GD: Hi, welcome to Existential Tetherball. My name is Gordon Smith and I am here with Rachel Fell and we're gonna go on a pilgrimage together today.

Rachel Fell: Yes, we are Gordon Smith. We have our friend BK with us today to explore pilgrimage. ⁓ BK is amongst other things a pilgrim. He's also a regenerative technologist with a deep appreciation for what's both possible and needed in our times. Practitioner in many social technologies with an emphasis on warm data, sociocracy and the art of hosting to tend to what's between and inside of us. When he's not working in civic tech, you can find BK exploring wisdom traditions, cooking with friends, or traveling to meet fellow humans. He also DJs because some things are better felt than said. Welcome BK. Thanks for being here.

BK: Hey, happy to be here.

Rachel Fell: Yeah, last time the three of us were all together in the flesh, we were making art, spray paint art in Gordon's backyard, which was awesome.

GD: I'm sorry.

BK: That was amazing. It's like one of my top top nights.

GD: you

Rachel Fell: Yeah, it's a good one. It's a good one. And so we were all together for the warm data training in Asheville in September of 2025. And during that time, got to hear a lot of stories and context around your travel experiences, your joy, your voyages and journeys and pilgrimage like your pilgrimages. So we wanted to bring you on today to talk about explore, discuss. What the heck is a pilgrimage? And ⁓ yeah, unpack your experiences with them.

BK: Yeah, I love that. It's such a profound question. It's often, I don't get a chance to think about it. And like, I'm really excited to co-explore this with you.

Rachel Fell: Yeah.

BK: Yeah, I can just kind of just give a little context on, you know. Maybe the first time I heard the term pilgrimage was like learning about the Mayflower. And there were these people with hats that came over. You know, there's something with turkeys and you know, like I didn't really catch all the other nuance, but ⁓ I just remember that they were pilgrims and that's probably all I could capture at that point in time. ⁓ But I didn't really.

Rachel Fell: Thanks.

BK: think about what the term meant for me until maybe like decades later. I had come across an organization in Germany called Dark Horse and they were trying to, it was kind of like a design agency, they were really edgy and like people who wanted to work with them, know, ⁓ were called pilgrims. And then people who stayed, like who weren't kind of moving about, like, but were, you know, maybe deeper practitioners were called monks. And so that was like the second time I had heard the term, like. ⁓ And then and then. I didn't realize that like. Throughout my whole childhood, in some ways, I'd been shaped by the Indian, Vedic systems. And ⁓ pilgrimage actually is ancient tradition. ⁓ It's held in ancient traditions as well. You can find it across religions, continents, peoples, cultures. I just happened to fall into a tradition just because of a classmate of mine whose father was deep into a South Indian pilgrimage called Sabrimala. And every year around November, December, January, there's millions of people in South India doing this circuit ⁓ to a temple in the middle of a forest region of the state of Kerala. ⁓ And there's kind of, it's kind of an adventure. it's, I would describe it as like folk religion meets kind of... ⁓ the Vedic tradition meets kind of local culture and then to like a person who's not Indian to kind of go into that. Like it was was like very eye opening in different ways. So I'm I'm like very excited to just like poke at this term pilgrimage with you all. Maybe hit it around. Hit around the tetherball.

GD: BK, when you went on that pilgrimage for the first time, I'm wondering what sort of intentions or expectations you had around

BK: Yeah, I was in my early 20s. ⁓ I had no context for what they meant as pilgrimage. So I was just going because my friend was going and it would be a chance to go to India, not by myself. And I'd have like, I'd be like taken care of. I'd have like a host family. So I was just like, I was in some ways along for the ride, but ⁓ upon arrival. a lot of the things that I cherished and I had pride in, I had to let go of immediately. ⁓ For example, I used to consider myself a competitive spice eating champion. Like I would eat things like Lacedon Mace and have no problem. And then like, was like, I'm coming to India with this big bad ass attitude.

Rachel Fell: Hmm.

BK: And I remember talking to my friend's cousin the night before the pilgrimage starts. She's like, you know, like, I heard you can eat a lot of spices. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I can can handle myself. And so she like brings out this tiny little green pepper and she's like, try this one. And so like I eat it and like it hurts. then like I'm thinking my pride is intact. in the next day, like I get sick. ⁓ And so like I can barely move. can barely keep anything down. And the question becomes like, will I go on the pilgrimage? Like. ⁓ So there was definitely a moment where I might have a different story to tell. But my friend's dad was like, you travel thousands of miles to be here. Like, why wouldn't you at least try? So that was that was the start to my my my journey.

Rachel Fell: Bye.

GD: So it began with this release of this self-concept that you had been really tightly embracing.

