the governments and so the people are coming out and supporting this convoy that's rolling towards ottawa and that has now mostly arrived in ottawa people are supporting it people with people on the left on the right in the middle of people who don't care about politics people who are backs people are unboxed people who are injured people who are like you know all kinds of people and of course that will include as justin trudeau loves to emphasize it will include people that are misogynist racist uh pedophiles whatever it's gonna include everyone and right in the mix of everyone you got people with some bad habits you're gonna have smokers you're gonna have drinkers you're gonna have a compulsive whatever you're gonna have unrepentant homosexuals you're gonna have all these things but uh trudeau doesn't list unrepentant as included in the trucker's convoy right you wanna start a band called unrepentant no no okay all right no i do not it's it's too embarrassing for me personally once a masturbator always a masturbator it's like it's it's a shameful thing i think a lot of guys uh have buried their shame to the point where they think it's healthy and i've been to i've been to events like music events or public talks where they say oh now a word from a sexual health expert so and so it's got nothing to do with the reason i came to the this event but then they start talking about the the uh joys and benefits health benefits of masturbation of whatever other perversions you know and it's being it's being normalized uh so much in our society i think a lot of guys aren't in touch with that shame and the with the the guilt and with the the fact that it's a sin and it's it's sad to me you know it's sad to me how how dead people are to the gravity of sin and offending god not only in that way but in all in all kinds of ways like just like that's just one that's just one sin among many many many ways of offending god there's so many ways to offend god i feel like um at times i feel like a big leather like like leather piece of skin okay and like like like the sacraments and like sacramentals are like a salve that is over time after being applied they slowly start to crack open this leather skin and like actually let the medication like seep in to where it's supposed to go and like i just feel like sin has basically like rotted like a rotted my body and it's uh and like it is the cause for my my lack of feeling you know um like remorse for for things because like um when i started praying the rosary um like a bunch of sins like slothed off you know and masturbation was one of them that took a little bit of time but it was one of those sins that like um uh uh like i really i had to ask for help for there was no way i was gonna like kick that you know without the help of god and of course of course it manifests in other ways now so like you know got an awesome life so like objectification and putting my eyes where they shouldn't be and of course the temptation is always there but um but i don't like hearing you talk about like oh yeah there's a shame and i'm just like shame i don't feel shame i just like i i'm like i feel like there's a certain amount of cruelty that was a lot of demand and i was just talking to somebody about this the other day um to like basically like like let's give man a penis and a bunch of hormones and let's let's make this grave and let's uh uh take the male mind like like let's like uh make the male mind in a manner that like i don't know it takes a long time for it to fully develop and um mature into the adult brain that we now have because uh with men it takes until we're about i believe it's the frontal lobes to actually fully develop and connect to one another impair action and consequence and so it's just like you know it's like given like it's like giving somebody a loaded gun and or a big red button to push and it's just like don't you push that button and it's like oh but it looks so good you know and so i don't know man at least you have the at least you have the shame it means that you're that you're not calloused i just feel like a shriveled like gollum that's not capable of feeling true guilt for anything well i mean uh it's we're in different places you know in terms of age and you know circumstances are different and everything else and god understands all the differences better than we do but um you know there is uh i'm not i'm not scrupu i'm not scrupulous i'm not scrupulous and i know there are areas of my life where i don't feel sufficient shame uh for example like laziness like i'm intellectually aware that i should not be lazy but i just uh i'm very i feel no shame i feel no shame for being lazy okay does that make you does that make you feel better okay i feel zero shame lazy but honestly i know what you're feeling or feeling doesn't make me feel too bad at all i mean in one sense it does but in another sense it's like well repentance isn't about feeling repentance is about repentance turning the other way knowing and so it's like i don't have to feel bad about this i intellectually know that i'm offending god and i'm like dude i'm really sorry and i'm also sorry that i don't feel that sorry like you're pathetic i'll have mercy on you because sorry not sorry you say that yeah yeah and he's cool and i'm sure he he has to be cool with that because like you know i mean who else does he have he just has a bunch of bums you know like working for him so it's kind of like and i mean you know the second thought i had the other day because you know the demons when i'm in when i'm in a dark place which