Rob Bell: “The Risk of Not Becoming More You”

Rob Bell: We have all these ways to avoid whatever the pain of it is. But if you turn towards it, all these new things happen. I started joking three years ago about entering my civilian phase. It’s like I left that role, but I became aware of how the role might still be between your ears.

Tami Simon: Welcome, friends. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, my guest is Rob Bell. Bell is a New York Times bestselling author of 14 books and plays, and a former pastor. When I think of Rob, I think of a dynamic creator. He has a podcast called The RobCast, a band called Humans on the Floor. He publishes visionary fiction, and more. Rob’s most recent nonfiction book is called Everything Is Spiritual: Who We Are and What We’re Doing Here—part memoir, part teaching, I would say part gospel.

And now, coming up at the end of this summer, 2026, Rob Bell will be leading an immersive workshop at the Omega Institute. It’s August 30th through September 4th, and it’s called The Ongoing Creation of Your Life: The Mysterious Work of Becoming More You. Omega Institute is located in Rhinebeck, New York, and is a sponsor of Insights at the Edge. You can learn more at eomega.org, and if you want to register for this workshop, you can use the code TRUE and get a special discount as someone who listens to this podcast.

Rob, welcome.

Rob Bell: It’s great to be with you. That’s quite an intro.

Tami Simon: Here we roll. This notion of the mysterious work of becoming more you—this is something I really care a whole heck of a lot about.

And one of the things I’ve inquired into, especially recently in my life, is why do I care so much about this? One spiritual teacher once said to me, “You know, Tami, it’s all about the Tami show, isn’t it?” I was like, “You know, you can go F yourself in a certain kind of way. There’s something else going on. There’s something else going on deep inside of me.” It looks like it’s about that, but it’s actually about something really different, which is the deepest core of what motivates me.

And this is what I wanted to start by talking with you about. It’s almost like the inner deepest love motivation that wants us to become and be more expressive of who we are—and how you see that.

Rob Bell: Yeah, because even you and I right now in this interview: the only way for anything essentially meaningful, or something of depth, to happen between us is for you to be Tami and for me to be Rob. And we can smell it when the other person is standing at a distance from their own life. We can smell it in others and ourselves when we aren’t, at some level, being true to who we are—even if it’s very difficult to give that language.

It’s like the thing that you’re most highly aware of when it’s off. But then if we were to ask you to describe it in the most technical, precise language, we end up using words like “vibe.” Do you know what I mean?

Tami Simon: Sure, of course.

Rob Bell: And like you said, how we find our way is both very granular and practical. You’re probably going to have to figure out how to pay the rent. There’s going to be some basic things. Too much credit card debt is going to load you down. There are all these very straightforward things.

And then there’s also the deepest of mysteries—that whole chapter of my life I don’t quite understand what was going on there, but this and that were amazing. And we’re moving constantly back and forth between these two. And that is why being a human being is so interesting, at some level.

Tami Simon: Well, I’m just going to keep going right for the jugular, so to speak—and that’s my own jugular, if you will, not necessarily yours. Which is: I didn’t really feel I was, quote-unquote, “positioned” to reveal and be more of who I am until I had security in my life. And I had a pretty high bar of how I defined economic security.

And I’m bringing it up here at the beginning ’cause I notice part of me feels a little conflicted about that. Like, it’s great for you to talk, Tami. You now have this sense where your survival concerns aren’t running your life anymore, so you can take all kinds of risks—but you were never really willing to do that previously. Not really. So I’m wondering how you address this, ’cause I know this comes up a lot when people have questions and answers with you.

Rob Bell: But I imagine when you look back on nine Tamis ago, there must have been moments when you stepped into something unknown, terrifying, something that you hadn’t done before. You must have, to become this Tami, have had—I don’t know—some people call it the defining moments.

Tami Simon: Yeah, but there are degrees. There are degrees. But then there’s big things that happen that shift it. And it seemed to me, in watching your life story, there were all kinds of degrees—and then you stepped away from being a pastor. I included it here in your bio. You noticed I said “a former pastor.” On your website it doesn’t even say that. I was like, “What? Oh, that’s interesting.” On his own Rob Bell website, he doesn’t even need to refer to this former thing. But yet I thought it’s important, we’ve got to bring that up. I mean, you’ve gone through that much reincarnation.

