Peter & Patrick in Dialogue

50:50 — November 17, 2025

This is the first in an ongoing series of dharma dialogues between Patrick Bryson and myself, in which we explore the leading edge of inquiry into what it means to be an awake individual in a time of great cultural and societal upheaval — and what it means to embody “no limitations” in a living and meaningful way.

In this opening conversation, we begin with AI — as mimic, mirror, and pattern-maker — and follow its trail back into the heart of human identity. What happens when a machine can reflect our own thinking faster than we can? Where is the line between genuine wisdom and simulated sagehood? And how does our evolutionary drive to construct identity, belong, and seek affirmation play out in relationship to these new technologies?

Rather than offering conclusions, the dialogue opens a shared field of inquiry: into the difference between enlightenment and freedom, the seduction of fixed identities (including “cosmic” ones), and the challenge of staying rooted in the immediacy of experience while the world around us accelerates and dissolves.

At heart, this is less a conversation about AI and more a shared inquiry into what remains irreducibly human: the living mystery that cannot be boxed, defined, or fully mirrored — and the possibility of being both deeply engaged and fundamentally free.

AI & Being Human — A Dialogue