Episode Summary:

We begin Season Six of Holy Heretics in a world coming undone. Evil is on our doorstep. Our democratic norms are no more. A sociopathic madman and his predatorily ghouls are raping and robbing their way through our common life. An entire system of life is cracking beneath our feet.We are standing at the threshold of an old world that is dying and a new world yet to be born. The only real way through is inner: to awaken, to unfold, to cultivate a new humanity from the inside out.

To open this season, I sit down with 88-year-old mystic John Butler—British author, retired farmer, and lifelong seeker whose gentle presence has become a sanctuary for millions. Formed by silence, shaped by prayer, and seasoned by decades of wandering across continents and inner landscapes, Mr. Butler speaks from a depth rare in our dopamine-driven age. Many have come to know him by a name he never claimed but quietly embodies: “Mr. Nothing.” It’s a title that gestures toward the ego‑less simplicity he embodies—a way of being that asks nothing, claims nothing, and yet reveals everything essential. He reminds us that the ground of our being is never unstable, we’ve simply forgotten how to tap into it.

Besides farming and meditation, Mr. Butler has lived an extraordinarily interesting life, including much spiritual insight, emotional ups and downs, long periods in Peru, Africa and the USA besides several years in Russia, all of which have been part of the far from easy journey to where he is now.

This season is, at its core, a season of spiritual health—of learning how to live from a deeper center when the world around us is fraying. Along the way, we’ll be joined by voices who have spent their lives tending the sacred: Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde, whose moral clarity has guided many through storms; Stanley Hauerwas, whose fierce honesty cuts through our illusions; Mark Vernon, who maps the inner terrain of consciousness with philosophical grace; Martin Shaw, who calls us back into mythic imagination; KJ Ramsey, who helps us inhabit our bodies with courage and tenderness; and Matthew Fox, who has spent decades reminding us that we were not born in sin, but in original goodness.

Season Six is an invitation—to slow down, to listen, to return to the place within you that no propaganda can distort and no authoritarian can reach.

We’re back! And we’re beginning with a conversation that asks you to breathe, to soften, to sit in silence, and to remember that your personal transformation begins in the one place the world cannot colonize—your inner life.

Connect with Mr. Butler on his website, https://spiritualunfoldment.co.uk, for articles, interviews, and additional resources on the contemplative life.

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Show notes:

http://www.sophiasociety.org/podcast/spiritual-unfoldment-john-butler

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This episode was produced by The Sophia Society and written by Gary Alan Taylor.  Music is by Faith in Foxholes.