happens you know uh which has been happening since the pandemic periodically when i'm in a dark place uh satan one of the temptations that he gives me is uh with sexual perversion is like really dark stuff like you know incest rape all kinds of stuff right like really really really dark and sick um and it's arousing for whatever reason it's arousing for me in my mind but uh god helped me to never be subject to those thoughts flooding my mind ever again and it can happen at what church can happen at work it could happen anywhere um but the the sick thought that i had was i wonder if god is turned on by me how what a i am because like you know if i have a fantasy that floods my mind of some or whatever and it's just like just the scenario that plays out and it's like all arousing and whatever for whatever sick reason um it shouldn't be cause it's not wholesome but um i wonder if god sees me like this dirty horror and it's like a turn on and like the way that i'm resisting the way that i'm resisting him is a turn on you know what i mean you know what i mean i i dear lord i hope not no but you know how god says he rejoices more for one loss sinner one repentant sinner you know what i mean so it's kind of this idea like it is exciting it is in a certain sense it is exciting for god when a dirty disgusting sinner like me feels even any kind of repentance or sorrow for sin or contrition right right so i'm trying to right i'm trying to see like is there in some sick way uh is there an analogy and i know god's perfect and he's incapable of sin he's incapable of uh you know uh he doesn't he doesn't fantasize i mean he lives in reality he is reality but if there's some sort of analogy where it's like you know as a humbling experience to say look look how disgusting i am and yet god still wants me right god still wants me and in a certain sense uh there's this idea like because i mean this this idea of rape is disgusting but this idea of like god kind of forcing me like a lot of my prayers are god like if you want me you're gonna have to force me you're gonna have to take me take me by force right you know like penetrate me you know and it's like i know it's it's dancing with blasphemy here but there is this sort of idea like i am disgusting and yet god wants me and uh he's gonna have to force himself on me and i'm asking him to force himself on me so it's kind of weird well i would definitely say you should be feeling major shame for all of us now uh i'm actually a couple steps behind you but in the same same line of thought lately um where um where like i i'm slowly coming to the realization that any of my disordered desires are all going to find their end in god and so sex is a not sex in general but like any kind of disordered sexuality or misplaced sexuality is going to find its end in god yeah and then it's like what does that look like and it's also don't be a prude you know like don't be because because it's because if if if god is the bridegroom and we're um the bride then that um analogy obviously has uh a grounding in truth where it's like well i'm the receptor and he's the he's the giver and that's just how it is and so then um but like you're saying you're dancing with blasphemy in that in that case but you that i guess that's why in most catholic spirituality you don't hear um you don't hear those things spoken about too much because it's too difficult to teach without being like weird about it but it's like so whenever i see a nice looking lady walking by it's like i you know like jesus is better jesus is better but if you really like scrutinize your thought that thought that's like a really weird thing to think it's like just think of a dude just think of a dude just think of a dude and it's like it's like you know well i often say i often say if you picture pope francis while you're like tempted to do some solitary sin or something like that it would be a good pretty good antidote i couldn't think of a much better one well i mean what about jp too i mean like he was just a yeah he's a good looking guy he's a good man that's horrible that's so bad he's make that joke but he was there's something about john paul the second i just i love that man he's just so cool he's such a cool dude but so anyway back uh i'm gonna loop it back around a little button here do you see that oh that's my boy look at that guy um what do you think do you do you uh like his edition of the uh luminous mystery i love the luminous mystery cool man yes yes uh what are your favorite luminous mysteries what's my what are my favorite luminous mysteries or what's my favorite top five favorite top five favorites just kidding my top five favorite luminous mysteries okay so my favorite luminous mystery would probably be the uh proclamation of the kingdom of heaven because there's a versatility in that one and you can literally like pick like any scene from the gospel basically and stick it in there i all it rotates so um stick it out indeed man continuing with the language it's uh sore the seed was today because i was reading a meditation on this over in the seed my favorites are just when he's sitting uh preaching like just one of the unrecorded instances where it's like you know because they're we don't have enough room in the whole world to document all that he said and did right as saint john said so i think about one of the unrecorded times where jesus was sitting like on a little hill or whatever and surrounded by people ordinary people and just talking wisdom that's one of my favorites the other one is uh more exciting it's when he's sleeping in the