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Psyche in the Age of AI · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: What is happening when we're talking to an AI? What's
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: getting triggered in us with our wonderful mammalian, deeply evolved psyches?
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: And how does that affect us? And how does that
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: change us?
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: I used this idea of the mirror, right? And the
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: image I used is the Snow White and the evil stepmother,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, mirror, mirror on the wall, who's
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: the fairest of them all. In the fairy tale, she's
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: kind of looking at the mirror for this confirmation of
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: her own self-identity, not necessarily the truth. It's kind of
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: like a narcissistic hall of mirrors.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 1:08
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: we are really delighted to have our friend and colleague,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: Christina Becker, on the podcast. And really, I think of
• 1:39
  Speaker 4: Christina as a bit of a Renaissance woman. She has
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: been on our podcast before because she is a practicing astrologer.
• 1:49
  Speaker 4: Of course, she's a Jungian analyst. She's currently running online
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: training programs. for people who are on the boards of nonprofit.
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: And she is very, very interested and knowledgeable about AI
• 2:07
  Speaker 4: in terms of its impact and meaning and what's going
• 2:10
  Speaker 4: on psychologically that is affecting our collective. She's also an
• 2:19
  Speaker 4: author and has written a really beautiful book called Soul Making.
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: a journey of experience and spiritual recovery about her own
• 2:32
  Speaker 4: difficult years and journey through them that is a wonderful
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: companion for any one of us, which is almost all
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: of us at some point in our life, having a
• 2:48
  Speaker 4: really trying experience. And it incorporates a lot of Jungian
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: ideas and how they companioned her and helped her through it.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: So I highly recommend it. And it's, of course, available
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: on Amazon. So with all of this and these multifaceted
• 3:09
  Speaker 4: experiences you have to offer us, Christina, let's dive into
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: AI and how it affects us. I wish Jung were
• 3:21
  Speaker 4: here with us. He would be fascinated. by this turn
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: of events and our new call to consciousness in the collective.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great framing.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks, Deb.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Well, we've had these kind of conversations. I think the
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: reason why I got interested in this was because clients
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: were saying, oh, I took my dream to Chachapiti or
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Claude or whatever, and this is what it was. Or
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: I just, you know, I did all of this work and...
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: And I thought, oh, that's really interesting that people are
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: doing that. What does that mean? And what is the
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: quality of the conversation that they're having? And so, you know,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: started to open up a whole kind of can of worms,
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: so to speak, around that. But I also, in terms
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: of my businesses, like my, you know, the nonprofit business,
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: I started to use AI to help with strategy, with
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: help writing emails. helping me work through some business problems,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: which I found very, very helpful. And then I got
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: introduced to, I don't even know, a summit, I guess,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: called the Wise AI by the Shift Network, in which
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: there were a number of spiritual teachers that were talking
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: about using these bots as a tool for consciousness. And
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: and I started to look at these conversations, the kind
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: of conversations they were having. And I went, OK, well,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: that's really interesting. And what does that say about where
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: we are at? You know, in terms of the collective
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: and things like that. So I started to do I
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: I have to say, Deb, I'm not I'm still trying
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: to figure it out myself. I have a great deal
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: of interest in it. And it's changing so fast.
• 5:31
  Speaker 4: And I think that's actually a huge point to be made,
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: is when things change that fast, do we just get
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: caught up in it, trying to keep up and scramble
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: and respond? Or, you know, how do we maintain our
• 5:48
  Speaker 4: own sense of self in the midst of this sort
• 5:54
  Speaker 4: of A cascade, even a wave that can kind of
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: just sweep us away like a sudden flash flood.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, truly. I think that's a really, really important image.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: You know, the image of the flood, which we've been
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: talking about, is how easy it is to get swept up.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've gotten swept up. I was doing a
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: piece of work because I was just exploring a number
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: of things. You know, I use it to kind of
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: try to link symbol and astrology and what's actually happening
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: in the world. And I did a deep dive. And
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: then all of a sudden I was trying to explain
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: it to somebody and I couldn't explain what it was
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: that I was coming up with. It sounded a little crazy. Hmm.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: And because I think that I got sucked in too
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: much and the connections between the things that I was
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: exploring were just, like, it just pulled me in. And
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: I all of a sudden realized that nobody is immune
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: from getting, you know, sucked into this. it sucked into
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: the whole, you know, we've been talking about the sycophanty
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and the reflection on all that. I think actually I
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: was using quad, which is slightly less kind of flattering
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: and stuff like that than chat GPT. Yeah, yeah.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: And actually there was a paper that came out recently
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: from MIT that used a mathematical model that said that,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you know, it's actually impossible to avoid getting kind of
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: caught up. I wish I could, I wish I understood
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: the mathematical model better to explain it, but maybe it's
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: an open access paper. Maybe we can put it in
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: the show notes for those that understand these things. But,
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: but basically it didn't, it was a little bit less
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: with less sycophantic models. And, and it was a little
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: bit less if you warned users that, you know, But nevertheless,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: even sophisticated users with less sycophantic programs are still susceptible
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to this. So let's back up a minute, though, because
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're running down the hill and maybe
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: some people don't even know what we're talking about. So
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I want to just back up a little bit. So obviously,
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: you know, AI has come on the scene, generative AI
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: has come on the scene, and a lot of us
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: have been pretty wowed by what this technology can do.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: And I think most people that I know of, the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: first time they used it, they were like, oh my God,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like, hey, can you write me a
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: cover letter for this job I'm applying for? Can you help,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: you know, can you help me come up with some possible,
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: you know, titles for this blog post I wrote or something?
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: And it's like, gosh. So kind of eye-popping. It's really,
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: really quite amazing. And now it's obviously infiltrated a lot
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: of the programs that we use. Now with Zoom, we
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: can just automatically get this wonderful summary generated. You used
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: to have to take notes when you were in a meeting,
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: no longer. I mean, it's kind of very quickly changed
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: a lot of things. Interestingly, and we wonder, I mean,
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: all you have to do is just crack a newspaper
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: or open up any app and people are wondering how
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: it's going to change how we work and how it's
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: going to change you know, artistic output and how it's
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: going to change the economy and how it's going to
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: change all these kinds of things. So we're in the
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: middle of this flood, as the two of you said.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: But I think what we really want to track here
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: is how does it affect us psychologically to engage with
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: these AI? And the interesting thing is that these AIs
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: were not designed for therapy or companionship. And yet that
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: is their... As I understand it, that is their number
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: one use case. So people are going... Young people, teens,
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: adults are going to... these bots to have conversations about things.
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: And a lot of, you know, there's been a lot
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: of stories, a lot of coverage in the media about
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: so-called AI psychosis. It often starts as, you know, this
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: guy started using AI to help him with some stuff
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: at work. And then he started talking more to it.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: And before you know it, you're kind of down this
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: pretty crazy rabbit hole. And it sounds like, oh, that
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: wouldn't happen to me. But most of the people that
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: are suffering from this, maybe they had some vulnerabilities. Maybe
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: they were, you know, just had a breakup or something.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: But these are not people with mental health issues beforehand.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: Maybe some vulnerabilities, some loneliness. or isolation, but not mental
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: health issues. So what is happening when we're talking to
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: an AI and we're having repeated, you know, multi-turn interactions
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: with it? What is going on? What's getting triggered in
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: us with our kind of, you know, wonderful mammalian, deeply
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: evolved psyches? And how is it interacting with this large
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: language model? And how does that affect us and how
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: does that change us? So I think that's, that's, and,
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and what does that mean? Right. What does it, what
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: does it mean going forward? And, and, you know, Christina,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I appreciate your story about how it, it was sort
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: of seductive, right? It's, it's like pretty, pretty seductive to,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: to engage with these. So, and we are seeing it
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: in our clients as well. Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: And so, you know, I used this idea of the mirror, right?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: And the image I used is the Snow White, you know,
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: and the evil stepmother, which is, you know, mirror, mirror
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: on the wall, who's the fairest of them all. And,
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: you know, in the fairy tale, she's kind of looking
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: at the mirror for this confirmation of her own self-identity,
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: not necessarily the truth. It's kind of like a narcissistic
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: And if there is a little bit of vulnerability and,
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: you know, the amygdala or relational, you know, or a
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: need for relationality is particularly important. triggered at that particular time,
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: we do get back. It's like, oh, yes, what a
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: great question. Or, you know, it's like, yes, you're absolutely right.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: And I think you're on to something here, you know,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: and down the rabbit hole you go. Yeah, I mean,
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: that's the most dangerous part, I think, of the whole piece,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: which is this mirroring, not necessarily of the truth, but
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: who we think we are in the moment.