Rachel Fell: Hmm. I was gonna, it made me curious about like, is a pilgrimage inherently humbling at some level or deconstructing or maybe you two have heard the term type two fun before, which is the kind of fun that is relative and makes you like kind of appreciate everything that exists because it's like a really hard hike or it's sort of like you're camping in the rain for days, right? And so that's such an interesting kickoff. you know, to your first pilgrimage experience because like quite humbling.

BK: Yeah, I mean, I don't know what my overall intention was at that time of my life, but I just wanted to have fun. I lost that on day one. I was dehydrated. I couldn't eat and I couldn't drink. And it's like an eight day hike. Yeah, just because of like a little pepper.

Rachel Fell: That is so interesting, right? Like, I don't know why I'm going really. I'm going because my friend's going. It's interesting. Like, I've always wanted to go. And yeah, it immediately like takes you down a peg a little bit, right? That's very fascinating. Yeah, Gordon and I were talking before you came on. Like, we always kind of look at various definitions of a word, kind of go into the etymology of a word. And... pilgrimage having something to do with like a voyage or journey for spiritual or religious reasons. Yeah, but in this example, you were just kind of following an impetus. In that first pilgrimage, did you connect with your own journey into the spiritual, the transcendent, the divine? That's a big question.

BK: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, there's that old Zen story about... somebody who comes to learn from his end master and you know, he's like, hold out a cup. like he, guy holds out a cup and then he just like pouring into it and he just keeps pouring, you know, and the guy thinks he's going to stop, but he doesn't. He's like, ⁓ like your cup's too full. and I do feel like that kind of humility is like emptying out, is, allows you what to absorb like from the journey, you know, the journey, not the destination. ⁓ I think with this particular ⁓ spiritual system, there are certain rules you have to follow, certain vows you have to take prior to even starting the pilgrimage. ⁓ You know, like you maintain a vegetarian diet, practice celibacy for 40 days, abstain from stimulants and intoxicants, just so that you can kind of level set your mind, because you'll be in the forest and you may not have modern amenities at all. and your job is to kind of travel from one point of the forest to another point in the forest in one piece. And you kind of need to travel light. there is this kind of reduction of ⁓ bass world, you know. ⁓ things that we have access to in our material wealth of today and just like letting go of like my phone and like all the things my phone brings, know, like what else can I focus on now? ⁓ Like that's kind of where you start to access more of a spiritual practice and whether you use mantra or your breath as mantra or some other device, like you start after day. day day you start to just ingrain these habits ⁓ and patterns because like the only thing you're doing is walking. Like you've reduced all activity to like one thing which is like to keep moving. So there's I think like there's a lot of magic that happens at the you know the psyche and individual level that's kind of hard to do if you're not in a really regimented system.

GD: Hmm Yeah, it's funny you hearing you earlier talk about Dark Horse about the pilgrim and then the monk and then to be on this pilgrimage in which this asceticism is demanded ⁓ Not for its own sake but for the sake of focus and emptying one's cup To make room for whatever might want to emerge or fill it I was thinking about that monk archetype in advance of today and how that pilgrimage is linked to that archetype. There is some sort of surrender or release, surrender to a set of rules or a set of vows, release of ⁓ a self-concept or a phone or a way of moving through the world ⁓ in an effort to have an experience that can be transformative or transcendent.

BK: Yeah, I'll just add one. Yeah, I think I think like that's like spot on. Like I I will say like a lot of people who are raised in this tradition, like they have family members who've done this for generations. They get quite emotional. ⁓ Once, you know, like, you you're kind of going. There's like layers to it and I'm trying to be brief. ⁓ But in some ways, part of this system is like you invoke ⁓ the deity into yourself. and you're like a representative ⁓ of this kind of folk and kind of spiritual tradition and you're kind of going home. It's a returning home. That's kind of the theme. And so like you take on the ways that that deity would live their life in hopes that you also kind of awaken your divinity. Like that's the transcendent part. And so like when you reach the final temple, you're climbing 18 golden steps. steps. Each step is representing like something you're climbing over like in your ego. You know, any habits that you're kind of trying to not overcome, say, you know, gain mastery in some ways. And so that a lot of people become uncontrollable, like with emotions, like they experience many things. Like, I think for me, it was more like a an elation like, you know, happy we all made it together. Nobody died. Nobody got eaten by a tiger. You know, just like the basic completing the loop that made me just like very felt accomplished in ways that I didn't quite understand.

GD: Hmm.

Rachel Fell: Yeah, no big deal. Nobody got eaten by a Solid work. Solid work. ⁓ Gordon, were you going to say something? I'm sorry.

GD: Solid. Yeah, sounds like a great holiday. Yeah, and so were you, so however you want to play it.

Rachel Fell: Rock, paper, scissors, one, two, three, go.

