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In Search of the Wild Man: Befriending Bigfoot · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's a bit of an illusion to think that just
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: because I'm on this side of the window and there's
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: a hole outside on the other side of the window
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean the window doesn't separate me. I'm still a
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: part of that world. And recognizing that like the trees,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: like the grass, like the sky, it wasn't invented out
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: of itself. It's not separate from, it's a part of.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: similar to what Jung describes when we think the ego
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: is entirely all there is. In other words, it's a
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: part of the whole. The self is the whole.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian analysts on
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: the unseen forces shaping our lives and what it means
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  Speaker 2: to be truly human in today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
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  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Today,
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  Speaker 3: it is our great pleasure to have our friend and colleague,
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: Mike Box, on the podcast to talk about The Wild Man.
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  Speaker 3: Mike is from Mississippi, and you'll hear that in his voice, Madison, Mississippi.
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  Speaker 3: He does a lot of work for Interregional. He coordinates
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  Speaker 3: the Memphis Atlanta Seminar.
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  Speaker 2: He has his.
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  Speaker 3: Own website, mikebox.net. That'll be in the show notes. Check
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  Speaker 3: it out. He has his own sub stack and is,
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  Speaker 3: as Lisa and I both know, a wonderful writer because
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  Speaker 3: both of us have just read his thesis, which he
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  Speaker 3: wrote a few years ago, and it was absolutely compelling.
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  Speaker 2: He is a.
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  Speaker 3: Photographer, especially of scenes and sites that carry some archetypal nominosity.
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  Speaker 3: And most of all, he has a constant companion, his dog, Kaya,
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  Speaker 3: who goes with him everywhere, including to our interregional meetings.
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  Speaker 1: And one.
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  Speaker 3: place that is the most wonderful footnote is that he
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  Speaker 3: has an eight-foot-tall statue in the waiting room of his
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  Speaker 3: office of the wild man, the Yeti, the Sasquatch, whatever
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  Speaker 3: that should be called. And that's what we're here to
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  Speaker 3: talk about, beginning, I hope, with the story of the
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  Speaker 3: statue of the wild man.
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  Speaker 1: I'd love to tell you about that because my wife
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  Speaker 1: got it. It's about eight feet tall, and it is
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  Speaker 1: carved out of one single piece of redwood.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: But the interesting thing, the really cool thing about it,
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  Speaker 1: she got it at a local antique shop here, and
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  Speaker 1: she got it when I graduated as an analyst. She
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  Speaker 1: thought it would be a good addition to the foyer
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  Speaker 1: in our office. But the interesting thing is it's not
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  Speaker 1: a wild man. It's a wild woman because the Bigfoot
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  Speaker 1: statue is actually feminine. She has breasts and appears to
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  Speaker 1: be pregnant.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: And she has a little poochy belly like she's pregnant.
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  Speaker 1: And she has this quizzical look on her face where
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  Speaker 1: she seems to know something that we don't. And what
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  Speaker 1: I really love about it is that the wild man
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  Speaker 1: Being from the South, wild woman has somewhat of a
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  Speaker 1: pejorative sound to it. And when I'm talking about wild man,
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  Speaker 1: I'm talking about humans who are in relationship with nature.
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  Speaker 1: Not so much, it's not gendered in a sense, even
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  Speaker 1: though the language is. It's beyond gender. It's about humanity
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  Speaker 1: in relationship with the world we inhabit. And I guess
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  Speaker 1: I wanted to say that pretty early because while a
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  Speaker 1: lot of my work is around male psychology and I
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  Speaker 1: work a lot with veterans and police officers and the
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  Speaker 1: majority men these days, I think the ideas extend beyond
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  Speaker 1: just the masculine. I think they extend to humanity in
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  Speaker 1: the sense that we've, separated ourselves a little bit from
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  Speaker 1: the natural world and sort of forgotten that we too
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  Speaker 1: are a part of it.