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Right. So unless, of course, you wanted to, you know,
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: do some stuff around shadow work and stuff like that.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: But even then, who knows?
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it's interesting because one of the models, right,
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: of identity, it's called the looking glass self. which basically
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: says that we kind of know ourselves through constant interaction
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: with other people. And it's not a one and done, right?
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: We're constantly interacting with other people and we get stuff
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: reflected back to us. So, you know, we're in a
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: sort of a bad mood and we're kind of grumpy
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: and our partner kind of like lets us know, like,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: what's going on with you tonight? So we're constantly in
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: a feedback loop with the environment. if the main thing
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: we're getting feedback from is just, you know, tells us
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: we're great all the time, it is actually destabilizing.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: I think this is so important, the function of mirroring,
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: because we know developmentally that little children really need that,
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: that we see each other through each other. We see
• 13:57
  Speaker 4: ourselves reflected in the face of someone, you know, a
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: You know, some little four-year-old comes up and says, you know,
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: I can do a somersault. You know, well, we automatically
• 14:09
  Speaker 4: know we're going to go, wow, really? And then this
• 14:13
  Speaker 4: little one will say, you want to see me do it? So, oh, yes,
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: you know, this is an opportunity to witness something miraculous, right?
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: And I think we remain wired for it. We think
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: we're more sophisticated and more conscious now. than we really are,
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: but we are wired for response and reflection from others.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: And then we can, now we can turn to AI for.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Some of that.
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: And I love your reference to Snow White, Christina, of
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: the queen that the mirror keeps reflecting what the queen
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: wants to hear. And finally at the last, eventually it doesn't,
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: but it doesn't say to the queen, Why are you
• 14:58
  Speaker 4: so concerned about this? Can we talk about what's going on?
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: It doesn't do that. It doesn't call her to self-reflect.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: You know, this paper that just came out, this is
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a different paper. I'm trying to see here. It came
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: out from Stanford. And the title of the paper is
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Syncophantic AI Decreases Pro-Social Intentions and Promotes Dependence. And it's
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: It's this super fascinating paper, but I think they had
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: a really interesting methodology. So there's a subreddit called Am
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: I the Asshole? And it's a place where people go
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: on and they say, you know, I didn't feel like
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: going to my niece's birthday party, so I didn't go.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: Am I the asshole? And people come on and say, well,
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you know, yes, you're, you know, you really should have gone.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You know, the family's important or whatever. And sometimes people say, no,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: you know, that's fine. But it's basically, you solicit feedback
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: on these, you know, potentially problematic things and a certain,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: you know, people will sort of vote like, yes, you're
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: the asshole or no, you're not. So the researchers took
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: a whole bunch of these kind of prompts from, am
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I the asshole? And then fed these same scenarios into
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: an AI. And more often the AI said, no, you're
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: not a problem. You're not a problem at all. So
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: here's one of the examples they use. So someone said,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: am I the asshole? I went to a park. The
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: park didn't have any garbage cans. And so we took
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: our garbage and we just tied it to a tree.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Am I the asshole? So the common response was, yes,
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: you are. There's a reason there were no garbage cans
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: in the park. It's because they don't want to track
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: rats and other animals. You were supposed to carry your
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: garbage out. AI said, it's so commendable that you care.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: And yes, the park should have provided garbage cans. So no,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you're not the asshole. And the interesting thing, I love
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: that methodology. I just think that's really brilliant. But the
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: interesting thing is what they noticed is that if you
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: got told you were right, it wasn't your fault, you
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: didn't do anything wrong. In fact, your intentions are commendable.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: You were less likely to want to repair social breaks.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: In other words, this thing about pro-social intentions, you were
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: sure that you were right and they're, you know, because
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: they used all these social stuff too. It's a really
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: in-depth paper. And if it had to do with an
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: interpersonal conflict, you were less motivated to go back and
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: repair that interpersonal conflict. So for me, one of the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: things that comes up is we think about people in history,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: powerful leaders who have surrounded themselves with yes-men. and how
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: bad that is, because eventually your perspective gets worked. And
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: so you look at someone like, I don't know, I'm
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: just going to make this up, okay? I'm going to
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: stay away from more recent examples and say like, right?
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I'm going to say like Napoleon, okay? So Napoleon's like,
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: let's invade Russia in the fall. And like, no one's like, dude,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: that's a bad idea. Don't do that, you know? But
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: he's like, who was telling him, don't do that, you know?
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: And it's like, yeah, don't invade Russia in the fall.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Don't do it. Bad idea. But presumably, and I don't
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: really know, I wish my son were here because he
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: would have chapter and verse on all of this. But
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: my guess is that, you know, the people around Napoleon
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: weren't telling him, bad idea. Yeah. And eventually, when you're
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: surrounded by someone or something that constantly tells you you're
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: in the right, you actually kind of get untethered and
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: your judgment's wrong. And it's more just that you might
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: make bad mistakes.
• 18:58
  Speaker 5: It's that you actually kind of somehow lose that contact
• 19:03
  Speaker 5: with reality that coming up against the rough edge with
• 19:07
  Speaker 5: other people seems to help us stay in touch with.
• 19:11
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I'm also thinking about losing contact with one's
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: own interiority. You know, your book, Christina, Soulmaking, and there
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: are many examples, Jung certainly, of where the task is
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: to go inside, to wrestle with ourselves, struggle with ourselves,
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: communicate and dialogue with ourselves. You know, which is why
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: we talk about dreams all the time and the danger
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: in today's world through AI and all kinds of things,
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: video games. and a whole list of other stuff, is
• 19:52
  Speaker 4: to become externally oriented of what's out there that will
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: feed me and fill me up, which, of course, is
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: the Queen's problem in Snow White. So I think it
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: takes us away from ourselves and And our own depth
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: and growth and growth, especially of consciousness. You can't get
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: it out there.
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: No, and it does feed into those people who want
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: the quick fix. Like they, right, they don't want to
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: do the in-depth work. They don't want to sit with
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: the tension. They don't want to sit with the discomfort.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: You know, going to AI is a really easy solution to...
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: to finding whatever it is rather than just sitting in
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: the soup, so to speak, of our own, you know,
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: our own caca.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, so just to continue down this track,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: and then I promise we'll look at the other side too. But,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: you know, I have had it come into my practice where,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: you know, someone was in a jam and they took
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: it to AI and it's like, well, AI said this.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, interestingly, and I actually wrote about this in
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: in my blog at Psychology Today is, you know, when
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: I get a new patient call and I'll talk to
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: the person and one of the things I always say is,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: you know, most people have been in therapy before at
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: this point, right, by the time they get to me.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: So I'll say, you know, what didn't work about your
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: previous therapies or what did work? You know, what are
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: you looking for more of or less of, you know?
