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Greetings. I'm Jim Finley.

And I'm Kirsten Oates.

Welcome to Turning to the Mistiffs.

Welcome everyone to season five of Turning to the Mistics,

where we're turning to an anonymous author

and the book The Cloud of Unknowing.

I'm here with Jim and we're going to dialogue about his first session on the

Cloud. Fun to start a new

Mystic. I'm excited about it. I wanted to begin where you began with that

first session, which was going over the schema that this author uses

to describe these states of faith or degrees of faith and awakening to God.

Just an opening question. Does everyone on a faith journey

go through, especially the first two stages?

I would say if we're on a faith journey,

first of all, of course, everyone is in or is gone to the first stage.

That is, there is a kind of religious consciousness

but it fulfills, gives moral guidelines,

gives a sense of belonging, all good things,

whatever your own heritage is, a continuity,

and probably too, to sincerely

...