GD: One, two, three. Oh, I'll start again. I wanna do this one more time. This is really fun. You ready? One, two, three, go.

Rachel Fell: Just go. I'll go after you. Just go.

BK: Yeah, that's out of three.

Rachel Fell: Okay, that's one, two, three, go.

BK: you ⁓

GD: Thanks for going on that journey with me. I know it was just occurring to me that, um, Brandon, you were talking about how you were showing up for it initially, as far as your expectations. And it was from this place of, I'm going to go to South India. I'm going hang out with my buddy. I'm going to do this weird shit that I've never done before. Um, and that was another one of the archetypes that kind of came up for me when I was considering pilgrimage was the archetype of the fool.

Rachel Fell: Happy to. Out we go.

GD: and this sort of naive entry into something. ⁓ And you were quickly disabused of being able to ⁓ flaneur your way through this thing by that hot pepper ⁓ and quickly made an avitiate into this monk archetype.

Rachel Fell: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Really interesting.

BK: You can happen fast.

Rachel Fell: HAHAHAHA one South Indian pepper away from completely dissolving a bunch of your ego.

GD: Hahaha

Rachel Fell: ⁓ I was going to ask, you know, religion and spirituality, ⁓ embodied meaning, dogma. I'm doing this because somebody else said I should. I'm doing this because I want to. I'm going in as the fool just because like, sounds interesting. I don't know what to expect. Sign me up, right? I had a similar experience of entering something from that fool archetype.

BK: you

Rachel Fell: I did the ⁓ Everest Base Camp track. So you go from Kathmandu, you fly in a little plane to Lukla, and then it's like a 10 day track from Lukla to Everest Base Camp. And it had a lot of the features that you've described thus far, but it wasn't in the context of like a religion or a tradition. It was a bunch of strangers from around the world getting together, but it had a number of the same, like the emptying, the readying, the... type two fun, the transcendence along the way, the sort of humbling of ⁓ connecting to deities, energies, these sorts of things. So just find that interesting, right? It seems like you can have a pilgrimage that's more structured or sort of intentionally build as such. But you can also have a pilgrimage kind of unintentionally too, like just kind of opt in and something can become that spiritual journey. of one's own accord. So I'm curious how that lands for you as somebody who's, it sounds like done a couple different versions of a pilgrimage. You know, there's the more structured and religious, you know, warm data could maybe be a bit of a pilgrimage too.

BK: I love that question. Yeah, what is a pilgrimage? ⁓ Or what makes a pilgrimage a pilgrimage as well? I think it's both and. ⁓ I think the intentionality is key. ⁓ You know, whereas I didn't have that initial foresight into like what it was I was actually doing. Like now I've done it three times. So like there's something that happened for me in the first time. And I basically done it every 10 years, like the Indian version. But it was I went last before this year, I went in 2010. or 2020, sorry, 2020. So maybe it's 10 years, five years. Hopefully I'll go again before it's too long. But ⁓ yeah, I think like when I think of, you know, the pilgrimage, like I was thinking of just like a random word of like pill, like you're definitely on something ⁓ to to kind of really throw away like your your life as it is and do this thing that's completely

Rachel Fell: you

GD: Yeah.

BK: different. I'm reminded of, you know, the monks walking for peace that just happened in the US. They started in Texas and then they ended in DC and they passed through Richmond except their their track was like 2300 miles. but they're ordained monks, right? Like this is what they do. But I still think you have to be on something to kind of want to go down that route.

Rachel Fell: Yeah.

GD: Yeah, you gotta take a pill because it can be pretty grim.

BK: Ha there we go that was good

GD: Thanks, dad joke came out, it happened.

BK: ⁓ yeah, you get- I feel like you do- I feel like you do get good with the grim.

Rachel Fell: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

GD: Hmm.

BK: Like Grim becomes normal.

Rachel Fell: So this isn't a question I thought I would ask, but it feels very like, like relevant now. Does a pilgrimage involve walking, hiking? I'm not like, could I pilgrimage without ever moving my body? Like, it's like, you know, levels of abstraction, right? And like, what is what isn't? But when you know, the Paulo Colejo, the pilgrimage, right? It's like, you know,

BK: Hit it. Yeah. Hmm.

Rachel Fell: My experiences that have felt like pilgrimage have all involved like walking or hiking.

GD: Mmm.

BK: Hmm.

Rachel Fell: I don't know, just curious.

BK: You know, I've only heard of walking pilgrimages. Except for the Mayflower people, they use the boat. Other than the journey. ⁓ I was just going to add, like I think... ⁓

Rachel Fell: A journey. Yeah.