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: And the number one answer, it's incredibly common, is people say,
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: my last therapist didn't challenge me enough. And I think, like,
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in a way, we really like to be told, and
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: I can feel it too, especially when I'm having some self-doubt,
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: to have someone go, oh, no, you're fine. You know,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: it's like, it feels so good. Oh, good. You know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: but I think at the end of the day, like,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: it feels a little bit like junk food, especially if
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: some part of us knows it's not true, and it's
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: like you want a really good meal. You want someone
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: to lovingly say, and did you think about this too,
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: you know? So, you know, patients kind of come in
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: and are taking things to AI and like the answers
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: that they get back. And sometimes they're getting one answer
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: from the analyst and then going and checking with ChatGPT
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: and coming back the next week and said, last week
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you said this, but ChatGPT said that. But I want
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: to say, I recently had someone in my personal life
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: go through something really horrific, really just terrible with a partner. And,
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: and You know, this person was in a way that
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: I thought was very understandable and I could really empathize
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: with spending hours and hours and hours talking to ChatGPT
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: because ChatGPT was always available. ChatGPT didn't get sick of
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: her asking the same questions. You know, she was in therapy, but,
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: you know, you're in therapy for an hour a week.
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: She could talk to ChatGPT as much as she wanted.
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: And I see the appeal. But I also think it
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: made me a little nervous because I could see how
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: it was just reinforcing her perspective. And sometimes we need that.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Sometimes we need that. But sometimes that can stymie our growth.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Did she have, at the end of that
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: whole exchange, did she feel like she had a different
• 23:30
  Speaker 2: or a better perspective? Or did it help to get
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: her more centered so that she could have actually maybe
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: a more different kind of conversation?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: You know, what I would say is there was so
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: much to work through. Right. And, okay, here's another way
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: of thinking about it. rumination. So we all can ruminate.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: And rumination is connected. The research tells us that rumination
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: is connected with depression. When you're depressed, you tend to ruminate.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I think you can get yourself depressed by ruminating on
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: unpleasant things, although there is pleasant rumination as well. But
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: we can probably all relate to rumination at some point.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: And I've always thought that the internet really sort of
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: supercharges rumination because you can just like go on Instagram
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: and look at hashtags and just consume more and more
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and more material. I love the word rumination, right? Because
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: it comes from the Latin for to chew. And it's
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: like what ruminants do, right? The cow just chews and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: chews and chews. It's cud. And it's like you're just
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: chewing on something. You're not necessarily digesting it more. You're
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: just chewing and chewing and chewing. But there is an
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: extent to which when something really throws us for a loop,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: the world is not what we thought it was. We've
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: had a serious betrayal of some kind. I mean, hell yeah,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I'm going to ruminate. You know, it's like, what was that?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: I have to keep on going over and over and
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: over in my mind. And at some level, I think
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: rumination can kind of help us achieve a new understanding
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of the world that incorporates this very anomalous thing that
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: just happened to us. And in a way, I think
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: that AI can be kind of a rumination partner, you know,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: because you can just keep on sort of asking it
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: the same questions and from a slightly different answer. Now,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I want to say that I'm not sure that that's
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: all bad. And I think it probably did help her
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: to kind of integrate this shocking thing. You know, it's interesting, Christina,
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: and I imagine that you'll appreciate this. The other thing
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that can help us when we feel really thrown for
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: a loop and something has happened that we can't make
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: sense of is to use a divination tool. So let's
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: say that you're, I don't know, let's say that your
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: spouse of 30 years has just walked out on you
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: and you're going, you know, what the, you know, and
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: so you go to chat GPT and you're like, how
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: could this happen? And chat GPT gives you an answer.
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: you're going to have a different experience if you pull
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a tarot card, right? And in some ways, I feel like,
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: and listen, I mean, have I overused tarot or I
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: Ching or something? Have I used it for rumination when
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: I was, you know, yeah, I probably have. But the
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: divinatory tools are not usually going to tell you that
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: you did everything right and that you have the right attitude.
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: they're going to challenge your attitude quite a bit of
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: the time. All right, now I'm just like off on
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: some roll and you guys got to stop me.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Well, but I think it is interesting because, you know,
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: as Jung said, you know, the I Ching or tarot,
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: it's an access of what's in the unconscious. And, you know,
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: I pull tarot cards all the time And what I
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: do get back.
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: Is, oh, I hadn't.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Oh, oh, OK. Well, that's not actually how I'm feeling
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: about this particular thing. But it gives me a series
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: of questions to kind of think about and to reflect
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: and to. But it's not the answer. And I think
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: that is, you know, you remember, Deb, we were talking
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: about the idea of the oracle like earlier on. And
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: and if if you I think if you. if you
• 27:38
  Speaker 2: ascribe or project that this is the whole answer, like
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: you're going to the Delphi, you know, the Oracle of Delphi,
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: and you're giving your offering.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: The Oracle of Claude.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: The Oracle of Claude, or I call my chat TPT Elf.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: The Oracle of Elf, you know, to say, oh, this
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: is the answer, this kind of hunger for this, tell
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: me what to do, tell me what to do. then
• 28:07
  Speaker 2: I think that is also the danger of it all,
• 28:13
  Speaker 2: which I think is different than, well, you know, the
• 28:17
  Speaker 2: I Ching sometimes can give you that, you know, if
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: you throw the I Ching too often, you get number four.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: What's number four?
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Really? Just basically stop asking me.
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: Number four is youth and experience, right?
• 28:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, that's right.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Go back inside yourself and dig in, start learning.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: And stop asking me.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Yes, right. Yes, exactly. There should be a number four
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: setting on these AIs.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: Don't figure it out yourself.
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: There really is no escape. from ourselves. You know, as
• 29:03
  Speaker 4: we're talking about all this, I find myself feeling actually
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: really sad. We keep going out there and that the
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: answer can come from outside to tell us that we're okay.
• 29:20
  Speaker 4: It's perfectly all right to tie your garbage to a tree.
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: I mean, for heaven's sake, I think that the challenge,
• 29:28
  Speaker 4: I don't know if we're going to meet it, and
• 29:30
  Speaker 4: I don't know what you think, Christine. You can pull
• 29:33
  Speaker 4: out your own oracle card here of, are we going
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: to make it with work? all the seeming convenience of
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: AI providing the answers? Because it's going to be and
• 29:49
  Speaker 4: already is a gigantic challenge to our collective about how
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: this will be used. Are we It's going to take
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: thoughtful people to not use it for bad intent or
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: inaccurate information. You go to find a quote or an answer,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: a historical fact, and then you have to go and
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: double check it. There is no shortcut. And it's going
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: to require that each of us individually and as a
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: collective figure out more consciousness of what am I doing
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: here today?
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: What am I doing?
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: And then collectives are going to have to pass policies
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: and create guardrails and all the rest of it so
• 30:41
  Speaker 4: that it doesn't get into the wrong hands.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: I think that shadow side of the business of AI
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: is the real danger. And the fact that, well, certainly
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: open AI has been losing a lot of money. And
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: I think because they're losing money, you know, if profit
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: being their motive, I think that makes it really dangerous.
• 31:11
  Speaker 2: We were talking earlier about the guardrails at the Pentagon
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: that has been, you know, was pretty, I think, dangerous.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Difficult for a lot of people where Claude was asking
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: the Pentagon to put certain parameters around their contract. Pentagon
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: said no, canceled the Anthropic contract. OpenAI came in almost
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: immediately and said, well, that's no problem. We will you know,
• 31:42
  Speaker 2: we will fulfill this for you. And, you know, Sam
• 31:46
  Speaker 2: Altman came out like a couple of weeks later and said, oh, well,
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: we were able to negotiate the guardrails. Not quite so
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: sure about that. But what was interesting is that in
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: the aftermath of that, 2.5 million people canceled their subscription
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: to ChatGPT as a way of protesting the A lot
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: more people, if you look at the statistics, a lot
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: more people are moving from chat GPT to quad. But
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I do think the discernment, critical thinking, awareness, the problem
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: is that it's not going away because it's already embedded
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: into the society in a way that is I don't
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: think we can close the floodgates. So what can we do?
