1 00:00:00,120 --> 00:00:02,840 Lemonada 2 00:00:06,120 --> 00:00:09,523 Hi, I'm Zosia Mamet. You might know me from the show Girls. 3 00:00:09,606 --> 00:00:13,955 I've been a horse girl since I was six. Not a phase, definitely not ironic. 4 00:00:14,038 --> 00:00:17,914 I will talk about horses until the people around me start to worry. 5 00:00:17,997 --> 00:00:21,578 So I made a show about that feeling. It's called OMG Obsessed. 6 00:00:21,661 --> 00:00:25,418 And every week I sit down with one of my favorite people and ask, 7 00:00:25,502 --> 00:00:29,023 what's your horse? What's the thing you cannot shut up about? 8 00:00:29,106 --> 00:00:32,391 So come be an obsessive with me. OMG Obsessed is out now. 9 00:00:32,475 --> 00:00:34,720 Follow wherever you get your podcasts. 10 00:00:34,950 --> 00:00:35,783 you 11 00:00:36,270 --> 00:00:39,436 Hi, it's Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread, 12 00:00:39,519 --> 00:00:44,145 and I am so excited about today's guest, the great scholar and thinker, 13 00:00:44,228 --> 00:00:45,090 Michael Mead. 14 00:00:45,690 --> 00:00:52,690 *music* 15 00:00:55,970 --> 00:00:59,881 - Hi, it's Elise Lunen, host of Pulling the Thread. On this show, 16 00:00:59,965 --> 00:01:04,859 we pull apart the web in which we all live to understand who we are and why we're 17 00:01:04,943 --> 00:01:05,377 here. 18 00:01:05,460 --> 00:01:10,460 My hope is that these conversations spark moments of resonance and plant tiny seeds 19 00:01:10,543 --> 00:01:14,340 of awareness so that we might all collectively learn and grow. 20 00:01:15,150 --> 00:01:20,354 Here is today's guest, Michael Mead, on what happens when we start on 21 00:01:20,437 --> 00:01:23,610 an individual level. growing our souls. 22 00:01:24,210 --> 00:01:28,290 other people are going to go away in the darkness isn't that the chaos where 23 00:01:28,373 --> 00:01:29,197 everything began 24 00:01:29,280 --> 00:01:33,396 Can we not begin it again? And then you get to the idea of the soul, 25 00:01:33,480 --> 00:01:37,349 where the individual soul is connected to the soul of the world, 26 00:01:37,433 --> 00:01:41,117 and enough souls awakening revitalized the soul of the world, 27 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:43,300 and we're back in a living cosmos. 28 00:01:44,130 --> 00:01:48,497 rather than in an accidental universe. Michael Mead is a groundbreaking 29 00:01:48,580 --> 00:01:52,257 storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, anthropology, 30 00:01:52,341 --> 00:01:55,266 and psychology. He has written many, many books, 31 00:01:55,349 --> 00:01:59,110 including "Why the World Doesn't End" and "The Genius Myth," 32 00:01:59,220 --> 00:02:03,400 And The Water of Life, which is a book about men and initiation. 33 00:02:04,260 --> 00:02:08,313 I was very excited to talk with Michael and he did not disappoint. 34 00:02:08,397 --> 00:02:12,951 He actually blew my mind with a historical gem he shared toward the end of 35 00:02:13,035 --> 00:02:14,100 our conversation. 36 00:02:14,250 --> 00:02:18,391 But before we get there, we cover the crisis of masculinity and the manosphere 37 00:02:18,474 --> 00:02:20,370 that has been dominating our feeds, 38 00:02:20,490 --> 00:02:23,230 But of course, Michael has a fresh take on all of it. 39 00:02:23,520 --> 00:02:28,117 We explore antidotes to monoculture and polarization and the fallacy of the hero's 40 00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:31,941 journey. And we spend most of our time talking about the importance 41 00:02:32,024 --> 00:02:36,390 of individually being. Each of us growing our own souls. 42 00:02:36,510 --> 00:02:40,340 what this means, how we do it, and what the result would be, 43 00:02:40,424 --> 00:02:43,360 personally and collectively. I loved this one. 44 00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:45,820 I hope you enjoy it too. Here we go. 45 00:02:50,000 --> 00:02:54,592 Thank you for joining me. This is a total thrill and I'm very excited. 46 00:02:54,675 --> 00:02:57,080 And there's so much ground to cover. 47 00:02:57,570 --> 00:03:01,567 And, you know, I mean, we are living in... 48 00:03:01,650 --> 00:03:05,010 archetypal times. I'm also very curious, 49 00:03:05,640 --> 00:03:11,121 about sort of the crisis of masculinity that's happening and the absence, I guess, 50 00:03:11,204 --> 00:03:13,847 of initiation or just your perspective on that, 51 00:03:13,930 --> 00:03:16,540 because it feels like there's so many things. 52 00:03:16,650 --> 00:03:21,370 I guess I would call them thin stories about it that catch wind... 53 00:03:21,870 --> 00:03:26,224 in the culture. So I'd be curious about what medicine you would offer. 54 00:03:26,308 --> 00:03:28,970 I don't think it's that, but I don't know. 55 00:03:30,540 --> 00:03:35,829 I don't know. Well, we'll see. The crisis of masculinity, I don't think, 56 00:03:35,912 --> 00:03:38,300 is more masculinity in this way. 57 00:03:39,150 --> 00:03:45,848 Simply put, it's soul. Simply put, it's soul. If men are not doing soul work, 58 00:03:45,932 --> 00:03:51,485 they are becoming more isolated, more inflated, more disjuncted, 59 00:03:51,568 --> 00:03:58,350 more dissociated, more anti-world, more anti-nature, more anti-feminine soul. 60 00:03:58,950 --> 00:04:01,639 All the work that we did with men that I, you know, 61 00:04:01,722 --> 00:04:05,257 years ago with Robert Bly and James Hillman and many, many others. 62 00:04:05,340 --> 00:04:08,280 was also work. And then people... 63 00:04:08,430 --> 00:04:11,510 began to talk about it as a men's movement. 64 00:04:12,330 --> 00:04:15,562 And I would always say, no, no, no, there already is a men's movement. 65 00:04:15,646 --> 00:04:16,896 It's called the Congress. 66 00:04:17,430 --> 00:04:21,779 In other words, if you're on top, you don't need a movement. 67 00:04:21,862 --> 00:04:25,768 You need a breakdown. You need a descent. You descent. 68 00:04:25,852 --> 00:04:30,157 And soul is the missing ingredient in the manosphere. Yeah. 69 00:04:30,240 --> 00:04:31,073 For sure. 70 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:37,220 I mean... Maybe we even start there as an introduction to sort of this cultural 71 00:04:37,304 --> 00:04:42,457 moment because – It feels like when we look at our world, it is that, right? 72 00:04:42,540 --> 00:04:46,710 The absence of soul and the people in power, fear of death. 73 00:04:46,920 --> 00:04:48,277 driving, driving, 74 00:04:48,360 --> 00:04:55,140 huge amount of unrealized anxiety and fear and unwillingness, right, to break down. 75 00:04:55,590 --> 00:05:00,930 So when you look at our culture, what would you diagnose it with? That? 76 00:05:01,020 --> 00:05:05,880 Lack of soul. Oh, yeah. Lack of soul is the briefest way. 77 00:05:06,000 --> 00:05:09,060 To say what the condition is. 78 00:05:09,300 --> 00:05:13,620 If we take soul to be the connective tissue of life. 79 00:05:14,610 --> 00:05:16,310 So spirit. 80 00:05:17,400 --> 00:05:19,540 is about rising up. 81 00:05:19,740 --> 00:05:25,440 Towards the light. And then that implies towards the spirit. Spirit as one. 82 00:05:26,310 --> 00:05:29,090 Soul is about descending down. 83 00:05:29,730 --> 00:05:32,910 And it goes into multiplicity and diversity. 84 00:05:33,690 --> 00:05:37,230 And so what we see is monoculture. 85 00:05:37,980 --> 00:05:42,560 And the hero's journey, which is a good mythological story. 86 00:05:42,720 --> 00:05:47,187 style of story, but it is not a monomyth, as Joseph Campbell said. 87 00:05:47,270 --> 00:05:51,200 That's a complete misunderstanding of both myth and myth. 88 00:05:51,330 --> 00:05:53,370 and imagination. 89 00:05:53,580 --> 00:05:58,877 And so part of what's, I think, generated the excess of the manosphere, 90 00:05:58,961 --> 00:06:04,720 besides loss of soul, is this fantasy of the hero's journey being the story. 91 00:06:05,520 --> 00:06:10,637 When it's masculine in style, it's aggressive in manner and it's aimed at 92 00:06:10,720 --> 00:06:14,797 the outer world. And so that's why I talk about the genius myth. 93 00:06:14,880 --> 00:06:19,681 Because genius already is inside people. You don't have to go looking for it. 94 00:06:19,765 --> 00:06:24,629 You could look inside and everyone has genius girls, boys, anybody in between. 95 00:06:24,712 --> 00:06:27,991 It doesn't matter social status or background genius. 96 00:06:28,075 --> 00:06:31,500 The word genius means the spirit that's already there. 97 00:06:32,220 --> 00:06:36,011 And right now we need that spirit that's already there and people, 98 00:06:36,094 --> 00:06:39,440 which is going to be by its nature, multiple and diverse. 99 00:06:40,200 --> 00:06:44,168 as opposed to monocultural or monogenderal or whatever the word, 100 00:06:44,251 --> 00:06:46,340 all the things that are mono now. 101 00:06:46,800 --> 00:06:52,290 or against diversity and diversity is the life of nature. 102 00:06:52,830 --> 00:06:55,780 Take the diversity out of the forest and it's not a forest. 103 00:06:56,280 --> 00:07:00,460 It's just a cultural project. And it's incredibly weak, right? 104 00:07:00,544 --> 00:07:05,220 And we know from sort of that Susan Simard's work that it becomes... 105 00:07:05,430 --> 00:07:08,947 Yeah, it becomes incredibly susceptible to... 106 00:07:09,030 --> 00:07:12,490 being ravaged in all sorts of ways. It can endure. 107 00:07:13,920 --> 00:07:19,571 Recent study really interesting in South America where the forest in Brazil and all 108 00:07:19,655 --> 00:07:25,029 have been turned into a monocultural thing with a growing just one kind of tree 109 00:07:25,113 --> 00:07:28,327 or one kind of plant. The bees in those places. 110 00:07:28,410 --> 00:07:29,350 lose their color. 111 00:07:30,420 --> 00:07:35,140 And the bees are either gray or tan and they have no color. 