Latest / This Jungian Life Podcast / The Psychology of Magic: A Jungian Exploration

Transcript

The Psychology of Magic: A Jungian Exploration · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One could argue everybody is doing magic. Everyone is doing
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: this because they're relating to their subconscious mind. It's just
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: they're doing it unconsciously like Puck or they're doing it
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: consciously and learning how to manage it. So it's not
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: exactly a full-blown control, I would say, because you're not
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: treating your subconscious mind like it's something that just has
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: to be controlled. Rather, in a loving and firm way,
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: you're trying to implant in it, this is what I want.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: This is what I'm after. These are the images that
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: are suggesting, what it is I want, and also my
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: willingness to become the sort of person who can have
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: it and merits it.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian analysts on
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: the unseen forces shaping our lives and what it means
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: to be truly human in today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano,
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: we are absolutely delighted to have a friend and colleague
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: with us, John White. We all trained together, and I
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: remember being just gobsmacked in awe when John delivered a
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: whole program and presentation to the whole body of our
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: big interregional society as a candidate. So, I'm still a
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: little bit in awe.
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Good.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: You like it that way.
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: Go on, establish domination.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: We're just going right for it.
• 1:49
  Speaker 3: He has a wonderful and truly wicked sense of humor.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: He has been a professor at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: He's now a scholar in residence. He's written about all
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: kinds of things. Please look him up. Capitalism, resentment. adaptation,
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: working on something about the feeling function. And of course,
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: he is a bona fide, honest to goodness, through and
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: through magician and sorcerer. And so we're going to talk
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: about what else magic.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: And one of my memories of you, John, which was
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: very magical, is I was at the nadir of my
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: training process, that point at which we all fantasize dropping
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: out of training. And I think it was maybe one
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: of your first meetings.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Which it was.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: In Montreal. And we wound up going to dinner together.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: And I laughed so hard that my stomach hurt the
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: next day. And I was like, well, maybe I'll stick around.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: The company's pretty good.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: That's right. I remember that. There was a small group
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: of us. I don't remember who it was, but we
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: just laughed and laughed and laughed.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Yes, it was exactly what I needed. Yeah. So magic, yes.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: And John, I've heard you talk about this before. I
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: think it's super interesting and we're going to cover hopefully
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the waterfront with this. But why don't you just, what
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: is magic? Why don't you just define it for us?
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: What are we talking about?
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: Let's start with the small questions, I see. Well, of course,
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of different ways of talking about magic.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: And what's interesting is that there are different ways You know,
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: there's a whole symbol system of this from the past,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: but I'll speak in more Jungian speak here that basically
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: says the same thing, which in most respects, what we're
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: talking about by magic is actually the intentional control of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: what Jung would call synchronicity.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Oh, interesting. I love that. Yeah.
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: It's basically the attempt to say, you know, Jung says
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: synchronicity arises when there is an intense investment of psychic
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: energy towards something. and that it tends to attract things
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: that somehow are similar to it. So if you take
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: that and extend it beyond Jung's usage, which is primarily
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: where in a session, for example, he gives the example,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: I think it's in Memory Streams and Reflections, where they're
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: talking about a scarab, and while they're talking, then suddenly
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: the closest to that species appears on the window. That
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: would be a synchronicity.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Taps on the window, yeah.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Taps on the window, exactly. And so it would be
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: a synchronicity because the investment of energy then has brought
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: something that's similar. But Jung's not necessarily thinking in that
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: instance that he's doing magic because he's not necessarily intentionally
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: doing it. So what magic in our modern sense usually
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: is talking about is the idea of intentionally doing that,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: of intentionally trying to bring about synchronicity. And you do
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: that by basically saturating your conscious life with what it
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: is that you want, symbols associated with it, archetypal energies
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: that may help bring it about and so forth. So
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: in the more modern sense, that's what it is now.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: You've mentioned before we began, Aleister Crowley, for example, on
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: talking about in accordance with will and that sort of thing. Again,
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: we can debate about the adequacy or inadequacy of that.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: But from a Jungian standpoint, it's basically using the principle
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: of synchronicity, but doing it on purpose.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: And my guess is that Jung wouldn't really look so
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: kindly on that because, and this actually kind of, I think,
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: leans into the Aleister Crowley thing. I think Aleister Crowley,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: who was a major figure in kind of Western ceremonial
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: magic at the end of the 19th century. He said
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: something like magic is the imposition of the will on
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: the universe or something like that. That's a paraphrase, John,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: if I've got it wrong.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's basically in accordance with will, yes, that you,
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: by changing the inner life, you change the outer life
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: is the idea that he gives you.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: I have an imagination that Jung wouldn't really like that
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: so much because Jung would see that as the ego
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: kind of colonizing the unconscious.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: Right. And that I think is a really crucial point.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: So drawing from the psychoanalytic tradition, anytime that something is
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: being driven from the ego in a Jungian perspective, it
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: will always be very complex and have other issues from it, right?
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: And so that would be a drawback. On the other hand,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: and I should add there is that Like it or not,
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: Jung's writings are often an access for people going into
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: esotericism because they don't really know about it until they
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: read Jung. And then suddenly they get very interested in it.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Wait, you're saying that they read Jung and then get
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: interested in esotericism? Okay, so it's kind of like Jung
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: is kind of like the gateway drug.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Yes, he is. Yeah, exactly. And there's even, I know
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: actually laboratory alchemists that their first exposure to alchemy was
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: through Jung. who of course doesn't use it in a
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: laboratory way, but that introduced them to it. So he
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: is the gateway, the gateway drug that brings one into
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: it in many ways. But there's a tension, I think, there.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: I mean, on the one hand, you know, as a therapist,
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Jung would be kind of He would suggest not doing
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: something along those lines in the sense that you have
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: to purify, so to speak. You have to make sure
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: that the ego is really in a more transcendent function
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: kind of place and so forth before it's doing that.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: And there are strong temptations in this because one practices
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: magic very frequently because one feels disempowered and feels like
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: one will gain power through magic. So there are a
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: lot of, I don't know, temptations, you might say, to
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: use it and use it poorly in the process. And
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: you can see where Jung would sort of object to that.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, Jung often acted like a magician
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: in his private life, whether he did ceremonial magic or not.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking here, for example, of, I think, let's see,
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: who was it? It's one of the great biographies of
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: one of his students. Trying to remember, who was the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: student who was Edinger's analyst? We're in that circle. Trying
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: to think of her name. The one who was very
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: into active imagination. Can't think of her name. Was it
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: Barbara Hanna? Yeah, Barbara Hanna, I think it was in
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: her biography of Jung where she mentions Jung was trying
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: to find this very obscure, rare alchemical text. And he
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: kept thinking and thinking, how am I going to get that?
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: How am I going to get that? How am I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: going to get that? And then with about a week,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a volume of it just had been sent to him
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: from Australia.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: You know, and so whether he did formal magic, I
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: don't think there's much question that he was using the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: synchronicity principle, whether consciously, unconsciously, naturally, I can't say it,
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: but that's what he was doing in a magical way.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: That's a really great example. And I just, but another,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: another thing you had put in this, in the same
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: bin is when he was, he and Freud were talking
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: about like, you know, the occult and then there was
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: that explosion and that knife had split in the room
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: and it's like, oh yeah, you think it doesn't happen
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: or whatever, but yeah.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think there's both the caution of how
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: one relates to this. I must say, if you go
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: on online forums and so forth, you can see where
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Jung is popular among esotericists, but it's primarily for the
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: theory of archetypes. But there isn't much awareness of the
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: clinical issues. And that causes problems for people because they
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: may invoke certain energies without any consciousness that they're not
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: very much on the path of individuation. And if that happens,
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: there are things that can happen that are really not
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: what are intended.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: Like what?
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Well, just imagine anything. For example, as I said, many
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: people become magicians in part because they feel disempowered. And
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: what they feel is the promise of use of magic
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: is that it includes an expansion of power. From a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: phenomenological standpoint, that's a fair point. I mean, there is
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: a feeling of empowerment that comes with it. And like,
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: as always, if you don't have clear sense of how
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: that power needs to be used, or you haven't worked
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: with the idea that you have a number of unconscious
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: complexes around power, it's not necessarily in your interest to
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: go ahead and be doing it. And so I don't
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: mean by that, that you might not achieve your ends.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: But the question is, what's the cost to your own
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: soul in the process as you're doing it, right? And so,
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: you know, the kind of the more traditional processes in
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: becoming a magician, you don't usually start with magic. You
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: usually start with meditation. Meditation becomes a central practice within
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: the Western esoteric tradition. One reason for that is the
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: feeling that the energy centers in the psyche tend to
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: get ordered by meditation. You don't even have to think
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: about it. They just do it by meditation. So that's
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: their way of dealing, so to speak, with what Jung
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: would understand as forms of psychopathology and complexes is that
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: The energy centers are somehow imbalanced. You bring them into
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: balance by a consistent practice of meditation. And then anything
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: you might do, like ritual work, such as you bring up, Lisa,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: then would be basically meditation in action, rather than something
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: that's disengaged from the kinds of psychological practices that also
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: bring balance.