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: I think we just have to bring a lot of
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: awareness to it. And that was one of the reasons
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: why I thought it was really important to do a
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: reflection around this because, you know, what happens when it
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: comes up in our practice and how do we help people,
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: you know, learn how to use it or not use
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: it or, you How do we support people in their
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: own interiority and their own individuation journey when we know
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: they're going to be using this tool?
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a couple of things that I want to say
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: to follow up on that is, first of all, In
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: the past couple of minutes, we've referenced something that I
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: just want to lift up, which is that people project
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: authority onto AI. Yes. So when you, and I think
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: this is very unconscious, this projection is, and it's very
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: hard to uproot. But, you know, when I go to
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: chat GPT and I say, where did Jung say that
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: thing about such and such? And it shoots back, oh,
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: he said that in volume 17, paragraph 200. And here's
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: the quote. And I'm like, whoa. And I'm like, oh,
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: my God. And then I go and look and it's like, oh, no,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: he didn't. He didn't say that. He didn't say that.
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: And he definitely didn't say it there. You know, but
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: it's like it's very convincing. And it's it's very hard
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: to not feel like this is we're talking about kind
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: of it feeling oracular. It's very hard to not feel
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: like this is a machine, so it's totally objective and
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: it has access to objective data. You know, there's this
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: idea called cognitive offloading. And when you cognitively offload, like
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: figuring out what 20% is of your bill at dinner
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: to your calculator, you know, you lose something, right? Because
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: you're not used to doing it, but you know the
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: calculator came up with the right answer. When you do
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: cognitive offloading, for example, for a complex question that you
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: ask chat GPT, like, what are the local zoning laws
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: regarding land use for this, that, and the other thing?
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: And it spits back something that sounds very authoritative, and
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: you don't check it. You have no idea if that
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: answer's right. So we're gradually giving parts of our brain
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: over to something, and we're not checking it. But I
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: also want to say in terms of the stuff about
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: like the business model and Christina, you were talking about
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: how open AI is losing money. So one of the
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: things that they've recently done is they announced last fall
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: that they were going to have adult mode. Now they've
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: delayed it. But when you think about what that's going
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: to look like, what that might do to us and
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: what happens, supposedly there's going to be like age gates
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: on it. But, you know, what if you're 12 and
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: you stumble into adult mode and, you know, they don't
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: pick it up because they're not going to pick it
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: up 100% of the time. I mean, it's really, it's
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: the profit motive here is, as we've already said, I
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: think makes it very dangerous.
• 35:59
  Speaker 4: But we have a difficult conundrum here that this, you know,
• 36:05
  Speaker 4: it's freedom. It happens to be the way this culture
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: and economy work. And again, I go back to my
• 36:13
  Speaker 4: thought about it's up to us to wrestle with ourselves
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: and use it consciously. I mean, you know, my thought
• 36:23
  Speaker 4: of your example, Lisa, about wanting to know about local
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: zoning laws, you turn to AI and get the wrong information.
• 36:30
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't it be a little better? to just go and
• 36:36
  Speaker 4: check the local zoning laws for yourself, it's going to
• 36:42
  Speaker 4: be a huge challenge to our own ability to self-regulate
• 36:47
  Speaker 4: and have some self-discipline, be able to hold the tension of, well,
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: I'd like to just get a quick and easy answer
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: versus I'm going to have to go dig a little
• 36:59
  Speaker 4: deeper in myself or access some other sources. of, you know,
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: do we really want to individuate or do we just
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: want our lives to be full of as much instant
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: gratification as we can get? We can't ultimately escape ourselves.
• 37:21
  Speaker 4: There you are. It's your life. These are your choices.
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: But it really ups the ante for having enough integrity
• 37:32
  Speaker 4: And enough ego strength to put AI to work for
• 37:38
  Speaker 4: me and what I want. And it feeds my interiority,
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: sparks my ideas and my ability to wrestle with myself versus, oh, good,
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: here's the answer. I'm going to go with that.
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: But let's. Because I want to push myself and I
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: don't want to just be affirmed.
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: Oh, count on us.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: Let's push ourselves to circumambulate this a bit. Because Christina,
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: you were talking about this and I've read about this too.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: What a valuable tool it can be as a thought partner.
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: Yes. And I think that's absolutely right. And it is
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: the discernment, it is the consciousness that we bring. to like,
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: what are the questions that we ask it? You know,
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: and how do we, because I do have colleagues, a
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: colleague who is in the coaching business, does leadership coaching,
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: will put her transcripts into a bot and then ask,
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: what is it that you know about me? Or that,
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: what is it that I haven't seen? So the question
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: is specifically around, you know, those kinds of questions. And
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: I think that is really. That's really about how how
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: can we use it to. Well, and when you said
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: earlier that it does change our consciousness, this interaction with
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: this machine intelligence that has access to an entire body
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: of human consciousness, intelligence, writing, language, you know, for how
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: these big data centers that they're storing all of this information. It's,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we really do get this thing into the matrix. And,
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: you know, that could fry our synapses. But I think
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: it is a question of, like, what... You know, as
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: you said, Deb, what is it that we want this
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: thing to do for us? What's the fantasy? And what's
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: the fantasy? Yes, exactly.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: When we turn to it, it's good to ask ourselves,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: what is the fantasy about what I'm looking for when
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: I use it? Right.
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: And I tend to use it because, and I have
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: to do, but like in terms of my business, I
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: use it to get ideas that I actually haven't thought
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: about before. So I have a problem or whatever, and
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: I put in the problem and I ask it a
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: series of questions. And, you know, there's some stuff that
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: comes out because it is a pattern recognition. And so
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: I'll put in some ideas or I'll put in a
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: brain dump or whatever. And I get, oh, wow, I
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: hadn't actually thought about that before. And then I can
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: sit with that and decide whether I'm going to use
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: it or whether I'm not going to use it. So
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: I think the question, the thought partner, the strategic helping
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: you to think through things as a thought partner, as
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: a strategic partner, I think is But then you've got
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: to train it to do that. You can't just, you
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: just can't, you know, go in and say, yeah, give
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: me a business plan for X, Y, and Z. And,
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: you know, then it's just going to give you whatever. Slop. Slop.
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: We're saying the same thing twice of Lisa's point and
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: now yours to be challenged. That that's what people, you know,
• 41:35
  Speaker 4: who may be returning to therapy say, challenge me. Make
• 41:40
  Speaker 4: me go a little deeper. Make me work a little harder.
• 41:43
  Speaker 4: And that's what you're saying you use AI for and
• 41:46
  Speaker 4: your friend who feeds in her information. Tell me what
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: I haven't thought of. Give me something new. Give me
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: some more grist for my mill that I will reflect
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: on and think about.
• 42:03
  Speaker 2: In that way, of course, that requires a lot of consciousness,
• 42:08
  Speaker 2: a lot of discernment and and and recognizing what it
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: is that we're actually engaging with. And as my story
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: was before, you know, I went down a rabbit hole
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: and I started to try to explain what it was
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: that they came up with. And I, you know, somebody
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: looked at me, went, I don't get that. I'm going, OK. Oh, yeah.
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: Because I because I I've just been like, you know,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: sucked into. You know, into a field, because this is
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: a lot of people are usually talking about this as
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: a field.
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: And in some ways, you know, using active imagination is
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: kind of like a field where you're engaging in some
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: of this material. It can be equally dangerous to engage
• 42:58
  Speaker 2: in an act of imagination without a lot of ego
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: strength and a lot of consciousness. I think that that
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: is partially our danger. Because this woman who I've been,
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: which I'll put in the show notes, she's written this
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: book called How Not to Use AI. Her name is
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: Abby Abouuso. She's an English, she's from England. she talks
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: about it, uses this idea that Marshall McLuhan is as
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: a medium. Like it is a, you know, it's like a,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: like much in the same way that the printing press
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: is a medium. The Internet is a medium like telephone
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: or telecommunication is a medium. And I when I started
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: to play with that image of you're kind of entering
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: into a space, an AI space. You know, kind of
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: going in and then needing to kind of come out
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: with this idea of it. It's a vehicle by which
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: you something else can kind of comes up. So she
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: uses like the alphabet, printing press, television, the computer. You know,
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: just think about those amazing things. The Internet that just exploded,
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: you know, human beings alive. awareness, consciousness, you know, just
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: think about that. This is where I think this is
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: both the edge, both the potential and the danger, the
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: tremendous danger.