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  Speaker 2: But you know what's interesting about that is, first of all,
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  Speaker 2: Clarissa Pinkle-Estes wrote Women Who Run With the Wolves, and
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  Speaker 2: she really is talking in that book about the kind
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  Speaker 2: of wild woman archetype. Yes. And of course, there have
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  Speaker 2: been books that I'm sure we'll talk about, written more
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  Speaker 2: about the wild man archetype, notably Iron John by the
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  Speaker 2: poet Robert Bly. And I see what you're saying, that
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  Speaker 2: it's about this being cut off from nature. And of course,
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  Speaker 2: Jung said many, many times throughout the collected works that
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  Speaker 2: the thing that imperils us as moderns is that we
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  Speaker 2: are cut off from instinct, which I think is essentially
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  Speaker 2: pretty close to the same thing. And yet, and so
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  Speaker 2: I appreciate your saying, you know, this applies to men
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  Speaker 2: and women. But would you agree that, I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: the way that the experience of being a woman trying
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  Speaker 2: to get back in touch with instinctual life is a
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  Speaker 2: little different than the experience that a man might have?
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  Speaker 2: Like there is some sexed difference there, don't you think?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: If you can't get enough of Jung, we have some
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: other offerings for you. Well, we don't, but the Philadelphia
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Association of Jungian Analysts does. So first of all, there's
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: our seminar, which is offered eight weekends a year here
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: in Philadelphia. It's all in person this year. So if
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: you're local to the area or you're willing to travel,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: there are a few spots left. All sessions are taught
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: by certified Jungian analysts. I will be teaching there this year.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: A lot of other great people in the lineup. You
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: can look at the syllabus if you want. You can
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: go online to cgyungphiladelphia.org and check it out and take
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: a look at the syllabus for the upcoming year. And
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: there's also information there on how you can apply to
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: be part of the seminar. So it's a small group.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: It's very, very rich. Deb and I were both in
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: it for a million years and still very close to
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: our hearts. There's also another Paja offering for clinicians. It's
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the Advanced Clinical Practice Program. It's limited to eight people.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: It's all online. It meets once a month. And in
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: the fall, it's going to be taught by our colleague,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: John White. And in the spring, I'll be teaching about
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: working with dreams in clinical practice. So if you're a
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: licensed clinician and you just want to brush up your young,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: check out our Advanced Clinical Practice Program. You can also
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: find more information about that at cgyoungphiladelphia.org.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think there's a big difference in the
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  Speaker 1: experience of the wild man for a male and a female.
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  Speaker 1: You know, just kind of kidding around, I've never been
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  Speaker 1: a female. I mean, I'm 50-something-year-old man who's always been
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  Speaker 1: a male. And so I think the experience of life
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  Speaker 1: and the expectations of culture are so different for the
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  Speaker 1: male and the female that it changes, in a sense,
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  Speaker 1: the way in which we experience wildness or nature.
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  Speaker 3: You know, what I think about in that context is,
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  Speaker 3: of course, the wild woman has often been persecuted. There
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  Speaker 3: were witch hunts all over Europe, you know, and famously
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  Speaker 3: in Salem, Massachusetts. They were the ones who were the
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  Speaker 3: herbalists who lived separately. A very different kind of image
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  Speaker 3: from a wild man, you know, roaming in the woods.
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  Speaker 1: Right. Right.
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  Speaker 3: And it calls up, you know, whether this is a
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  Speaker 3: connection that is life-giving. a relationship with nature, or are
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  Speaker 3: we talking about savagery and bestiality?
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  Speaker 1: I think, Deb, that calls into question the word wild. Like,
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  Speaker 1: what is wild? One way of looking at wild is
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  Speaker 1: anything that's not civilized. And civilized is whatever the person
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  Speaker 1: calling something civilized claims it is. So for one group
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  Speaker 1: of people, something could be considered very civilized that is
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  Speaker 1: very wild for another group. And so it goes back
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  Speaker 1: and forth. But I think on a more basic level,
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  Speaker 1: you know, wild, it really comes in two different ways.
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  Speaker 1: It can be something that's out of control or something
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  Speaker 1: that's natural. And I think that's two poles of the
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  Speaker 1: word wild. And so when we talk about the woman
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  Speaker 1: living at the, edge of town sort of like the
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  Speaker 1: shamans did in older cultures is she mediating between the
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  Speaker 1: wild and the town is she in relationship to nature
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  Speaker 1: but frequently when we see something different that doesn't quite
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  Speaker 1: meet the civilized ideal It's often scary. And things that
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  Speaker 1: are scary often get pushed to the side, such as
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  Speaker 1: the Salem wish trials.
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  Speaker 2: You know, Mike, I like what you're saying here about
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  Speaker 2: it's very relative what we consider wild. And I know
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  Speaker 2: I've read in your thesis about your experience kind of
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  Speaker 2: growing up as a man in a kind of agricultural context.
