Stan Bennion Transformation
For me, a big part of the spiritual journey has been examining and practicing and developing my relationship with the present moment. Welcome to the Grow in the Light podcast. We are going to talk about transformation today. This discussion is so foundational for understanding our growth journey. I think you'll really enjoy it Welcome today, we have as our guest for the podcast Stan Bennion.
Stan lives in Alaska, and he's a mentor to me on this beautiful process of transaction and transformation, the spiritual transformation. Stan, do you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah. I live here in Alaska with my family, wife, four kids that are all out of the house now, so it's a shifting time as the kids take flight, and we're, uh, kind of enjoying the empty nest.
They were all here last night, though, and, um, so for the first time I've got all four here in Alaska in probably the last four or five years, so it's lovely to have them all here. I was an HR executive for 30 years and worked in oil and gas for most of that time. As a family, we lived in South America, in Bolivia and Colombia, and Middle East for a while.
Um, and then got transferred to Alaska, and we've kind of settled in here. About two years ago, I retired from full-time work and got a certification in integral coaching from Integral Coaching Canada. And so that's what I do now, is I work with i- individuals and executives on personal change. I'm not wrestling big organizations anymore.
I'm working one-on-one and so that feels very refreshing and vitalizing for me, 'cause I get to grow myself, you know. It's me walking alongside clients as we grow together. That's beautiful. What has been the most rewarding part of that coaching integration practice with individuals for you? So you do a lot of coaching in human resources.
You know, you're dealing with a lot of internal conflict. You're dealing with drama. You're dealing with ambitions and fears and all those sorts of things that are part of the human condition. We do a lot of training, leadership training and all that, and I think in my heart we were training skills to cope more effectively.
I was like, all right, we can give people skills to cope more effectively and be more effective in their working lives. But I think I held within myself a little bit of an idea that we don't foundationally change as human beings. In the last three years as I've been on a little bit of a journey and actually in some ways have awakened to the spiritual life much more.
You know, my whole life I've been active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I teach gospel doctrine right now in my ward. But I would say I saw it as a safe place and a good place with good people, but it wasn't really something lively for me and it kind of felt like a failure at personal prayer.
I think some things were breaking in my life, and, uh, started learning how to meditate and really started exploring the spiritual journey in a new way, and it's been very enlivening for me. And going back to this idea of are we learning to cope better as human beings, or can we actually transform on a foundational level who we are?
And that's been a remarkable thing to me that I have come to a place where I do believe we can foundationally transform how we walk through this world. So that's the thing that I enjoy, is that idea of transformation rather than just learning how to cope more effectively. One of the teachings I've learned from you that you articulated so well that, is that there is growth that takes place from the outside in, and then there's growth that takes place from the inside out.
And I think that relates here to what you're talking about, this spiritual journey. Can you tell us a little bit more about what's the same and different about those two different growth processes? So, and there's no downside to one or the other, but I, I think, uh, you know, as we start moving in the world, we wanna be more effective.
We wanna be, we wanna be able to make more money and be more secure in who we are, gain some fame and notoriety, gain some power over who we are in the world. And so we try to exert a lot of willpower, and it pays off. You know, if I exert willpower to study hard and do my job really well, and so I show up well and make sure I do the right things and don't do the wrong things, you know, obey commandments, then that, that does produce results and I, I get more effective.
But it's a very willpower orient. You know, I'm exerting discipline and willpower to try to earn things. So I, I'm doing these outside actions, and it's bringing me value. It's bringing me security. It's bringing me notoriety. And I'm learning and growing, and I'm, I'm able to do good things in the world, help other people as well as provide security and safety to my family.
So I'm doing these outer things through discipline and willpower. But I think in the spiritual path, that can only take you so far, and you'll come up against roadblocks. You can only perform your way so far. Hopefully at some point we hit those roadblocks enough to recognize there's growth in examining my emotions, my thoughts, my orientation towards God, towards other, towards myself.
I would say those are the three foundational relationships, my relationship with self, relationship with fellow man, and relationship with God. And those don't have to do with performance. Or maybe there's assumptions that we have about those relationships that drive a lot of that performance. But I think the inward journey, the growth starting from the inside is really an examination of those foundational relationships with self, with other, and with God, and exercising practices that help to shift those relationships.