Rob Bell: Yeah. I don’t resonate with the word “career,” like it was a well-planned climb. It felt like I was following something. And I actually remember in my late 20s when I was a pastor—I’d started a church, and I was becoming aware that the job was actually to say… there were a number of things that were expected of me to say to keep the whole thing running smoothly.

And I distinctly remember this feeling like I was following something with my life, and that that was actually what I was doing—not trying to run an institution—and that I was going to follow it, and it might lead me out of that. It was like I was playing a different game, and that whatever it is I was following, and what I was learning, and the curiosity that was alive within me, sometimes fit within the parameters of the space I was in and sometimes didn’t.

And so I remember thinking, “Oh, that’s what we’re doing here. We’re following something that we can both name with great clarity, and it’s quite mysterious and ambiguous.”

Tami Simon: Yeah. I mean, it’s interesting even to talk about that notion of following something, ’cause that’s part of what I want to talk about. In me, it’s following this—there’s like this imperative, if you will. And it’s some kind of imperative, I mean, this is the way I would say it, to give more. To give more in a high-fidelity way. To somehow contribute right in the blood and bones of who I am.

And you talked about, you know, there must have been other risks and things like that. But in running Sounds True for 40 years, there was a small way—it was small—that I was hiding. I was hiding. And now I’m no longer the CEO, and as you can notice in this dialogue, I’ve come out of hiding. I’ve come out of hiding.

And that’s part of my excitement in talking with you, and about holding up what you’re doing in terms of helping people become—using your language here—the mysterious work of becoming more you. ‘Cause I think this imperative, this drive, I think it lives in everyone. I think it’s a human thing that moves us.

Rob Bell: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been hiding for years. Yeah.

Tami Simon: Really? Even with all the, you know, scandals, and he’s saying this and he’s doing that and he’s wearing that and who knows what—all the things you’re…

Rob Bell: “He’s wearing that.” When I look back—especially the trap of, if you have some sort of thing that you’re doing in public, or if you’re known for a thing, it doesn’t mean that you aren’t just like everybody else. So, yeah. Hiding behind a microphone and hiding behind… oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I feel more me now, this year, than ever. And when I look at pictures of five years ago, or the last time you and I talked, I can see in my eyes—and people I love have pointed this out to me—look at the level of tension, or anxiety, or trying to fit yourself into a particular mold, or how you’ll be perceived. Yeah. I 100% relate to that.

Tami Simon: Tell me about the last few years of coming out of hiding, what that has been like for you.

Rob Bell: Well, I remember on 9/11, I think I was in a shoe store, and there was a TV in the corner, and there were the images of the towers. And I remember the shock in the air and the disbelief around me. And I distinctly remember thinking, “I’ll have to say something about this on Sunday.”

So the job that I took on in my early 20s—this pastor that you refer to—the job is: you all have your experience, your human experience, shock, rage, anger, trying to forgive somebody who’s wronged you. I’ll try and help guide you through it. But ever so subtly, there’s a hierarchy in there. And ever so subtly, you’re standing at a distance, showing people the patterns, showing people the text. And that’s a role I took to for a number of reasons, but it also had a shadow to it—your own vulnerability and humanness.

There’s a performance to it. There’s a performance to it. And only in the past couple of years have I been able to get to that, and how it shaped me, and, sort of as we do, you unravel it.

So what you said about economics and about having space—it’s almost like you get these moments later on when you go back and unravel how you got here. It’s almost like you’re ready. You’re ready to go into that and understand how that shaped you and how that formed you.

So in my experience, I just keep—and I used to think that was nostalgia, or being stuck in the past. Like, why am I thinking about that thing that happened when I was twenty-three? Why am I thinking about that thing? Like, why am I stuck back there?

But memory can only ever be in the present. So an image arises, an event arises, a series of relationships arise. Who knows why? You’re talking about the past year—who knows why now that arose? But it arose in the present, probably to show us something, probably to liberate us, or help us see a pattern or something that we didn’t see before. And then you turn into it rather than away from it, especially if it has an element of pain, ’cause we have all these numbing devices.

We have all these ways to avoid whatever the pain of it is. But if you turn towards it, all these new things happen. I started joking three years ago about entering my civilian phase.

Tami Simon: All right.