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  Speaker 2: And there was this expectation of stoicism, and you didn't
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  Speaker 2: reveal feelings, and you didn't even say very much. And
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  Speaker 2: it seems like that is one particular view of what
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  Speaker 2: it means to be a man. And let's face it,
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  Speaker 2: it's kind of an impoverished view. And so what I
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  Speaker 2: want to sort of suggest, and I think you could
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  Speaker 2: say this for women too, that the wild man archetype
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  Speaker 2: kind of brings back what got pushed out. And of course,
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  Speaker 2: we really see this in Robert Bly's Iron John, which
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  Speaker 2: is just a fantastic book. And I hope we can
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  Speaker 2: talk a little bit more about the fairy tale that
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  Speaker 2: it's based on. But the wild man in that story
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  Speaker 2: introduces the young prince to those parts of himself that
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  Speaker 2: have been exiled. And I think that that's one of
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  Speaker 2: if I understand kind of what you're saying, that wildness,
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  Speaker 2: meaning natural, can restore us to a wholer version of ourselves.
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  Speaker 1: That's exactly what I'm trying to say, is that I
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  Speaker 1: think that it's a bit of an illusion to think
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  Speaker 1: that just because I'm on this side of the window
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  Speaker 1: and there's a hole outside on the other side of
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  Speaker 1: the window, the window doesn't separate me. I'm still a
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  Speaker 1: part of that world. And my body is, my dreams
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  Speaker 1: come from that place. And to live as though we're
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  Speaker 1: divorced from nature, in a sense, and I'm not trying
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  Speaker 1: to say this too strongly, but we lose so much
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  Speaker 1: by not being, having the freedom to express ourselves in
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  Speaker 1: the sense of just being human, just being, being, and
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  Speaker 1: recognizing that like the trees, like the grass, like the sky,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: it wasn't invented out of itself. It's not separate from,
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: it's a part of. And it's similar to what Jung
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: describes when, when we think the ego is entirely all
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  Speaker 1: there is. In other words, it's a part of the whole.
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  Speaker 1: The self is the whole. And so it's a kind
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  Speaker 1: of an as above, so below moment in the sense
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  Speaker 1: that the below being the ego thinking that it's the
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  Speaker 1: whole and separate, just like the individual might think that
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  Speaker 1: we are whole and separate from nature, when in reality,
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  Speaker 1: That's an illusion. And so for me, growing up, as
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  Speaker 1: you said, Lisa, growing up in a very rural community,
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  Speaker 1: doing agricultural things, even going to school originally to be
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  Speaker 1: a veterinarian. That was how, you know, I'm so far
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  Speaker 1: away from that. But what ended up happening is those
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  Speaker 1: parts of my life that I had disowned in order
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  Speaker 1: to fit the ideal, some were accentuated, and some were minimized.
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  Speaker 1: And what ended up happening for me is that I
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  Speaker 1: became very much removed from myself. And in my efforts
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  Speaker 1: to be more connected with nature or the human nature,
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  Speaker 1: I actually lost touch with both, both myself and nature.
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  Speaker 3: Well, I'm thinking how profound that, the theme is inside
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  Speaker 3: ourselves psychologically to be cut off from parts of ourselves
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  Speaker 3: and not know our own true nature and how important
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  Speaker 3: it is to recognize that we live in a much
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  Speaker 3: much bigger context yes where there are rivers and trees
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  Speaker 3: and mountains and sky and all of that and we
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  Speaker 3: need to establish relationship with all of that, including some
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  Speaker 3: humility that we are a part of and not autonomous.
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  Speaker 3: And of all the stories that you told in your
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  Speaker 3: thesis about one that really got me was taking a
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  Speaker 3: bunch of adolescents who'd been in trouble with the law
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  Speaker 3: and were rough and tough, and taking them just outside town,
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  Speaker 3: less than 10 miles away, and that they turned into
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  Speaker 3: playful kids learning how to fish for the first time
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  Speaker 3: in their life.