BK: Yeah, what is sacredness? I feel like in some ways the pilgrim is in pursuit of something sacred, something beyond them, something larger. And wherever you can find that, yeah, then I consider that a pilgrimage, whatever that word is for you. I think with the, in the Indian context, they have this idea of like power centers, like there are places in the world that kind of hold significance. And if you visit those places, like you kind of are like getting a boost. And so like, you know, from that context, like it's it's more about like going to certain places. And I feel like without the route, like the itinerary. ⁓ It's hard to have like the pilgrimage like term like you need to have a start and an end somehow. And I think as long as you have some bumps along the way, like, yeah, I consider you a pilgrim.

GD: Mmm.

Rachel Fell: As long as it's grim. Along the way a little bit. As long as it's-

GD: As long as there's some grim, we're good. Yeah. That sense of what is it? Because when I was thinking back through the pilgrimages that I've undertaken, none of them have been that highly structured going to a conventional place that is deemed sacred, that is associated with divinity or the transcendent. ⁓ I think that the one that's coming up for me right now was, it was a spring break. I was in college and I decided I was gonna drive to JD Salinger's house. I was really into Salinger. I actually reread some last night, Franny and Zui, because I was led. Anyway, so I went alone and I hopped in my Mitsubishi and started driving towards his house. And I was like, I brought a tent and I was sleeping in little campgrounds. It wasn't terrifically comfortable. I was pretty broke. I was a college student. I was alone. And pretty quickly you're with yourself, right? There's nothing else. There's nothing else to occupy you. It's open road and no conversation. I'm not even sure. I probably had a cassette player. ⁓ But nothing more advanced than that. And I made my way into roadside taverns. I made my way into places that I hadn't been and ⁓ came upon people. I was an English major at the time and I was focusing on Middle English and medieval literature and there's so many pilgrimages. know, just Chaucer alone is plenty.

Rachel Fell: Take care.

GD: but I was having these experiences of being on the journey and meeting these influences ⁓ along the way and then continuing and not being stuck or trapped, but letting it build one thing upon the other. And I realized ⁓ about three days in that I didn't have enough money or enough time to get there, to get all the way to Salinger's house. And so... I had to make this choice to, well, I guess I'm not going there. And so where I was in West Virginia at the time, I pulled out the map and had a look and was drawn, led, guided to go to a national radio observatory that was looking for alien life. And it's like like 50 satellites. I'm just like waiting for for, for ET to phone home. And, ⁓ and so I found myself in this, in this place and camping in the, adjacent state park campground. So here I am, entertaining aliens alone in this forest. And I woke up one morning and walked out into the dawn and it was misty. There was like this waste level mist across this field. And there was a herd of deer in this field. I would guess 50 or 60 deer. And amidst them was this one buck. It was this white buck and it was majestic. It was, I was transfixed. ⁓ The whole scene was otherworldly. And I waited until the fog lifted and the deer moved on. And then I drove home, feeling like I'd arrived and received what I went.

Rachel Fell: Mm. Mm. Mm. Mm.

GD: Was it a pilgrimage? I say yes.

Rachel Fell: Yes, there's no doubt in my mind. It has all the features as they emerge and as we explore them. You set out on a journey that had some sort of the the Salinger, Salinger's house. This is sacred to you. This is important. There is a connection here. There's a resonance, right? And ⁓

BK: Mmm. Mm.

GD: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Rachel Fell: Type two fun, you've only got a cassette player. You don't have enough money, you don't have enough time, like you're sleeping in, but like also you're meeting, it's like expectation. One of the words I wrote down is like, so sometimes we're seeking, but we don't know what we're seeking or there's an intention to connect and we may or may not, know, it's like his house is the material, but it's like him, what does he represent? You know, what did he represent for you? What does he still represent for you?

GD: Mm-hmm.

Rachel Fell: I guess I'm asking.

GD: Uh, he represented somebody who seemed to understand my experience. Um, and as this like neurodivergent, uh, college kid who had made a bunch of friends, but also didn't really feel seen. Um, uh, it was one of those things like, Oh, I think this guy gets me.

Rachel Fell: Hmm. Yeah, yeah, resonance in the artist, the writer, the, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. And you didn't have an expectation other than to connect with, sorry, Brandon, or sorry, BK.

BK: Yeah, I was... I was gonna add, ⁓ one of the things that I love how you phrased it was like you were called or led. And there's like maybe another feature is that directionality, like maybe not destination, but like direction ⁓ that also kind of just allowed you to be more emergent instead of having like a planned path.

Rachel Fell: and

GD: Hmm

Rachel Fell: In your subsequent pilgrimages in South India, BK, that call to return. So the first time it was sort of like, there was a call, but the call was in the form of like, let's say like the fool's entry or sort of like, I'm just going to go and I don't know what to expect. But in those subsequent returning experiences, ⁓ would you mind sharing a little bit about that, that magnetism or that attraction to do it again?