Rob Bell: Which was—’cause it’s like I left that role, but I became aware of how the role might still be between your ears. So we leave an external form, and then over the years, the form begins to leave us, in all the ways that it shaped us.

Tami Simon: Now you said, “I’ve been hiding a lot in my life.” Do you feel like you’re hiding now, as you and I are having this conversation, and in your life as it’s currently structured, and in the teaching work you’re doing?

Rob Bell: No. No. When you ask if I was hiding, it’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve been hiding for years.” An earlier me would’ve tried to find some clever way to frame all that and almost soften the blow of it or something. My friends would call it a Rob Bell twist on it, where the plane doesn’t crash, but it looks like it almost crashed and then it takes off—as opposed to…

Tami Simon: Right. I know that feeling. I know that feeling.

Rob Bell: I remember when I first began to understand in a new way the abyss, or the void, or the dark night—that feeling of lostness that is a natural wave of the human experience that comes and goes. Almost like you lose your taste buds for life. And I would think, “What’s wrong with me?” I would panic. Like, these buoyant, hopeful energies aren’t available for me today. As opposed to: yeah, this is all part of it. The experience of, what are we doing here on a ball of rock hurtling through space?

And I was born into a home where there had been great trauma right before I arrived. It’s like I was born on the stage after the act before me, which was brutal. So the need of the system to be like, “Everything’s fine, right? Everything’s fine, right? We’re doing great, right? We’re fine.” I picked that up at an early age. Everything’s fine.

So what do you do with terror, trauma, anger, the deep existential anxieties of—yeah, some things don’t turn out fine. So I was conditioned and learned early how to always put a positive spin on it. And pulling that apart, and just letting the experience be whatever it is, has been the past 10 years.

Tami Simon: You mentioned that in this phase of your life, you’re civilian Rob Bell. Civilian. Everyday neighbor civilian Rob Bell. Does your nervous system feel different to you? If you were to say, you know, previously there was some kind of survival going on—does it feel different now or not? I’m curious.

Rob Bell: It feels night and day. It feels night and day.

Tami Simon: Really?

Rob Bell: Yeah. Even—oh, this goes way back. This goes way back to 1995, the first job I ever had. At the end of my sermon, anybody could write down a question on a piece of paper and hand it to the front, and then they would just hand me the stack, and I would read the questions and respond to them. But what do you know when you’re 25?

So “answer man” was a central part of the job, about stuff you just don’t know anything about. So a well-crafted soundbite answer about the deepest questions of the human experience was just expected—which is also slightly insane. So my nervous system around, like, an interview was like, “You better have short, crisp, clever, informed answers about everything.”

And that alone will cause your nervous system to be on high alert. And it also ends up being very much a head game. You ask a question, I come up with my seven paragraphs on that topic, as opposed to listening to what you’re actually saying. And, yeah, I don’t have anything clever to say about that. I do know what it’s like to hide.

Tami Simon: Yeah.

Rob Bell: My experiences of the void and the abyss have profoundly shaped me, as I’ve learned to relax into them.

Tami Simon: When you reference experiences of the abyss, are you talking about, like, the everyday five-minute thing in the afternoon? Are you talking about periods of your life where there have been, you know, “I’m in it for X number of…”

Rob Bell: Anything from you’re driving along and it’s almost like a full-bodied, “What is this day? Who am I?”—all the way to that thing that sets in sometimes for weeks or months. I mean, for some, this can last years, this feeling of, like, a cloud.

Tami Simon: How have you come to see that as part of your creative process?

Rob Bell: Well, perhaps you can relate. I’m a child of a late-stage-capitalism Protestant work ethic, that your worth and value come from what you produce. So there’s an engine that’s running all the time.

And so what I began to notice is if I didn’t fight that abyss, void feeling, and just—”Well, apparently today and tomorrow, apparently we have nothing to say, or there’s nothing to create.”

And as I began to be more tuned into how creation around me actually works, where a field lies fallow so that—or in January, in lots of climates, everything’s frozen. That January is so that you can have a July. And I began to notice, every summer, and then every turning of the year, every six months, there was like a… I became tired of listening to myself talk or make things. And if I just trusted it and followed it, then on the other side, all sorts of new ideas and things to make began to emerge. So it was part of learning these rhythms.

