Another key discovery for Smith? Realizing “the insatiable nature of material chasing, like no matter how big a movie is, you want the next one to be bigger. There is no end. That is the trick of the material world.”
Smith now makes music “to connect with humans,” he said, and his art helps him and others “find our way to the supreme and absolute truth.” The musician feels a responsibility to be authentic, even though it’s “terrifying to dissolve parts of your previous image.” He admitted, “I’m joyful a lot, but I’m not happy all the time, as folks have seen.”
RELATED: Will Smith: New Film Shows ‘The Power of Faith To…Endure Anything’
Smith and Lecrae then discussed biblical heroes, as well as Joseph Campbell’s thoughts on the hero’s journey. Those steps are “part of a psychological, emotional, and spiritual pattern that we all go through,” Smith said. “The story of Christ, the death and the resurrection, that’s the literal telling of the figurative thing that needs to happen to us, so you died to your previous self in order to be reborn as your higher self.”
Campbell described that as “return with the elixir,” Smith said. “You return with the secret, and now it’s a whole new journey of ‘How do I share this secret?’” Suffering is a blessing, Smith said, referencing Daniel’s return from the belly of the whale—before Lecrae corrected him, noting that was Jonah.
Smith laughed and told Lecrae not to cut that from the podcast. “We’re not going to hide that I made a mistake,” he said. “That’s the whole point” of my rebirth. “My spiritual practice today is be okay with everything,” Smith said. “Whatever I get, that’s my curriculum. Thank you, God, I’ll work with that.”
He continued, “I trust me and God to figure it out,” even when unwanted situations arise. “I trust that [life’s] an adventure,” Smith said. “I trust that it’s a mystery. And I trust that I’ll handle whatever becomes my divine curriculum.”