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: I want to go back to your idea that people
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: that are not really quite ready can engage in practices
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: that are harmful.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: So, like what?
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I would say any esoteric practice could in principle
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: be used well or poorly. And like with any spiritual practice,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: I mean, nobody would think it was strange to say,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: I went to the East and studied with a guru
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: for many years before I did X, Y, or Z.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: Here in the Western tradition, let's say specifically in America
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: with our consumerist mentality, we just think, okay, we should
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: be able to follow this formula and make this work.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: And sometimes it does work. because there's a peculiar alignment
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: that happened to work at that moment. But remember that
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: you're aligning with energies. At least the claim is that
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: you're aligning with what Jung calls somewhat neutrally archetypal energies,
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: but the agents call the gods. So if you're going
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: to align with energy like that, you probably want to
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: be sure that, number one, you're in a good relationship
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: with the gods, who are also fully capable of playing
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: tricks on you, and that your attitudes are sufficiently humble
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: and that you're relating to the world in a fairly
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: healthy way, anything that throws you off too much from
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: that is likely to manifest in various ways. So you say,
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: like what? I'll just give you one example that I'm
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: fairly close to that I know of is someone who
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was early on in the practice was, let's say, messing
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: around with the archetype associated with Saturn. You don't want
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: to mess around with Saturn. He's a pretty serious dude.
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: And the person kind of glibly wanted to have one
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: of his psychic perceptions opened up. And this story is
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: told in an important book. I burden you with the
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: details of that. But the person did that without any
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: idea of the purpose of doing it. So there you
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: can see how a power complex is at work, right?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Because power has to be always understood as a means
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: to an end. So when you're just trying to gain power,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: but you're not worried about the end, you know the
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: power complex is to some extent. unconscious and operating here
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: well as the story goes yeah he got his wish
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: but again for no purpose couldn't sleep for for years
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: wow because the psychic abilities were opened up so you
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: know whether you take that as reality or not obviously
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: up to you i take it as very serious and
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: factual story because i've heard of similar stories before But,
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: you know, being purposeful in your work when you're going
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: to work in this kind of sphere is particularly important.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: If you're not purposeful, you don't quite know what's going
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: to happen. So what purpose here would mean is, of course,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: understanding both what the purpose is and what the ends are,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: but also that making yourself the sort of means that
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: you could bring about those ends in a way that's
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: not going to evoke energies that aren't good.
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: So I can imagine some listeners being like, oh, my God.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: this is beyond the pale. They've totally left the farm here.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: What's going on? But I want to just talk about
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: it in slightly different language for just a second, because
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: as clinicians, and we're all clinicians here, we know that
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: sometimes someone comes into our office, let's say, with a
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: deep desire for something, and we're moved. We want this
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: person to get their wish. And we, along with the person,
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: are wondering, where are they being blocked in achieving this wish?
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: They tell this story. They're worthy. They are trying hard.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: They're doing all the right things. And somehow their desire
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: eludes them, the achievement of their desire. And so we
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: start listening for what are the ways that something in
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: the unconscious is holding them back. And this is where
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: it does start to kind of seem like we're talking
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: about something similar. to magic because the unconscious can really
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: have its way with us and can hold us back
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: and can trip us up. And if we can understand
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: that blockage and kind of negotiate with the unconscious, and
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: there are some wonderful fairy tales that talk about just
• 15:13
  Speaker 2: such a process, you know, you can really move things.
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: I'm going to give a personal example, actually, which was
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: very instructive to me. When I was pregnant with my
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: second child, my parents were, they were living in down
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: south and they had decided that they were going to
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: move up north, but they needed to sell that house
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: before they moved. And I wanted them to move up.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: They were going to move close to me. I really
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: wanted them here. By the time the baby came, I
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: had these incredibly wonderful idyllic images of pushing the stroller
• 15:48
  Speaker 2: around Philadelphia with my mom, with me, you know, she'd
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: come down once or twice a week and help me
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: look after the kids and it would be great. And
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: I just, I wanted it so badly, but they couldn't
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: sell the house and they couldn't sell the house. They
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: couldn't sell the house. And so I found myself sort of,
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: you know, meditating on it. And the thought that came
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: up was, what if, what if the outcome of them
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: moving up here is not what I'm imagining? And I
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: let myself imagine the possible other side, that they might
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: get sick and I might need to take care of them,
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: that maybe it wasn't going to be, you know, me
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: and mom pushing the babies around and enjoying a cappuccino.
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: And I thought, if that were the case, if them
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: moving up here meant not what I'm fantasizing, but this
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: other scenario, would I still want it? And I let
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: that sink down and I thought, yes, I would. And
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: do you know what happened the next day?
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Sold the house.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Sold the house.
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: No surprises.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: And by the way, and this is now, you know,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: 22 years on, what happened was my mom, by the
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: time she moved up here, was already, she already was
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: suffering from dementia. We now know looking back.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: There were no idyllic, you know, walks around Rittenhouse Square
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: with the kids. Never happened, not even once. And within
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: a few years, I was helping my dad care for her.
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: And I was really grateful that they were up here.
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: But what I might say is that there was some
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: unconscious ambivalence. That's how I might talk about it sort
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: of psychoanalytically. And once that ambivalence was surfaced, then it
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: was cleared. So when someone comes in, for example, into
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: analysis and has this thing that they really want, one
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: of the things I'm curious about is where in the
• 17:40
  Speaker 2: unconscious is the other half?
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: It's lovely.
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: If what they really, really want, for example, is to
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: find a partner and get married, I'm going to be
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: listening for what part of you actually is afraid of
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: that or knows that if you get that, you'll have
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: to give up this other thing. And not that it's
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: bad to be ambivalent. I think we're always ambivalent. But
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: if it's unconscious, it can trip you up. Yes.
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: That's wonderful. It's a great example of what I was
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: talking about, about this it's one of the things what
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I mean when I say you also have to become
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: the sort of person who in achieving their goal is
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: the person who can actually enjoy it, manage it, work
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: with it.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Right. So one of the dangers that often comes with
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: people who are doing these sort of more standard esoteric
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: practices is that they focus so much on the end,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: but not being the sort of person either who could
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: manage it. It's sort of like the stories you hear
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: about someone, you know, winning the lottery, you know, and
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: then they've lost all their money within a year. It's
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: because it's one thing to have money, it's another to
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: have the virtues and the habits and so forth that
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: can actually manage such a thing and could actually even
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: have the enjoyment of it. And also, as your story
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: is partially indicating here, Lisa, are you willing to pay
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: whatever price would actually come for that end? And realizing
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that sometimes the, you know, the idyllic picture is a
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: nice way of representing the purpose that's driving you, but
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily represent the price you might have to
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: pay for it. And when you were willing to say, yeah,
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: I am willing to pay that price, then the issue happened.
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: To me, that is an example of synchronicity because you
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: kept imagining, you kept thinking about it, and presumably your
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: parents did too. But this ambivalence, what you're talking about
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: is crucial. And there isn't enough of that discussion, in
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: my view, within the esoteric world. It's one of these
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: areas that has been know, a real source of concern
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: for me because many of my patients, they come, I
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: don't even know that they're interested in it, but within
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a few sessions, you know, suddenly they're bringing up, you know, well,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: you know, I've been studying Wicca or I've been doing this,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is. And it's so widespread now.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: And so when, you know, you're talking with them, they'll often,
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: they're sold on this idea of this empowerment that comes
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: from it, but not with the idea that, well, with
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: the empowerment comes a need for sacrifice. By sacrifice, I
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: don't just mean any suffering. I just mean the willingness,
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: I will give this for that.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's always a cost to everything.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: Right. Comes with a price. That's right.
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: But it seems to me, you know, if I go
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: back to Lisa's example, that the real magic is between
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: me and me or between you and you, rather than
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: between me and the external world that I want, you know,
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: something that I desire to manifest itself out there.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, ma'am.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: When what I really need to do is get in
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: alignment with myself.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: But the really interesting part about my example is that
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: something very particular and concrete did happen in the outer world.
