Awesome interview! Jules, this question sparked something in me: "But people want to go on workshops about healing your emotions or manifesting abundance or having ecstatic experience. A workshop on critical thinking?" It's illuminating how you lumped those together--I would normally eyeroll over people wanting to "manifest abundance," but the way you put it underlined what I actually believe: That most people are driven by emotional trauma of one kind or another. How desperate they are to escape, how desperate I have been to escape. But I've been forced by circumstances (thanks, God!) to explore my trauma as a path to spiritual awakening. It's grueling, often terrifying, and probably just as rigourous as taking a monastic path. Western culture created an artifical separation between psychological healing and spirituality. This separation is still the domanant paradigm, but it's shifitng thanks to Gabor Mate and others. How desperately people need support!