Tami Simon: One of the things I’m really curious about—and I heard you say this in a different interview—was that before Everything Is Spiritual came out, about 18 months before the completion of the writing, you had some experience where your head fell into your heart. Something happened in that moment. It sounds like there was some defining moment. And, you know, I’m still wanting my head to fall into my heart. God, would it, could it please just fall in there and stay there? But anyway, I’m curious what happened to you.

Rob Bell: Yeah. There was like a basement somewhere, and maybe some plant medicines, and maybe an experience of, like, oh—I could see my lineage, and, what do you do with the pain that the body is carrying around? Intellectualize it. What do you think about this? What books have you read? Here are my thoughts on that.

So part of it was seeing the lineage I came from that didn’t know what to do with its pain. And part of it—and my brother and sister and I laugh about this—learning that you have a body was a relatively new thing. I didn’t grow up in a tradition that really knew what to do with a body.

And so I began to see how too early on I took on, “I’ll study and I’ll read and I’ll memorize and I’ll know stuff,” and how I had sort of played that out.

And I had started writing plays around that time, and novels, where it didn’t start with an idea—whereas a lot of my earlier creations were about an idea that I was trying to explain or give flesh and blood to, or here’s an example of it. And then I started writing these stories that were just about these characters. Some of them were on planet Earth, some of them weren’t, and there was no point.

So, a spiritual teacher, explaining energy: here’s the idea, here’s where it comes from, here’s how you break it down, here’s how you apply it, here are some texts, here’s some research. That was a gear that I was in for years. And then in a relatively short period of time, I lost interest in that, ’cause I kept getting these stories that were so compelling to me, and these characters and things that were happening to them, and there was no point.

You know when you see a bad movie and it feels heavy-handed, because it’s like, ugh, it was so on the nose, it was so paint-by-numbers? Explaining energy—I couldn’t find it, and it was super boring, and I was not interested. But these stories just pulled me in, and it’s all I wanted to do. And that was some of it. Yeah, that was a huge part of it, right around that time.

Tami Simon: Well, I’m going to ask you a question. You don’t have to give me an explainy answer. You can share a metaphor, tell a story if you want. But as you were talking about your basement experience and the lineage of pain in your family line, and how that had created in you this desire to go up into your head and explain what had happened—to myself, I wonder how Rob feels in relationship to that lineage of pain.

And I’ll say a little bit more. For me, I feel like for a long time I carried the pain of my own biological lineage as some kind of way of honoring them, and by being identified with it. And only recently have I decided, no, I’m not going to carry it. I’m here to bless them all. I’m here to make this me, me. Continuing to carry it like that’s not helping anyone, and it’s certainly not allowing me to come forward with a lot of new life. So I’m wondering how that goes for you.

Rob Bell: Yeah, because right around that time, one of my kids used the phrase “toxic positivity,” and he very articulately… I remember he and I talking about, if he’s sad—”Dad, if I’m sad, it’s not a referendum. It’s not a judgment on whether you are a good dad. I’m just sad.”

And I remember my kids helping me right around that time. It was a very distinct experience of: it’s okay to be sad. And sadness was actually one of the ways in for me. Yeah, this is all part of it, and I don’t have to carry around that, and I can just feel it all—which is one hundred percent basic and obvious. But if you’re new to it, then it’s absolutely revolutionary and illuminating.

So yeah, that’s how I found a lot of things—I found my way in through the sadness of it. Or even disappointment, which sounds so ugh. You know what I mean? Like, “Oh, you’re disappointed. Wow, that’s tough.” But actually, those are some of the ways you find your way into the larger things.

Tami Simon: All right. I saw this phrase in your artwork, and it really captured me. And in a way, I think it maybe even relates to what we’re talking about here: “And then I kept going.” And then I kept going. So here, something happens—sadness or whatever—and then I kept going.

I really liked the phrase “And then I kept going,” because I found in myself I can get stuck. I can get stuck in this or that. So how do you apply that, but not have it be in any kind of, you know, “I’m going to discount the difficulty I’m experiencing”—and then I kept going?

Rob Bell: It strikes this chord within me of: whatever I thought would finish me off, it didn’t. There’s some sort of odd resilience that I didn’t set out to have, but I am here. So whatever it was, somehow I stumbled my way through it, and over time that’s actually something.