boat and the storm comes and he just says why don't you have faith and he calms the storm that's one of my favorites because i need i need well we all need peace right we need peace i need peace i crave peace and uh sin so obviously destroys peace that i wonder to myself why do i sin because i know that it destroys my peace and what i want is among other things peace so why do i sin because i know from first hand experience it destroys my peace so it's kind of like being mentally or being on some weird drugs or being drunk and like why don't you know this is saint paul this is saint paul you know i do the things that i don't want to do you know spirit is willing the flesh is weak yeah that's cool man would you have a favorite luminous mystery uh i actually what's your favorite mystery of the entire rosary let's do that uh let me think i have to get in the headset here think about that i mean i'm thinking right away of the sorrowful mysteries obviously that's where i'm most most excited but um it does it does move around a little bit lately i'm just trying to think lately if i've had any sort of favorites um i do there's some that i don't like i should talk about that maybe first yeah um the i don't know why i don't know why because i like the presentation i like the idea of the presentation but in my practice of the rosary i struggle i yeah i struggle with but in theory i like it a lot because it's sort of i i'm a strong proponent of the judaism like christianity is the fulfillment of judaism i love that idea i'm very married to that idea i like to emphasize that and the presentation i think is a good example where uh that's exemplified like jesus didn't have to go to the temple he didn't have to fulfill judaism but he did right and fulfilling the law and all that sort of thing and i also like in the presentation how i don't know if it's theologically correct but i i view it like mary gives up jesus yeah and by the grace of god the temple those in the authority that have the authority from god give back freely without any obligation they give back jesus so that's how i think about the presentation so i do love it but when i'm praying it i just think oh presentation or whatever just get through this one it's like it doesn't for what for whatever reason even though i have some nice things to meditate on and to think about that i really am attached to for whatever reason i don't know why uh lately i've been sort of just like uh whatever presentation okay get through this one so uh do you have any like that where you sort of have a an aversion to one or you don't feel excited about one so i do know my favorite and uh the one let's see here um the my least favorite or or my most rushed through um hmm trying to like get in the right get in the house yeah the baptism um yeah i treat that one lightly too yeah that one um because it's always like the same scene i actually like the idea of him no not not that that sounds stupid but i mean like it's always in my mind like i know that i've pruned the neural networks to like do the same things over and over and over again so i just go back to the same stupid trite images that are like really fuzzy and not good okay um but just because it's just because my mind is weak um but i i i enjoy more thinking of him being driven to the desert after the the baptism itself um so that i'm always like imagining him like lacing his shoes that he's not wearing and like all right peace guys like like getting out of there after being like you know driven into solitude because i love the idea of that of jesus experiencing pain because i'm selfish and i like want to commiserate with him yeah yeah but my favorites the crowning with thorns because uh it's just so this is such a beautiful mystery and just like like i don't know there's just something so cool about god that would just like a god that would like take this crappy body and like then sit there and be like just beaten to a pulp for my benefit and like there's just something just so metal about that where fight club um you know when brad pitt is being beaten by lou the bar owner and he just starts bleeding all over him and says you don't know where i've been you don't know where i've been there's something so subversive in jesus's um ability to be um like martyred um that's just so it's like wow what a man like that dude is like the like like i want to be as strong as as him one day and i know i won't be but you know um admiring that is all i've got right now so well i mean like paul said the we can glory in our weakness because it's it's we need to be an empty vessel so that we can have christ's strength right like we we acknowledge that we're weak and that's that's a win-win situation for us because if we think we're strong then we're screwed so we need to know that we're weak and make space for the strength of christ and we need to know that we're fools so we can have the the wisdom of god and these sorts of things but um yeah i mean it's just like the the the mysteries that i want to understand best and to meditate on the most are the sorrowful mysteries just because it's uh it's the key it's the key to transformation like it's the key to loving god it's the key to appreciating what god's done for us and it's the key to so many things and when i get to uh the joy you know when i do the joyful or the luminous or whatever it's just i don't i don't feel as invested just because i'm not as interested in that but i i also tell myself that it's all part of the it's all part of the package and the process and like which is ironic too because if you don't