John Vervaeke is an Assistant Professor at the department of Psychology at the University of Toronto. His main field of study is cognitive psychology, wisdom, its traditions, and meaning-making. He has made 50-hour long video series on the meaning crisis and how to awaken from it which is very much our focus of this podcast. John is special, because he does not only an incredible academic work, but he also walks the talk as you'll hear on the podcast.  

We've talked about what lead John to his field of study and such a passion for it? What are the lost ways of knowing. How to cultivate wisdom and how does it help with the "waking up" from the meaning crisis? What role does mindfulness and insight play? What are John's daily routines to cultivate wisdom and meaning? Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with nonother than John Vervaeke.

John is an author of a book Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis.

Subscribe to John's Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCpqDUjTsof-kTNpnyWper_Q

Timeline:

4:00 How did John became interested in what he does

15:00 What is meaning crisis and why are we in one

22:00 Distributed cognition and ecology of practices

26:00 How does meaning crisis affect you?

31:00 Practices to cultivate wisdom and meaning

34:00 Lost ways of knowing

47:00 How to optimize cognition for insight and how does insight lead to de-automatization

56:00 Why and how to make sense of the world

1:03:30 Waking Up and systemic insight

01:10:00 - Altered states of consciousness and perspectible knowing

01:15:00 - Pure consciousness event and a "short guided practice"

01:25:00 - Existential modes : Being mode vs. Having mode

01:42:00 - How to fall in love with reality again

01:50:00 - John Verveake's daily routines, books and interesting practices