I think about my friends and the things we’ve been through together, and just the fact that we kept going, at the most basic level, is somehow strangely beautiful. I was just talking to a friend earlier today who—we have walked through so much, and we do a regular, “Yeah, man, that was rough, and we’re here.”

So there’s something buoyant in that, but it’s hard-earned. And I noticed that painting, and anything with that phrase, did something to people, ’cause it did something to me—about how many things, if you just keep going. Yeah, it’s even strange to talk about. Art’s odd to talk about, ’cause it moves you and strikes you and speaks to you, and then you try to articulate it, and you just sound ridiculous. It’s a bit like surfing. If I talk about it, it just feels weird.

Tami Simon: Where did that phrase come from? “And then I kept going.” What was the origin of that?

Rob Bell: During the pandemic, when we were all in our houses, lots of us, I started doing these sessions where people would bring their questions, and I would just ask them questions about their questions. And I noticed how many people would start talking about how they were stuck or frustrated or irritated, or felt like they couldn’t find any sort of clarity.

And then they would give me some backstory. And I just kept noticing how truly fascinating so many people’s lives were, in which they would tell about something tragic, some loss, some challenge, some obstacle, some moment when the whole thing collapsed in on them—and they would report it.

And I would be sitting there listening to them, and other people who were doing the session together, we would be listening to this person like, “This is incredible, what they’ve been through.” But the person would be reporting it without any sense that this is quite astonishing, what they’d been through.

And I might say to them, “And then you kept going?” Like, “That would have finished most of us off.” But the person wasn’t aware of it, and they weren’t all sort of swagger. “And then, yeah, and then he died, and then the house caught on fire, and then I lost all my money, and then I decided to open a…” They would just sort of matter-of-factly report it. And there was something about pointing out people’s resilience that I noticed—how many people were like, “Huh. Yeah, I guess. I guess that is something.”

Tami Simon: If you were to apply that to your own life—and then Rob kept going—what’s the first imagistic sharing that comes to mind?

Rob Bell: This still, quiet space where something arises, whether it’s a book or a film or a tour or a novel or a play or a piece of art or some music, and something within me was like, “Yeah. I’d like to try and make that.” And it generally comes with, “I don’t know if I could actually pull that off and make it—but yeah, that would get me up in the morning.”

There’s a very tender, raw feeling of possibility, and then throwing myself into it and seeing what it becomes. And if you ask me to run something, or you ask me to… it’s that. As long as I stay centered in that, I’m okay.

Tami Simon: All right. So I have several questions about your book, Everything Is Spiritual, that I want to ask you. But before we do, I want to clean up a couple of things, so to speak. In the beginning of our conversation, we talked some about, well, do you really have the freedom to keep becoming under economic pressure? And I don’t feel like we really answered it. I didn’t hear your answer.

For the person who’s listening to us and says, “I’m so happy Rob and Tami are having this great conversation. I want to be more of a creator. I have this instinct. I want to make this thing. I’m willing to take the risk—but I have real financial pressures in my life.” And, you know, Rob, you’re one of the few people who have actually written about money and creativity, which is why I want to ask you.

Rob Bell: Well, honestly, if we’re talking about creativity—people who are, like, even the word… I just don’t see it as, some people are creative and some people aren’t. So I just begin with how you spend money, and what you give your energies to, and what’s on your calendar. There’s something fundamentally creative about that.

And lots of the people who I most admire would never use a word like “creative” or “art.” You know what I mean? They’re running a restaurant that I love, and it’s hard, and the margins are tighter than ever, and keeping good employees is maddening. And so I never found the person isolated from the actual grit of paying your bills and figuring it out to be the ideal. It was just my people I know who were working regular jobs. But I just always saw the whole thing much more like a creative act.

Tami Simon: Okay. And then this mysterious work of becoming more you, expressing more of you—you’re talking about, okay, there’s this quiet moment, something comes. Okay, I’m going to take a risk and do it. It might not work. How in your life do you deal with the fear of just utter humiliation, and people making fun of you and stuff like that? ‘Cause you’re so public with a lot of what you make.