My conviction is that will start to change how I walk through the world and how I impact others. But it's a very different orientation. The outside in is I'm trying to get to somewhere in the future, right? If I do all of these things, then I'll be successful. I'll be able to retire. I can do all these remarkable things.
I can do heroic service in the world, right? I can earn my way to the celestial kingdom. So it's a very future kind of oriented way towards life, whereas I think the inward journey is a recognition that my life is happening right here, right now. How am I experiencing life now? And my experience of God is right here, right now.
It's not about trying to change God's mind so that He's gonna like me in the future if I'm at the judgment bar or something like that. So transformation is sourced by the relationships we have with God, with ourselves, and with each other.
Yeah. I think central to that is relationship to the present moment. What is my relationship to the right here, right now? I, I think for most of my life, the now felt boring, felt insufficient. There was kind of an anxiety of, no, I need to always be thinking about the future or daydreaming about the future.
And so I did not have an easy, comfortable relationship with the present moment. And for me, a big part of the spiritual journey has been examining and practicing and developing my relationship with the present moment. How has that process happened for you, learning to be more present in the present? So there was a time when I was in a big corporate job that just felt really, really heavy.
Kind of felt like I was failing. I was doing all right, but my inside experience was, holy cow. Every day felt like I'm going to work wondering, who am I gonna let down today? And then in my personal life, I had four teenagers. One was kind of every boundary you tried to put, she was blowing up. Another one was struggling with some depression, and it was like holy cow, how
you know, what's the right way to operate? So I would say feeling like a, a little bit of a failure as a parent, as a father. And then in my church life, I'd carried this idea that personal prayer just wasn't working for me. I couldn't figure it out. I couldn't connect in a way that I was supposed to, and I would say in some ways I'd kind of given up on it.
That's a pretty profound failure in our context, right? 'Cause it's the main thing you hear every week is, well, personal prayer- It's the solution to everything ... that's the solution to everything. And so it wasn't something I would really voice, but I think in my heart I was feeling like, all right, I'm a failure and a failure and a failure in this.
I wanna just pause- Yeah ... for a minute there, because I think that challenge is more widespread than we want to acknowledge. Yeah. I think that there are many of us that even as adults in the church all our lives struggle with feeling that prayer is a meaningful con- connection. It's a relational experience that is fruitful.
I think that's more common than we acknowledge. I, I think you're right and it feels fruitful for me that I'm in a sound enough place that I can voice that and be vulnerable like that to say, "Oh, well let me examine that. What is my relationship to personal prayer, and how is it working or not working, or what is my self-judgment maybe," um- That's a beautiful question
related to that. And I think just acknowledging it, putting it out there gives us each the permission to authentically look at it ourselves and not feel like a failure, but explore why might that not be working. And I feel like you're saying that that was part of your journey, this transformation for you, was admitting that- Yeah
exploring that a little bit maybe? Yeah. And I, I think it was more of a, a sense that things were, were feeling broken and, and I was having a hard time projecting positive ideas of the future, you know, of going to a more exciting place. So this strategy that would work pretty well for me to escape pain in the present moment, you know, daydreaming about the future.
I was even struggling with that strategy. A cousin of mine who was into meditation... Or I knew had done some things in meditation, which totally blew my mind. He came and visited us in Alaska with his family, and so I was really- And questioning him about what is this about, how is it done, and where do you even start?
And he recommended a book called The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I had a son who was struggling with depression at the time. Amazing kid. But I thought, "Well, maybe this will be good for him." So I suggested, "Well, let's read this together." And in my mind, this would be good for my son. And I started reading, and it was profound for me.
It shocked me into recognizing my own relationship with the present moment, and Tolle hits that from a thousand different vectors, really examining your own relationship with the present moment. In some ways, deep prayer is a willingness to hold the present moment. It is an inner stance of w- willingness and commitment to say, "I am just gonna be fully here right now in my embodied experience.
