Lifted from the archives of Lisa Carley's history with her good friend Joel David Lesses, this from July 2013, into the deep of night, armed with Mike's Hard Lemonaid, American Spirits, Pringles, Eckhart Tolle and Rumi, in Lisa's 2001 Black Hundai Elantra in the parking lot of Allentown Trading Company Gas station, at the corner of Buffalo's Allen Streen and Delaware Avenue, Lisa Carley and Joel Lesses explore the nature of the existential condition and its relation to identity and reveal an enduring friendship.

Using psychological, poetic and spiritual lenses, Lisa and Joel laugh, talk, drink, and smoke their way through a terrain that is both deeply personal and exploratory, introspective and hilarious.

A version of this talk is also on the Unraveling Religion podcast.

Joel and Lisa talk about identity and examine it through the psychological lens, relationship as a model of teaching, repressed memories; poetry begins to emerge in this second segment, existential psychology and mental health distress are examined.

What do we attach or connect to in the world.

Is the world physical spiritual or both?

What does it mean to be a 'good father.'

Past lives and poetry intertwine.

What are we as human beings 'holding together' and what does it mean when we fall apart?

More hilarity as the conversation loosens up.

The poetry continues, talk of Bardos (spiritual realms), what does it mean when we first meet someone and time slows or stops, spiritual signs are discussed.

The special evening ends with a favorite Rumi poem.

Biography:

Born in Buffalo, NY, Joel David Lesses has lived in Nepal and Israel, along with hosting Unraveling Religion is a poet expressing the landscape of our existence, capturing the mystical elements of our human being. World religion, poetry, spirituality, meditation, encompassing the makeup of our mind and life. The crux of his own personal journey are the manifestation of questions and answers to his personal koan “What is the matter with me?” which reveals the individual and universal aspects of our inherent and potent creativity. Everything is flux. Everything is poetry. Other passions include the intersection of poetry, spirituality, science and phenomenology shared and disparate in the human experience, and transformative power of self inquiry and introspection through contemplative and meditative practices with a belief that the fundamental transformation of individuals and our collective comes through barreling inward, relentlessly, the question, "Who am I?" or "What am I" or "What is the matter with me?" the latter being his question which after years of examination, shattered a false sense of self, the work of integration of that experience being an ongoing work in progress.