BK: Yeah, the return, yeah. And I'll start with a thought. ⁓ In between like Pilgrimage 1 and Pilgrimage 2, which is like 10 years, my mother passed away and she ⁓ kind of like held a space of like normalcy for me, like in my life. ⁓ And so like she passed away in like 2015. like I was also maybe like searching or like seeking for like groundedness. And so like I start I fell into a place in West Virginia. So like when you started talking about that, I was like, ⁓ like you probably went to that place where there's like no like radio signal, like they only have radio signals. So it's like.

GD: Yes.

BK: There's like low light pollution. Like this place is like magical. It's like untouched. ⁓ I had I had a version of that. I visited a Sri Lankan monastery called Bhavana Society. It's in the woods of West Virginia ⁓ outside the capital. And. ⁓ I'm like there specifically to just like get like a sense of groundedness. Like I feel very perturbed in my system ⁓ I don't know if I'm happy with the way my life is going. I'm just like, I'll go to a silent retreat. I've never done this before. I think I can be silent for three days. I get there Friday night. There's monks who are people who are there all the time. They don't leave. And then there's people who come and visit. And they talk to the monks and like, how is it being a monk? ⁓ And so they're like, hey, like you guys are welcome to ⁓ do your silent retreat. We'll give you like some discourses, but we're not going to do your laundry. We're not going to cook food for you. That's all on you. So like make sure you follow your volunteer coordinator. ⁓ You know, like they'll kind of direct you through our monastery and kind of how to conduct yourself. So like night one ends and one other thing I signed up to be like a kitchen prep to like help make food for people so we could have food since the monks weren't cooking for us because they need to like care for themselves. I wake up ⁓ maybe like four a.m. and like I have a dream of like a wolf and like a bear. And like we're in the middle of nowhere, it's like maybe they were there, like I don't know, just like, we're looking over you brother. Like I have no idea, but I get up and I was just like, oh, this is magical. And I go back to sleep and I wake up at like seven and I stumble out of my little cabin. and I go into the main hall and the volunteer comes at me. He pulls me to the side and like, where were you? You were supposed to help make the food for everybody else. was trying to have my best night's sleep that I'd ever had. And I just remember ⁓ being really surprised that that was the reaction. ⁓ that I was getting from somebody who's like at a monastery, you know, but then I felt really bad. I'm just like, ⁓ like people might not be eating because of my selfishness. But then the rest of the trip was fine. I woke up crack of dawn every day and made food, but ⁓ it just reminded me when you were talking about West Virginia. ⁓ the headmaster or the head monk at that place, he's like in his 90s, like 99, 98 now, Bonte G. He... was talking to us just about like life. Like he moved from Sri Lanka to stay in America, like not his home. And I've always wondered what that journey has been like to kind of make place. Like, so I feel like the opposite of the Pilgrim or in some ways is the monk, like making place. Like you've you found a home in your decisions and you're okay with like this new form of life. You've like let go of the old. There's like a discarding a renaming of yourself as well, I think that you alluded to. But yeah, that that was all on my mind leading up to 2020 for my return to India, just because that was like a chaotic like time in my life. And I was like, oh, like the pilgrimage actually was the chance to reset. Like, just go back to the baseline. Like you're cutting every you're cutting out the noise. So that's why I went the second time. The third time, I just wanted to go for vibes, man. ⁓ I hadn't seen these people in a long time. They kind of became like family. You're trapped in the middle of nowhere for a while. ⁓ And it was like a chance for me to like just be more intentional about what do want the following years to bring. But yeah, that's how I would kind of show you how my mental state changed across.

GD: Hey Brandon, in all of-

Rachel Fell: Beautiful. Thank you.

BK: store vibes.

GD: In all of these iterations, ⁓ I wonder what is it you're seeking?

BK: Mmm. and I wanted some pause. Yeah, think like there is no, there's no right answer, but in some ways, the first thing that popped in my head was like, I'm seeking myself. Like I'm seeking to know parts of myself.