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: And certainly we know, I think everybody's had some experiences
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: of synchronicity. And it's very affirming whenever that happens, that
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: you think of somebody and there they come around the corner,
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: you were just walking to board. On the other hand,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: the internal alignment can come with or without, in your story,
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: your parents having sold the house. You still, it would
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: have been fine, they couldn't sell the house. But you've
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: resolved the tension within yourself and you've looked at the
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: shadow side, settled it with yourself. And that that part
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: of the work, to me, Most times with most people
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: and the people we see in our consulting room, that's
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: the work of you have the power to resolve things
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: in and with oneself. We all do. That part we
• 21:49
  Speaker 3: can do. And if something wonderful, shall I say magical,
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: happens out there and it actually manifests externally, that's a bonus.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: That's interesting, because if we changed Lisa's story and then
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: suppose that they weren't able to come, you know, it
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: might be that there were good reasons why they didn't
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: come also that didn't appear till afterwards. And so maybe
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: to your point, Deb, is that this internal resolution is
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: key no matter what the outcome is.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: You mentioned Crowley earlier, and that's, you know, this idea
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: of not being concerned about the ends. You're after the ends,
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: but you don't assume that them being fulfilled... is the
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: best fulfillment of what you're actually after is also maybe
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: a key to this.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: The best fulfillment of what you're after is being at
• 22:37
  Speaker 3: peace with it. You know, I'm thinking of that old
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: Buddhist story about, I can't quite remember how it goes,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: so help me out here, of the man who has
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: a young adult son, they're farmers, and the young son
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: breaks his leg and the farmer bemoans the terrible fate
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: that has befallen him without his adult son helping him.
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: And then the army comes along recruiting, drafting people, anyone,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: whether you want to or not. But now it's a
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: good thing. The bad thing has become good. Now my
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: son will not be drafted. And so it goes that
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: I'm lifting up the point about what's the meaning that
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: we make of these things.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's meaning too, but just to kind of
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: go back to, you know, the strict, the kind of
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: framework about the Western mystery tradition. I mean, those who
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: kind of practice ritual magic will often kind of bind
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: their requests by saying, you know, all this or more
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: for the greater good, which is that we may not know,
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: and this speaks to your point, Deb and John, also
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: the point you were trying to say about my story,
• 23:47
  Speaker 2: we don't know what might be for the greater good.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: And we always have to acknowledge that so we may
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: have a particular desire. But it could be that the
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: thing that would have been for the greater good for
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: me and everyone else would have been something different.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: So so there is some humility there. I might I
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: might call it a sort of relativization of the ego.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: You know that we don't have all the answers.
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: But but I do.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: I also want to say, though, Deb, just to just
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: to be a little bit of a pain in the ass.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, look, when you're, let's say, 28, OK,
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: and you really, really, really want to get married and you,
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: you know, you haven't it hasn't things haven't been going
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: your way and you're not meeting anyone or whatever. And
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: you go into analysis thinking I've tried everything else. I
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: might as well try this, you know. You know, Lord
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: knows why one would do that, but it's been known
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: to happen. And and but I mean, if that's your situation,
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: like it's fine to say, well, I'm just going to
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: get all philosophical and just get OK with myself and
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: understand that maybe there's a reason this isn't happening. But
• 24:54
  Speaker 2: when you're when you're, you know, 30 ish or something
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: and you want to get married and get on with
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: your life and it's not happening like you want that
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: thing to happen. You know, and I mean, I think
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: this is the difference, say, between a kind of philosophical discipline, perhaps,
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: or even an analytic one. And the practice of magic
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: is that you actually are looking to affect the outcome.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Is that fair? Or I know Deb doesn't care about fairness.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: She's already kind enough to tell us that ahead of time.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm all for it.
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: You know, we throw everything at desired goal. And as
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: long as we do our internal work around that, it
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: helps us accept whatever the outcome is. I mean, sometimes it,
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: whatever the it is, can't happen, doesn't happen, and then
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: how do we deal with that?
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: Right. But in my experience, I want to say kind
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: of responsible practitioners of ritual magic, actually that internal work
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: is a big part of it. Thinking, what will this
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: cost me? Am I willing to bear this cost? Yes.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: What are the potential negative aspects? There's a lot of
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: that that goes into kind of formulating a magical request.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: There's a lot of that work.
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and sometimes you do a kind of discernment, whether using,
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Tarot or whatever you might use. They
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: try to say, what kind of effects might this have
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: on others? Not necessarily that it reveals it. It all
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: depends on where you are in your progress and so forth.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: But whether there are things to think about you know,
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: there's a fair practice of divination, whether that's through tarot,
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: through geomancy and other kinds of things that many practitioners do.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: And part of it is not simply to say what's
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: going to be the cost of people near me, but
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: what kind of broader cost might there be? Not everyone
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: does that, I mean, to be honest, but, you know,
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: many people will do that and say, what kind of,
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, are there any indications that this would just
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: be not a good thing to do for, you know,
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: other people concerned in some way? So you The cause
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: and effect that we call karma is something that you
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: really want to be thinking about. If I'm bringing certain
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: types of energies into the world, they're probably not only
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: going to be beneficial for me, they might be negative
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: for me, they might be negative but beneficial for others
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: and things like that. There's only so much that you
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: can account for, but it's at least kind of, you
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: might say, a best practice here to be considering the
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: kinds of things that are going to happen to others
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: or are likely to happen to others or that their
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: indications could happen to others in the process.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: So I have two totally different questions. I think I'll
• 27:50
  Speaker 2: go with the small question and save the big question.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: The small question is, you talk like your practice is
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: full of practitioners. I don't think I've ever had one.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's a synchronicity here or something.
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: But how many people do you think, you know, consider
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: themselves adherents?
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: I think there's a broad range of what counts as
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: an adherent for one. I mean, there are a lot
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: more armchair magicians than there are people who actually practice it.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: A lot of people are very interested in it, but
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily move into it. There are strong constraints. I mean,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you know, from people, especially with, from a Christian background,
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: you have more of the kind of the more traditional
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: sacramental objection to it, which is interesting because that's different
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: from say the reformed traditions of more sacramental Christians as
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: a rule. have to basically admit our sacraments are magic,
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: but we're not going to call it that. We're going
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: to call them sacraments, even though sacramentum is a translation
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: of mysterion. So early Christianity with the sacraments was a
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: mystery tradition. So oftentimes, say, from a Catholic background like
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: I have, it's not so much that magic doesn't exist.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: Just don't practice that. Only practice ours. Whereas... from reformed traditions.
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: You mean where, like, the piece of bread turns into
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: the body of Christ?
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, those little things like that. Those little claims, yeah. Exactly.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: But from a more reformed tradition, part of the old
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: criticism was that Catholicism was too much like magic. So
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: it's a criticism of all magic, including the Catholic picture
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: of the sacraments, right? So you've got two diverse different
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: types of criticisms there. But I think when you start
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: thinking in terms of how it is that you activate
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: certain practices, certain parts of yourself, how you're trying to
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: bring forth certain things in the world, you have to
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: understand that there certainly is a cost, but there's also,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: as I've already mentioned, you have to become a certain
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: sort of person to be able to manage those things,
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: to be able to live with consequences, to understand that
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: if there are consequences that were brought about by this,
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: that that I'm more responsible for than I realized because
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: I wasn't doing the interior work. And then it's really
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: on me also to try to resolve that somewhere, right?
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: So when I said earlier that you begin with meditation,
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: you know, that's usually the first step that you do
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: because meditation is giving you a type of self-knowledge. It
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: is a form of therapy, if you will, because it's
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: kind of entering into your depths, learning how to enter
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: into your depths, learning how to read these parts of yourselves,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: you know, that are active and how to mitigate or,
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: you know, manage them in some way. And if you
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: don't do that and you practice these things, I think
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of times they bring about as many negative
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: as positive consequences and principle.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: But do you have like a rough figure, like what
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: percentage of the country, you know, considers itself Wiccan or,
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: There was a Pew study, it was probably 10 years ago.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: What is it? If I'm remembering it rightly, so I'd
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: have to look it up, but there was a Pew
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: study where I really saw just a really interesting piece
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: of it. It was only a piece of it that
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: was in an article and the article was on Presbyterianism,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: keeping in mind that much of the East Coast was
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: settled by Presbyterians, right? There's a huge Presbyterian history that
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: we have here, particularly on the East Coast. And that
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: Pew study, I think about 10 years ago, said there
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: are about 1.3 million people who identify as Presbyterians and 1.4
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: who identify as Wiccans. And I wouldn't say Wiccans are
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the most widespread of So there's a broad range here of,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: like I said, of people who are practitioners. I mean,
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot more talk about practice than
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: reality of practice. I think a lot of people are
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: just uncomfortable with the traditional religions and are kind of
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: poking around in these things. And many times people begin
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: in it, and I think partially because of, again, a
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: sort of consumerist mentality that not realizing this takes a
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: lot of years to do this and do this well.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that they give up after a while. So I think
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: it becomes more of a way of speaking about things
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: than doing things. But I would say there was certainly
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: in the heyday of my practice, I would say probably
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: half of the people that I had as patients. And
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: they hadn't come to me because I advertised this. They
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: were just there. And then I found out that they
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: were interested in it. Now, one thing I do do
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: is that I'm not averse to saying, well, here's a
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: practice that comes from you know, Buddhism. Here's an old
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Puritan practice. Here's also from esoteric psychology, you know, so
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I include it as a spiritual tradition, no different from
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: any other when I'm doing therapy because I do consider it,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: you know, basically similar to a lot of other traditions.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: And so I might, you know, people don't mind talking
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: about mindfulness meditation, which comes from the East, but so
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: why wouldn't I? Why would I mind talking about a
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: Western tradition of meditation, which is different from that? So
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: I might get different sorts of things, just include that
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: in spiritual tradition, but I don't advertise this or anything.