112 00:07:35,280 --> 00:07:37,280 And so it's like nature saying, 113 00:07:37,770 --> 00:07:41,221 Pay attention. Look at what happens when you go in. 114 00:07:41,304 --> 00:07:45,378 When you move away from diversity, you move away from color, 115 00:07:45,462 --> 00:07:50,506 which makes things either just red, gray and depressing or black and white 116 00:07:50,589 --> 00:07:51,490 and divisive. 117 00:07:52,020 --> 00:07:57,300 Yeah. I think it's so interesting thinking about the hero's journey. 118 00:07:57,420 --> 00:08:00,575 and your perspective on sort of that being a fallacy, 119 00:08:00,658 --> 00:08:05,279 I always read it through the reason that it doesn't work or the way that it's 120 00:08:05,363 --> 00:08:09,923 misunderstood or misapplied in our culture is that it's not seen as the full 121 00:08:10,006 --> 00:08:14,871 developmental cycle where you, regardless of gender, would individuate, separate, 122 00:08:14,955 --> 00:08:19,637 go out into the world, find the antidote, find the medicine and bring it back. 123 00:08:19,720 --> 00:08:24,647 That somehow it's particularly in sort of it's a masculine application that people 124 00:08:24,730 --> 00:08:25,563 get stuck 125 00:08:27,420 --> 00:08:31,642 fighting, whatever, swashbuckling way. But it makes sense to me, too. 126 00:08:31,726 --> 00:08:36,010 And it's also one of the things that's picked up, right, by Hollywood. 127 00:08:36,094 --> 00:08:42,270 And then... The gaming world all comes out of that. But it's not just that. 128 00:08:42,353 --> 00:08:46,270 It's that also the antidote is not out there. 129 00:08:46,830 --> 00:08:51,525 Going out there is necessary because you get defeated and it drives you in. 130 00:08:51,608 --> 00:08:54,730 And the antidote and the medicine is in the soul. 131 00:08:55,620 --> 00:09:01,726 Mmmmm. That's beautiful. So it reverses the process of awakening when it's taken 132 00:09:01,809 --> 00:09:06,995 literally the way it has been taken. And when it's presented as the only story, 133 00:09:07,078 --> 00:09:10,080 some of the people that are running Pixar are 134 00:09:10,830 --> 00:09:13,830 have at times be in contact saying, 135 00:09:13,920 --> 00:09:16,951 What are the stories other than the hero's journey? 136 00:09:17,034 --> 00:09:20,820 Because all of our creators keep repeating the hero's journey. 137 00:09:21,180 --> 00:09:25,232 And they don't know of any other story, but they know that there's something wrong 138 00:09:25,316 --> 00:09:28,140 when all the creators are coming up with the same story. 139 00:09:28,860 --> 00:09:32,460 So the creative Western world, 140 00:09:32,550 --> 00:09:38,882 American version of things only has that story inside the abuse of it with Donald 141 00:09:38,966 --> 00:09:43,635 Trump and his cohort who are all masculine, who abuse women. 142 00:09:43,718 --> 00:09:50,209 And everything that's being demonstrated is really a distortion of the exaggeration 143 00:09:50,292 --> 00:09:55,120 of the hero saving everyone. Yeah. Trump's first move. 144 00:09:55,320 --> 00:09:56,153 Yes. 145 00:09:56,730 --> 00:09:59,927 can save you. I don't know if you've encountered James 146 00:10:00,010 --> 00:10:04,042 Kimmel Jr.'s work. He wrote this book called The Science of Revenge. 147 00:10:04,126 --> 00:10:08,703 It's kind of about the hero's journey in part in feeding our revenge-obsessed 148 00:10:08,786 --> 00:10:09,377 people. 149 00:10:09,460 --> 00:10:14,479 culture. He essentially posits that revenge is an addiction pattern that 20% 150 00:10:14,562 --> 00:10:17,177 of people have, including Donald Trump. 151 00:10:17,260 --> 00:10:23,079 Stalin, Hitler, but that this need for vengeance also creates this weird cycle, 152 00:10:23,162 --> 00:10:26,300 and it's put in all the children's movies. 153 00:10:26,920 --> 00:10:31,637 that this right must be wronged in this Hammurabi's code type of way. Well, 154 00:10:31,720 --> 00:10:35,710 a very helpful. Very child, dark childish. 155 00:10:36,100 --> 00:10:41,380 I mean, it's really many cases, it's vengeance on the parents. 156 00:10:42,100 --> 00:10:47,170 I mean, Trying to defeat the father, but also trying to 157 00:10:47,980 --> 00:10:51,980 Hmm. Exact. Some kind of penalty on the mother. 158 00:10:52,090 --> 00:10:55,842 Usually for not being loved, if you get right down to it. I mean, 159 00:10:55,925 --> 00:11:00,503 that's why Trump is so great. You know, he's always trying to defeat his father 160 00:11:00,587 --> 00:11:04,929 in terms. And yet he's fascinated by people more powerful than him or other 161 00:11:05,012 --> 00:11:07,490 autocrats, which his father was like that. 162 00:11:07,720 --> 00:11:12,460 but also he was never loved. So we have that huge narcissistic wound. 163 00:11:12,760 --> 00:11:16,797 So he gets elected by whatever it is, tens of millions of people. 164 00:11:16,880 --> 00:11:20,220 And the feeling of that is gone in about five minutes. 165 00:11:20,303 --> 00:11:23,980 It just goes right out the hole of the narcissistic wound. 166 00:11:24,250 --> 00:11:27,530 And so he's really such a symptom. 167 00:11:27,700 --> 00:11:32,543 He's a living symptom of American culture and all of the things we've been talking 168 00:11:32,626 --> 00:11:37,049 about. Not that that should justify his existence or certainly his position 169 00:11:37,132 --> 00:11:41,735 of power. No, but he is very archetypal. And I want to talk about that because 170 00:11:41,818 --> 00:11:43,140 there's a moment in... 171 00:11:43,360 --> 00:11:48,137 why the world doesn't end that I was like, oh, wow, that was very prophetic. 172 00:11:48,221 --> 00:11:53,382 Before we get to that, though. Yeah. So if men are sort of architected or oriented 173 00:11:53,465 --> 00:11:55,640 around hero's journey and history, 174 00:11:55,960 --> 00:12:00,768 That being the story and a refusal to go in and the antidote being soul. 175 00:12:00,852 --> 00:12:05,999 What is that aversion? Do you think that's a cultural aversion to that inward 176 00:12:06,083 --> 00:12:10,279 journey? Or is it a fear of the feminine or fear of that depth? 177 00:12:10,363 --> 00:12:13,420 What do you think it is? All of those things. 178 00:12:13,510 --> 00:12:20,510 OK, all of those things. And so then you had mentioned initiation and initiation 179 00:12:20,981 --> 00:12:24,250 was the culturally created descent. 180 00:12:25,060 --> 00:12:30,047 that took place the young man or, you know, 181 00:12:30,130 --> 00:12:34,630 Teenager, as we would say now, out of the gang. 182 00:12:35,050 --> 00:12:39,155 otherwise known as the political party or the police or whatever. 183 00:12:39,238 --> 00:12:44,051 The men form gangs all the time and take them out of that into an individual 184 00:12:44,135 --> 00:12:44,968 dissent. 185 00:12:45,460 --> 00:12:51,258 For two reasons there is I could figure out one is to find their own natural 186 00:12:51,341 --> 00:12:56,830 gifts, the gifts that they are in sold with and the other being to begin 187 00:12:56,913 --> 00:13:00,860 the healing of the wound that everyone has. And so. 188 00:13:01,210 --> 00:13:04,810 Whereas with women, it's a little different because of the menses. 189 00:13:04,930 --> 00:13:10,203 that a girl becomes a woman in a sense on the day she begins having the menses. 190 00:13:10,286 --> 00:13:14,203 And it's a physical, extroverted demonstration of bleeding, 191 00:13:14,287 --> 00:13:19,628 which suggests the moon. I said a wound, a wound, but it also suggests the moon. 192 00:13:19,711 --> 00:13:22,830 And there's a whole thing that goes with that. 193 00:13:23,080 --> 00:13:26,600 And if men have the menses, it's. 194 00:13:26,770 --> 00:13:28,960 Internal And 195 00:13:29,500 --> 00:13:33,757 Can go unnoticed. You can't pretend that there's not blood happening, 196 00:13:33,841 --> 00:13:38,350 but you can pretend men pretend that they don't have wounds all the time. 197 00:13:38,433 --> 00:13:44,630 Back to the manosphere. To be a man is to know one's wounds, not to deny them. 198 00:13:45,160 --> 00:13:50,276 And so there's a way in which the manos fear might better be termed 199 00:13:50,360 --> 00:13:56,810 the adolescent. No spear. You know, it's more like adolescent teenagers. 200 00:13:56,950 --> 00:13:58,550 than it is men. 201 00:13:59,170 --> 00:14:05,037 Yeah. Well, in our culture, too, we equate getting older with getting theoretically 202 00:14:05,120 --> 00:14:10,011 older. more mature, but many men are in an arrested development. 203 00:14:10,094 --> 00:14:13,730 Many women are too, but that there is this lack of 204 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:18,460 growth, maturity that's happening where people aren't really 205 00:14:19,090 --> 00:14:22,840 moving forward. into... Manhood. 206 00:14:22,930 --> 00:14:26,750 Yeah, I mean, it's like these 13-year-old boys at the wheel. 207 00:14:27,730 --> 00:14:32,925 Well, maturity, if we look to nature, it depends on the roots going down as well 208 00:14:33,009 --> 00:14:34,790 as the branches coming out. 209 00:14:35,290 --> 00:14:41,243 And so actual maturity would be depth combined with outer growth or evident 210 00:14:41,327 --> 00:14:43,060 growth. So, yeah. 211 00:14:43,180 --> 00:14:47,395 Yeah. So that's what we were doing when I was doing a lot of men's work. 212 00:14:47,478 --> 00:14:51,812 We called it soul work because the feeling was that men didn't have souls. 213 00:14:51,895 --> 00:14:56,289 They weren't growing the soul. They didn't even know they were supposed to. 214 00:14:56,372 --> 00:14:58,700 And the key to that is the woundedness. 215 00:14:59,080 --> 00:15:02,400 The acceptance of being wounded, which is... 216 00:15:02,680 --> 00:15:07,000 Oh, it's really interesting because it actually creates a second kind of tears. 217 00:15:07,270 --> 00:15:11,412 that there's the tears of the child and then there's more mature tears that come 218 00:15:11,495 --> 00:15:12,710 from a different place. 