like doing certain mysteries um they have the same effect as the sorrowful mysteries because there's a kenosis that involves and pouring yourself out and dealing with like the like the version yeah the aversion to them what i like about the joyful mysteries is they kind of describe the process of what's happening when you're praying the rosary okay and so like um like the enunciation is basically just this opening up to god opening up to god and the receptivity of god and then the visitation is well like the rosary is only good if you can take what you've learned from it and then go and like carry that to other people and then the nativity is excellent because it shows that jesus is born in poverty and what more like what what what better poverty can you get than being born in me and then the presentation is cool because you then take those gifts that you get from the rosary and you can hand them back to god um and then the finding of the child jesus in the temple is what happens when you experience all of these things and then one day it's gone which happens when you pray the rosary and then mother takes you by the hand and leads you right back internally to find them again so there's this kind of like in those mysteries i see like this kind of summation of what's going on when when you're when you're praying interesting you know i uh i have i don't have all of the have a couple a couple that i use in my shrine that sort of help guide me and for whatever reason for the finding of the child jesus in the temple i have a bearded jesus so he's obviously not a child he's he's obviously not a child but i i just for whatever reason i've gotten into the habit of looking at this one while i pray the uh that mystery and uh jesus has the uh well it's an open book i would imagine it's the law and the prophets um but what i what i use i use that as a way of thinking about jesus the knowledge that he has when he's in when he's asking questions to the rabbis in the temple okay and when he's pontificating or speaking and explaining to the rabbis um i think about the the the law the ten commandments and i think about the um the t the teachings of judaism and i think about the um eternal truth that's in the eternal word the bible and i think about how god uh how god sent christ into the world to communicate that and to explain that and to interpret that and to fulfill all that and i think about how uh if i were to be transport transported while i'm praying the rosary into that scene the child jesus would have all kinds of teachings that he could expose me to and uh so i turn it is sort of like a teaching moment right like um and there's something there's something that i like about that like i just sort of like stumbled into this habit but i like it because there's something about having a young child teach you like there's sort of like a purity and an innocence to a child like even though jesus is just as innocent as a 30 year old as he was as a three-year-old but there's something about submitting yourself to a teacher who is so much younger than you and like it just naturally opens you up like if if you it's it's humility it's it's it's it's it's a you know creating fertile ground through humility yeah it's like so i found that very powerful yeah even though it's a little bit it's a little bit off the beaten track in terms of what people would typically uh think i'll take that a step further i think the cool thing is that you can create a kind of a memory memory palace or a memory room kind of experience with that if you wanted to and then you can um you can fit like whatever old testament teaching you want to fit into that mystery and like put that like put a lens through that for like the child jesus teaching that to you and because like i'm always because everybody says oh the rosary is a compendium of the gospel but it's like maybe it's a compendium of the entire bible like what i think that it's that it's it's um um uh more than what we give it credit but i think we i think we know i think we know that it's just that we tend to talk about it in limited terms because we talk about it the way that we engage with it but um um i think it was father payton who said talked about it and he said oh what a what a cosmos the rosary in circles and i'm like yeah actually it does encircle the cosmos it is encircling um god himself it is this image of the face of jesus and um it holds everything i could possibly want um if you read the promises that saint louis de montfort talks about in the secret of the rosary not just like the traditional 15 promises which is not even actually in that book because i think those came around later that they were actually presented he talked about knowing jesus in a perfect manner that's a really bold claim to make about something um and so literally if you wanted to you can you can cram so much so much good stuff and just this single mystery like finding the child jesus in the temple or um uh the um proclamation of the kingdom of heaven and you can kind of just run with it and uh um it becomes this very huge devotion that we you know always looked at as like you know um staunch um severe stern and uh um not fluid at all but it's a metaverse it is it is dude it's a person too in a weird way the rosary is a person because you're entering into the body of jesus and um it's it's every person in the body so one of the promises uh and this could be crazy this could be heresy don't care gonna say it anyway but when you pray the rosary everyone of the heavenly court becomes an intercessor for you right and um and basically