• 32:54
  Speaker 1: I just include that as part of suggestions that a
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: patient might do.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: So what are the kinds of changes that an esoteric
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: practice by somebody that has done all his or her
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: sort of meditation and maturation, individuation work, What does this offer?
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Because it's fascinating that you said it's the intentional control
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: of synchronicity. So what are people striving for? What kinds
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: of changes in the external world does it really, one
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: can really achieve this? Because there are plenty of changes
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: I think most of us would love to see in
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: the external world.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: That's right. Do you have any particular in mind? Well,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: never mind.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: If I send you my list, can you.
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: I'll get my best man right on that, yeah. Okay. Well,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: you know, it's still important to understand the inner and
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: outer are correlated to each other, right? Like the old
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: hermetic thing, as above, as so below, as within, so without.
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: So you want to be able to understand it not
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: so much as simply bringing about external things, But also
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: to having a level of consciousness of what your actual
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: desires are, which, as we all know, as therapists, both
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: for ourselves and for our patients, it's actually really hard
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: to know what our desire actually is. Yeah.
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: So part of the meditation work is actually to understand
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: who you are, maybe to ask broader existential questions. Why
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: am I here? Things like that. I mean, those are
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: the kinds of questions you ultimately want to get through
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: with meditation. Understanding that you still run the risk that
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: in your meditation that can be as complex as anything
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: else you do. So you still have to do the
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: kind of work that we do at analysis, whether you're
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: an analysis or not. You have to kind of understand
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: what your structures are. You have to understand the signs
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: of complexes at work and so forth. And as I mentioned,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: there isn't enough emphasis on that in my view. What's
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: used from Jung is the idea of the archetypes, because
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: that gives an idea that we're moving from microcosm to macrocosm.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: The notion of archetypes gives a way of trying to
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: describe energy. So instead of talking about Saturn, you might
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: talk about the Saturn archetype or something, and that's very
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: typical in esoteric circles. And I was actually quite impressed
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: when I first started reading this to realize that Jung
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: was held to much higher esteem in the esoteric world
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: than he is sort of in mainstream psychotherapy, where he
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: doesn't get enough of a listen. It's not as therapeutic work.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: It's the use of the word metaphysical concepts in Jung,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and that's part of the danger that I see in it,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: is that there isn't enough of a reference to the
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: inner work that one has to do. But to go
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: back to your question, Deb, if this kind of inner
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: work happens, it's not only that you have more positive
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: effects in the outer world, it's also that you have
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: a better idea of who you are and what you're
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: willing to sacrifice for those events. So One of the
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: ways in which I've taught about this is actually in
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: a somewhat more psychological tradition that's called New Thought. I
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: don't know if you've ever heard of that. It was
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: an older tradition from the 19th century.
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: New Thought.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: New Thought. And it was very popular here in the
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: United States. Partially, it comes from the traditions of Ralph
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: Waldo Emerson, the Transcendental Movement, and things like this. The
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: latter part of the 19th century, maybe this history is
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: somewhat important here, is that The latter part of the
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: 19th century in the English-speaking world is where you find
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: things like Christian science, a fair amount of spiritualism, new thought,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: and the esoteric revival that's usually associated with the Golden
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: Dawn traditions of the 1880s. So the point here is
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: to understand there's a strong mystical move, and this is
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: prior to psychoanalysis, prior to Jung. So Jung is already
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: an inheritor of these traditions, which didn't only happen in
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the English-speaking world. Which very much influenced early psychoanalysis, and
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: Ellen Berger's wonderful book on the discovery of the unconscious
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: actually gives some of that background. But in the New
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: Thought tradition, you might say the New Thought is something
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: like the psychology of Western esotericism, without necessarily going into
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: things like ritual and other things. It really emphasizes synchronicity
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: without talking about synchronicity. It talks about the creative imagination.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: You create a sort of vision of what purposes you have.
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: And as you try to enhance that through the equivalent
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: of meditation, I don't necessarily call it meditation, but through
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: desire and through enhancing desire, a couple of things begin
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: to happen. Number one, so the theory goes, you're telling
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: your subconscious mind that you want a sort of goal,
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: then your subconscious mind begins to develop the abilities that
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: you have in order to attain that goal. Right. And
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: that the subconscious mind being very rich, it just needs
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: to know that that's what you're after. And so it
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: begins to develop that. And you also become basically larger
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: as a human being because you become more focused on
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: what you think is important because you're not going to
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: put this much energy in something less important. And so
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: if your purposes are smaller, it won't sustain this. And
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: it makes you, forces you basically to ask questions, is
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: there something larger that you're after? Also within that tradition,
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: it's not infrequent for those authors to say, well, sometimes
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: you don't get what you want, but that's because you're
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: not aiming high enough. or because you're not facing it
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: as an obstacle, which is going to give you the
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: abilities to actually get what you want. And so that
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: psychology is very much, is very attuned to what we
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: nowadays call the Western mystery tradition. It's very attuned to
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: it so that it's talking about both self-development, becoming the
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: sort of person who not only can, but really deserves
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: to get the thing that he's after, right? And that's
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: a very specific theory of the subconscious mind, which I
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: think I should just say a few words on because
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit different from the way that we approach. Obviously,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't do this therapeutically, although we might suggest to
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: our patient to do it. But there is a somewhat
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: different vision of the subconscious mind here because it's sort
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: of like this. The best images I can think of
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: actually to talk about it come from one of these traditions,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: and they take two images from Shakespeare. So if you
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: remember Puck from Midsummer Night's Dream, who was a fairy
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: figure who just caused all kinds of problems wherever he went.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: But because it was a comedy, it worked out. So
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: that was the good news. But it's not always like
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: that in life. And then there's The Tempest, where the
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: Magus Prospero has Ariel as... as a fairy figure. Now,
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: those two fairy figures are sort of interesting, because you
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: could take them as representations of the subconscious mind, as
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: one is talking about it here. Puck is the subconscious
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: mind who has no training, has no guidance, nobody's ruling him,
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: and so Puck's just causing problems wherever he goes. because
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: he just follows whatever his whim is, whatever his desire is,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: and so forth. But Ariel in The Tempest is under
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: the training of the Magus, Prospero, who understands that he
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: has to be loving and firm with this very powerful
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: but somewhat wild entity. And so the point would be
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: something like this. One could argue, and the New Thought
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: people would argue this, is that everybody is doing magic.
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: Everyone is doing this because they're relating to their subconscious mind.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: It's just they're doing it unconsciously like Puck or they're
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: doing it consciously and learning how to manage it. So
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: it's not exactly a full-blown control, I would say, because
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: you're not treating your subconscious mind like it's something that
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: just has to be controlled. Rather, in a loving and
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: firm way, you're trying to implant in it, this is
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: what I want. This is what I'm after. These are
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the images that are suggesting what it is I want
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: and also my willingness to become the sort of person
• 40:42
  Speaker 1: who can have it and merits it.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: So that sounds like psychoanalysis to me. People come in,
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: they're troubled by something, you know, a relationship, you know, career, mood,
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: all the things that people come in with. And the
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: kind of work you just described is sort of like
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: what we do in the consulting room of getting in
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: alignment with oneself.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: You know, how much is this an external world problem?
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: How much of it is your own attitude toward it?
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: What might need to be grieved and relinquished? How much
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: is you getting in alignment and really saying, okay, I
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: am going to truly commit to this project or goal?
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: That feels to me like analytic work or individuation. recognizing
• 41:39
  Speaker 3: and then resolving internal conflicts. Whereas for me, the magic
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: is it kind of brings up the idea of causality.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: You know, if I do all this, meditate and do
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: this and get myself in alignment, so on and so forth,
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: then that will transpire.
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. Or something equivalent.
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And I have long been... True confession here. I've
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: long been, I think, the podcast part of this operation.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: I've been the one with the lead feet. I've been
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: the one kind of marching along the dirt road.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: You're a skeptic.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm open to all kinds of adventures and processes,
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: but talk about causality. I think that's the question I'm
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: trying to lift up.
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, fair question.
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean, but the thing is, I mean,
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: I was going to say, but if, John, I really
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: appreciate the way you framed it. It's like the intentional,
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: what did you say? The intentional control of synchronicity. And like,
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: we know that synchronicity is not causal in the normal
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: way that we understand it. And yet there's something, right?
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: I mean, like that, the story that I told, it's not,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: It's not the most remarkable story I've ever heard. I've
• 43:04
  Speaker 2: heard many more remarkable stories, but it was uncanny for sure.