In this moment of my mortal experience, I'm gonna be wholly here right now in this present moment." Thomas Keating would say, and I often repeat this to myself just as I'm getting into that space, "I consent to the action and presence of God within me." Mm. So it's not putting any expectation on that. It's just an open stance to say, "I'm gonna be right here right now in the immediacy of my actual life, and I consent to the presence and action of God within me," whatever that may be, and then just sit there with it.
Part of the experience for me is starting to let go, 'cause my mind will wanna think about this and that, and hopefully I can catch it before it gets attached to that thought and say, "No, I'm not doing the thinking thing right now," and just let it pass. And as I did that, I recognized that that, for me it felt like the first spiritual experience or practice that was actually shifting my day, was shifting my experience of life.
I needed it. I could feel a deep peace and a connection and a sense of the deepest me, and a sense of God that I needed in that phase of life when it felt like several things were crashing in. That sounds like a great description of a transformation that was happening from the inside out, that experience of peace and of shifting that you were experiencing then.
Yeah. Yeah, 'cause it wasn't about performance. One of the things in the classes we've done together is being able to hold differing polarities, and I see here the polarity of make it happen and let it happen. So often in our lives we like to make things happen, to plan, to control, to influence, that transactional effect.
And what you're describing is very much a make it happen orientation to God's will and to the present, and to be in the present in a let it happen orientation to life. Yeah. Yeah, and for me, I was so oriented to the do that I didn't have access to learning how to actually be. The becoming versus being.
If we're spending all of our time doing, doing, doing, doing, that there's underlying that the sense of lack. We haven't exercised the being side of that polarity. Learning how to be, learning how to be a being that is fully temporal and fully divine at the same time. There's a lot of potential growth there.
And it's not to depreciate the, the doing's important. One of the concepts we've discussed in understanding this, differentiating it as transactional, which focuses on the actions that bring the desired outcome, versus transformational. What can you tell us about where the outward law, the doing-ness that we've been raised to believe can transition to this transformational way?
I think as children we can really only understand a transactional view of life. If we don't put our finger on the stove, our finger doesn't get burned. It's a cause and effect. If you study hard and get good grades, then hopefully you'll get a good job, and you'll be able to support yourself. The simple gospel that we tend to teach as missionaries delivers great comfort to people that are living in chaos.
If you're living in chaos and you don't know how you're gonna feed yourself the next day, the simple gospel, which is a little bit of cause and effect, do these things and then you'll be blessed in this life and the next life, there's a lot of comfort there, and there's a lot of power in it. And it's not to depreciate that at all.
There's a lot of value in the transactional view of our spiritual journey. Here's the downsides of staying in a transactional view. They tend to cause us to focus on the rules themselves. 'Cause if it's really about exactly what can you do on Sunday and what's the right way and the wrong way, it leads to a lot of comparison.
It's human, but that's a transactional view. The transactional perspective tends to focus on outward behavior, right? Things that you can see and feel and mark down. It's difficult to say what's on the inside because we're very focused on the outside. And we will have failures at some point, and that can lead to all or nothing thinking.
I think it can actually stall spiritual progress because it can get us to a place where we're like, "All right, I've got it done. I've got the merit badges. I've got my temple recommend. I just need to white-knuckle endure to the end." And that's not a growth mindset. Enduring, you know, I, I appreciate the language, but in some ways it's a fearful mindset.
We maintain the status quo and see that as success instead of growth and progress being- Yeah ... our orientation to success. And, and the reality is if all of our spiritual self-identity has to do with performance, there is a reality that as we go into our 60s, 70s, and 80s, we may not be able to perform on that same level.
And I will just say I've seen it with some of my friends and their elderly parents who ... Losing a lot of that identity, 'cause if all my identity is built around heroic service and if you're not able to deliver heroic service, you might, "Oh, what am I doing around here anyway?" You know? "I'm just taking up space at this point."
Another side is at some point if you're just held in the transactional ti- construct, at some point that is likely to fail you. At some point there's going to be death, and there's gonna be disease, and there's gonna be heartache, and there's gonna be divorce, and there's gonna be loss of job, and really difficult things happen to people that don't deserve it.
I mean, this life is too complicated to put it all into cause and effect. And I think that is a point that can cause a lot of pain and a lot of brokenness. In some ways, some of that behavior can be a desire to control God, right? If I do all of these things, then God has to do these things and whatever expectations I have in my head.