219 00:15:13,510 --> 00:15:15,250 And so... 220 00:15:15,880 --> 00:15:19,500 Anyway, we may be making the interview unnecessary. 221 00:15:20,350 --> 00:15:27,350 Do you? 222 00:15:48,880 --> 00:15:53,827 particularly in the olden days, was a confrontation with death as well. 223 00:15:53,911 --> 00:15:57,370 Do you think that that's just a deepening process? 224 00:15:57,453 --> 00:16:02,542 It's just much more intuitive to women that we are just much more earthy, 225 00:16:02,626 --> 00:16:05,801 connected to the moon, connected to the tides, 226 00:16:05,885 --> 00:16:09,640 connected to the planet as another co-creative thing? 227 00:16:09,730 --> 00:16:12,070 vehicle? What do you think that that is? 228 00:16:12,610 --> 00:16:15,935 Well, I think it's I mean, it's lots of things, 229 00:16:16,019 --> 00:16:19,790 but I think there's such a thing as lunar knowledge. 230 00:16:20,560 --> 00:16:23,408 which actually is connected to the moon in cycles, 231 00:16:23,492 --> 00:16:25,720 and therefore it's a bodily knowledge. 232 00:16:26,440 --> 00:16:30,880 And then, yeah, if you take the menses as the beginning of the end of childhood, 233 00:16:31,810 --> 00:16:33,550 But it's then... 234 00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:38,741 being pulled into the cycles of the moon, which are attuned to the cycles of all 235 00:16:38,825 --> 00:16:41,777 the bodies of water as well. So you're in this. 236 00:16:41,860 --> 00:16:48,860 Water, moon, lunar changing realm, which partly then becomes women's much greater 237 00:16:50,018 --> 00:16:53,140 capacity for shifting emotions. 238 00:16:54,010 --> 00:16:58,210 which they can track to the back of the brain, the stem of the brain. 239 00:16:58,293 --> 00:17:03,237 But also it's a bigger thing than that. And so men tend to get stuck in emotions. 240 00:17:03,321 --> 00:17:08,079 I mean, you know, a man that hasn't learned anything about his own woundedness 241 00:17:08,162 --> 00:17:12,548 of the nature of his own psyche can be in a mood for two or three years. 242 00:17:12,632 --> 00:17:17,079 Not still not talking about it, whereas women will convert the experience 243 00:17:17,163 --> 00:17:20,742 of emotional mood into language and share it. And it moves. 244 00:17:20,825 --> 00:17:23,357 It shifts really quickly or much quicker. 245 00:17:23,440 --> 00:17:25,040 So there's a whole... 246 00:17:25,450 --> 00:17:31,512 you know, different world in the sense, which was indicated in the initiation 247 00:17:31,595 --> 00:17:33,590 practices to some degree. 248 00:17:33,940 --> 00:17:39,887 But psychology then would say, yeah, but inside the man is the unseen woman. 249 00:17:39,970 --> 00:17:42,767 Inside the man is the feminine trying to awaken, 250 00:17:42,850 --> 00:17:47,147 and that would bring all kinds of new levels of knowledge inside the man. 251 00:17:47,230 --> 00:17:51,587 And then inside the woman is the man trying to awaken that would bring all 252 00:17:51,670 --> 00:17:56,248 kinds of levels also. And everybody is a mixture of both. And it's not binary. 253 00:17:56,331 --> 00:17:58,943 It's a big arc with all kinds of places on it. 254 00:17:59,026 --> 00:18:01,931 And you can move up and down if you want. You know, 255 00:18:02,015 --> 00:18:04,710 it gets to be just a bigger, greater exchange. 256 00:18:05,260 --> 00:18:09,790 But the difference, the difference, makes the exchange possible. 257 00:18:10,720 --> 00:18:16,330 Yeah. No, certainly. And I think people are starting to become more aware of, oh, 258 00:18:16,414 --> 00:18:19,231 I have a lot of masculine energy personally, 259 00:18:19,314 --> 00:18:23,449 and the variability between the two and what they feel like and, 260 00:18:23,533 --> 00:18:27,009 and how to move seamlessly between those two energies. 261 00:18:27,092 --> 00:18:30,832 And that it's unfortunate that they're attached to gender, 262 00:18:30,915 --> 00:18:34,847 because I think people get really confused, but that they're 263 00:18:34,930 --> 00:18:40,750 also different animating energies that belong to all of us. I was talking to this 264 00:18:40,930 --> 00:18:45,870 I don't think that they're science, but he was talking about for women that the womb 265 00:18:45,953 --> 00:18:50,235 functions as a brain, like an intuitive brain that's constantly scanning. 266 00:18:50,318 --> 00:18:52,830 I loved that just as an image of a way of. 267 00:18:53,020 --> 00:18:59,766 Yeah, of a perspective, essentially, brain that is taking in a ton of information 268 00:18:59,849 --> 00:19:01,620 about what's present. 269 00:19:23,020 --> 00:19:26,224 horse. What's the thing you cannot shut up about? 270 00:19:26,307 --> 00:19:30,048 So come be an obsessive with me. OMG Obsessed is out now. 271 00:19:30,131 --> 00:19:32,680 Follow wherever you get your podcasts. 272 00:19:33,130 --> 00:19:33,963 you 273 00:19:34,390 --> 00:19:37,116 Hey guys, we're Elizabeth Chambers and Marissa Hermer. 274 00:19:37,200 --> 00:19:40,238 You may know us from television, business, and other things. 275 00:19:40,322 --> 00:19:42,840 We're talking about the stuff that really matters. 276 00:19:42,923 --> 00:19:46,274 Every week we're celebrating women and getting real about divorce, 277 00:19:46,357 --> 00:19:49,552 dating, motherhood, sex, friendship, and everything in between. 278 00:19:49,636 --> 00:19:53,403 It's honest, hilarious, unfiltered, and proof that this chapter of life is 279 00:19:53,486 --> 00:19:56,368 the best one yet. So if you're ready to laugh, feel seen, 280 00:19:56,452 --> 00:19:59,937 and join the conversation, come hang out with us. This is a podcast. 281 00:20:00,020 --> 00:20:04,760 is The Dash. Listen and subscribe to The Dash wherever you get your podcasts. 282 00:20:06,410 --> 00:20:11,459 All right, let's talk about this current moment because it feels obviously like 283 00:20:11,543 --> 00:20:14,513 kabuki theater. It feels incredibly archetypal. 284 00:20:14,596 --> 00:20:17,910 And I don't know if you remember writing this in... 285 00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:19,900 Why the World Doesn't End in 2012, 286 00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:23,360 But... You wrote about the trickster. 287 00:20:23,630 --> 00:20:27,710 And you wrote about how the trickster appears... 288 00:20:27,950 --> 00:20:31,508 I don't think it's always the trickster that we want. Sorry, 289 00:20:31,591 --> 00:20:33,207 there's an alarm going off. 290 00:20:33,290 --> 00:20:36,651 It's the trickster. That's the trickster. That's the trickster. 291 00:20:36,734 --> 00:20:39,002 Triggering the alarm. Triggering the alarm. 292 00:20:39,085 --> 00:20:42,610 Just being mentioned and it shows up. Just being, and it shows up. 293 00:20:42,693 --> 00:20:46,546 And that the trickster shows up when we need to break out of our rhythm, 294 00:20:46,630 --> 00:20:49,170 when there's a preponderance of cultural shadow. 295 00:20:49,254 --> 00:20:51,550 You write about him needing to bear his... 296 00:20:51,650 --> 00:20:56,410 behind to show us the other side of life, to break the spell of perfection. 297 00:20:56,493 --> 00:20:59,270 And you even write about him as throwing... 298 00:20:59,450 --> 00:21:02,785 fecal matter. I don't know if you remember this. 299 00:21:02,868 --> 00:21:07,770 Sometimes at people and sometimes at God. And I read that. Yeah, yeah. 300 00:21:07,853 --> 00:21:13,324 And I was like, whoa, that was a prescient statement when we think about Trump 301 00:21:13,407 --> 00:21:17,810 and his obsession with bathrooms and the fact that he, I guess, 302 00:21:17,894 --> 00:21:22,225 pooped on all of us on No King's Day. Yeah. He's an open book. 303 00:21:22,309 --> 00:21:27,740 He's an open book. Psychology. Yeah. Yeah. But do you think He's a trickster. 304 00:21:28,460 --> 00:21:32,396 No, he's totally unconscious. He could be. He's so unconscious. 305 00:21:32,479 --> 00:21:35,394 He's tricking himself every moment of his life. 306 00:21:35,477 --> 00:21:39,987 He has to trick himself to think he's OK and he's better than everybody. 307 00:21:40,070 --> 00:21:43,368 He's smarter. He's more powerful. He's more handsome. 308 00:21:43,451 --> 00:21:45,620 All this crazy narcissistic stuff. 309 00:21:45,950 --> 00:21:49,457 He's constantly tricking himself. And then, of course, 310 00:21:49,540 --> 00:21:52,382 he has to all deals are tricks in his hands. 311 00:21:52,465 --> 00:21:57,501 He's tricking everybody with every deal. And so he's like the extreme version 312 00:21:57,585 --> 00:22:00,510 of the utterly unconscious trickster energy. 313 00:22:01,190 --> 00:22:03,974 Yeah. Yeah. No, I agree. He's not conscious. 314 00:22:04,057 --> 00:22:08,210 I'm just wondering if he hasn't been inserted into this moment as 315 00:22:08,293 --> 00:22:13,357 an unconscious trickster to blow it all up and expose it all. I don't think so. 316 00:22:13,441 --> 00:22:17,037 But that implies that he could be the agent of the good. 317 00:22:17,120 --> 00:22:18,627 He cannot be. 318 00:22:18,710 --> 00:22:24,110 Say more. I'm trying to find a moment of faith. It doesn't work that way. 319 00:22:24,410 --> 00:22:29,019 It doesn't work that way. No. So the trickster is underneath the trickster 320 00:22:29,102 --> 00:22:34,173 is the healer. So that in Native American traditions like the Hopi, 321 00:22:34,256 --> 00:22:38,544 the tricksters come and they disturb everything and everybody, 322 00:22:38,627 --> 00:22:40,390 but their aim is healing. 323 00:22:40,760 --> 00:22:46,362 which means to make it whole. So the healthy aim of the trickster is to create 324 00:22:46,445 --> 00:22:50,371 wholeness out of a broken person or a broken community. 325 00:22:50,454 --> 00:22:55,109 And so and then if you think of the tears of the clown, you know, 326 00:22:55,192 --> 00:23:00,649 that was a popular song once upon a time. But it's a common idea that inside 327 00:23:00,732 --> 00:23:02,700 the comedian are the tears. 