i realized one day oh the rosary is an icon of mary it's like even just the physical rosary because it what it was was i was looking at it and i was looking at it like this where jesus was in the center of it and you have the border of it as the body and then they all share the same mind which is christ crucified and we get a chance to enter into this living body and most of the time the focus is mother mary so most the time it's you're engaging with mother mary but really you can pick any of your favorite saints and you can turn to that angle whatever that is and enter the body through that angle and engage with it and uh in a way that's um so much more um life-giving than like a lot of the um old texts talk about you know and and that's why i love saint john paul the second because he people have described him as like you know they'd walk in on him praying the rosary but he wouldn't he was just floating in the air holding his rosary groaning because he couldn't you know like because he wasn't wrapped up in such an ecstasy um john paul ii yep yeah and um one of my one of my spiritual directors uh father ganzer told me that he's like yeah dude because i was talking to him about the form and i'm like dude what happens if you like engage with a high degree of prayer um one day like you accidentally stumble into contemplation um like or when you're done with contemplation like are you supposed to finish up your decades or are you done for the day is that your prayer for the day and he's just like well yeah that's your prayer for the day like don't don't worry about it but so many people put so much emphasis on start to finish like this is what you do yeah um and then you have to you have to follow through with it and that's really good that's a good way to be because you do have to do that but at the same time um um it's so much bigger than that and it's supposed to lead us to something to um to an actual encounter with jesus so like so much of the time we think we're thinking about him in these prayers but really it's like no i'm not you're not just thinking about him you can use it as an opportunity to directly engage him yeah i picture the door like jesus said i am the door right so um i'm thinking about the what is the point of a door it's to enter like i mean so my my prayer life generally is like yeah there's the door yeah i can see it i can touch it like i'm right here i'm right here grounded and grounded in the worst sense of the word meaning like i'm in the world i'm of the world and i'm just like here there's the door i'm doing my prayers ding ding ding okay the door it looks like this feels like this i'm familiar with it but i haven't gone through the door the whole point is to go through the door so that contemplation is is about like uh letting go and going through the door right like so that's that is the goal like someone asked me as someone who's a a friend of mine he's uh into eastern philosophies eastern religions i don't know what he believes exactly but he was telling me like do you pray or do you meditate and i say well or do you do contemplative prayer or do you do you enter into the silence and he was just trying to find out like what are the different levels of prayer and meditation and contemplation and you know i admitted to him as i met to everyone readily that you know my prayer life is not very good because i'm a weak sinner but you know i do i do pray and i do meditation and uh you know that's that's easy enough and i do spiritual reading but when it comes to contemplation and uh entering into silence like i've maybe had a couple of moments where i've been able to you know have the grace to go that far but it's not like every day i'm i'm entering into that that that those higher realms right it's not like but that is the goal right that is the goal you know and he was pleased to hear from me that that is the goal and that it sort of matches his eastern mystic mysticism approach because i mean obviously like i mean we east west north south we all know that it's the deeper the better the higher the better the purer the better the more innocent the better the more goodness and truth and you know we we all agree about that right and like some superficial uh and superstitious manual prayer life it does have some merits but it's just a baby step on a journey that has to go deeper and has to go higher so i think every human would agree to that like even the satanists i think that they know their different levels of power and sacrifice that they can make to have what they crave which is pleasure here on earth and they can have power and pleasure and like even they know their different degrees and depths and like they can laugh at their little brother who is just taking the baby steps in satanism like you think that's exciting holy cow you have no idea what's available once you open these portals to uh the demons right so even the dark religions they have that and so if if you want to say well only catholicism is is the one true religion and buddhism or hinduism or judaism or islam or whatever they don't they don't have they don't have the fullness of religious truth well yeah obviously but they still have so much common ground with us in terms of uh you know basic fundamental principles and uh and the mechanics of achieving yes well and that's the thing too um so like um i always wondered like well if those other forms of meditation aren't legitimate like we're not they're not listed we're not supposed to engage with them why do they still hit those same levels of prayer or like why are they experiencing