Rob Bell: Oh, yeah. I actually don’t buy into the premise that it’s risk and then no risk. In my experience, it’s risk both ways. So if you try that, it could work, it could not. That’s risky. Also, you keep bringing it up, and you keep talking about it—so it sounds like if you don’t try it, there’s risk there. Something within you may die. And if you keep getting pushed or nudged or pulled in a particular direction, and you keep saying no, that becomes a habit. That becomes a pattern.

And so I actually don’t see it as risk versus not risk. What we’re actually just doing is risk management: which is less risky? And sometimes trying whatever it is is actually far safer than standing at a distance. So I see it much more as, like, an in-the-moment—it’s like you’re doing the math on it.

Tami Simon: Yeah. The risk of not becoming more you.

Rob Bell: Yeah. So, lots of people that people have heard about, who seem to do amazing things, and everybody’s like, “How do they do that?”—guaranteed, if you met them before you ever heard of them, they were like that. So you may have heard of them, and they may have made something that really moved you or motivated you or inspired you, but if you went back, they were probably like that from early on.

They probably were just somebody who threw themself into what they were doing, and they just really didn’t care what people thought, ’cause they were listening to something within themselves. So that idea that somehow you get whatever—successful, whatever that means—and then you can be… No. They were like that. There was some hustle and some grit and some commitment early on, for sure.

Tami Simon: Okay. I said I wanted to talk some about Everything Is Spiritual. There’s a lot of great parts of the book, but one—I’m just going to pull the sentence out, but it’s where the sentence points to inside that I want us to talk about. “There is a direction to what is happening in the universe. The universe only knows one direction: forward.”

This whole notion of this forward-moving direction of everything, of the whole. I wanted to share with you that there’s something that happens in me when I hear that, and it’s like every part of me lights up and gets excited. And I was like, “I want to hear how Rob has such a conviction about this.”

Rob Bell: Yeah. Well, you think about—technical terminology would be like emergent holism. Two things bond together, and that forms something new that has properties that aren’t present at the earlier component level. You put together cells and molecules and atoms and bones and skin and hair, and you get a person who has all these qualities and characteristics that you can’t locate at the earlier sub-component level.

That’s baked into the very expansion of the universe, which is the weirdest thing ever. It’s weird to the core, that these atoms—what is it, 300,000 years after the Big Bang—these atoms start to bond with each other, and that starts to form these… these particles form atoms, and these atoms form molecules, and each new layer that emerges has all these properties that weren’t there earlier. Wait, what? And it increases in complexity, with greater breadth and greater depth. Just the story of what we would scientifically call the origins of our universe is weird to its core.

And so with every answer and every technical explanation, you also move the mystery down a layer. Like, we learned how to run so we wouldn’t get eaten. Yes, we did. Why don’t we want to get eaten? ‘Cause we want to live. Why do we want to live? ‘Cause we… yeah.

Tami Simon: So what do you think this could be pointing to that might be helpful to us now, at this point in time that we’re in? Some people would say—just like you gave the example of the abyss in a personal life, and how it gives birth to something new coming out of us—that here, collectively, we’re in a pretty dark time. Do you see it as some kind of evolutionary journey we are on?

And I’ll take this from your book, Everything Is Spiritual, where you write, “There’s a great line in the New Testament about Jesus coming to bring about a new humanity,” and how much you liked this idea of a new humanity. Some people are saying there’s a new humanity that is trying to be born at this time, and we’re in the very beginnings of seeing that. And anyway, I’d love to know your view.

Rob Bell: Yeah. Like, my daughter is 17, and she is feisty and smart and has a giant heart and loves literature. And the other day she was telling me how much she loves to argue, and she was in Model UN, and she was in mock trial debate. And for my daughter, the idea that everything that is available to man isn’t available to her as a woman is absolute absurdity. The awareness that we’ve done horrific harm to creation—I go down the list of ways that she sees the world as just obvious. Even the word “progressive” to her would be like, “What?” She would probably replace “progressive” with “obvious.”

So I’ve just watched her growing up—how many things that I found my way into, like, “This is amazing,” that for her are like, “Yeah, it’s Tuesday, Dad.” So I don’t know what you call that. When she has greater role and greater influence and greater power, that will be a very different kind of world, I assume, at some level.