328 00:23:03,350 --> 00:23:07,840 And that tells you something. So that if Trump were to be... 329 00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:10,160 acting the role of the trickster. 330 00:23:10,430 --> 00:23:16,750 in some way that is aligned with healing and wholeness, he'd be crying a lot more. 331 00:23:17,450 --> 00:23:23,024 He doesn't cry. He makes people cry. It's a real inversion of the idea of 332 00:23:23,108 --> 00:23:27,597 the trickster as healer. And it's the mindless destructive. 333 00:23:27,680 --> 00:23:32,330 So in a lot of trickster myths, the tricksters are creators. 334 00:23:32,630 --> 00:23:36,750 But he's not that. He's the other side. He's a destroyer. 335 00:23:36,950 --> 00:23:42,477 So a healthy trickster would be taking the already broken things and showing people 336 00:23:42,561 --> 00:23:45,670 how they can be put back together differently. 337 00:23:46,340 --> 00:23:48,740 And Trump is actually just breaking more things. 338 00:23:49,190 --> 00:23:53,533 But is he breaking things? I'm just looking for meaning here. Okay. 339 00:23:53,616 --> 00:23:58,488 So just bear with me. Is he breaking things in part because it has been one 340 00:23:58,571 --> 00:24:03,509 of the sort of superific parts of our culture is someone's going to fix this 341 00:24:03,592 --> 00:24:08,463 for us. And is he breaking it? Is he not the healer in part because there's 342 00:24:08,547 --> 00:24:13,418 a collective healing action that will be incited by this that will generate 343 00:24:13,501 --> 00:24:14,307 healing? 344 00:24:14,390 --> 00:24:19,746 Something new, something beautiful, something creative? No? No guarantee. 345 00:24:19,830 --> 00:24:23,577 No guarantee. The archetypes are both good and bad. 346 00:24:23,660 --> 00:24:27,160 Both, you know, the archetypes are not human. 347 00:24:27,560 --> 00:24:33,860 By definition, and they are manifestations of darkness and light. 348 00:24:34,580 --> 00:24:40,880 So that you can have you have the dark king versus the enlightened leader. 349 00:24:41,690 --> 00:24:48,690 And Trump is totally on the dark side of it. And so you see the potential for. 350 00:24:49,550 --> 00:24:54,290 tricks their energy or something like that, but you don't see it happen. 351 00:24:54,373 --> 00:24:59,246 What happens is the Christians start voting based on the idea that empathy 352 00:24:59,330 --> 00:25:02,210 is the most destructive thing in the world. 353 00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:04,940 I know. Everything is upside down. 354 00:25:05,720 --> 00:25:09,560 Yeah, it's upside down because this is the trickster of destruction. 355 00:25:10,130 --> 00:25:14,785 And also it's dangerous because the Christians who I'm not sure are interested 356 00:25:14,868 --> 00:25:17,700 in the world mythologically and philosophically, 357 00:25:17,784 --> 00:25:22,378 they think this world is a fallen place. So if this world is destroyed, well, 358 00:25:22,461 --> 00:25:27,116 they were going to leave it anyway. They're trying to get to that other world, 359 00:25:27,199 --> 00:25:31,611 which is over identified with the good. And so the kind of destructiveness 360 00:25:31,694 --> 00:25:32,970 that he's acting out. 361 00:25:33,080 --> 00:25:36,905 I mean, which is massive. And when you get to the individual level, 362 00:25:36,988 --> 00:25:41,338 he's destroying lives. He literally taking food out of the mouths of infants 363 00:25:41,422 --> 00:25:44,280 and actually glorifying it. That's not trickster. 364 00:25:44,510 --> 00:25:48,510 That's madness. That's being, what would you call that? 365 00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:53,667 taken over. by dark forces that... 366 00:25:53,750 --> 00:25:58,512 Yeah, so it's the trickster on only one side, the destructive side. 367 00:25:58,595 --> 00:26:04,008 So the problem with it is, I think, not that it can't kind of provoke people 368 00:26:04,091 --> 00:26:10,083 to get more awake and get more imagination about how to fix things and all that kind 369 00:26:10,166 --> 00:26:15,217 of stuff. But more likely what happens is it causes the reawakening and 370 00:26:15,300 --> 00:26:18,410 the reimagining of the world. It delays it. 371 00:26:19,100 --> 00:26:24,860 Mm. Yeah, so that if people can't figure out pretty soon what to do, 372 00:26:24,943 --> 00:26:28,380 then that kind of a reign of power lasts longer. 373 00:26:28,940 --> 00:26:33,711 And it actually prolongs the darkness. The world will come back. I mean, 374 00:26:33,794 --> 00:26:38,026 someone wrote a book about that. The world can't come to an end. 375 00:26:38,109 --> 00:26:42,677 That's that's I think that's OK. But we could be living in, you know, 376 00:26:42,761 --> 00:26:47,427 under the jet stream dropping piles of feces on us for a long time if. 377 00:26:47,510 --> 00:26:51,034 He and they, because he's got cohorts all around the world. 378 00:26:51,117 --> 00:26:53,930 It's a worldwide thing, the rise of autocracy. 379 00:26:54,440 --> 00:26:57,729 The longer that they can hold power, it's like the Middle Ages. 380 00:26:57,813 --> 00:27:01,560 We could go into the Middle Ages before we could find the Renaissance. 381 00:27:02,120 --> 00:27:07,497 So the trick is, how do we get Renaissance now? And part of it is by realizing that 382 00:27:07,580 --> 00:27:08,600 that 383 00:27:09,200 --> 00:27:11,220 The world is both dark and light. 384 00:27:11,420 --> 00:27:15,080 And that certain kinds of darkness are not going to produce light. 385 00:27:16,220 --> 00:27:17,053 Yeah. 386 00:27:17,300 --> 00:27:23,160 You know, this is bad stuff. What's going on with no virtue coming from it? 387 00:27:23,630 --> 00:27:28,191 I'm trying to be more optimistic. I'm trying to, 388 00:27:28,274 --> 00:27:31,347 which is maybe delusional and... 389 00:27:31,430 --> 00:27:35,972 I don't know, trying to imagine the ways in which this is happening for us and not 390 00:27:36,056 --> 00:27:38,030 to us and what it could accelerate. 391 00:27:38,930 --> 00:27:43,474 In response, I'm with you, but I don't think it's optimism. 392 00:27:43,557 --> 00:27:49,356 I don't think that I think optimism, pessimism is not an interesting binary 393 00:27:49,439 --> 00:27:51,650 thing. I think it's knowledge. 394 00:27:51,980 --> 00:27:56,257 It's not... I mean, even just from the talking to you for a little time, 395 00:27:56,340 --> 00:27:59,959 you have knowledge about things. And then when we get real knowledge, 396 00:28:00,043 --> 00:28:01,760 we don't have to believe things. 397 00:28:02,120 --> 00:28:06,387 Believing in optimism is kind of like, OK, you know, that's good for a while. 398 00:28:06,471 --> 00:28:08,900 And then you realize there's more optimism. 399 00:28:09,110 --> 00:28:14,450 more firm and embodied knowledge ways to know things. 400 00:28:14,540 --> 00:28:19,520 that don't require us to project, you know, I mean... 401 00:28:19,910 --> 00:28:21,290 I get up every morning 402 00:28:21,470 --> 00:28:25,977 excited to work on mythology and stuff and dreams and things, you know. 403 00:28:26,061 --> 00:28:28,917 And so but I don't know that it's optimistic. 404 00:28:29,000 --> 00:28:32,660 Because the dream could be a nightmare. 405 00:28:32,780 --> 00:28:37,520 And I'm going, all right, well, the nightmare is there for some reason. 406 00:28:37,603 --> 00:28:40,660 And let me find out what's in that nightmare. 407 00:28:40,790 --> 00:28:44,876 And so I think it's actually I get really interested in knowledge. 408 00:28:44,959 --> 00:28:50,119 I guess it's wisdom, I mean, or a kind of knowledge or what the Greeks used to call 409 00:28:50,202 --> 00:28:53,900 dark knowledge. which is a knowledge of light and dark. 410 00:28:54,230 --> 00:28:58,407 And so the argument I'm making about Trump would be based on 411 00:28:58,490 --> 00:29:03,532 My supposed knowledge of light and dark and that there's nothing there. 412 00:29:03,615 --> 00:29:06,430 It's all what we see. It's all surface. 413 00:29:07,070 --> 00:29:12,023 It's all narcissism. It's all a kind of spell of superiority. 414 00:29:12,106 --> 00:29:18,628 It's all needing that others to go down for him to come up moment at the moment, 415 00:29:18,712 --> 00:29:24,738 year after year, term after term. He's an example of how that could become 416 00:29:24,821 --> 00:29:28,830 the Middle Ages or. the Kali Yuga, as they call it in India. 417 00:29:29,270 --> 00:29:34,766 You know, he's not going to help. I mean, he helps in the sense that you could see 418 00:29:34,849 --> 00:29:37,790 from the psychology. What's wrong? 419 00:29:38,180 --> 00:29:42,290 But he will not... help things, get better. 420 00:29:42,770 --> 00:29:47,657 even by making it worse and worse. He'll just keep making it worse and worse 421 00:29:47,740 --> 00:29:53,044 and new levels of worse. And people could stay in the dark for a longer time. Yeah. 422 00:29:53,127 --> 00:29:54,620 So I think the energy... 423 00:29:54,800 --> 00:29:59,917 I'm about the soul a lot because the soul, which seems connected to truth, 424 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:03,060 darkness and depth, essential qualities of the soul. 425 00:30:03,240 --> 00:30:05,290 The soul is already living in the future. 426 00:30:05,490 --> 00:30:07,570 Our souls value the future. 427 00:30:08,430 --> 00:30:11,147 And I know people say just live in the present and all that. 428 00:30:11,230 --> 00:30:12,997 That's interesting. But the present. 429 00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:17,406 The present is the place where the ancient past and the unseen future meet. 430 00:30:17,489 --> 00:30:21,463 And so I'm not sure what they mean, because if you're in the present, 431 00:30:21,546 --> 00:30:24,167 you're really in the present in your own soul. 432 00:30:24,251 --> 00:30:28,459 You're connected to the ancient past and the origins of ongoing creation. 