Rachel Fell: Yeah. ⁓ As I was making lunch between my morning sessions today and sitting down to connect with the two of you. ⁓ this spontaneous sort of like idea popped in, which was, you know, this journey of sort of, for me, life is kind of a pilgrimage at this point. Like if I'm being just kind of like open and very honest and unfettered and that the cyclical nature of life coupled with this journey of like becoming elder, it's like, we don't talk a lot about these sort of like, the emptying, the composting, the reformation that comes with the journey of becoming and becoming elder. And I wonder if these sorts of pilgrimages act as almost like containment for a process that we might already be in or like, and there's varying degrees of that process, right? So when you were describing the first version where you're like, you went in and there was this sort of like, ⁓ I'll just see what's up. And also like, I got this, no big deal. Eats pepper, is humbled. The second version, the second time you go, ⁓ you've just lost a parent, you've just lost your mother. And that's a very, that's like a, that's an event. And that's gonna destabilize, pull the rug out from under as you were sharing. It's like seeking some sort of stability or some sort of home. And the third version, there was this experience of home you've had previously in the last two iterations. You're like, I wanna reconnect with this. So there's this idea that's sort of forming in me around sort of like pilgrimage, pilgrimage as containment for the process of becoming that we go through as humans, that invisible process of becoming elder, right? Because there's the physical process of becoming elder and aging, but what I'm talking about is something different. I'm talking about that psychic process of becoming, of learning, of growing, of kind of connecting with that transcendent or that sort of that self connected to the divine and less with the. you know, the ego, let's say. Yeah, so it was just a thought I wanted to share as you two were kind of exploring that pop back up for me. It's like, ⁓ pilgrimage is like a form of containment. Brings the physical together with the, you know, the emptying, the adversity, the discovery.

GD: Yeah, it's the power of ritual ⁓ extended with movement ⁓ that when we think of ritual, we tend to think of pretty, brief in duration, you know, ⁓ when I know when I think of a ritual, it can be as short as a few seconds or as long as about an hour. ⁓ But what you're saying, Rachel, is that that pilgrimage is a ritualized ⁓ process.

Rachel Fell: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And that it might do us all well to notice when we might want or need. I think in the offering that you and Laura Hope Gill, that I participated in, Gordon, did, ⁓ these stages of alchemy, or the sort of like there's stages of sort of disintegration, and these are largely invisible in modern culture. These are connected to different wisdom traditions, different spiritual and religious traditions.

BK: you

Rachel Fell: The purifying for example like is one of them right and BK spoke to that. It's like yeah, you're not going into this You when I did the Everest base camp. It's like yeah, we're no drinking. No, know meat no drinking You know, there's like that aspect of it. But yeah ritual containment for spiritual growth question mark

BK: I love that. Yeah, there's definitely, I think there's the art of creating the container around the pilgrim. And that intention might be the spark for that. ⁓ In some ways, ⁓ there's a word called circumambulation.

Rachel Fell: Mm-hmm.

BK: ⁓ And so like pilgrims often when they reach a holy site, will ⁓ in the Indian tradition, it's called production. So you will roll, roll around the temple or the deity, like roll like your body all the way around, ⁓ making a loop. And in some ways like that, to me, that circle that that that

GD: Hmm

BK: looping actually is symbolic of like rituals. So like when we in some ways look at daily life, like what are we circling? Because I think like you're right, like in some ways daily life already is a pilgrimage. But like, do we know where we're going? Like, is there an intentionality to it? Are we trying to go more in depth with like what's already happening? Yeah, I think like that's a fascinating exploration. I was going to say one other thing. Bees, like pollinators, like

GD: Thanks

BK: They also are circulating, ⁓ they're moving things from one place to another. I think there's something that I wasn't thinking about is what does my presence do for other people? ⁓ A lot of these folks that I go with, don't really hang out with Americans that may not be Indian. ⁓ So I have a completely different worldview. What am I bringing into the mix just by being there? My life or my presence has value just me showing up and like how can I ⁓ be more open to like chance and meeting life as it comes whether adverse or otherwise you know I think there's like this grand play that's always happening

Rachel Fell: Leela, yeah, the design play.

BK: What, I guess like I have a question for you two, like, because I think the containment aspect, know, like, in some ways, like I'm thinking of the word growth. ⁓ Do you have any stories around times that you knew that you grew something new? Like a new ability or like, I didn't know I could do that. Like has that ever happened for you?

GD: You're speaking of growth into a new something ⁓ while or during a pilgrimage or as a result of one? Brandon? BK?

BK: We're just even like you realizing that ⁓ you could do something that you didn't think you could do previously. ⁓ I can give you a quick example. ⁓ On Sunday, I to visit a friend and I, you know, I didn't realize this, but they're turning 40 soon and they want to host a party.

Rachel Fell: Meow.

BK: and they need a DJ. So I was like, well, I have my stuff in my car. We can just party. And so they had all their friends there. And I ended up DJing. And it was magical. I had never seen the party. They were using Spotify. I thought Spotify was good. They wanted to offload it to the DJ. Can I go request a song? ⁓ And so I started a vibe.

Rachel Fell: Hmm.

BK: and then people would add to the vibe. Then it became this co-created mix. And I had never felt DJing like that. It had always been a listening party. And so just to see people really co-create, really start, when their song came on, just to see them just light up, I was like, ⁓ this is what DJs like to do. I didn't realize this is what I was giving in that scenario. yeah, that was just like a light bulb moment for me. just like, ah, like I didn't realize like I could be that kind of DJ.