that level of contemplation and why is their method getting them quicker than mine and um those are like legitimate questions those are like really big questions because um transcendental meditation you ask anybody they'll tell you it works and um uh the answer is is that or i'm finding that part of the answer i don't know if it's fully it but that um we all have these natural mechanisms in our body that we can engage that allow us to to engage with the spiritual and you have to have like the right system of theology as well and you have to make them connect they don't just naturally connect with one another so like like this method the method that we employ can be used by anybody um but it wouldn't like if they don't have jesus they're still gonna have the effects of it but um they're going to be able to be led astray in that in that moment but the effects are going to look the same um because there's this natural component that we have to be engaged in i think that like like the jesus prayer or the rosary while they're two very different styles of meditation they both lead one safely to um um to contemplation whereas those other avenues are not safe and they're gonna you're gonna hit the you're definitely gonna miss the mark um because the focus with um eastern meditation is always me i am god and the focus with christian meditation is jesus the trinity he they are god and so um you know you're gonna you're gonna land you're gonna land elsewhere if you're if you're aiming for you all the time but um you know when you pray the rosary um people are like well that's the difference between that in a mantra and it's like probably not too much man not for the brain anyway the brain doesn't scan the brain and the brain is going to respond is going to have very similar scans um if you're praying um in tongues and you're praying the rosary or you're engaging in centering prayer you practice a mantra or you do shrooms you know there are they it's so funny i was reading an article the other week about um carmelite nuns who practiced uh centering prayer and um they found that they had brain scans very similar to people who took psychedelic mushrooms and except that the nuns brain connections were they were deeper and more authentic looking than the ones from the mushrooms so it definitely showed that like if you really want to if you really want to be open-minded pursue prayer don't pursue drugs but um you know when somebody talks about having a legitimate experience a legitimate spiritual experience from the use of some kind of psychedelic i can't anymore write it off and say like nah that's bull crap in one sense i could but in another sense if they came to me and said i think jesus is god and i think he led me there through this avenue i'd be like yeah i believe that i think that that's legitimate because god works through um whatever little inch we give him and um you know i think we're kind of superstitious about things you know we kind of like take a we take a poop on things that we that aren't you know like well you like strawberry i like chocolate and then we like you know completely dismiss strawberry is a legitimate yeah conflating essentials with non-essentials in a lot of spiritual practices and stuff like that and i can't say this if kieran's listening happens a lot in eastern orthodoxy and catholicism there's a lot between the two of those things there's a lot of uh um with like the jesus prayer stuff and um like if you look at like uh um uh palomism versus tomism there's a lot of talking past one another and like yours isn't legitimate and mine is legitimate and you don't have the key and i have the key yeah yeah you see that happen when we you know when we get married to our set of emphases and then uh turn it into uh that man-made tradition or whatever like the uh the idol that's worth right that's uh well obviously you can't do that if you're humble you can only do that if you're proud so i mean that's the root of every sin but i was thinking when you were talking about that um explaining that similar mechanisms similar reactions similar benefits for mental health and calmness and peace whatever all the benefits of prayer so-called prayer of different practitioners of different religions i was thinking about also both like explicitly illicit stuff that gives you pleasure like sex where you could have you know you could have a trip you could have a certain um exploration of that realm like i'm sure there are there are sexual perverts who have a lot of sexual partners and they explore this magical mystical realm that uh that it's possible to enter into with sexuality but um it's it's forbidden i mean it's just forbidden like you're you're trespassing right you're trespassing at that point but still you're coming back from that mystical voyage with truth like you are coming back with truth and you are communicating that truth and you write your best-selling book about that truth that you discovered through your illicit explorations right like there it is true i mean this is what came to me when you were talking about uh east versus west or different religious approaches to meditation and contemplation whatever it's like we are by the way i think they're all really cool except we're you're burning your way into a new enlightenment is kind of lame but like like i love the idea that there is this like circular like through all of those different methods there's this circular way to get there but like only in those differences do we have the complete do we have that complete picture to get there and it all leads to the center