433 00:30:28,543 --> 00:30:32,751 And if we're really in the present, we're getting glimpses of the future, 434 00:30:32,834 --> 00:30:37,572 because when does the future come? Every present moment is falling into the future 435 00:30:37,656 --> 00:30:40,360 just as much as it's disappearing in the past. 436 00:30:40,650 --> 00:30:41,890 Anyway, that's. 437 00:30:42,300 --> 00:30:48,022 So when you think about that, when you think about sort of re-insuling the world 438 00:30:48,105 --> 00:30:50,497 and insuling men and women who... 439 00:30:50,580 --> 00:30:56,200 Need it. How does one do that on the scale at which we... 440 00:30:56,670 --> 00:31:00,510 particularly when it feels like we're being run by 441 00:31:00,630 --> 00:31:04,250 amok by a bunch of guys with Messiah complexes. 442 00:31:04,620 --> 00:31:09,922 Well, let's throw some women in there, too, because you in America, 443 00:31:10,005 --> 00:31:14,744 you now have the attorney general. Kristi Noem, too. I mean, 444 00:31:14,828 --> 00:31:17,467 there's some real it's it's wild. 445 00:31:17,550 --> 00:31:21,430 Yeah. So when it really happens, it gets like that. 446 00:31:21,600 --> 00:31:25,921 And it penetrates all the things you thought might resist it. 447 00:31:26,004 --> 00:31:30,480 And that's a lack of soul. Christy Noem, I mean, what is that? 448 00:31:30,570 --> 00:31:34,701 She's an empty vessel. Oh, yeah. A big hollow thing. Yeah. Yeah. 449 00:31:34,785 --> 00:31:38,389 And she's just all performative. It looks very feminine, 450 00:31:38,473 --> 00:31:43,592 but it has this deadly quality. I mean, I mean deadly because of the ice people 451 00:31:43,675 --> 00:31:45,190 and what they're doing. 452 00:31:45,450 --> 00:31:49,477 So I think if it keeps going, it'll penetrate more like that. 453 00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:53,740 Because you also have ministers and church leaders signing up. 454 00:31:54,180 --> 00:31:55,960 Signing up for a war on empathy. 455 00:31:56,400 --> 00:32:01,492 So it's really upside down and it's also plunging into darkness. 456 00:32:01,575 --> 00:32:07,960 And the soul has its own light. One of the old definitions of soul was the light 457 00:32:08,044 --> 00:32:09,580 hidden in darkness. 458 00:32:10,440 --> 00:32:12,690 And so I think that's what we're looking for. 459 00:32:12,900 --> 00:32:16,300 The light hidden in darkness. And that's in everyone also. 460 00:32:17,130 --> 00:32:21,643 Is that the same as Jung talking about the gold lost in the shadow or the gold in 461 00:32:21,726 --> 00:32:22,559 the shadow? 462 00:32:23,040 --> 00:32:25,220 Yeah, it's like the gold shadow, yeah. 463 00:32:25,470 --> 00:32:30,442 So are we being prepared in some way to go into the darkness to collect the light 464 00:32:30,525 --> 00:32:34,498 and collect the soul, collect the gold? Is that what's happening? 465 00:32:34,582 --> 00:32:35,830 We're being invited. 466 00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:38,160 Okay. We're being invited. 467 00:32:38,910 --> 00:32:43,158 And so then the other thing about the soul is the human soul. 468 00:32:43,241 --> 00:32:47,430 And I like these really old ideas, which Jung was tracking. 469 00:32:47,610 --> 00:32:52,482 And so one of the old ideas is that the individual soul is connected to the soul 470 00:32:52,565 --> 00:32:53,398 of the world. 471 00:32:54,060 --> 00:32:57,579 The soul penetrates everything. The soul is the connective tissue of everything. 472 00:32:57,663 --> 00:33:01,213 And so when you find the soul, you're actually connected to everything. 473 00:33:01,320 --> 00:33:06,116 And you could learn how that is, which means we could learn how to reconnect 474 00:33:06,199 --> 00:33:07,740 human culture to nature. 475 00:33:08,460 --> 00:33:10,927 which aren't opposing things in a binary way, 476 00:33:11,010 --> 00:33:15,260 they will used to be connected and they still are. We call it human nature. 477 00:33:15,690 --> 00:33:18,037 But so then you can work from that. 478 00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:22,060 the depth of the individual soul. And so in the Renaissance, they would say, 479 00:33:22,230 --> 00:33:23,930 Change the soul, change the world. 480 00:33:25,230 --> 00:33:28,380 We change the world by changing our soul, by growing more soul. 481 00:33:28,710 --> 00:33:32,317 And that's how it changes. There's not going to be an idea or an agreement. 482 00:33:32,400 --> 00:33:36,635 Or a revelation in a religious revelation or something, I think, 483 00:33:36,719 --> 00:33:40,211 or I've been I wrote the book called The Genius Myth, 484 00:33:40,295 --> 00:33:43,248 which says that it's the awakening of genius, 485 00:33:43,331 --> 00:33:46,840 the inherent natural spirit in more and more people. 486 00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:51,240 so that the world gets renewed from the bottom up. 487 00:33:51,870 --> 00:33:55,130 So that, for instance, when you get to where everything is wrong, 488 00:33:55,320 --> 00:33:57,780 Nature's falling apart. Culture is collapsing. 489 00:33:58,830 --> 00:34:01,451 There's no fix. And because people want the simple fix, 490 00:34:01,535 --> 00:34:05,583 and that's why someone says I can fix it. And people vote for that because they want 491 00:34:05,666 --> 00:34:09,066 to get out. But that's not going to do. It's going to make it worse. 492 00:34:09,480 --> 00:34:14,370 The opposite is the truth in a way that the awakening of genius in many, 493 00:34:14,453 --> 00:34:16,940 many people, and it doesn't require. 494 00:34:17,040 --> 00:34:20,851 It's not like democracy. It doesn't require a 51 percent vote. 495 00:34:20,935 --> 00:34:24,495 No one knows what the no one knows what the proportion is, 496 00:34:24,578 --> 00:34:28,320 but if it's under 50 percent. Like the Renaissance. 497 00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:33,417 You know, all the people in Italy and parts of Europe in the Renaissance all 498 00:34:33,500 --> 00:34:37,140 didn't become artists or philosophers, a certain number. 499 00:34:37,290 --> 00:34:42,090 And then it becomes the exact opposite of what you have now. We have polarization. 500 00:34:42,390 --> 00:34:45,742 Everyone turned against each other and every issue that comes up, 501 00:34:45,826 --> 00:34:49,976 it polarizes again. When the soul is activated, it's the opposite. 502 00:34:50,059 --> 00:34:53,749 Each person waking up to who they are and what they have to bring. 503 00:34:53,832 --> 00:34:57,864 And all of a sudden that affects the person nearby that didn't know that 504 00:34:57,948 --> 00:35:01,408 was possible. And then that person goes, well, what do I have? 505 00:35:01,492 --> 00:35:05,550 And then that changes the world. That's the premise I'm operating with. 506 00:35:05,910 --> 00:35:07,310 I think that's beautiful. 507 00:35:35,910 --> 00:35:40,210 is The Dash. Listen and subscribe to The Dash wherever you get your podcasts. 508 00:35:40,910 --> 00:35:44,291 Hi, I'm Zosia Mamet. You might know me from the show Girls. 509 00:35:44,374 --> 00:35:48,695 I've been a horse girl since I was six. Not a phase, definitely not ironic. 510 00:35:48,778 --> 00:35:52,629 I will talk about horses until the people around me start to worry. 511 00:35:52,713 --> 00:35:56,270 So I made a show about that feeling. It's called OMG Obsessed. 512 00:35:56,353 --> 00:36:00,087 And every week I sit down with one of my favorite people and ask, 513 00:36:00,170 --> 00:36:03,668 what's your horse? What's the thing you cannot shut up about? 514 00:36:03,752 --> 00:36:07,015 So come be an obsessive with me. OMG Obsessed is out now. 515 00:36:07,099 --> 00:36:09,330 Follow wherever you get your podcasts. 516 00:36:10,770 --> 00:36:11,603 you 517 00:36:12,180 --> 00:36:17,977 In our highly polarized world and... 518 00:36:18,060 --> 00:36:24,137 this invitation to eat the shadow or to go into the shadow, to find the soul, 519 00:36:24,220 --> 00:36:27,580 find the gold. Is that also a way I would, 520 00:36:27,750 --> 00:36:33,819 I want to believe that that's the way that the polarization starts to mute down is if 521 00:36:33,902 --> 00:36:39,102 enough people are working with their own internal shadow and then helping 522 00:36:39,185 --> 00:36:42,367 to transform the collective and not feed it. 523 00:36:42,450 --> 00:36:43,770 Is that accurate? Yeah. 524 00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:49,620 Yes. And so polarization, if you take it back to the origins of 525 00:36:49,890 --> 00:36:52,990 polarization is the source of creation. 526 00:36:53,490 --> 00:36:57,007 So we're closer to we're closer to creation. 527 00:36:57,090 --> 00:37:01,229 Thank you. Also, the beginning of creation is chaos in all myths. 528 00:37:01,313 --> 00:37:03,490 Chaos is the beginning. Darkness. 529 00:37:04,380 --> 00:37:06,480 disorder, but really chaos-wise. 530 00:37:06,570 --> 00:37:11,558 means more than that. It means the unexpressed creativity being held in 531 00:37:11,641 --> 00:37:17,058 a dark condition, something like that. And so we're almost in it solidly now. 532 00:37:17,141 --> 00:37:19,570 We're actually closer to creation. 533 00:37:20,010 --> 00:37:24,444 We're closer to going. And that's why I say it's not going to be helped by people 534 00:37:24,528 --> 00:37:27,930 like Trump. They're going to hold to that darkness. OK, fine. 535 00:37:28,080 --> 00:37:30,994 Other people are going to go away in the darkness. 536 00:37:31,077 --> 00:37:35,249 Isn't that the chaos where everything began? Can we not begin it again? 537 00:37:35,332 --> 00:37:39,984 And then you get to the idea of the soul where the individual soul is connected 538 00:37:40,067 --> 00:37:44,419 to the soul of the world and enough souls awakening revitalize the soul of 539 00:37:44,503 --> 00:37:47,200 the world. And we're back in a living cosmos. 