GD: Yeah, it expanded what it meant to do that.

Rachel Fell: Mmm. Mmm. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I had a bunch of a man. I wonder if a pilgrimage by its nature, and then the more one engages the spirit and the physical reality of the pilgrimage, if life can just sort of become more of a pilgrimage, like embodied learning, like I think of Gnosticism a little bit here and this sort of like embodied knowing or like,

GD: You got one, Rachel?

Rachel Fell: I get right into these questions of human intelligence and how it works. And I've had some pretty profound experiences while on pilgrimages that were either known to me to be such or like you in their earlier versions, the first and second versions, more sort of like, I'm just going and I don't know, but I feel this attraction or I feel this magnetism. ⁓ I went backcountry camping in Denali National Park in 2019. Well, I was in the throes of a positive disintegration. I was having a lot of physical, emotional, mental, existential. I was in a profound state of melt, let's say that. And I got lost in the middle of the night in the fog, which was a very harrowing, terrifying experience. And the next day, the mountain came out, which is rare, happens 30 % of the time or so, and we were camping at the base, pretty much the base of the mountain. ⁓ And I felt my intelligence reorganize. Like in that moment, it felt like a bunch of stuff was stripped away from me, a bunch of things were reorganized. And in that moment, this is edgy to say on a podcast, but like, I felt like I was reborn and I understood paradox as a certain sort of answer for everything. And it's edgy to say that stuff out loud, but like if we're talking about pilgrimage being this sort of container for transformation, absolutely. Like to the extent that I've been fearful to talk about it because it was so profound and it fundamentally changed me fundamentally. ⁓ So yeah, my answer is a resounding yes, VK to that question. I don't know about you, Gordon, if you wanna, if you have any particular examples of transformation.

GD: That's a beautiful story. the it's it's interesting to hear the edge in it for you because it's so central to who you are now. And so it's it's letting people into the these innermost chambers for you. Yeah. And what feels edgy to you feels really warm and round to me. So just I just want you to know that.

Rachel Fell: It is. Yeah, that is. Hmm. Thanks. Does it have a color? Just warm and round. ⁓

GD: Yeah, it's the color of your eyes. Yeah.

Rachel Fell: Awesome. Awesome. You see me try to give it right away. I'm like, tell me about yours, Gordon. Tell me about yours. I can't stand to be in this. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

GD: I, ⁓ what came up for me was after graduate school, I gave myself a ⁓ two month trip to Turkey and landed in Istanbul and then like ⁓ circumambulated the ⁓ country. And ⁓ in so doing had all manner of adventures. One of which was doing a little mountain climbing. Like right after two years of grad school, I was not in the best shape and I injured my knee in that process. And so I was led drawn to a place to kind of convalesce for a week. I needed to sit still. And so I went to this place called Cappadocia in central Turkey in a little town called Gorema and a little hostel there. And one morning when I was at the hostel, somebody ran in and said, hey, they're bombing America. This was September 11th, 2001. And so I gimped my way down to the internet cafe and hopped on Yahoo chat because all of the new sites were crashed from traffic and was just gathering information and all the other, all the people in the internet cafe just gave way to the Americans and let the Americans have the computers. and we were all just shouting information as we learned it. ⁓ And after about six hours of that, kind of came to a relative understanding of what had gone on. And I wandered out of the internet cafe, out into the main road. It was hot, my knee was hurting. But Cappadocia is all of this volcanic rock. It's very soft, you can carve it with a spoon. And it was historically a university. It was a population center. There were apartments, essentially, carved into these rock faces. And you could climb into them, and you could see where people had decorated them with art. ⁓ And you could see where they'd carved their beds and where the professors had carved their auditorium. And to be in that place in the remnants of a dead culture, it just after the impact of 9 11 had an expansion within it for me around impermanence and around structural security, uh, uh, being, uh, not being a place to, to, to build your house.

Rachel Fell: Hmm. Yeah, deeper.

BK: I love that, yeah, not being a place to build your house on. ⁓ I wanted to say like, maybe being a Pilgrim gives you tenacity. ⁓

GD: Hmm.

BK: There's just something about being on the journey that you gain fortitude or stick with it-ness, whatever the word you want to grit, whatever the word you want to call it. I love the carving into the mountain. Like maybe we're all carving our lives into the mountain and one day our life will be left on a wall. We're all heading towards impermanence. ⁓

GD: Yeah, yeah.

Rachel Fell: my abandoned MySpace page. Well, I wonder if we, it is maybe how we, one way we learn what we uniquely might need to learn at any given time in our lives or in our journey, right? This confluence of influence and like the context of.

BK: Nice.