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: So that's interesting in itself, that there's a connection. And
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: whether it's the intention that ego had or the kind
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: of realization that you had, that either way, in a way,
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: would have been okay.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I want to say my recognition wasn't that it
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: would have been okay either way. My recognition was that
• 43:34
  Speaker 2: I still wanted what I wanted, even if it wasn't
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: going to conform to my rosy picture of it. I
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: still wanted them to move up here, right? And that
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: is what happened once I confronted my own one-sided fantasy,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: I would say.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: What I'm thinking about, though, is... was there causality there
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: or is it the connection? Yeah. You know, does one
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: thing actually influence or cause another? And you have to
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: count me doubtful. Synchronicity for sure. Synchronicity, I've had those
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: experiences too, but it wasn't, I don't make the connection
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: in myself that because I was troubled by something and
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: intensely desired and needed something, and then it happened. My
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: story is about being in New York as a relatively
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: young adult and totally overwhelmed by the city and the
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: noise and the subways. It was so much energy coming
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: at me all the time. I couldn't shut it off,
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: and I couldn't find a job. I didn't know what
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: to do, and I was bowled over by the enormity
• 44:57
  Speaker 3: of it, you know. You might as well have asked
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: me to, you know, sort of chart a course through
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: the Pacific Ocean, and I'm going, oh, my God, this
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: thing is so big, I don't know what to do.
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: And sitting on the subway, I saw a newspaper open
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: on the seat across from me, and I didn't have
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: anything with me. This is way before cell phones, folks.
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: There used to be things called landlines.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: What was that again?
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Newspapers.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Newspapers, okay.
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: It's like it was actually paper.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:29
  Speaker 2: Papers were actually papers.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: Printed on paper. It was really the good old days.
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: And so I picked it up and it was the
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: help wanted section. I had nothing else to do and
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: I looked at it. I saw a job. That's my job.
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: That's it. And so it was. Now, Do I think
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: that there was really cause and effect? I mean, it
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: was certainly felt uncanny, felt magical, all the rest of it.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: Did my desire cause something? Did it facilitate something? I
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: want to kind of go down to the granular level
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: here of how actually does it work?
• 46:15
  Speaker 2: Well, that shouldn't be too difficult, John.
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. Exactly. But at least.
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: There are two things I would just say just right
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: off the top of my head. One is that, remember,
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: if I don't know the how, it doesn't mean that
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: it's not so. Right? And so don't assume that it's
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: not so simply because I can't explain the how, right? Oh, sure.
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: Fair enough.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: But the further thing is you have to say that
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: if you function within an esoteric worldview, you function within
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a mythological worldview.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: This doesn't mean true or false. It's precisely metaphysical, so
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: it's not proven in the materialistic sense of proven. You
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: can't go through an experiment in the usual way because
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: you're telling a grand narrative that has to do with
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: the idea that there are beneficial forces that are larger
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: than you and whose purposes are not necessarily personal to you,
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: but who are willing to work with you when they
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: have their own purposes that they have at the same time.
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: So in other words, when you work esoterically, you work
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: in a mythological worldview. I don't think that's specific to that.
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: I think if I'm a Christian praying to a saint,
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: for example, over something, there's synchronicity going on there too.
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Does that mean it only depends on my subconscious mind?
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. Certainly the person doing it doesn't
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: believe so in any case, right? If they're praying to saints,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: they're praying to St. Anthony to get that parking spot, then,
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: you know, then... Am I going to say that it's
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: causality in the sense that the subconscious alone was that? No,
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: I don't have any reason to say that it's one
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: way or the other. But I will say they are
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: living within a mythological worldview. Again, myth doesn't mean false here,
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: but they're telling a grand story about how causality works,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: which is, I think, larger than the way you're asking
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: that question. If you mean physical causality or quasi-physical causality,
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know. But I would say that there is
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: a strong tendency that if you live within a certain
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: myth and Causation seems to happen in a way that's
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: in conformity with that myth. And that's true whether I'm religious,
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: whether I'm esoteric, whatever that is.
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: Say more about that, of what it's like to live
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: within a mythological worldview or a particular myth. I mean,
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: I think each of us has, you know, some mythological
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: dynamic inside us that varies from person to person.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Sure, sure. It varies culture to culture, and there are
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of ways where that varies, right? But myth
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: in the sense that I use it is maybe somewhat
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: different from how Jung does. What I don't understand by
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: myth is the idea that there's a deep response to
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: the divine that characterizes how we understand the world. That's
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: myth in its unqualified sense for me. And then the
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: mythological stories that appeal to us are the ones that
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: seem to express the This deep relationship to the divine,
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: because in this respect, I'm a throwback to the 1890s
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: when all the sociologists and philosophers and theologians held to
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: this idea that human beings respond to the divine. They
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: just do that. They don't actually have an option. They
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: may replace something that's not God with the divine, maybe.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: it's the state, maybe it's capitalism, maybe it's whatever their
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: pet thing is, but that there's a natural orientation that
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: we do that. So by the myth, I mean that
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: some deep, deep level response to the divine and if
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: your meditation practice is successful it should actually bring you
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: below the layers the accrued layers of cultural and familial
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: and other things so that you get down to that
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: mythological place if you get the closer you can get
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: to that the more you're able to articulate a mythological
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: view that also expresses that because what is what is
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: expressing your basic vertical relationship to the divine in my
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: view and so whatever it is that that consists in
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: becomes expressed in that. Like there's a deep difference, just
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: as I said, esoteric practitioner who's an armchair practitioner versus
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: someone who's actually living in the midst of it. But
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: that's true of every esoteric religion too, right? You know,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: you met the sort of, you know, the sort of
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: Christian who it's right in their bones and you know
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: it's in their bones and that's the myth that they're
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: living in and, And life seems to be not only
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: interpretable that way, but there seems to be causes and
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: effects in strange ways that are like that. Is it
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: actual causality? I don't know. But I do know that
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: deep response is, in my view, the most important theme
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: for how their life begins to unfold, whether they're good
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: at it, bad at it, whether they're in it and
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: unhappy about it or not. I mean, all of those
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: things make a difference. So for me, the question is,
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: can we get to that deep enough, close enough to
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: that deep myth and then find a way of articulating that?
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: So interestingly enough, for example, especially in British traditions, you
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: find a lot of esoteric practitioners there who are also
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: explicitly Christian, though they don't usually work with the exoteric churches,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: but there's a profound Christian element and they have no
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: problem with invoking the energies of Saturn and Hermes and
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: so forth because they actually, because of the way in
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: which Jewish Kabbalah has been internalized into the esoteric tradition,
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: it can somehow comprise all of that. So they have
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: a mythological system that wouldn't make any Jew or Christian
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: or anybody else exactly happy, but somehow they have done
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: that because they can tell the myth in such a
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: way that they can bring those things to coherence. When
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: that's the way they actually live, then a lot of
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: these synchronicities just tend to happen and they have an explanation. Now,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: maybe that looks like just a ready-made explanation. Maybe it is,
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: maybe it's not. But what is crucial is to be
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: able to articulate a myth that goes from our deep existential,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: the depths of our psyche, and could somehow give expression
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: to that. And the closer that we do that, I
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: think the more frequently we experience it that way. Is
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: it physical causality or quasi-physical causality? Probably not. But it
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: gives a kind of causal explanation that's satisfactory within the
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: mythological framework that it's in, shows some sort of coherence there.
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: And by the way, this totally gets to the second
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: question that I referenced a few minutes ago. Like, what
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: is the worldview, right, that makes what we're talking about
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: make sense? I think you're answering it really well. But again,
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: I think I just want to say this again, that
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: what you're talking about is people that kind of live
• 52:23
  Speaker 2: in this myth and can kind of be in the
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: flow of it. Certain things happen in the outer world
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: that are in alignment with their desires. In other words,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: it kind of works. I mean, if I can say that.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Well, that's actually the point. And that's one of the
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: things I liked about when I first was exploring esoteric
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: traditions is that in the end, there's a pragmatic dimension
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: to it because you aren't simply praying to the gods
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: and hoping. You're actually trying to make yourself such that
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: you become a co-creator, let's say, with the divine. And
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: in that co-creative act and in that kind of transformational point,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: You also are pretty pragmatic and you find that, you know,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: some things just don't work for me. It doesn't mean
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: it doesn't work for somebody else, but it doesn't work
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: for me. Sometimes I keep at it and then it
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: does begin to work for me, but sometimes it just doesn't.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: There's some people where certain aspects of this, just like
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: in any aspect of an exoteric religion, you know, will
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: focus on certain things and they're just particularly good at
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: it and they're not good at other things. That's all
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: part of this too. But you're pragmatic about it in this, right?
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: If it works, then you remain within the myth because
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the myth is actually giving you a way, a narrative
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: by which you can understand what's happening. And when there's
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: a conflict between the two, then it raises the question is, well,
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: maybe the myth isn't quite right. And then you have
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: to be honest with yourself. Is this really expressing that
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: deeper part of me or is there something else that's
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: going on in it?