540 00:37:47,970 --> 00:37:50,430 rather than in an accidental universe. 541 00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:54,180 Mm-hmm. So maybe he's just the polarizer in chief. 542 00:37:54,510 --> 00:37:57,907 And that's his job, right? Yeah, because he... 543 00:37:57,990 --> 00:38:03,187 When you get all the way down in the narcissistic personality, apparently, 544 00:38:03,270 --> 00:38:06,475 And the borderline personality, which has those qualities, too. 545 00:38:06,559 --> 00:38:09,430 What happens is you have a split that never got united. 546 00:38:10,230 --> 00:38:12,630 That in the infantile realm, 547 00:38:12,930 --> 00:38:16,345 Yes. You know, there's always the dark mother, you know, 548 00:38:16,429 --> 00:38:21,031 who isn't there when you need to be nourished or she has one of her breasts 549 00:38:21,114 --> 00:38:26,029 is envious and the other one's nurturing, whatever it is that never got resolved 550 00:38:26,113 --> 00:38:29,613 at all. That split is so deep that it's currently unresolvable. 551 00:38:29,697 --> 00:38:33,420 People like him would have to go into therapy for a very long time. 552 00:38:34,230 --> 00:38:37,131 And in order to do that, they would have to admit they're not perfect. 553 00:38:37,214 --> 00:38:39,987 They're not in charge. They don't know what the hell they're doing. 554 00:38:40,071 --> 00:38:42,427 It's all a pretense and they're not going to do that. 555 00:38:42,510 --> 00:38:44,210 And as long as they don't do that, 556 00:38:44,370 --> 00:38:47,530 Then they're just creating more darkness for everybody. 557 00:38:48,300 --> 00:38:52,369 Yeah. All right. I mean, I buy it. I understand your version. 558 00:38:52,452 --> 00:38:57,084 And I just I want to believe that we're at some and maybe we're both getting to 559 00:38:57,167 --> 00:39:01,500 the same place, which is that we're at some sort of shock point. You know, 560 00:39:01,583 --> 00:39:04,245 you mentioned it as being this point of chaos, 561 00:39:04,328 --> 00:39:06,871 which is the sort of cauldron of creativity. 562 00:39:06,954 --> 00:39:10,809 All growth comes out of the darkness, the tomb to the womb. Right. 563 00:39:10,893 --> 00:39:15,584 And that there's something that wants to be born or there's something that wants 564 00:39:15,667 --> 00:39:18,830 to come through. And it is a do or die moment. Right. 565 00:39:19,170 --> 00:39:24,441 or it feels that way. No, it is. And in a funny way, it always has been. But yeah, 566 00:39:24,524 --> 00:39:27,951 some are more do or die crises than others. And yeah, 567 00:39:28,034 --> 00:39:33,051 we're at the do or die. But a moment, you don't know how long a moment lasts. 568 00:39:33,134 --> 00:39:35,965 A moment is not a minute. A moment can open. 569 00:39:36,049 --> 00:39:40,950 So that's the Greek idea of the Kairos is we're also in the Kairos moment. 570 00:39:41,460 --> 00:39:44,460 When something regenerative happens, 571 00:39:44,580 --> 00:39:49,980 can spark a great imagination and the process of a renewal begins. 572 00:39:50,730 --> 00:39:55,483 But I think the thing that really got lost is the value and necessity of 573 00:39:55,567 --> 00:39:56,910 the individual soul. 574 00:39:57,630 --> 00:39:59,927 That's the big... in mass modernization. 575 00:40:00,010 --> 00:40:00,843 culture. 576 00:40:01,300 --> 00:40:05,110 Where a person is seen as part of a voting group or part of a purchasing group 577 00:40:05,193 --> 00:40:09,203 or part of the, you know, whatever. Now they're trying to make it part of a gender 578 00:40:09,286 --> 00:40:13,086 group. All those things they're trying to do. Yeah, an identity group. Yeah. 579 00:40:13,690 --> 00:40:16,590 And the individual soul is unique by definition. 580 00:40:17,140 --> 00:40:20,714 It is unique. You cannot completely categorize it. 581 00:40:20,797 --> 00:40:24,820 And that's what we lost. And the tradeoff has been for. 582 00:40:25,180 --> 00:40:28,940 in materialism versus the awakening of the soul. 583 00:40:29,260 --> 00:40:33,309 which brings both spirit and a deeper connectedness to life. 584 00:40:33,392 --> 00:40:38,681 And that has been traded for whatever that is. I don't know what they call it. 585 00:40:38,764 --> 00:40:44,052 But anyway, all the material goods, wealth has been championed over well-being 586 00:40:44,136 --> 00:40:49,355 repeatedly by both political parties, even though I go with any party that is 587 00:40:49,439 --> 00:40:53,020 for freedom and independence and that kind of thing. 588 00:40:53,230 --> 00:40:55,430 But everybody's kind of sold out. 589 00:40:55,750 --> 00:41:00,902 And lost the soul. Christianity took the soul out of the equation in that meeting 590 00:41:00,985 --> 00:41:05,232 in Constantinople in 869 of all the Catholic bishops and cardinals. 591 00:41:05,315 --> 00:41:08,030 And they took the soul out of the picture. 592 00:41:08,410 --> 00:41:14,260 It was always... spirit body and soul They took the soul out. 593 00:41:14,470 --> 00:41:18,970 And you have spirit and body and spirit is moving away from body. 594 00:41:19,420 --> 00:41:22,441 There's nothing bringing you know about this. So why? 595 00:41:22,524 --> 00:41:24,340 Why did they take the soul out? 596 00:41:24,670 --> 00:41:25,690 Too feminine? 597 00:41:26,440 --> 00:41:29,555 Yes, good one. Too feminine, too connective. 598 00:41:29,638 --> 00:41:35,380 It was causing all the problems. You couldn't separate God and humanity from... 599 00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:41,041 If humanity had a soul, because the soul was the connection to the divine and you 600 00:41:41,124 --> 00:41:45,438 couldn't pretend that it was outside if the soul was saying, no, 601 00:41:45,521 --> 00:41:49,780 it's inside everybody. It just was messing with their project. 602 00:41:50,050 --> 00:41:53,350 of creating a religious system 603 00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:57,951 That had heaven and earth as separate and had good and bad as opposites. 604 00:41:58,034 --> 00:42:00,140 And the soul never was like that. 605 00:42:00,340 --> 00:42:04,697 It's a ternary force, right? A unifying ternary force. 606 00:42:04,780 --> 00:42:08,180 bringing the two together and the divine and the human together. 607 00:42:08,500 --> 00:42:10,823 The masculine and feminine and the timelessness. 608 00:42:10,907 --> 00:42:13,932 It's the thing that brings everything together. Take that out. 609 00:42:14,015 --> 00:42:15,820 You can really control people. Yeah. 610 00:42:16,330 --> 00:42:18,596 You can say those people are bad, those people are good, 611 00:42:18,680 --> 00:42:21,953 or those people are bad, we're good. You can play all kinds of things and people 612 00:42:22,036 --> 00:42:22,870 buy in. 613 00:42:23,080 --> 00:42:24,760 People know they have a soul. 614 00:42:25,210 --> 00:42:29,578 You can't do that. You can't say, you know, this is men and this is women. 615 00:42:29,662 --> 00:42:33,127 You can say these are masculine traits and feminine traits, 616 00:42:33,211 --> 00:42:37,820 but you cannot divide it. You cannot polarize when the soul is really present. 617 00:42:37,903 --> 00:42:40,610 So one reason I think about the soul so much. 618 00:42:40,780 --> 00:42:45,486 is that if the soul is present, you can't get polarization of the kind that we have 619 00:42:45,569 --> 00:42:49,204 now. Would you say that this is a different concept? 620 00:42:49,287 --> 00:42:54,427 The soul is different than the capital S self that Jung writes about or Richard 621 00:42:54,510 --> 00:42:58,080 Schwartz talks about in his system is the soul itself? 622 00:42:58,240 --> 00:42:59,920 that inner self, 623 00:43:00,610 --> 00:43:03,410 higher self or is it a different concept 624 00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:10,580 Yes? It's a both and yes kind of thing? Yeah. That's the thing, 625 00:43:10,664 --> 00:43:12,830 the soul defies definition. 626 00:43:13,270 --> 00:43:19,358 Yeah. So you can't do the things that the church has done and that philosophers do. 627 00:43:19,441 --> 00:43:22,778 You can't do it because the soul says, oh, no, 628 00:43:22,862 --> 00:43:28,801 it's not this one and the other one. It's actually a third thing that mixes them, 629 00:43:28,884 --> 00:43:32,207 that redefines them and revitalizes them. So. 630 00:43:32,290 --> 00:43:37,030 The soul is something that has no definable substance. 631 00:43:37,570 --> 00:43:41,410 and yet when it's not there substantial things are missing 632 00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:44,207 I mean, it's paradoxical in a way. 633 00:43:44,290 --> 00:43:48,214 And that's part of the problem that the church had with it. Well, 634 00:43:48,298 --> 00:43:52,715 we can't define the darn thing and it keeps messing with our theologizing 635 00:43:52,798 --> 00:43:56,924 things. About heaven and earth and everything and the good and the bad. 636 00:43:57,008 --> 00:44:00,980 So let's just get rid of it. And then Descartes comes along. 637 00:44:01,330 --> 00:44:05,298 You know, that's quite a bit later. And he comes along and says, well, 638 00:44:05,381 --> 00:44:06,770 I think, therefore I am. 639 00:44:07,180 --> 00:44:11,487 There's a subjective and the objective. And then modern science is based on 640 00:44:11,570 --> 00:44:14,648 the division between the subjective and the objective. 641 00:44:14,731 --> 00:44:19,180 And it does produce a lot of stuff, but it tends to alienate people's souls. 642 00:44:19,690 --> 00:44:23,985 Yeah. Well, it takes everything off the table that can't be readily or immediately 643 00:44:24,069 --> 00:44:24,902 explained. 644 00:44:25,090 --> 00:44:30,551 And it substitutes quantity for quality. And the only things that count are things 645 00:44:30,634 --> 00:44:35,959 that are measurable and can be proven. And soul is immeasurable and can never be 646 00:44:36,043 --> 00:44:40,422 proven. And yet when it's not there, you know something's missing. 