So what is that? Or you look back—I mean, there’s a lot of people who talk about how slavery was just baked into the human experience. People own other people. Yeah, that’s part of the arrangement here as humans. And then, what is it, like a hundred-year window, 1770-ish to 1880-ish, you have a good portion of the world’s governments outlawing it? And obviously today you still have forms of slavery. But what is that? Or even the idea of individual rights, or equality—these are all relatively new ideas.

So, yeah, what is that thing that you’re pointing to? And that thing within us, when you talk to an individual about what their life could be and who you see that they are. I’ll often ask people, “Did anybody ever come along and tell you who they saw that you were, at some key moment?” And most people had a teacher, aunt, uncle—somebody saw them in some way, and it lit them up. It opened them up. It created some sort of possibility. What is that, that we get pulled into something? And there’s all sorts of “bigger, higher, wider, more expansive.” All that language can feel sort of vague and squishy, but it also is how it works, at some level.

Tami Simon: So, okay, I’m going to be a little confessional here. When I was reading about, you know, 13 billion years and the universe has been expanding, I was like, “Yeah, expanding. We’re moving in this direction—greater love, greater expansion.” And then I typed in, “Does science say that the universe will just keep expanding indefinitely?” And it was like, well, there’s some debate going on. Science is not saying that this is indefinite expansion. And I had a, “Huh.”

And I’m curious, ’cause I know in Everything Is Spiritual you go deep into physics, quantum physics, and our connection to the expanding universe. And I thought, Rob, is it going to all come down to—just like there was the Big Bang, they say there might be a big crunch, a big contraction? And I was like, “Really?”

Rob Bell: Yeah, right. Because we now know that the sun has about five billion years left, and then it will enter into a phase called the red shift, and then it will become a white dwarf, and it will have burned out its supply of fuel, essentially. So we actually know that everything that we know to be solid and stable is actually temporary, and that what we thought was utterly dependable is happening within a solar system and universe that’s actually here, and then it won’t be here. So this is an appearance of some sort.

And that book was seven or eight years ago. That’s like six Robs ago. Way more, “Hey, this thing is way more big and wide, and it’s all just expanding, this beautiful…” Now I would be much more like, “Actually, the sun’s going to burn out, but we are here, and there is something wondrous about it—and also heartbreaking and painful and kind of awesome, and it’s a mix of lots of different things.”

Yeah, I’d be way less about “It’s all headed in a great direction.” I don’t know. I don’t know. Even people talking about the climate—have we passed the point of stopping it or saving it or something? Those are very real voices in our world, and that makes me actually appreciate it more.

Tami Simon: Tell me more about that. Now I’m talking to, you know, Rob or whatever we’ve gotten to. And so this is not the expanding cosmic love forever. It’s all appearance. That’s interesting.

Rob Bell: Yeah. Like, my dad, at the end of his life, lost his mind—dementia. And I would go visit him, and he would turn to my wife and say, “Who’s this?” He would ask my mom who I am. And then he was in a home the last couple of years of his life, for people with dementia. And we all knew that we were going to be at the end here. We didn’t know how long.

But I would go visit him, and he became very childlike. He would see me coming towards his room—he’d be in the hallway sometimes when I went to visit him—and he would come towards me really fast and hug me like an eight-year-old. There was something childlike and innocent. He’d be so happy that I came to visit.

And there was something about it that was like, you’re communing with the temporariness of it on a whole new level—but it was also incredible. And I remember the last conversation that we had, and not knowing, ’cause then I would leave and go back to California, and not knowing when I would see him again. And sitting there in his room in this home, and how my heart was, like, exploding. Like, so alive from the, “This is my dad, and he won’t…”

Yeah, that temporariness can actually heighten your senses to this experience. So I came from a world where you avoid death. It’s life, and hope, and focus on the positive. But life cycles—and as opposed to life and death, life is actually birth and death. And the more conscious you are of birth and death all being part of what makes it it, the more it heightens your senses, or your capacities, to actually be in this. And yeah, you’re more alive than ever. And that’s what happened to me.

Tami Simon: It sounds like really noting the fragility—the death of the sun in five billion years—that that actually has increased your, shall we say, experience of aliveness, appreciation of aliveness?

Rob Bell: Absolutely. Yeah. There are these passion fruit vines on this hiking trail near my house, and you can make a pretty good cocktail out of them. And I’ll be with friends I love very much tonight in my front yard, and we’ll have a passion fruit cocktail from the vines nearby. And that’s a pretty big universe right there.