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting, isn't it, that this is one
• 53:52
  Speaker 2: of the issues over which Freud and Jung split. Jung's
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: interest in the so-called occult.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, but it's partially that this combination of personal
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: and impersonal that is, I think, was a touchy point
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: for Freud. I think Freud understood this to be an
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: entirely personal analysis. This just has to do with this individual.
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: And when you say, well, yes, it's this individual, but
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: also involved with energies that are not simply individual, that's
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: sort of undermining the principle there. Yeah.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: That's really interesting.
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: That's the difference between the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious, too.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: And like Freud sort of saw it as like fairly
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: atomized and discrete, like it's just the individual instead of
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: there's a way that we're embedded in this larger matrix
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: and we affect it and it acts upon us.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: So when we talk about living in the myth, it's
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: not a particular myth necessarily, right? What we're talking about
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: from a Jungian point of view is being receptive to
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: interacting with, aware of the collective unconscious, the deeper layer
• 55:04
  Speaker 3: that all humans have in common of all our accrued
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: history over probably millions of years of that knowing that
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: we live in a deeper context. There's a wonderful illustration
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: that Jung has. It's a series of peaks and valleys,
• 55:26
  Speaker 3: sort of like imagine an ice cream cone with the
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: point up top of the individual ego and its connection
• 55:35
  Speaker 3: with immediate family and then the larger clan and then
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: the community and the nation. And it gets bigger and
• 55:41
  Speaker 3: bigger and bigger. The context widens and widens until at
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: the very bottom it's The creative fire or something like that,
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: you know?
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 55:53
  Speaker 3: That which we really, we can't imagine. It's too far
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: away for us to connect with it. But that's what
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: I'm asking is that that's what you're talking about in part.
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: In part, yeah. Because like I say, I think every
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: individual gives this kind of deep response to the divine.
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: And it's finding what that is. And that may have
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: layers as deep as what you're talking about, absolutely. Although
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: that won't have only layers like that. Because more often
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: than not, the mythological framework that you articulate in it
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: isn't necessarily going to that level. But certainly, in the end,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: you'd want to say, yeah, it's the creative fire, divine fire,
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: let's say. Mm-hmm. Remember that in Western esotericism, the anthropology
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: is closer to Gnosticism than Jung is. For Jung, the
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: psyche has an image of the self. Western esotericism, there
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: is a divine spark. That's what you're trying to release.
• 56:48
  Speaker 1: And it's that divine spark is really there. It's not
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: simply an image. That's a reality that you're trying to
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: release through your practices and life, and which becomes your
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: other that accompanies you. One of the traditions from which
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: Jung drew early on was German idealistic philosophy, which was
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: very sensitive to these points, the idea that psyche and
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: spirit are not the same thing. And spirit is not
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: simply another version of psyche, even if, like Jung, everything's
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: a universal principle in the end. And it's spirit here
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: that gets unfolded in the esoteric anthropology. It's releasing the
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: inner divine spark, which is also a source of our commonality.
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: And why we can play something like mediators between the
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: divine and the cosmos.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: You know, it seems to me that really one way
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: that we could talk about this that's very simpatico with
• 57:48
  Speaker 2: being a Jungian is kind of the power of the
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: unconscious and the power of what Jung called the objective psyche.
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: And that, you know, talk about a myth. I mean,
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: I suppose I'm living in the myth of Jung, that
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: this is powerful and mysterious and can't just be subject
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: to my ego will.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: That's exactly, that's a point that I think we're sort
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: of circling around is the difference between being in service,
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: in touch with and aligned with the deeper unconscious, the
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: divine versus, and now I'm aligned with all that and
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: I want to make something happen. I wish to intentionally
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: control other powers, other forces, the control of synchronicity. So
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: they're a little bit in opposition to each other.
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: It's tension.
• 58:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's... Right, tension.
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: Well, versus the sort of thy will be done to...
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: My will be done.
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: But let me just twist the screw, just one more rotation, Deb,
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: because we talk about the ego self-axis. And the idea
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: behind the ego self-axis is that the ego has some
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: means of connection with and interchange with and dialogue with
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: the self, with a capital S. And so in that sense,
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: if you have a good, healthy ego self-axis, what the
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: ego wants is often really bathed in the juices of
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: the self. And we see this, right, where the ego
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: aligns with what the self wants. I mean, I think
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: we've probably all had moments in our own lives like that.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: We've seen this happen with our analysis hands. And when
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: that happens, it's like, like there's nothing stopping you. And
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: things do kind of line up like magic. So I
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: don't know that they're in opposition. I think what Jung
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: might say is as long as the ego makes sure
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: that it's in good contact with the self, then that
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: ego can act in the world in a very powerful way. Yeah.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: I totally agree with all of that.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: And I would call it psychoanalysis.
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: Well, psychoanalysis is the means, but here the point would
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 1: be that... Ah, okay. And the way that you were
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: posing that earlier, Deb, it made it like it's either
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: thy will be done, so I'm sort of passive in that,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: or else it's ego in a negative sense. Lisa's saying
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: there's something in between that, I take it. There's something
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: that can originate in the ego in the sense that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: it's my choice and this is the direction I'm going.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: But it doesn't mean I haven't sacrificed at the altar
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: of the divine ahead of time. And if I've done
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: that and willing to do that, the ego self-axis, again,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: would be a way of describing this release of the
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: divine spark in us. That is, we become more sensitive
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: and more in dialogue with it. That's also maybe where
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: Puck and Ariel give us a sense for this too, right,
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: is that In the case of Prospero, Prospero is able
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 1: to manage without controlling in the sense of just defining
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: what has to be done for Ariel. He tells Ariel
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: what he needs, and Ariel finds the way of bringing
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: it there. So he doesn't control every step of the way.
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: That would be more like ego in the negative sense,
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: I think, that you're talking about, Deb. Here, the point
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: would be, I make whatever changes I need to make.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: And I discern if this is really my will and
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: what I'm willing to do for it. I don't necessarily
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: predetermine how it happens. That would be much more of
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: a control model where I need it this way. This
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 1: is how it has to have these effects. That's not
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: really what I'm doing. I'm still playing the role of
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: co-creator with the divine. And I'm also partially discovering what's
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: going to happen. It's not simply subject to my will.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: So the word that comes up for me around all
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: this is that it's a process of alignment.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: And that actually works for me, clicks something into place
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: in a way that feels real and feels right and.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 1: Possible.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: And if you'll forgive me, not so magical.
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: Deb, you just gotta yuck our yum.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: What are you doing?
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: I'm not used to being in the role of the provocateur,
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: but I.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: Have to say.
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: It may be that the conception of magic that people
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: are working with is usually not very realistic because it
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: doesn't really take in dead seriously this idea of microcosm, macrocosm,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: that we're connected in these various ways. We're not just
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 1: out to get something. We're out to be something and
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: to be the sort of person who wants to also
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: be worthy and to merit even the thing that we're after.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: So that's a lot more than Harry Potter-ish, you know,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: flicking a wand, you know, or something along those lines,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: or that's what I want, so I'm just going to
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: get it. So the sorcerer tries to do that and
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: usually pays a heavy price for it. But the authentic
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: magician is one who's very attuned to the cosmos and
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: feels him or herself to be somehow in their work,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: also to be bringing about ends and currents and so forth.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: That's also part of the cosmic plan.
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, what I'm really hoping to do is
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 3: sort of bring some of these things with different language
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: and so on and so forth to actually help people
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 3: envision the possibility of magic, of yes, we can all
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: do some of this.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Better to do it consciously than unconsciously. Yeah. Oh, yes.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 3: And then there's that.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the thing about it, it is if
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: you're a real adherent of the Western mystery tradition and
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: you're really practicing, it is actually a lot of work, right?
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: It's not, you know, it's not a shortcut.
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, exactly. And usually when you think, Something
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: doesn't happen by magic. People are thinking in that other
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: kind of Hollywood-ish sense of magic. But, you know, this
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: is really a spiritual practice that one does. And that
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: you're constantly confronted with the ways in which you still
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: have to do more of that spiritual practice, I believe.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: So it's certainly not for me. my experience, it's not easy.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: And so you often go down really the wrong rabbit
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: hole time and time again because you think you've done
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the work in this area, even though usually the universe
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: is telling you over and over again, you've got to
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: go back and do this and you're not seeing it
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: or you don't want to hear it.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: Right, right. And it's interesting too how it kind of
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: aligns with dreams in a way because, you know, sometimes
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: dreams tell you things you don't want to hear, but
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: it it sort of feels like you're dialoguing with the
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: same force. You know, it's like, no, you don't have
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: that yet. You think you've got the magical answer, but
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: I'm going to show you in your dreams that that's not.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: That that's not, you know, the easy answer to your dilemma.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: But I wanted to bring us back to Jung. One
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: of my thoughts about this topic was that when I
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: remember when I read the Red Book, it's a strange document.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: You think?