647 00:44:40,505 --> 00:44:45,170 And so we lost our connection to all that is immeasurable about life. 648 00:44:45,520 --> 00:44:51,380 which includes both the masculine and the feminine. It includes the love. 649 00:44:51,463 --> 00:44:56,020 It includes the intuition of being deeply connected to nature. 650 00:44:56,170 --> 00:45:00,130 Because you can't do the nature culture split when you have soul. 651 00:45:00,760 --> 00:45:05,077 You take a walk in nature and you can have these soulful experiences that, 652 00:45:05,160 --> 00:45:09,560 as people would say, blow your mind because your mind cannot capture that. 653 00:45:10,330 --> 00:45:15,730 But your soul can experience it. And so all of those divisions and the 654 00:45:15,820 --> 00:45:18,647 lead up to the big polarization. 655 00:45:18,730 --> 00:45:21,770 in a sense, comes from lack of loss of soul. 656 00:45:22,750 --> 00:45:26,750 The only good thing about that is it means we have a way back. 657 00:45:27,250 --> 00:45:29,357 We have to reinstall the world. 658 00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,230 And the only way we can do that is to grow our own souls. 659 00:45:33,314 --> 00:45:38,531 And we're back to the idea that each one of us can contribute by becoming more 660 00:45:38,615 --> 00:45:43,440 soulful, which will also mean we're more creative, we're more creative. 661 00:45:43,630 --> 00:45:47,338 in love with the world, with other people, with ourselves, 662 00:45:47,421 --> 00:45:49,970 because the soul is the source of love. 663 00:45:50,590 --> 00:45:54,950 Right. And then it is really interesting to me because. 664 00:45:55,150 --> 00:45:57,527 The old ideas would say, well, where is the soul? 665 00:45:57,611 --> 00:45:59,770 And one answer would be it's in your heart. 666 00:46:00,220 --> 00:46:04,006 And so then wait a minute, all of a sudden it brings the heart in, 667 00:46:04,090 --> 00:46:06,527 not as a medical organ or a physical organ. 668 00:46:06,611 --> 00:46:08,780 I call it the heart within the heart. 669 00:46:09,220 --> 00:46:14,073 The heart within the heart is the source of our soulfulness, our capacity, 670 00:46:14,157 --> 00:46:18,760 not just to love, but to learn of love and our source of imagination. 671 00:46:19,750 --> 00:46:22,712 which has always been considered the power of the soul. 672 00:46:22,795 --> 00:46:26,809 So when people took away the soul, they took away the capacity to imagine. 673 00:46:26,892 --> 00:46:31,238 And no one can imagine their way out of the polarization because they don't know 674 00:46:31,321 --> 00:46:33,370 that imagination is the only way out. 675 00:46:33,940 --> 00:46:36,440 Most people cannot imagine how we get out of this. 676 00:46:36,640 --> 00:46:42,315 Or rationalize out of it. Yes. But the soul can imagine things that are unseen, 677 00:46:42,398 --> 00:46:46,700 unexpected. unpredictable and unable to be categorized. 678 00:46:47,560 --> 00:46:51,835 Mm. You know, such like love and the deeper, deeper, 679 00:46:51,918 --> 00:46:57,950 greater values of humanity are aspects of the soul, not aspects of a belief system. 680 00:46:58,630 --> 00:47:01,887 I have two questions. One is a selfish one, which is, 681 00:47:01,970 --> 00:47:06,991 have you written about this? And or are there any great books about what happened 682 00:47:07,074 --> 00:47:11,528 in the ninth century and the desoling of the world? That's question one. 683 00:47:11,611 --> 00:47:14,510 Are any of your books specifically about this? 684 00:47:14,890 --> 00:47:18,364 Not specifically. I usually just throw it in. In there, 685 00:47:18,448 --> 00:47:22,892 just toss it in as a little bit of a salad dressing. Yeah, but I mean, 686 00:47:22,975 --> 00:47:26,643 people can study this conference in Constantinople in 869. 687 00:47:26,727 --> 00:47:31,624 They were trying to solve philosophical, theological problems in the Catholic 688 00:47:31,707 --> 00:47:36,216 Church, but also in what becomes the Russian Orthodox Church also since 689 00:47:36,300 --> 00:47:37,217 Constantinople. 690 00:47:37,300 --> 00:47:41,592 where the East and the West kind of meet. And it's just point black. 691 00:47:41,675 --> 00:47:45,067 They just get rid of the soul. This is so fascinating. 692 00:47:45,150 --> 00:47:49,764 I wonder if there's a Dan Brown novel about this. No. Yeah, it'd be good. 693 00:47:49,847 --> 00:47:54,480 I know. Have you read The Secret of Secrets? It's so fun. No, I haven't. 694 00:47:54,880 --> 00:47:59,273 It's all about consciousness. Yeah, it's really fun. Yeah. And Descartes, 695 00:47:59,356 --> 00:48:03,280 who everybody knows as the Cartesian split, he's adding to that. 696 00:48:03,520 --> 00:48:10,397 He's coming in from the Catholic background and so on. He also has no... 697 00:48:10,480 --> 00:48:16,060 active mother or father. He's an early life orphan who was never held. 698 00:48:16,540 --> 00:48:21,080 And he becomes the embodiment of the Cartesian split. 699 00:48:22,180 --> 00:48:27,060 Acting out in a sense and then speaking out his own words. 700 00:48:27,700 --> 00:48:29,180 infantile. 701 00:48:29,800 --> 00:48:33,012 Lack of being held and becoming connected to, you know, 702 00:48:33,095 --> 00:48:37,505 usually the connection to the mother. The mother is Mother Earth. You know, 703 00:48:37,588 --> 00:48:42,058 the connection infant to mother is like the connection to everything outside 704 00:48:42,141 --> 00:48:42,974 the infant. 705 00:48:43,570 --> 00:48:47,065 And he doesn't get he doesn't get that. So he is split. 706 00:48:47,148 --> 00:48:51,228 He then his personal split in a way then comes up with the idea. 707 00:48:51,312 --> 00:48:56,238 I think therefore I am instead of I love. Therefore, I am. I sing. Therefore, 708 00:48:56,321 --> 00:49:01,637 I am. I defecate. Therefore, I mean, you could add a whole lot of things that could 709 00:49:01,721 --> 00:49:06,707 make you. And you could be aiming through those things. He makes it thinking. 710 00:49:06,790 --> 00:49:07,970 and being, 711 00:49:08,170 --> 00:49:12,934 which then becomes the mind-body split, which then enhances the split between 712 00:49:13,017 --> 00:49:17,550 human nature and nature, and we're headed historically for polarization. 713 00:49:18,460 --> 00:49:22,158 For everyone who's listening and saying, okay, I'm grokking this, 714 00:49:22,242 --> 00:49:24,220 but how do I become more ensouled? 715 00:49:24,430 --> 00:49:29,452 What do we do? Okay. So, in a sense, we did what people always did, 716 00:49:29,536 --> 00:49:34,652 because there was an understanding in ancient times, you know, not that, 717 00:49:34,736 --> 00:49:39,167 you know, to make... the past perfect, but people did 718 00:49:39,250 --> 00:49:44,890 have the sense of that they were connected to nature and connected to the cosmos. 719 00:49:45,100 --> 00:49:50,780 I mean, when you read ancient stories and certainly mythology, humans are. 720 00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:54,677 Unique beings because we are stretched between heaven and earth, 721 00:49:54,760 --> 00:49:58,060 not because we live on earth and we're going to heaven. 722 00:49:58,540 --> 00:50:01,240 really it's more like we're here to and down to earth. 723 00:50:01,430 --> 00:50:05,870 That's more like a soulful thing. So there's an answer, kind of. But 724 00:50:06,440 --> 00:50:10,980 The soul being the source of imagination and love, let's say. 725 00:50:11,420 --> 00:50:12,760 That gives us some hints. 726 00:50:13,640 --> 00:50:17,450 what we love is how we grow the soul. 727 00:50:18,770 --> 00:50:22,090 And then you could say who we love is how we grow the soul also. 728 00:50:22,190 --> 00:50:23,830 because 729 00:50:24,290 --> 00:50:30,986 The soul being the source of love wants to have meaningful connections to other 730 00:50:31,069 --> 00:50:35,015 people. But it also wants to have meaningful connections, for instance, 731 00:50:35,098 --> 00:50:37,298 to what you were saying about the deep self. 732 00:50:37,790 --> 00:50:40,430 So we grow the self deeper. 733 00:50:40,910 --> 00:50:44,790 We learn how to love ourselves better, which I think requires big time 734 00:50:44,873 --> 00:50:47,790 forgiveness. I was raised Catholic. And so, you know, 735 00:50:47,874 --> 00:50:51,130 they mess around with you as a child when it comes to that. 736 00:50:51,214 --> 00:50:55,290 You're supposed to believe all this stuff and all. But it does activate. 737 00:50:55,790 --> 00:51:00,267 ideas and imaginings about what it is. And one of the great things that's in there, 738 00:51:00,351 --> 00:51:05,300 even though, it's become occluded is forgiveness is really important. 739 00:51:05,630 --> 00:51:08,390 Once we realize I'm not a perfect being, 740 00:51:08,780 --> 00:51:13,404 And everything hasn't always gone right. And even when I was young and couldn't 741 00:51:13,487 --> 00:51:17,367 defend or handle myself or protect myself, some things went wrong. 742 00:51:17,450 --> 00:51:21,710 and you accept that, then forgiveness becomes a part of it. 743 00:51:22,070 --> 00:51:27,915 Forgiving oneself for not being better for whatever we were told we should be. 744 00:51:27,998 --> 00:51:31,190 And so we accept ourselves more as we are. 745 00:51:31,340 --> 00:51:35,807 That would be soulful. And then following. So there's an old statement. 746 00:51:35,890 --> 00:51:40,310 You find it all over the world at some point, which is what we love is a cure. 747 00:51:40,910 --> 00:51:42,770 So the illness... 748 00:51:42,920 --> 00:51:47,976 is being gifted and wounded. The illness is being alive at a dark time. 749 00:51:48,059 --> 00:51:52,040 The illness is being alive in a period of polarization. 750 00:51:52,460 --> 00:51:53,960 And what we love is the cure. 751 00:51:54,470 --> 00:51:59,334 So someone loves music. They just love it. We all like music. 