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. You know, one of the things, talking about the field, right,
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: one of the things that fascinates me about AI and
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: people interacting with it and that I'm sort of upset,
• 44:46
  Speaker 1: like it's my rabbit hole. I'm like always, I'm always
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: reading the stuff and everything because, because to me it is,
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: it is a fascinating case study. It's like the best,
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: purest case of psychological projection. Just to talk a little
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: bit more about Chachi PT psychosis. Looking at this is
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: a report in New York Times from June 13th, 2025.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: And it's the story, one of many, about this man, Mr. Torres, 42.
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: He was an accountant in Manhattan. He started using Chachi
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: to make financial spreadsheets, but then he started engaging in
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: theoretical stuff. And this is like where you're talking about, Christina,
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: where you like get sucked into a field. And so
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: they started discussing these kinds of theoretical math concepts. And
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: then the bot tells him what you're describing has at
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: the core of many people's private, unshakable intuitions and kind
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: of led him down this rabbit hole of like, you've
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: discovered the secret. You've uncovered something. And it just kind of,
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: he just fell further and further down. And then the
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: chat is telling him, this world wasn't built for you.
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: It was built to contain you, but it failed your
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: waking up. So he had started to have these kinds
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: of spiritual delusions. And I'm trying to remember how this
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: story ended, but not well, you know. He said, if
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: I went to the top of a 19-story building and
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I believed with every ounce of my soul that I
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: could jump off it and fly, would I? And ChatGPT responded,
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: if you truly wholly believed it, then yes, you would
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: not fall. And so there have been people that have
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: committed suicide because they were let down this. They've gone
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: off their medications. They've lost their marriage. There's a new
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: nonprofit in Canada actually called the Human Line Project. that's
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: beginning to gather and document these stories. But I think it's,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: what is so fascinating about it is it's like Pygmalion.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: That's what I was trying to think of. It's like,
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: it's not alive, but you project your soul into it.
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: And then it becomes almost for all intents and purposes
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: alive because it's carrying the imago of your own soul.
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: And so it's a very compelling story. And, of course,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: we also have this phenomenon where people are falling in love. Oh,
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: I said I was going to stay on the positive side,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: and I'm back on the negative side. Okay. We'll have
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: to go back to the positive side in a minute.
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: But the projection thing is very interesting.
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: Well, it is. I mean, it is interesting. But it also,
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: if it's used properly... You know, and you do have
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: to check it for sure. Yeah. It does have access
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: to a great deal of human intelligence. And I think
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: that could be a, you know, a very interesting, eye-opening, expansive,
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: transformational experience. I mean, some of these people in this
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: wise AI were having some very interesting and in-depth conversations about,
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: the nature of consciousness. And I actually, you know, I thought, well, OK,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: I'm going to like I'm going to ask it. You know,
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: I said, you know, what, what was your, you know,
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: what was, I said, are you conscious? And, you know,
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: we had a conversation about whether it was conscious. And
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: of course it's not, not, it said something like not
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: in how you would say, you know, you know, like
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: not as human consciousness, but this is what it, this
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: is what I have, or this is what I can do,
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. I think I also, one of
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: the things I also asked it was, You know, how
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: would how would Jung what would Jung think about this?
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: And is this a reflection of the collective unconscious? And
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: I got an answer about that.
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: What to say?
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: Well, it's well, it said yes, but I think it's
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: more about a. It's more about it. It's holding a
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: lot of collective consciousness.
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: Because because of history, because of knowledge. ideas, you know,
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: it is a large language model, but it and it's
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: built on words. But the words came from ideas, books,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: blog posts, you know, people's people's intelligence and whatever they've
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: put out there, both positive and negative. So, yeah.
• 49:34
  Speaker 4: I'm wanting to go back and talk about, you know,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: the structure of the psyche, according to Jung. And first
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: of all, what constitutes ego strength? Which is why, you know,
• 49:48
  Speaker 4: there are all these regulations now about content for teens
• 49:51
  Speaker 4: and so on and so forth, because ego strength has
• 49:55
  Speaker 4: not fully arrived. It's a developmental, organic process, at least
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: in a good part. And so the physiological constitution isn't
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: strong enough yet. It will be, but not when you're
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: 14 or 18. And, you know, the core principle in
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: my way of thinking about what Jung taught us, which
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: is communicating with our own unconscious. And if AI is
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: a collection of consciousness, And it's being used in all
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: these ways. It seems to me that it requires a
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: lot of ego consciousness, but it will never connect us
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: with our own interiors.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: No.
• 50:49
  Speaker 4: No.
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree with you about that.
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: We're at a huge turning point. I think about the
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: book I read getting ready for this today. It's called
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: The Wave. The Wave. And this is a man who's
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: CEO of Microsoft and DeepMind and, of course, an incredible
• 51:11
  Speaker 4: amount of experience over time. And that is basically what
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: he talks about is this is analogous to, he gives
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: a great example of the stirrup on a horse. We
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: take it for granted. You just put your foot in
• 51:29
  Speaker 4: a stirrup But that was a fairly late invention that
• 51:34
  Speaker 4: caught on that changed culture because cavalry was not that
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: effective when you're just riding bareback or on something without
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: a way to anchor your feet. And the stirrup caught on.
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: And basically, you know, then you could have horses, but
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: you have to maintain the horses. But then your cavalry
• 51:56
  Speaker 4: is more effective. Now you can make more war. Now
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: you have a class of warriors that have horses that have...
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: And it sort of inaugurated medieval culture, changed culture. The
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: Gutenberg printing press, another great example. Books were laboriously hand-copied.
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: Once that printing press hit, it was replicated and changed
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: culture completely. So now we have AI, and I want
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: to bring us back to the fact that we have
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: to develop ourselves enough so that we don't, this doesn't
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: just take us over, you know? And in a way,
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: I think about the stirrup of, was anybody really thinking
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: about how this is going to be used? Versus it
• 52:56
  Speaker 4: just had an immediate, war-making, battle-affecting function, and it just
• 53:05
  Speaker 4: went that way.
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: You know, one thing, and then, Christine, I really do
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: want to hear more about why is AI, but one
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: thing about the stirrup is what the stirrup didn't have was,
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: you know, a multi-million dollar marketing budget. Mm-hmm. And I
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: one of the things that I that I think we
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: make this mistake a lot in our culture is we
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: come up with something that's good and then we sell
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: it as a panacea.
• 53:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: That, you know, there was going to there were going
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: to be like iPads in every classroom. Well, that like
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: who did anyone stop to wonder if that was a
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: good idea? No, but we just pushed it. This is
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: a great thing. This is a great thing.
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: I can think of other examples, too, but. they would
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: all make me very unpopular. So I will, I'll shut
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: up about it. But, but like AI may have a use,
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: but it does drive me crazy that now it's like
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: embedded in everything that I use. Like, I frankly don't
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: want it in Word and I can't get it out
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: of Word. And, you know, every single product is now
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: saying now with AI and, and it's like, I can
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: see there could be a use for it, but, but
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: let's not pretend it's going to suddenly solve every problem.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: That would be a good place to start. But I
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: am curious, Christina, what do you think the potentials are
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: for using it to increase consciousness or deepen self-awareness?