And if something really breaks in that, it can be very painful. Um- Kind of like a sense of entitlement that we feel in that paradigm. Well, yeah. A sense of security/entitlement. Mm-hmm. And at some point the bottom will drop out on that, I think. Yeah. The last thing I'll mention is I learned meditation from a guy named Phil McLemore, and he was a hospice chaplain for many years.
And he said his experience on the deathbed for many members of the church was, um, "I don't think I've done enough to go to the good place." Mm-hmm. And I think that is an example of really good people held in a transactional perspective on the gospel that hadn't been able to move to a place of grace and rest and trust, and learning how to be both a spiritual being as well as a temporal being in this world.
And even in their brokenness and their incompleteness, feeling totally acceptable to God. So as we strive to grow through this same process and become more transformational in our thinking and being, you talked about how Jesus Christ was an exemplar of that in His teachings and in His life. And I'd love to just go to the scriptures.
The process you have of identifying the old way, the traditional law, and what the trap of that is, and then the transformation that's taught in God's word. Do you have an example you want to walk us through? In scripture with that? Yeah. I would say the whole Sermon on the Mount is Jesus' masterclass on moving from a transactional to a transformational perspective on spirituality and the spiritual life.
And there was a guy named Ben Stassen, and the way he expresses it, and I- it was really helpful for me to kind of look at it in that frame, is that what Jesus goes through is he explains this is the traditional view, this is the transactional view of this law. Here's the trap if you hold into that, and here's the transformational perspective that I offer you.
So as an example, he says the traditional law is thou shalt not kill, so pretty straightforward The trap is if we still nurse anger or accusation, call our neighbor a fool vocally or in our heart, we hold grudges that enable our ego to cultivate a sense of superiority, that we haven't killed anyone but we are holding into that sense of superiority, and holding on to anger that's actually not allowing us to move forward.
And so his transformational principle is go and be reconciled first before the anger or hatred build up and calcify in your hearts. We cultivate an ability to see the beam in our own eye and our own conflicts and disagreements, so we're able to turn inward. And he says, "Thou shalt not kill" is not just about killing.
It's about recognizing the anger that comes up in our judgment in our own hearts, and working through that judgment, and that's where transformation starts to come. And we can release that. Our ego doesn't want us to let go of anger and guilt and condemnation of others, but that's where the spiritual growth comes from.
Beautiful. Can you think of another example? Yeah. So the, the traditional law is thou shalt not commit adultery, right? It's pretty straightforward. The trap is when we use fantasy to turn others into objects of our satisfaction. And we could also include the fantasy that money or status or a more perfect spouse would make us free and whole.
And so his transforming principle is to stop playing the mind game called fantasy, and he uses the imagery of tearing out your eye or cutting off your hand because he knows how seductive our fantasies of money or fame or esteem of a more perfect partner might be. And I think that's the power. It, it's not willpower.
Well, just don't commit adultery or don't, you know, think dirty thoughts. It's actually looking deeper within us to recognize the fantasies that we hold. Oh, if I just had more money, if I was just more famous, if my spouse was just more perfect, were more of this or less of that, then I would feel whole and I would feel complete.
And so in, in the transformational journey I think it's really valuable to start seeing how those fantasies are operating within our hearts and those daydreams that we have of, oh, if I just had more of this or less of that- More joy, more pleasure, something ... or my spouse were... So that's an examination of our relationship to the present moment, and can I start to detach a little bit from those fantasies?
It's hard because they've served us really well, but the spiritual journey I think is about detaching some from those fantasies and seeing the beauty that's right here right now. That's beautiful. So how does this apply to our parenting? You've talked about how you're in this empty nesting stage. It's a transition in our roles, right?
How does this, this spiritual journey of transformation- Um, show up differently in how we parent One of the things my mom likes to say, and she's got a great relationship with all of my... I've got five brothers, and she's got great relationships. And she says, "When your kids are little, you're a parent, right?
You're keeping them out of the street. You're very transactional. You know, don't do this, do that, do your homework, and you get your reward. And when they're teenagers, hopefully you're moving into a coaching role where you're guiding, you're directing, but you're opening up a greater space for them to make their own way.