752 00:51:59,417 --> 00:52:01,850 Music is archetypal, you know, 753 00:52:02,000 --> 00:52:05,757 connection for almost everybody, even for the animals, they say. 754 00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,840 But someone loves it. That's it. What they really. 755 00:52:09,350 --> 00:52:12,825 go with that, if they accept that, it doesn't mean they're going to be a great 756 00:52:12,908 --> 00:52:14,517 musician. That's not even the point. 757 00:52:14,600 --> 00:52:17,000 It means they will be growing their soul. 758 00:52:17,540 --> 00:52:22,420 You know, through the process of being engaged with things that are essentially 759 00:52:22,504 --> 00:52:24,200 lovable by that individual. 760 00:52:24,860 --> 00:52:29,957 And then that just puts more music in their life and more music in the world. 761 00:52:30,041 --> 00:52:33,658 Someone else loves an aspect of nature. Just, you know, 762 00:52:33,741 --> 00:52:36,447 I was once got to meet with these people. 763 00:52:36,530 --> 00:52:38,667 pretty young people that were doing 764 00:52:38,750 --> 00:52:43,956 Kind of scientific work with rivers, getting the heavy metals out of the river 765 00:52:44,040 --> 00:52:48,025 and getting the rivers to be more pure. They used that term. 766 00:52:48,108 --> 00:52:51,280 And they were using mushrooms, they figured out. 767 00:52:51,364 --> 00:52:54,890 You could use mushrooms to get the heavy metals out. 768 00:52:55,100 --> 00:52:57,500 And they were in love with what they were doing. 769 00:52:57,620 --> 00:53:02,063 And they were completely lovable when you were with them because they were in love 770 00:53:02,147 --> 00:53:05,431 with what they were doing. And someone could call it science, 771 00:53:05,514 --> 00:53:08,191 but it looked to me like a love project, you know. 772 00:53:08,274 --> 00:53:11,007 And so what we love becomes the cure. For instance, 773 00:53:11,090 --> 00:53:15,092 some people really love knowledge. I remember I used to always make notes. 774 00:53:15,175 --> 00:53:17,880 I'd read books and I'd make my handwritten notes. 775 00:53:18,380 --> 00:53:19,380 Because... 776 00:53:19,610 --> 00:53:23,010 When you're writing by hand, you're using your body, not just your mind. 777 00:53:23,094 --> 00:53:26,294 And then someone said to me once, oh, so you're an intellectual. 778 00:53:26,570 --> 00:53:29,720 And I said, hey, I didn't insult you. Why are you insulting me? 779 00:53:32,900 --> 00:53:38,420 Knowledge, intellectual knowledge, is a very small strata. 780 00:53:38,870 --> 00:53:45,117 of the kinds of knowledge. So some people love knowledge. And in ancient India, 781 00:53:45,201 --> 00:53:50,810 that would be called the path of yana, J-N-A-N-A. It's a form of yoga. 782 00:53:51,170 --> 00:53:57,030 The path of loving knowledge. and that leads to being perhaps a philosopher, 783 00:53:57,350 --> 00:54:03,710 "Philosopher" comes from the Greek, "philo," which means love, Sophia, 784 00:54:03,800 --> 00:54:08,747 is the God of wisdom. Those who love Sophia, the God of wisdom. Well, 785 00:54:08,830 --> 00:54:12,507 if we were going to have wisdom set of just data and. 786 00:54:12,590 --> 00:54:15,840 information, We're going to have to have people that love wisdom. 787 00:54:16,430 --> 00:54:20,910 And the ancient definition of wisdom is light and dark. 788 00:54:21,320 --> 00:54:24,537 And so the seekers, the ones who know, 789 00:54:24,620 --> 00:54:29,499 really love both light and dark, and they have a great value to everyone around 790 00:54:29,582 --> 00:54:34,524 them. There's all kinds of knowledge that we have lost and the kind of knowledge 791 00:54:34,607 --> 00:54:36,240 that we've lost primarily. 792 00:54:37,190 --> 00:54:38,250 Is wisdom. 793 00:54:38,780 --> 00:54:43,700 And so some people love knowledge and they should. And that becomes a sacred path. 794 00:54:44,270 --> 00:54:49,938 And so I don't know, almost anything that anyone really some people love animals. 795 00:54:50,021 --> 00:54:52,920 It's actually a fairly common thing. Well, 796 00:54:53,003 --> 00:54:58,529 humans used to associate with animals. Animals were understood as spirit beings 797 00:54:58,613 --> 00:55:01,947 and animals were imparting knowledge to people. 798 00:55:02,030 --> 00:55:07,037 They do it now. And so the people that love animals are also capable 799 00:55:07,120 --> 00:55:11,079 of rediscovering the animal nature of the human being. 800 00:55:11,162 --> 00:55:17,067 Because a human is an animal on one end and connected to the divine on the other 801 00:55:17,151 --> 00:55:17,697 end. 802 00:55:17,780 --> 00:55:23,774 So the animal lovers actually could bring the kind of animate knowledge of the body 803 00:55:23,858 --> 00:55:26,640 and the instincts back into the world. 804 00:55:27,350 --> 00:55:29,900 I don't know. I'm just... I'm just talking. Yeah. 805 00:55:29,990 --> 00:55:34,087 No, I love it. I think it's really beautiful and helpful. 806 00:55:34,170 --> 00:55:39,733 And I think we're all... searching for what is our specific mandate to do. 807 00:55:39,816 --> 00:55:44,607 And I always like to be reminded that we're individually, uh, 808 00:55:44,690 --> 00:55:48,684 uniquely gifted and that your part is different than my part, 809 00:55:48,768 --> 00:55:54,099 but that there is a part and we are all participating in this collective culture, 810 00:55:54,182 --> 00:55:56,967 even if we might not like it or choose it. 811 00:55:57,050 --> 00:56:02,570 Yeah, and the philosophical idea that's also a soulful idea, 812 00:56:02,690 --> 00:56:05,650 is the part is related to the whole. 813 00:56:05,960 --> 00:56:10,223 Change the part, you change the whole. So it's not to be inflated and say, oh, 814 00:56:10,307 --> 00:56:12,480 I'm so important. It's not that at all. 815 00:56:12,620 --> 00:56:19,107 It's actually to be real and say, I'm doing what I'm called to do, which is, 816 00:56:19,190 --> 00:56:23,450 involves a greater awakening to who I already am. 817 00:56:23,570 --> 00:56:27,344 at the core of the self or the soul. And in doing that, 818 00:56:27,427 --> 00:56:31,972 I'm not just satisfying my ambition. I'm actually adding presence, 819 00:56:32,055 --> 00:56:35,197 imagination, creativity and love to the world. 820 00:56:35,281 --> 00:56:40,437 And the more I do that and the more other people do that, all of a sudden, 821 00:56:40,520 --> 00:56:46,613 the polarization starts to be diminished and it starts to be revealed to be what it 822 00:56:46,697 --> 00:56:51,997 is. a kind of lack of soul and a loss of the sense that we're really all in 823 00:56:52,080 --> 00:56:57,937 this together. And that's the I would say that's the future world is a reimagination 824 00:56:58,020 --> 00:57:02,886 of a world in which everything and everyone and all the beings and all 825 00:57:02,970 --> 00:57:07,000 the things are all interrelated as they have always been. 826 00:57:17,060 --> 00:57:20,980 which objectified people and diminished the world. 827 00:57:22,390 --> 00:57:27,063 Beautiful. This was such a pleasure. I hope you'll come back. I loved it. 828 00:57:27,147 --> 00:57:31,103 And now I'm going to go read about 9th century Constantinople. 829 00:57:31,186 --> 00:57:35,599 This feels like a big unlock for me, so I really appreciate it. Well, 830 00:57:35,682 --> 00:57:40,421 that's the knowledge part of you. Your knowledge, and I want to know that. 831 00:57:40,504 --> 00:57:44,917 Yeah, it's amazing. They actually did it. They got together and said, 832 00:57:45,000 --> 00:57:49,803 let's just get the soul out of this. It was never two. It was always three. 833 00:57:49,887 --> 00:57:51,190 It was always three. 834 00:57:51,770 --> 00:57:55,635 So is a relationship. Two people are in love. It's the one person in love, 835 00:57:55,718 --> 00:57:58,730 the other person in love, and the presence of love itself, 836 00:57:58,813 --> 00:58:01,717 which has hints of the divine and hints of the creative. 837 00:58:01,801 --> 00:58:04,012 And as soon as you take the middle one out, 838 00:58:04,095 --> 00:58:07,990 you just polarize those two people and they have to start all over again. 839 00:58:08,510 --> 00:58:10,490 Yeah. 100%. 840 00:58:11,360 --> 00:58:14,500 you you 841 00:58:16,790 --> 00:58:17,623 you 842 00:58:19,070 --> 00:58:22,297 That was so fun. And he just turned some of my ideas, 843 00:58:22,380 --> 00:58:27,169 I'll just say he evolved some of my understandings in ways that is always very 844 00:58:27,252 --> 00:58:30,250 thrilling for me. And hopefully it was very fun. 845 00:58:30,770 --> 00:58:36,860 for you. And I am just shook by the fact that 846 00:58:37,310 --> 00:58:41,277 this third force, the soul, was removed. 847 00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:45,839 In the 9th century, I feel like so many things now make so much more sense to me. 848 00:58:45,923 --> 00:58:50,260 So I will be in a wormhole excavating that. And I will speak to you all soon. 849 00:58:51,740 --> 00:58:54,352 If you got something out of today's episode, 850 00:58:54,436 --> 00:58:57,560 I would so appreciate your help spreading the word. 851 00:58:57,740 --> 00:59:01,937 Please rate and review the episode, follow pulling the thread on your preferred 852 00:59:02,020 --> 00:59:06,300 podcast platform, and share this episode with a friend who would also enjoy it. 853 00:59:06,500 --> 00:59:09,080 That's how we grow this thing. It's so helpful. 854 00:59:09,440 --> 00:59:14,659 Thank you. If you want more in this world, please sign up for my newsletter 855 00:59:14,743 --> 00:59:19,433 at eliselunan.substack.com or consider picking up copies of my book, 856 00:59:19,516 --> 00:59:20,990 On Our Best Behavior, 857 00:59:21,380 --> 00:59:24,130 and the new workbook, Choosing Wholeness Over Goodness. 858 00:59:24,500 --> 00:59:25,800 Thanks again, friends.