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I was preparing for this. Someone somewhere online said
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: that the Red Book could be seen as kind of
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: like a psychoanalytic grimoire, which I thought was interesting. But,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 2: you know, he's doing all these acts of imaginations, which
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: is sort of like an esoteric technique, actually, with all
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: these figures.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 2: There's a section called The Gift of Magic. Now, forgive me,
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 2: because it's a dialogue between him and And S, and
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know who S is. It may be Salome,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: but I just didn't have a chance to look it
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: up before we started. But it's called The Gift of Magic.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: And he's given this black rod. And so S says
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: it's a magical rod. And Jung says, what should I
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: do with magic? Is the magical rod a misfortune? Is
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 2: magic a misfortune? And S says, yes, for those who
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: possess it. And Jung says, that sounds like the sayings
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 2: of old. How strange you are, my soul. What should
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: I do with magic? It must be Salome if he's
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: calling it her soul. And she says, magic will do
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: a lot for you. And he says, I'm afraid you're
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 2: stirring up my desire and misunderstanding. You know that man
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: never stops craving the black art and things that cost
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: no effort. And then S says, magic is not easy
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: and it demands sacrifice. And Jung says, does it demand
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 2: the sacrifice of love, of humanity? If it does, take
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 2: the rod back. And S says, don't be rash. Magic
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: doesn't demand that sacrifice. It demands another sacrifice. And Jung says,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: what sacrifice is that? And S says, the sacrifice that
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: magic demands is solace. Which I think is really interesting
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: because basically, the way I understand that about solace being
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: what is demanded is, if you're really living in this
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 2: kind of magical way that we've been talking about, you
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: are taking a kind of a radical responsibility for your
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: own life. And that is not comforting. There is no
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: comfort because you have to deal with the, you have
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: to deal with the outcome. You have to, you know,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: you have to, there, there's, there's no denial. You can't
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 2: be in denial. You have to try to look at
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: things with incredible clarity and responsibility. And that, And that
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 2: is not comfortable.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: No, no, I think that's exactly right. And that is
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: certainly true, that when things are not working in the
• 1:07:38
  Speaker 1: way that you expect them to work, they don't seem
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: to be moving in the direction that you want. Your
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: first thing has to be, what am I not doing?
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: And that isn't something that most people want to do,
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: as we know. I mean, all of the kinds of,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: you know, whether naive or serious narcissism that we have
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: always wants to blame it like something happened to me.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: And that may not be entirely false, but it's not
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: usually entirely true either. And so doing that sort of
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 1: work is very crucial on this. This is why I
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier on that it's one of the things that, again,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: as a psychoanalyst, it's somewhat troubling to see some of
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: the things that people are doing or talking about magically
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: because they are either thinking that it's easier or thinking
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: that when something occurs, that they had no role in
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: And there's always a hidden narcissism there, isn't it, that
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 1: you always accuse the outer. And narcissism and the expansion
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: of narcissism is arguably its largest risk because to become
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: grandiose because you're experiencing that you can actually affect change
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: in the world is, of course, one of the main
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: things that comes with it. So exercising humility or not
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: acting out of one's resentment or, you know, those kinds
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: of things, you know, those kinds of temptation, you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: can often come from it. We don't have to go
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: down this route, but you can even wonder, is it
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: greater power or is it greater openness to divine energies flowing?
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: through you that's even a an open question i mean
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: i would say that one of the more important contemporary
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: streams of esotericism author named rj stewart i think he's
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: i think he's doing some very important work about the
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: realization that you know really what we're trying to do
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: is to try to invite energies and It's not so
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: much our will, as Crowley puts it. It's really more
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: the idea that we are, again, my word is co-creating
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 1: with those energies, but it's really to try to draw
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: those energies into what he calls the sphere of art.
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: That's a thing of its own. R.J. Stewart is a
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: very interesting esotericist in this way because he recognized that
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of the classic statements of esotericism since the
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: esoteric revival had all been moving from earth upward. But
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: he was also a musician who's very familiar with Celtic
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: folk music and also a composer. And he realized that
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: these lyrics often have initiatic teachings about an underworld initiation.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: That sort of the upward movement has a downward movement
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: because after all, Part of the idea is that we're
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: all basically made up of the same stuff as stars,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 1: but the closest star we have is actually the core
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: of the Earth. So we have to do a downward
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: initiation before we do an upward initiation if we're not
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: going to be imbalanced. And you can see where that
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: might balance out also a kind of Mother Earth to
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: Father Sky image there. There's a balancing going on. So
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: I think Stuart's work is extremely important for understanding the
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: more authentic meanings here of you know, starting in the
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: 60s and 70s, the New Age movement begins, which begins
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: to kind of be a little bit more capitalist with
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: this sort of stuff. And so all kinds of stuff
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: just gets repeated and said again.
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 2: Including Jung, right? Like the New Age movement really borrows
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 2: from Jung.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: That's right. But without too much critical thought and all
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: of that sort of thing. And I think Stuart's work
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: is a lot of kind of bringing us back to
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: our center, many of us who are esoteric practitioners in
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of important ways.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, this is just so interesting, John, and
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 2: I'm Yeah, I feel like we could go. Have we
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 2: missed anything?
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: There might have been one or two things.
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: All it has taken is an hour and 20 minutes
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: to cover the entire waterfront of magic.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: That's right, it's all done. All over but the Weebans, yep.
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: But, you know, as Lisa's question stands, have we missed
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: anything you really wanted to say?
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 1: No, I think... What I like about our discussion today
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: is that it revolved around this synchronicity and the question
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: of whether there's a way of using or managing or
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: relating to synchronicity that isn't about just controlling it and
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: at the same time not just being passive with respect
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: to it, right? So we're trying to get to an
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: in-between place where our relationship to what Jung calls the
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: self or the divine spark, to use the more esoteric
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: traditional language with that, that relationship is healthy enough that
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: one can actually make that move. It's kind of an
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: active spirituality, so it's rather different from the more passive.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: It's primarily through prayer that you do it. Maybe prayer
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: is a safer route, but it may not be one
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: that satisfies everyone. So to feel that you're a little
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: bit more active, but then you have to run those
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: risks of dealing with your grandiosity and other things. But
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: I think ending up with this discussion about whether, you know,
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: is it really that we're magicians or more like mediators,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: as Stuart would put it? I think is an important
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: place to end this as a way of consideration around it.
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: That's great.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Today's dreamer is a 39-year-old woman who
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: is a teacher, and she titled her dream, It's My Party.
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: It's My Party. I am at a party being thrown
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: by one of my best friends. However, this party is
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 2: to celebrate me, not my birthday or any life event,
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: just celebrating my existence. It's also being held outside on
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: a shadowy hillside, which is peppered with trees and the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: occasional structure. It's nighttime, but we can see everyone's face
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: by the moonlight. I'm having a good time socializing with
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: various friends and acquaintances. with our kids occasionally running up
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: to show or ask us something and then disappearing again
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: to do their thing. I look around and notice X,
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: a man I used to train with in a recreational
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 2: sports context, even though no one else here has ever
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 2: met him. The friend throwing the party tells me that
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 2: she invited him because she wants to give him a
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: chance to tell me his feelings. He's dressed a bit
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: like a Roman legionnaire, and is keeping completely to himself,
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: I continue socializing, happy for him to see me shine
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: in a setting where I am light and positive, yet
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 2: also in control. He never approaches me. So, she says
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: for context, I had this dream recently, about a year
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: and a half after splitting up with my ex-husband, although
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 2: we had struggled mightily for several years before that. I
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 2: hadn't felt capable of moving out due to financial and
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 2: child-related reasons. Although I still mourn the loss of the
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: future I thought we were building, I am generally happy
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: with my life now and am confident that I made
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: the right choice, even if I struggle with some maternal
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 2: guilt and I don't know how I feel about the
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: viability of any future partnerships. Main feelings in the dream,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: she says, I felt pleasantly buzzed and at peace initially.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 2: It seemed only natural that a party was being thrown
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: for me. When I noticed X and realized why my
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: friend had invited him, I felt anticipation, but at the
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 2: same time I was distracted by the other attendees and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 2: my role as guest of honor. When X didn't approach me,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: despite knowing no one else there, I was disappointed. And
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 2: here's some more associations. The friend throwing the party is
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 2: a close confidant in real life, and I genuinely enjoy
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 2: playing the role of a social butterfly at her soirees,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 2: although I am not a big partier otherwise and hate
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: throwing parties of my own. Also, to me, X is
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: a loaded figure. I joined the recreational sports mentioned above
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 2: as a way to cope with my frustration in my marriage,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 2: and it proved essential in helping me see myself in
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 2: a new light learn to deal with discomfort, and make
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: new connections. I was not, however, expecting to fall in
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 2: love with X, a recently married new father, after a
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: year or so of training with him. I suspect my
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: feelings were reciprocated, but I knew I could not act
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: upon them. Instead, I used this realization as an impetus
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: to take ownership of my own situation and end my marriage.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 2: X doesn't train anymore, though I still wonder about him
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 2: on a regular basis. Mostly, I am grateful for having
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 2: met him, even if he doesn't know just how pivotal
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 2: his role has been in my life. As for my
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: association with the setting, I grew up in the flatlands
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: and live in a flat city, although my childhood home
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: was at the top of a hill. The nighttime setting
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 2: is not really my element, as I know I make
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 2: better choices in daylight, and I tend to go to
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 2: sleep early for work. The Roman legionnaire costume reminds me
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 2: of the Asterix and Obelix comics or Rick Reardon's Heroes
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 2: of Olympus series, both of which I spend a lot
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 2: of time reading with my son. So I associate that
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: more with comedy or fantasy than with the military element.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: So I could just jump in. I think it's a
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: great animus dream.