Tami Simon: I’m talking with Rob Bell. He’s going to be leading an immersive workshop, The Ongoing Creation of Your Life: The Mysterious Work of Becoming More You, at Omega Institute, taking place August 30th to September 4th. You can go to eomega.org and use the code TRUE if you’re interested.

Tell people a little—you’re doing a workshop like this. What is it when the two beings combine, you and whomever you’re talking with, people who are there, that makes something of greater depth and complexity that’s worth you getting on a plane from one side of the country to the other and going to do this?

Rob Bell: Well, I’ve only done, like, a week-long thing a couple of times. This might even be, like, the third time. But something happens when you’re with a group of people for, like, five days. So that just right there. You can go places that you… I do a lot of things here in Ojai for two days—but five days. So that right there, you can follow something and really follow it, and with other people. So that right there is significant.

I give people these super basic, like, stick figure drawings to do. Like, I have people draw a tree, a birch tree—so their version of a… and if it takes longer than five seconds, mm-mm, no. And then talk about how a birch tree produces about 250 million seeds, and probably two of those seeds maybe will produce a fully formed, mature birch tree somewhere in the future. So a birch tree produces literally hundreds of millions of seeds that will never reach full capacity.

So, what do we call that? Did the birch tree fail? The birch tree doesn’t seem that fixated on efficiency or production like we are. So we follow these truths about how creation around us actually works. A river winds its way. It meanders. It finds its way down the side of a mountain. And there aren’t a lot of right angles in creation.

So part of it is: if you only had the world around you, and we’re just making observations about how it works, and that’s what you had to go on for how your life works—what would be, like, your guiding truths? So part of it is these observations that have helped me, and I watch how they do things to people, about how you make your way.

And then, what I love is what happens when people start to get clued into what questions they have about their life. And then we take time, and the person asks the question, and I start asking them questions about their question, ’cause lots of people have all kinds of knowledge and clarity. It’s just buried down in there. So things start to happen when you watch somebody else find clarity around a project, their life, some seasons ending, some chapters beginning. So we’ll move around among a number of different ways to follow it. I really love it. I really love it.

Tami Simon: One thing that you wrote about that I’d love to hear you comment on, ’cause I’ve found it’s true, is that sometimes when people would listen to you after you would give a sermon or a talk, they would hear things that you hadn’t actually said. And I have heard that reflected back to me many times. People will say, “I love that talk you gave, and I was…” What were they listening to? I had no—did I say that? I don’t think so.

And your take on that is that it has something to do with—well, I’d like to hear what it is, but it sounds like the energy in the space, what’s coming in, what’s being communicated at a pre-verbal level, kind of allows there to be a hearing of what the person needs, or something like that. Anyway, I’m curious how you view it.

Rob Bell: Yeah. When you, Tami, give a talk, there’s an architectural dimension to it, in which—

Tami Simon: Ideally. Hopefully.

Rob Bell: —you’re speaking something. There’s an old tradition about a cathedral of words, like what the poet is doing, what the orator is actually doing. You’re creating a space. And so you might be talking, but there’s also a space that’s being created, and people hear all kinds of things in that space that may directly connect to what you’re saying. But there’s something atmospheric about what you were doing. You had some intention for their wellbeing and your own. That created a space, and then, turns out, for people’s wellbeing, they started hearing things.

Yeah, this happened to me in my early 20s. When I would give a talk, and then afterwards people would be like, “Oh my God, I feel like I’m finally at peace with my mother’s death,” or something like that. I’d be like, “I was talking about generosity.” I remember thinking, “Why even prepare? Why not just read from the phone book or something?”

But it was actually about some intention. It was about the craft—and the more I worked at the craft, that seemed to happen more. So it’s like you work very hard to be clear and articulate and honor people’s time by giving them the best you can. And you also just throw it up in the air and go, “I have no idea how anything works.”

Tami Simon: Well, I hope the atmospheric space that has been created here, you and I together in this moment—I hope, oh listener, it gives you exactly what you need. Take what you need.

It’s great to be with you. I hope we can be fleshy together sometime.

Rob Bell: Great to be with you. We’ll meet up down the road somewhere.

Tami Simon: Yes, indeed. We will. We will. Okay. Thank you, Rob. Thank you. Thank you.