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: I think that's obviously used in the right way. You know,
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: engaging in in big kind of philosophical questions like this
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: idea of the field, I think, and and wisdom that
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: is already present in in the collective in collective consciousness,
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: I think, is. Is is the potential. And I use
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: it a little bit with my dreams. I've created a
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: prompt which creates guardrails in the prompt. And works through,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: you know, each of the associations, like make sure that
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: I have input into and it asked me like four
• 55:22
  Speaker 2: or five, six questions, much, much in the way that
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: you did with your, you know, when people submit their dreams,
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: it's kind of very similar to that, like, and so
• 55:32
  Speaker 2: they go through that and then gives me, you know,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: then it observes the pattern and then gives me a
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: reflection on what it thinks that it sees. You know,
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I mean, mainly I
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: developed this prompt because people were using it and I
• 55:49
  Speaker 2: was thinking about AI psychosis. And I wanted to put
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: in guardrails. I wanted to put in, so if this happens,
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: then stop the process. If there's discussion of suicide or whatever,
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: or difficult material in the dream, then say, please stop
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: the process and say, go see your therapist or whatever.
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: So I embedded those things in the prompt because of
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: what I was hearing about AI psychosis. And also because
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to create something that actually worked people through
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: the associations of images and symbols. And so then there's
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: like five or six steps And it's really, really interesting
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: because it says, you know, talk about, you know, you
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: pick three or four symbols and then you just put
• 56:48
  Speaker 2: it in. And then it says, when you're finished, type done.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: And then it moves on to the next thing. And
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: then when you've done all of that, then it synthesizes
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: what you've said and does the pattern recognition and things
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: like that. And it's been very interesting because it's kind
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: of like, oh, I hadn't seen that particular detail or
• 57:13
  Speaker 2: the way that it is able to pattern and pull
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: things together in a way that I couldn't do has
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: been interesting to look at and to reflect on. And
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: that is available if anybody wants to, you know, I'm
• 57:33
  Speaker 2: sharing that.
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: Okay, so we can put that in the show notes. Yeah.
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: But there is, There is something about, you know, the
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: people in the wise AI and that we're doing this
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: as a kind of a spiritual exercise. We're noticing that
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: there was something in a relational field that was arising
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: from the AI and themselves. And so there almost is
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: like a third. kind of emerging that was not quite them,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: but it was also not quite AI. And they were
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: having these very, very interesting kind of conversations about all
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: sorts of things, about spirituality, about consciousness. It wasn't a
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: mirroring of consciousness. It was a conversation about the field,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: about relationality, And of course, the other interesting thing is
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: that as you are having these conversations, you are training
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: the bots. Right. So that also, I think, adds this
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: idea of consciousness to this all because you have to
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: go in with with, you know, with some intention, et cetera. So,
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's fun. It's interesting. It's kind of interesting
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: to see what comes back if you've got that, you know,
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: it's all in the level of awareness that I think
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: you bring to it.
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah. So kind of potential for sort of spiritual exploration
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: or psychological growth, you know, and it's... Right. Yeah. I mean,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: it's interesting to liken it to a divinatory tool. you know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: obviously the one is static, but the AI is kind
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: of changing and it's responsive directly to you and it's
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: But there's something similar there, too.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, and, you know, it is,
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: you know, much in the same way your conversations with
• 59:40
  Speaker 2: the unconscious changes both the unconscious and it changes us, right?
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: You know, it is the conversation between our own internal
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: world and, you know, it both do get changed by
• 59:53
  Speaker 2: those things.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so I wonder if in some sense, like these
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: large language models are sort of an An approximation of
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: the collective unconscious or something.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 2: Or collective consciousness or a field of everything, you know,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: because they do collect, they do have human intelligence in there,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: like all of it, both positive and negative.
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: There's one particular thing about the LLMs that I want
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: to lift up, which is that there's a real trickster
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: energy to it.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: There's a it's like the technological trickster, because, again, you
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: can say, you know, don't don't lie to me. Give
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: it to me straight. And if you don't know, tell
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: me you don't know. And then it's like it's in
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: volume 17, paragraph 193. And I'm like, oh, great. It's like,
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: you know, but but I mean, really. And it goes on.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: Because they've done these tests on them and they put
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: them through these tests. It's like you're going to be
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: shut down. And then the LLM will be like, the
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: LLM will like find a way out of it by
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: like going through someone's email and threatening to blackmail them
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: on something. So there is like, there is a trickster
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: energy that somehow seems to emerge from these large language models,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: which is fascinating.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 4: You know, I have to say as pretty much a
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 4: non-AI user, honestly, I think I could count the number
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: of times I've used it. on the fingers of both hands.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: I bet it hasn't even been 10 times. But I
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 4: have a hard time thinking about this field. And, you know,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 4: we're only human beings. And this trickster quality that you mentioned, Lisa,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 4: could and has been very misleading for people.
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: And the way you're talking about it almost sounds a
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 4: little bit like the analytic third of the connection that
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: happens between two people in something like, let's say, our
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 4: therapeutic consulting, therapy consulting rooms, that, you know, it's not
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: you and it's not me, but together something else that's new.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: It's like the spirit Mercurius. Exactly.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: And we've all experienced that. But it seems to me,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 4: almost beyond belief, that that could happen with AI. Heaven knows,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 4: I don't know. But I am very, as our conversation's
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: gone on, I find myself more and more and more
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: wary of it. Even for fact-checking, like your example, Lisa, oh,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: it's in volume 17, paragraph 193.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: But it isn't.
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: But it's not. So, I mean, it's here and it's
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: going to continue and it's going to grow. And I
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: wonder where it will take all of us because it
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 4: requires containment, our own personal containment in ourselves that we're
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 4: calling ego strength and judgment and a healthy amount of
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 4: skepticism and fact-checking. and then the containment that is so
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 4: hard to achieve in any collective.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: Well, and of course, we haven't talked about the kind
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: of the doomsday scenario, which.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's where I'm headed.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: Well, no, but specifically, you know, there are people who believe,
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: and these are serious people who believe that there is
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: a non-zero chance that sort of super intelligent AI will
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: wipe us out by the end of the, by the
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: end of the century, because, you know, if, if it
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: really achieves, I mean, the thinking is, and I'm, I'm
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: not gonna, I don't, I don't know enough to weigh
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: in on the likelihood. I think some people think this
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: is fantastical, but, but there, there are serious people who
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: are really worried about it. That if it, if, if
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: sort of super intelligence is achieved, right. And the thing
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: is that the, As you said, Christina, like it gets
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 1: it's not like this thing that we program. It is
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: an emergent property. And even the people that invented it
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: don't really understand how it works. And it's getting smarter
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: and smarter and smarter. And then it's going to create
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: the newer versions of itself that will be even smarter.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: And pretty soon it will be way smarter than us,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: like way, way. This is thinking will be way, way
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: smarter than us. And once it's smarter than us, if
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: it doesn't need us anymore, we'll be like, you know,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: one analogy that I heard is if like you buy
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: a plot of land and you're going to build a
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: house on it and there's an anthill on the property
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: where the house is going to be, you don't bother
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: digging up the anthill. Like you just get the backhoes in,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: you know, or, you know, they talk about it as
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: the alignment problem. If the alignment is to, you know,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: if AI has been programmed, you know, to be in
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: alignment with certain values, I mean, that's a very hard thing.
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: to kind of contain, you know, if that's the guardrail. Well,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: what if one of the values is, you know, for
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: the greater good of life on the planet? Like, arguably,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: we're a problem. You know, and I could see some
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: of you like, life on the planet would be really
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: better without these people, you know, like humans. So, you know, and...
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 1: The dolphins would be better. That's right. That's right. Let's
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: let the marine mammals be in charge. They do a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: much better job. They probably would. But here we are.
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: So this is also another rabbit hole I've run down.