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: Perfect.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 2: Right? It's a really lovely animus dream. And It sounds
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 2: like she, you know, X became an anonymous figure when
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 2: she was dealing with the marriage. And she, it sounds
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: like kind of worked with it very psychologically. She didn't
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: have an affair with X, which would have been kind
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: of concretizing it. But whatever it was that got evoked, constellated,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: projected upon or whatever, however you want to think about it,
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 2: I think it's probably a combination of those things. It
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 2: helped clarify herself to herself. And let her make this
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: very big decision on a kind of expanded basis. And
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: so he appears in the dream.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 3: Pretty much on a pretty similar page. But here she is.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 3: She's at a party. It's there to celebrate her. And
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: where is this party? Well, it's outside in nature in
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: a shadowy, click, hillside.
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 2: Good point.
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: So in case the dream maker hasn't made it really clear,
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 3: it's nighttime. Okay, so now, okay. But we can see
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 3: everybody's face by the moonlight. So we already know what realm,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: you know, all these events are taking place in, you know,
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: the realm of shadowy stuff. And everything is pretty much okay.
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: You know, this is pretty nice.
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: There's a party to celebrate her death. everyone's having a
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: good time. Our dream ego is having a good time.
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 3: Kids are running up. I mean, it's a wonderful sort
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: of picnic kind of setting where all kinds of lovely
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: things are happening without anybody having to make any big effort.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: And then if all that happens, I look around and
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: notice X. And the friend says, our shadow figure friend says,
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: I invited him because I wanted him to tell you
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 3: his feelings. So how does our dream ego get in
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 3: touch with our man dressed as a Roman legionnaire? Well,
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 3: and that's pretty distinctive. She associates it to stories she told,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: you know, has read to her son as fantasy figures
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 3: and so on. But hey, there he is in your dream.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 3: The dream maker could have featured anybody.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:19:44
  Speaker 3: And instead he picks X where there was a fantasy relationship.
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: He was somebody very attractive and so on, and he's
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 3: dressed as a Roman legionnaire. Okay, that's not the same
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: as those fantasy figures. I would be wildly interested in
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: hearing about, you know, what do we imagine? What's a
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: Roman legionnaire to you?
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: Or a dreamer?
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 3: Really, really great. But then we have, he's keeping entirely
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: to himself. So even though the shadow figure wants to
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 3: sort of be the broker, the fixer-upper, hey, I invited
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: him so he could talk to you. You talk to him. No,
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: matchmaking is not happening today. I continue socializing. Here's where
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 3: the dream ends, which we always pay attention to. I
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: continue socializing, happy for him to see me shine in
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 3: a setting where I'm light and positive, yet also in control.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 3: And the clue is, she's happy for him to see
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 3: me shine.
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 2: I'm okay.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: I'm okay, even if we don't connect.
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: Well, that's lovely reading.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: We see my lead-footed tendencies in going methodically from the
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: beginning to the end.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: No, I think that that's good. And I would also
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: point out that in the association, she talks about being
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: brought up in a hill and being in the flatland.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: Here she's on the side of the hill. She's in
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: an in-between. And there's also, as you point out, what
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: we usually call conscious and unconscious or conscious and subconscious
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: was in the esoteric tradition called solar and lunar. So
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: she's in a lunar consciousness here and realizing that there's
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 1: a light in the lunar consciousness. So this is saying
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: something about probably some compensation that she has to do
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: because she says, well, I'm not comfortable there. It's not
• 1:21:49
  Speaker 1: where I make good decisions. And yet this seems like
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: it's almost an invitation. to start entering into that lunar consciousness,
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: to notice that the light that is actually on people,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 1: that it isn't just darkness. There's also this peculiar light
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 1: that the moon shines on us. There's a lunar element
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: to that. But also this figure that you're... I'm just
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: thinking of the poor dude coming to a place to
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: his feelings and thinks that dressing up as a Roman
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: legion was the way to heaven and here. And so
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: he's so other. He's almost like a deus ex machina here.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: He just sort of falls in on this. I was
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: just going to say, though, she related to the military.
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: It seems to me it's more martial than simply military,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: meaning that, like Mars, it represents maybe things like focus,
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 1: like she said, being in control a little bit. Maybe
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: she is more in contact with it than she realizes.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: He may be isolated, so the version of it there
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: might be isolated. But I wonder if the expectation was
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 1: that this was personal or it's a little bit more impersonal.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: It's about her capacity to relate to the marshal, not
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: necessarily to him. And that's why he doesn't reach out
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: in the dream. That's interesting. And that would maybe confirm
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: this anima animus way of thinking that it's less about
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: him than he's an occasion of other potentials with the soul.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 1: And she's happy when she's in contact with it, so
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 1: she doesn't need to reach out to him.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: Right, right. You know, It is a really interesting and
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: actually pretty complex dream. And first of all, I just
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 2: want to say the kind of feeling tone of it.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: I'm happy. I'm a little buzzed. It's great. I've got
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: all these friends. There is a real kind of it
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: does feel like the dream is kind of celebrating her
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: a little bit to come through a divorce and say,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 2: you know what? this is hard. I'm more in it.
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 2: And I feel like I made the right decision there.
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: That is that is a kind of time for psychic
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: celebration to have gone through something difficult to have kind
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 2: of tested yourself, but to feel like, wow, I did
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 2: the right thing. That's that's a real kind of psychological accomplishment.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: And in some way, I think the dream is is
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 2: celebrating that. But but it But as you both kind
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: of talk about the tension of here's this guy, but
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 2: and something doesn't quite happen that she thought that at
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: least her conscious ego thought was going to happen. But
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: but John, I think you're saying like even the fact
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: that he's there is significant, you know, like there's some
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 2: way where there's an expectation about some circuit that's going
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 2: to get closed and it doesn't get closed. And yet
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 2: and yet there he is. And it's it's wonderful to
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 2: know that he's watching. I wonder, John, kind of picking
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 2: up on what you're saying a little bit, if the
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: dream isn't a bit of an invitation, you know, you
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: were able to meet this other part of yourself through
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 2: this experience of training with X and that helped you
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: move into this new stage of your life. But there
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 2: may be more work there. may be more yet to do.
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 2: You kind of, you got to this one spot, you
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: made this decision, you left the marriage. It may be
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: that there's more self-development in that same direction.
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: Yes. Yeah, that's how I was, that's how it felt
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: to me when I read it. Also that, you know,
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: the legions are very archetypal within the deep unconscious mind,
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: not that we talk about them all the time. But
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: one thing that's not, generally known about the Roman Empire
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: is that they were extremely pious. And we don't necessarily
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: think of conquerors as being incredibly pious, but just to
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: give you an example, before the Roman Empire, when they'd
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: send an army to conquer someone, the priests in Rome
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: first tried to convince whoever the major god is of
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: that country or group to come into the Roman pantheon.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: The idea being that if the god joins us, then
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: we'll be victorious in this. And the general had to
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: do certain rituals after that was done. And it was
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: only after that, as a rule, that the Romans sent
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: their armies. So I'm just bringing this up that, you know,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the Romans, however hard this might be for us to understand,
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: they really thought conquest to be a destiny that they had.
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just, it wasn't simply... the economic materialist things.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 1: They really thought of it as a destiny and the Legion,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: you know, Legionnaire would represent that as would Mars, you know,
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 1: the kind of martial energy that's there. So what I
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: was wondering when I read it is also whether there's
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: a spiritual component, a spiritual invitation here that's implicit in this,
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: not that it would necessarily have to do with the
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: personal associations, but would have to do with this specific
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: martial element. I mean, even training, you know, together for
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 1: a sport of some kind. And in those days, you
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 1: did games for the gods, right? So that was a
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: very pious sort of thing. So I keep wondering if
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 1: there's an implicit act of piety here that's being invited
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: as well. It's just maybe where my associations went.
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungielife.com. If
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 2: good review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 2: your podcasts. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and make sure
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 2: to click the notification bell to be alerted whenever we
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 2: upload videos and keep up with all things TJL by
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: following us on Instagram, Facebook, X, and TikTok.