which is jesus but you know i guess it's just when people kind of act um high and mighty about their method that it gets to be annoying but i love that there's people out there doing um uh centering prayer even though i don't necessarily agree with it because it's like well that really seems to to work for them and i like their perspectives on things you know i like that they're doing something different and they're willing to um to continue engaging with that because years down the line there might be you know a church sanction that actually says actually that was pretty good we should keep that you know you know what i mean like no i mean i try to keep an open mind about the different paths to god because i don't know if you caught it i mentioned it a couple of times once when i was reading this fundamentals of catholic dogma by ludwig ott and then in another how to read david but i did mention in a couple of episodes but i'll i'll repeat it to you just in case you missed it but um basically what he says is there are i don't know how authoritative it is but he said there are four kinds of people um and they're two they're two categories no the well basically okay they're you know the two destinations heaven are hell right ultimately okay so those who are destined for hell like they will end up in hell uh that's one of the four categories but the other three they make it to heaven and they because they make it to heaven they are considered members of the church of christ okay and this is what this is what vatican ii talks about this is what blows my mind about vatican ii and this is why i will always defend vatican ii against said of cantonese and everyone else so that rad trads because it is so it is so exciting to me to know that there is absolutely no possibility of salvation outside of the catholic church just like there was no possibility outside of noah's ark right it's so exciting for me but it's also scary and the way it's reconciled that tension is reconciled with my love of non my non-catholic neighbor the way that's reconciled that tension is through these three categories of members of the church there are those who are full members who are in the state of grace and who have the faith there are in the second class there are people that have the faith but who are not in the state of grace okay and the third category is the most exciting of all these members of christ's church don't even have the faith yet yet right that's the key word so we have to think about it from god's perspective god knows the destiny of each and every one of us it's either heaven or it's hell those who are damned ultimately that's their category but everyone else makes it to heaven and that includes the atheist the agnostic the muslim the jew the hindu and the new age and that and that sick pedophile over there that looks like he's damned and he's on death row right because if he's not damned he's going to heaven so this is what i love about vatican ii this is what i love about christ and his church is that if you're not going to hell you are going to heaven so this makes us right away not judge our neighbor we don't judge our neighbor because that neighbor for all you know is a potential member of christ and he is by definition a member of your church right even though he's not in a perfect relationship far from it but it's so exciting for me to think about that and to remind myself about that and now the temptation would be what to say well obviously this guy is destined for hell but we're forbidden by the church to do that right right well and why would you want to too i mean like we love doing we like doing that stuff like um i was watching something with father altman the other day and he was um like emphatically stating like uh judas's um uh current occupation of hell yeah and like like judas is burning in hell and i'm just like oh okay all right there god calm down buddy you know like there was something really gross about it and it's like he's probably right um but like why like why would you want to be right why would you like and why would he say it the way he was saying it you know there's something like you know um i don't like the dare we hope theology because it does kind of say like hope jesus was wrong but i like i like the attitude that those people have where they desire salvation for all because we should all desire salvation for everybody that should be like the um that should just be the standard you know it's like position yeah it should be the default like i really want to see that person in heaven and you know how often do you find yourself sitting there thinking like yeah the only the only reason i don't entertain hope for satan and his demons is because the church says it's definitive it's too late they're screwed right but if the church said exact words right if the church if the church told me that there's some hope then i'd be excited i would be happy for satan that he has some hope but the church tells me there is no hope for satan and his demons so i don't entertain any hope i have zero hope for satan and his demons even though i can picture another scenario where like not reality but a fantasy where the church taught me that there's hope but that's not the reality i live in so i have zero hope and i don't lose any sleep over it but with with judas i do have hope right i do have hope i do why it's not much hope but i do have hope why because the church will not say that judas definitively is in hell even though if you read the saints i did research recently about judas and the saints and i mean i've never met