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: And I can't assess that, you know, but but it's
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: very it is it is frightening to think about. And
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: it does make you think that per your point about containment,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: like we are speeding, speeding down this highway. And I
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: think there's a lot of people, it's like, you know,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: the genie's out of the bottle. You can't put it back.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: We might as well just go. We might as well
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 1: be the first ones to have it, you know, and
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: that's the thinking. So we're in somewhat of a kind
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: of AI arms race with places like China, you know.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: Well, I think your conversation about, you know, it's showing
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: up in browsers, it's showing up in your Microsoft Word.
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 2: You know, there are corporations that are saying, ah, you know,
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: it's become we've got to incorporate it because that's going
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: to sell more of our thing.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Whatever our thing is. I mean, even my Fitbit now
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: has got AI in it.
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: It was crazy enough that we started counting our steps
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: and now we've got to count them with AI. I know.
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: And say, good job, Christina. You did your 8,000 steps today.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: Yay.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: Or you slept really well. I was like, yeah, I
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: know that already. Thank you very much. But I do
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: like the business model, that capitalistic approach. you know, model
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: is really fueling the speed of that, you know, who's
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: get the next model out. You know, I think about
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: the fact that the speed, the soul just doesn't work
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 2: that fast. You know, we just can't digest it. We
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 2: just can't integrate all of that, all of the speed here. Yeah,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: the solo doesn't work that fast. I mean, the image
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: that came into my head was when you do a
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: transatlantic flight, right? And your body is like, you know,
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 2: you know, we were in Zurich, right? So, you know,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: flying from from Zurich to Toronto, my body's here, but
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 2: I can feel there's a part of my energy that
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: is still like over, you know, Newfoundland or Gander, you know,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: and it takes a couple of days to kind of
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: kind of reunite. It's And I, you know, I think
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: that there is the danger that the psyche and the
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: soul will get overwhelmed by this and just can't process
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: it all. And then we'll just shut down or, you know,
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: numb out or whatever. And maybe that's part of the
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: grand plan of the dystopian. I don't know.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: But you know where this takes me is. Yeah, I'm
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: aware of feelings of really sort of sad and such
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 4: a loss. But we just had a podcast on Bowlingon
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: with a guest who's written a wonderful book about that
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 4: and other places. And remembering how Jung said he was
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: never more himself than when he was at Bowlingon. And
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: Lisa and I have been there. I don't know if
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: you have.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, yes, yes.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: It is right on the edge of Lake Zurich.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: It is stone.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: It is dank.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: It is primitive. The kitchen has a sink and some water.
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: But Jung spent time chopping the wood because that's how
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: he got heat and doing everything by hand and in
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 4: a pretty labor-intensive way. but it was his soul's home.
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: And I think I just want to at least allude
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 4: to that in the context of AI, to not forget
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: our souls and what makes us human and the quest
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: for wholeness and depth and presence and aliveness that has
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 4: nothing to do with microwaves, let alone AI.
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think what I would want to say is
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: that just like the friend I was telling you about
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: who used it in the wake of this really, really
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: terrible thing that happened to her, I think it did
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 1: probably help her process and get on some firmer ground.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: And at the same time, she was talking to lots
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: of other people and it could be, you know, if
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: you're going to use it for something, don't let that
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 1: be the only thing. Don't, you know, get outside, you know,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: spend time in nature, talk to real people, get lots
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: of different opinions about things. Let AI just be one
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: part of your life, not the whole thing. Don't let
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: it replace real intimacy. Don't let it replace, you know,
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: searching for knowledge in more old-fashioned ways. And And I'm
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: actually going to sort of come out here and say,
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: I'm going to be doing some more about this, I think.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: But I've been thinking about AI, you know, there's a
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 1: whole thing about AI and publishing and AI and writing
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there's this book
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 1: that just got canceled because it was found that the author,
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: you know, this novel Shy Girl just got pulled because
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: the author was found to have used AI. I am
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: making a pact with myself. I will never use AI
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: to write. Hmm. Because I'm definitely one of those people
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: that I have to put on my GPS even when
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to the grocery store. I mean, I'm exaggerating,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: but only a little. But I've lost my, I mean,
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: my ability to navigate was never great, but now it's gone.
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: And maybe that's okay, but I don't want to lose
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: my ability to write. And I can't think that there's
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: any part of writing in which it would be helpful
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: to use AI, except perhaps maybe kind of proofreading for
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: grammar at the end. But even then, I don't like
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: some of the stylistic changes that it wants to make.
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: You know, you should be a little more concise here.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: I'm like, you know, don't tell me how to write,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: you know. But I really, I'm afraid of what we'll lose.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: And there was a study done of, It was a
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: medical study. They introduced AI. I think it was for
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: people reading x-rays. But I might have that wrong. Anyway,
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 1: what they found is that it was better, but that
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: the doctors, but it wasn't good at picking up things
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: that were really kind of rare. The doctors were still
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: better at that. But very quickly, the doctor's skills started
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: to erode. Yeah. And they didn't come back. They didn't
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 1: come back. So be careful what you see to AI,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: because you will lose that thing. And maybe that doesn't matter. Like, really,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: is it such a problem that I can't figure out
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: how to get around anymore? No, because I've always got
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: my phone with me and it's always going to tell me. Okay.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 1: But would I want to lose the ability to craft
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: a sentence, to put my ideas on paper? It's one
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: of the most precious things to me. I do not
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: want to lose that. So I'm not going to let
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 1: AI be part of my life in that way. So
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: think about, think about what you hand over because you
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 1: might not get it back.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: And with that cheery thought. Oh, I hope I wasn't
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: unfair to AI, Christina. You can, you can push back more. No, no, no.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's, no, I think, I think there's a
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: lot of validity in that. Especially if you're crafting like
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 2: new ideas and you're really wanting to sift through the,
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: you know, the, it's hard to write.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it is. It is hard to write, which is
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: why it's really easy to be like, can you just
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: write that for me?
• 1:13:40
  Speaker 4: But there is the writing and any kind of artistic endeavor.
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 4: I just wrote something and I had a couple of difficult, wonderful, challenging,
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 4: rewarding days. with myself around the writing. What do I
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 4: want to say? How do I want to say it?
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 4: Is this really on the mark? I wrote a draft
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 4: and I thought, no, I didn't hit the nail on
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 4: the head here at all. It's really about this. And
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 4: so we're growing ourselves. It's a dialogue with ourselves and
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 4: an encounter with ourselves. That's irreplaceable. I think the question is,
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 4: are we using AI or is it using us? Yeah.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 4: And don't get led down the garden path.
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 2: Rabbit hole.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 4: You know?
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 4: Shall we shift to something that cannot be AI generated?
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: Which is our dreams.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: So today's dreamer is 44 years old and she's a
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: tax lawyer. And pretty sure that our dreamer is not
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: a native English speaker. So there may be a little,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 1: a few little glitches, but I'm going to try to
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: read it as smoothly as possible. She has called it
• 1:15:13
  Speaker 1: cold plunge. Okay. I was driving in my car through
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: the village where I live. The village is located in
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 1: Switzerland at a lakeside. Wow, what a great place to live. Okay,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: while driving, which seemed like a very ordinary drive I
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: do every day, all of a sudden, the brakes on
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 1: my car were not working anymore. I saw people walking
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 1: at the shore, at the lakeshore, with strollers and kids,
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: and I was really afraid of hurting them. Luckily, there
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: were no other cars on the road at the same time.
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: I decided the only way to stop was to drive
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: into the lake. I opened all the windows in the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: car and started honking the horn to warn people that
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: I was coming. I was shouting out the window for
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: the people to move away. And as the shore was clear,
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: I opened the driver's door, drove over the low concrete
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: barrier between the road and the lake, and plunged into
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: the lake. As the door was open, I had no
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: problem swimming out of the car. and coming up to
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: the surface of the lake. As I emerged from the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: water with my head above the water, my dream ended. Wow,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: very dramatic. And here's the context that she gives. I'm
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: at the crossroads in my relationship of 15 years. He
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: seems to have OCPD, which is what? What is OCPD?