Rachel Fell: you know, where Gordon was in his life and what was happening and where he was and how that all kind of comes together. The confluence of what, you know, it's like, I do wonder if, you know, pilgrimage gives each person maybe uniquely a certain sort of embodied experience that then connects the dots in these ways that are, you know, aren't so reductionist and aren't so cognitive. is this very like profound, deeper experience of learning and then knowing perhaps.

GD: Yeah, and with that before and after sense to it.

Rachel Fell: Yeah, yeah, that there it's like a it's a mile marker. It's in your human journey. Yeah.

GD: Mm-hmm

BK: Yeah, I think what I kind of am realizing now is like the thing, the only thing that's changing on a pilgrimage is you. Everything else is kind of fixed or static and it's really just you that's changing as much as you're allowing yourself to change.

GD: and the sacred being an important element, sacred meaning an association with the divine or the transcendent. ⁓ And at the same time, what were you doing? Like what were you seeking? You were seeking yourself. ⁓ And so these things ⁓ are coexisting. I'm reaching toward transcendence and I'm dropping into what it means to be this thing. ⁓ And that leads me to the third archetype that I was thinking about in this ⁓ In this as I was contemplating pilgrimage and it was the magician archetype Which has kind of in this case that has your monk and your fool kind of merged right like it's it's a stripping away of experience and But it's within this this this constriction ⁓ And that magician is an embodiment of like a societal wisdom keeper. You'd mentioned elderhood. Like it is like this process that takes one to a new state of being.

Rachel Fell: Absolutely, absolutely. ⁓ As we were speaking before BK jumped on, you said something about ⁓ the difference between the monk and the magician and sort of like really self-bypass. like, I forget what the word you used, but this like anchoring in of wisdom, of divinity, of the unseen, of experience through the physical, emotional, mental, existential self, right? So it's like, This journey of sort of becoming or seeking transcendence does not take us out of one's solves it brings us more home into ourselves which like Use the word home a couple times VK is like what am I seeking like the sense of home? It's like, okay Here we go, right? Like maybe these these experiences are you know, whether we design them or we're following a wisdom tradition or you know with a group and it You know has more of a structure or it's hopping in your car to go Connect with the ghost of JD Salinger, right? It's like Yeah, yeah, good stuff. ⁓ Is it time for another pilgrimage? I don't know. Yeah, maybe.

BK: Yeah, maybe we should make our own pilgrimage.

Rachel Fell: Yeah, I feel like that's my way. I wonder what it would be like to do more of a structured one, how that would work for me personally.

GD: Well, if y'all want, you can come back to warm data this year in Asheville and we can structure it up. I'll, yeah.

BK: All right.

Rachel Fell: We can make it into a Pokemon, it's the three of us, yeah. ⁓

GD: I'll hide the booze. It'll be great.

Rachel Fell: Nice. Nice.

BK: I'll maybe share this one last thought. ⁓ There's a book called Yoga Vashishta, ⁓ which is like ⁓ one of the non-dualistic texts in the Indian tradition. there's this concept I'm thinking of where they talk about seekers, like people who are going on these journeys to find the answer to the meaning of life. And they talk about, you know, the seeker has two wings, like if you were a bird. ⁓ One is kind of the effort, the discipline. ⁓ the rigor and then the other side is kind of surrender, not attachment, letting go. But you need both in order to fly. ⁓ So like the structure is only as helpful to you, ⁓ is only helpful to you to the moment you can let it go and then deal with emergence. ⁓ And so it's like these things are like. Two they're two peas in a pod. Like they're constantly cycling. And our lives can be good containers ⁓ to train from. if we want them to, ⁓ or they can be places of fun. Like I, maybe we'll spray paint ⁓ a whole bunch of new art. Like that's, I want to have an art pilgrimage. Like if y'all are down.

Rachel Fell: Sounds great, sign me up. Creativity.

GD: I'm totally down. Brandon, BK, thank you so much for being here and for sharing this and taking us on this journey. I hadn't anticipated sharing so much story today. was really nice to be able to.

Rachel Fell: Thank you very much. Yeah, I am, yeah, so glad you were able to join us and you're traveling tomorrow. We were talking, is it a pilgrimage? Is it not? I'll be curious to hear when you return if this one has the features of a pilgrimage for you.

BK: Yeah, I definitely will be trapped on a route. I'll try to see if we can bring in the other features to make it a growth or a transformational container. But we have more to come. Thank you both for having me.

Rachel Fell: you Ha ha ha! Thank you.

GD: Yeah, so thanks for everybody who's listening. We are Existential Tetherball. And if you're into liking and subscribing and following, we like all that. We really appreciate other folks being able to find us. ⁓ The folks who are going to connect with this, please help us connect with them.