And when they're adults, you become a cheerleader, and that's your role, is to be a cheerleader. And if you wanna have a good relationship with your children, it's important that you move into a cheerleader role." And that's liberating in itself, just to kinda have that perspective on it. But I think underlying that is I think there is value in recognizing your own relationship with fear and how much, I think as parents, we naturally fear for the future of our children.
And this is some of the greatest advice that I got as my kids were teenagers, is I was told by a very wise guy that parents are tuned to have fears about their future of their kids. If my kid does this, then that might happen. If they don't do this, then that might happen. And so, you know, we project all of these fears.
If we're honest, some of our own fears that we project. Where the destruction happens is we let those fears make us do things and say things that impacts our relationship with that child, and that's actually the most important and most valuable thing that will help that child for their future, is that relationship.
Carl Jung said that the burden of every child is the unlived life of their parent, and I think I find some truth to that. And, and that's where we see the fears of one generation get passed to the next generation. And another way of saying that, wherever one generation got stuck, their fear of the next generation getting stuck in that same place will actually cause them to do things that will cause some stuckness.
And so in some way, what's been liberating to me is I'm actually super convinced of this, that the best thing I can do for my children is to keep growing myself. The best thing that I can do for my children is for me to keep growing myself. And the best thing I can do for my marriage and my partnership is for me to keep growing myself.
And I think not only is that true, but it's something that I can absolutely do, that it is totally in my control to focus. Not always comfortable- Oh, no ... um, but it is kind of a counter, a counter move to say, no, actually, if I keep growing myself, that is the best thing that I can do for my children. Okay, so I have an interesting question on that.
What if you're in a relationship where the other person isn't interested in growth? So, I, I think real spiritual growth doesn't require anything from anyone else. And it's, um... it's tricky if your partner has fears that they see you reading something or trying something new or trying meditation, which might promote fears of the partner.
And so I don't want to downplay that that can create some conflict. I'll just say this is a little tender, but I've done a few meditation retreats with Thomas McConkie, and they've been really valuable for me. And when I came home once, my wife expressed her fear that w- you're gonna be with all these people that are growing and doing all these spiritual things, and I'm just gonna be boring and I'm not gonna be interesting to you anymore.
And what a tender thing for her to be able to voice and for me to explore and to see, you know, from her perspective what her fears are. And I, I think she's a remarkable person exactly where she is. And I can still learn from her, and maybe in some ways she's ahead of me on the journey or just different.
You know, we all suffer in very, very different ways in the world, and so our growth path is very, very different. So my growth path and my relationship to, like, the present moment, as I said, is just a very different growth path than the growth path for my wife. So I don't know that I have a total answer to that except that it can cause tension if one party is growing in some direction and...
but hopefully an openness and a grace and open communication can help smooth the way through that. In different situations are, are really live and really profound that people are struggling with. It's really hard to navigate it when it's at your core, right? And, and you know it is the deconstruction process happening on its own sometimes within you that is propelling you to this kind of growth.
And so it's hard to say, "No, you can't change or become that because you have to keep making this relationship work." It's, it's a tricky thing to negotiate, to hold space for the transformation happening within self and hold space for a partner not wanting transformation in spouse or in self, right? Yeah.
That's tricky. Yeah. It's, it's, it's very, very tender. Yeah. And it, it, it's really interesting to hear you put it in that framework, um, because when you are the one in the stable situation of this old way of being, right? The... what we would call the old way of being. Often that person can... feels this is the right true good way.
And so any change or any transformation, any deconstruction away from this- It's, it's dangerous Yeah ... and that's a tricky thing to hold space for. That's their reality, how threatening it is, when it seems liberating when you're the one experiencing the growth. It can be upsetting to people who are holding to that transaction- and that, that transactional frame provides a lot of security.
So I was teaching gospel doctrine. I was having us examine D&C 53, man is not compelled in all things. In fact, if we're commanded in all things, we're slothful. And so for me, that's a very transformational kind of scripture. And I was questioning the group to kind of explore that, and uh, this one guy, I hadn't met him before.