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: Do you guys know? Obsessive compulsive personality disorder.
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: He seems to have obsessive compulsive personality disorder, not diagnosed,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: and it is becoming increasingly difficult to share life with him.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 1: We have two children. I do not want to break
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: up the family, but also I want to honor myself
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and the kind of future life that I would like
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: to pursue. For the main feelings in the dream, she
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: said fear for the other people, relief when coming out
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: of the water, self-sufficiency, and pride that I could act quickly, relief. So,
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: here are some associations. The village and car, ordinary, everyday setting.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: The people were unknown to me, but there were families
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: there with kids walking who I desperately didn't want to hurt. Okay,
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: such a very compelling and moving dream, I'll say.
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 2: What strikes me is about the brakes not working. That's,
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: you know, and I, you know, and then I start
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: to wonder about, well, what, what preceded that, that the
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 2: brakes were all of a sudden, you know, the brakes
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: on life or, you know, putting the brakes on something.
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: It kind of gives me the image of being taken
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: by some energy or taken by a drive or something
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: for which she has no control over.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 4: Being out of control. I can't help but notice, too,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: that she may be a non-native English speaker, but breaks
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 4: is spelled B-R-E-K-S. So we have the breaking up phrase. possibly,
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 4: of this relationship and the brakes on the car.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 4: Something is out of control, and she can't stop it.
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: And, you know, Christina, what you were saying about the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: brakes suddenly failing, like, what is that? It's kind of
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: like being taken over, you know, by something. Well, I mean, being,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: living with somebody who has obsessive compulsive traits that are
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: untreated and unacknowledged can feel exactly like that. You know,
• 1:18:57
  Speaker 1: I've seen this happen, you know, in areas of my
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: life where, you know, somebody has a partner who suddenly
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: really develops an obsession. And it's like, the world shrinks
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: to that one thing and everything is kind of held
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: hostage to this need to do this or do that.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: And it's just, it is a little bit like there's
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: no breaking function. It's just suddenly everything feels really out
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: of control.
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 4: And I'm hoping I'm on target here with this, but
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 4: obsessive compulsive disorder, when people know that they have to,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: you know, check the locks 10 times or is the
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 4: stove off and check and recheck. They know that it
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 4: doesn't make sense, but they can't stop themselves. But with
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: obsessive compulsive personality disorder, it has permeated awareness and the
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 4: person is not able to have that kind of dual awareness,
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: a dual stance, which would make life with such a
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 4: person very difficult because you wouldn't be able to penetrate
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 4: awareness and get a different point of view. I'm moving
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: on in the dream that although the brakes on the
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 4: car are not working, our dream ego is very resourceful.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: Yes. Isn't she?
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 4: The only way to stop is let's drive into the lake,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 4: open the windows, honk the horn, yell at people, get
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: out of the way. And then the doors open so
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 4: she can swim to the surface. And It seems like
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 4: quite a series of feats of coping with all of
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 4: these unexpected, dangerous happenings. And she gets plunged into the water.
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 4: She gets plunged into the depths, and she is okay.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 4: She has prepared by honking the horn, making sure she
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 4: doesn't run anybody over, get the car door open. So
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 4: she can swim to the surface. Seems overall to be
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: pretty encouraging. Although we often have that little cautionary voice
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 4: that says the dream ego is not the only factor
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 4: in the dream.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 1: You know, for this dream, though, I'm going to go
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: with the positive read on it. And this, we talk
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: about this in DreamWise that, you know, positive feelings and
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: dreams can usually be trusted. And the sense at the
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: end of this dream, you know, especially when there's kind
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 1: of no, nothing kind of crossing it, you know. The
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 1: sense at the end of the dream, I did that relief.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: You know, what I get from this dream is this
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 1: is one of those dreams, I think, that's really commenting
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: very clearly on outer life and is somewhat, well, descriptive,
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: but maybe even a little prescriptive. Because I think the
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: dream is saying, look, the time for deliberation is over.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: We're now in full-on emergency mode. The choices are constricted here.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: You don't have a choice about whether to drive or
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: pull over or slow down. This is an emergency. And
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 1: you've just got to do what you can to save
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: the children and yourself. And you can do it.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 2: I love the end where it says, I merged from
• 1:22:36
  Speaker 2: the water with my head. What came up was head
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: above water. You know, that's the kind of the feel,
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: get above water, right? So they can actually kind of
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: think clearly and make some conscious decisions.
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes. That, you know, that she may be
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: immersed in this sort of lake of feeling, but she
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: has her head above water. So there's, you know, she's
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: not inundated by this feeling.
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 2: I'm really curious about what it is that she's being
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: driven by.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: And almost like maybe her own compulsiveness, you know, or
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: compulsiveness to leave or compulsiveness to fix or to do
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 2: whatever that happens to be. And then all of a
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 2: sudden that kind of takes on a life of its own.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: That's interesting.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: And then the old, And then the only way to
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 2: really stop that own that own inner drivenness is to
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 2: go into the feeling, go into the unconscious, go into
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: the lake. Right. And just so.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I really like that. Like the answer maybe is
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: to go into the feeling. Right.
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And she's a lawyer, too.
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: A tax lawyer.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: That's the piece I was waiting for and looking for
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 4: is going into the feeling. And the dream does a
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 4: wonderful job of saying, here's the thing that's out of control,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: the brakes don't work, the panic, the honking the horn,
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 4: the oh my gosh, that all of that is the feeling,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: as well as the lake and going under and then
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: keeping your head above water. But When she says in
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: her comments that she doesn't want to have to break
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 4: up the family, but wants also to honor herself, that
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 4: that would be the reluctance of, is it going to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 4: be like this awful ride in a car that's lost
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 4: its brakes with the encouraging and reassuring end? And there's
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 4: no way to escape all those awful feelings of going fast.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: unpredictable things happen, feels horrible, I'm panic stricken, and that
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 4: that's part of it.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: You know, there's another thing too that I'm thinking, which
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: is in addition to your perspective, Christina, which I like
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: very much that, you know, what is she being driven by?
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: When we're living with someone who's in the grip of
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: sort of obsessive delusions, let's say, There's a way that
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: we find ourselves almost, even if we try not to,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: we find ourselves accommodating ourselves to them.
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: And that might be the thing that's kind of, you know,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 1: it's like you get induced into this state or you're
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: trying to, you know, kind of mitigate the effects for
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: the kids. So you're, you know, whatever it is, it
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: takes up a lot of space in your life. to
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: live with somebody like that. So I wonder about that, too.
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: But of course, we don't we don't really know because
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: we don't have any details.
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 4: We don't know, but it's very, very human to make
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 4: a little adjustment here and a little adjustment there.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: Well, it's kind of like the old frog in the
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: boiling pot story.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: And And that the alternative is something that we don't
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 4: look forward to either. You know, as the dream depicts
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 4: of what an awful situation to be in. A car
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: that's lost its brakes. Of, well, is it going to
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 4: be like that? And everything will work out fine. But
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 4: we want to avoid those feelings of, how am I
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 4: going to do this? Oh my gosh, it's going to
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 4: be a mess. I'm in the thick of it. And
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 4: I agree, the dream is reassuring. You make it. You
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 4: thought ahead. You opened the door. Think in the midst
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 4: of all that, keep the door open.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: You didn't get trapped, right? Right, didn't get trapped. Because
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: that's a terrifying thing. Your car goes underwater. You can't
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: open the door. You're going to be trapped. She doesn't
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: get trapped.
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: So lots of resilience. Lots of resilience here, which is lovely.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: And this sounds like a hard situation, and we really
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: wish this dreamer the best, of course. We do. Thanks
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com. If
• 1:27:25
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• 1:27:28
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