O’Donohue: I feel like in the book I wrote on beauty, I was trying to say that one of the huge confusions in our times is to mistake glamour for beauty. And we do live in a culture which is very addicted to the image. And I think that there is always an uncanny symmetry between the way you are inward with yourself and the way you are outward. And I feel that there is an evacuation of interiority going on in our times and that we need to draw back inside ourselves and that we’ll find immense resources there.

Tippett: When you say “symmetry,” I don’t think you mean that there’s an equality, but that they are intimately connected and that when we are putting our energy outward, it’s taking something from inside us.

O’Donohue: It’s taking something; exactly. That’s exactly what I mean, that it’s taking something from inside, and we’re secretly debilitating ourselves. And it’s understandable, too, because if you look at the educational system and you look at most of the public fora in our culture, there is very little time or attention given to what you could almost call learning the art of inwardness; or a pedagogy of interiority. That’s why I find the aesthetic things, like poetry, fiction, good film, theater, drama, dance, and music, actually awaken that inside you and remind you that there is a huge interiority within you.