I could tell just by his body language that he was uncomfortable, and his comment was, "Well, we're compelled into a, a lot of things, you know," and in fact, he said that scripture said we're not just compelled in all things, but that means we are compelled in most things. And, um, and I tried to, you know, hold an open heart that I think there are people that come to church that maybe their lives are kind of in chaos, and they come to church for security and certainty, and we know exactly what to do and what not to do, and we have all the pieces and we know how they fit together.
And if everyone else just lived exactly like we do, then everything would be perfect. And so for me, there is beauty to that. There's safety to that, and I need to honor that. And some people come to church for that. And at the same time, feel into what is the right level of, um, openness and exploration and vulnerability that we can say, "All right, there's spiritual growth beyond the transactional that's beckoning to us when we're ready to take those steps."
And when we talk about a theology where we claim that we are part of an ongoing restoration, that implies transformation. That implies change. And so it's can be difficult to reconcile wanting that consistency and predictability of the tradition and the ways of being and doing and satisfying those expectations and being safe in that certainty, and the paradox of holding space then for the transformation and the growth and the restoration and the changes that inevitably come with growth.
You know, Richard Rohr's been remarkable for me. His book Falling Upward I just found remarkable. Ah. So I, I went through that and, you know, we have to create a stable ego before we can say, "Oh, now the job is to start to be- Release ourselves or detach Deconstruct it. Um Yeah, deconstruct that ego. And, uh, and there's times when I'm back in my ego and it works.
You know, we need a stable ego to go into the world and to get a lot of stuff done and, you know, to make dinner. And so what are some signs in our life that we are growing from spiritual transactions to spiritual transformation? So I think the topic of fear is very alive for me. Many times in the scriptural accounts when the people come into contact with something transcendental, with an angel, the first words are, "Fear not."
Mm-hmm. "Fear not. Fear not." And so I think as we examine our spiritual or religious lives, the extent to which fear is operating as our motivator, you know, there's fear that's always gonna be a little bit of a part of us. But I would say to the extent that we find fear being a prime motivator in our spiritual lives, we're probably more on the transactional side.
And where trust and love and flow is... if we can feel that as our primary fuel, then we're maybe moving more towards the transformational side. So I think there's something about what is the primary fuel that is pushing us through our lives? Beautiful. So what's your takeaway message? What is it that you hope listeners get from our discussion about this topic of transactional being and transformational being?
I think what I can just share is my whole life has shifted as my spiritual life, in some ways, has taken center stage. It's a rejuvenating energy and, uh, and it's, um... it imbues a lot of my relationships. And just my stance towards life is, is not, uh, characterized by any fear, but kind of excitement and a sense of abundance and a sense of plenty.
And it's a physical experience. It's, uh... you know, if we could come up with a drug that could give someone this experience, we'd make a lot of money. But there's a beauty to that, to say I can have this physical experience of interacting with life and being alive that doesn't depend on me having to take a drug, that doesn't depend on anyone else having to be a certain way.
If I can be in a relationship with God and myself, and therefore fellow man, and do that with a sense of love and a desire to bring healing to the world, it's a beautiful way to be in the world. And there's no risk to it. And it may be if I can move in the world and have this sense of joy and excitement and wonder, hopefully I can have this sense of wonder even the morning of the day of my death.
Hmm. That's beautiful. Living whole-souled, right? You know, body, spirit, heart and mind all together. Yeah. Well, thank you for being with us, Stan. And you have a lot more to share about meditation. We're gonna have another episode where you share more in depth about how meditation can help facilitate this process of transformation in our lives.
We look forward to that- Oh, that'll be fun ... that discussion together. Well, thank you, Stan. Thank you, Emily. I'm glad you joined us today. I hope you found something meaningful that connected with your soul. One takeaway for me in my role as a single mom was the best thing I can do for my children is to keep growing myself with trust and love and flow.
Another important point for me was how authentically Stan talked about his struggles in his prayer life, and what he chose to do to grow in that. I love that mentor example of authentic vulnerability and activated agency. That's a powerful combination for growth. I invite you to consider sharing this podcast episode with someone who would be blessed by it.
That's how we make the world brighter, one ray of light at a time.