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  Speaker 1: I think that was the beginning of it for me,
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  Speaker 1: of noticing how coming into relationship with the natural world
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  Speaker 1: could really make a big difference. I think the thing
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  Speaker 1: that struck me is I remember these kids would have
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  Speaker 1: been felons had they been an adult. I was working
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  Speaker 1: with them due to violent acts that they had been
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  Speaker 1: convicted of. And what was interesting is when we would
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  Speaker 1: take them to the pond and we would begin to
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: bait the hook with a worm to watch the compassion
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  Speaker 1: and empathy that the children developed for the worm. And
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  Speaker 1: that's nothing compared to the compassion and empathy they had
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  Speaker 1: when we caught the fish. And then when they recognized
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  Speaker 1: how the fish was suffering, that even as the fish
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  Speaker 1: didn't want to be caught, and when it was caught,
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  Speaker 1: it was hurting a little bit. And this, I think,
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  Speaker 1: was probably the first time in a long time many
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  Speaker 1: of these folks have been able to think about how they're,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: actions impact other things, how other things are impacted by
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  Speaker 1: the things that we do, even if those things that
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: might be necessary. And I get to see some, this
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  Speaker 1: has been a long time ago that I worked with
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: these guys, but occasionally I'll see one of the folks
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  Speaker 1: I worked with in the community and it's always beautiful
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  Speaker 1: when they come up and the only thing they ever
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: really mention is going fishing.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: That was so impactful for them.
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  Speaker 2: That's amazing. That's amazing.
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  Speaker 1: Beautiful experience.
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  Speaker 2: You know, I wonder if we can just back up
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  Speaker 2: for a second because I think we've got a big
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  Speaker 2: one on the line here, if you will pardon my pun. Because,
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  Speaker 2: you know, we're talking about the wild man as an archetype.
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  Speaker 2: And it's a great example of an archetype because we
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  Speaker 2: can give these ways that it has... kind of presented
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  Speaker 2: itself through the centuries in all kinds of different cultures.
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  Speaker 2: We can trace it in popular culture. We can talk
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: about the effect that it has had on us. And
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: then we can also see it at work in people's lives.
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  Speaker 2: And I think it's a great sort of lesson in
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: what we're actually talking about when we talk about archetypes.
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  Speaker 2: So would you indulge me and just let us go
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  Speaker 2: on that ride for a few minutes?
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  Speaker 1: Please, please. What are you thinking about?
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: So to tee it up, we're just going to remind
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: listeners that Jung came up with this idea, archetype, to
• 18:34
  Speaker 2: talk about a universal pattern. It's not necessarily an image.
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  Speaker 2: He differentiated between the archetypal image and then what he
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: called the archetype as such, which is which is sort
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: of pattern empty of any content, but it's sort of
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: an expectation of a kind of universal experience. And then
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: something can constellate the archetype and then it takes a
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: particular form. So an example would be the archetype of
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: the great mother. And we all come into the world
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  Speaker 2: kind of programmed, if you will, although I don't like
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: the computer analogy, but we're sort of wired to have
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  Speaker 2: this experience of mother. And then there it is in art,
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  Speaker 2: you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of paintings of
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: the Madonna and Child and the Venus of Willendorf and
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: all these other images of mother throughout the centuries. And
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about the wild man archetype. And Mike,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you can kind of get us started
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: here and just talk about the different ways that you
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: know of that it has appeared in different cultural forms.
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: I think, Lisa, that it has appeared... in culture almost
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: as long as there has been culture. I think arguably
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: one of the oldest pieces of literature is the Epic
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: of Gilgamesh. And it's the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu.
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  Speaker 1: And Gilgamesh was the king.
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And he ruled with an iron fist, and he was
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: so far advanced beyond the populace that he was very,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: very difficult on people. And then Ishtar, the goddess, sent
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Enkidu as a sort of a balance, and he was
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: found out in the woods or out in the fields
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: grazing and communing with the animals. And so in order
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: to capture him, a woman was sent out to bring
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: him back in. And he spent some time with the lady,
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: and before long, he wasn't able to speak to the
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: animals anymore, but he was able to understand the language
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: of humans. And so there was a civilizing principle there,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: real similar to what happened with Merlin, with Cuckoolin. That's
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  Speaker 1: a very common motif. But if we go from ancient times,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: all the way through, if we skip to the Greeks,
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: I think Pan would be the best example of what
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  Speaker 1: the wild person or wild man might be. And Pan,
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: as we know, means all in English. It would translate
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: to all. So Pan was all-encompassing, and it was one
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: of the stranger things of the Greek deities in the
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: sense that Pan wasn't worshipped in the temples, wasn't worshipped
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: by a group of priests and this giant hierarchy that
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: I'm aware of. Instead, he was worshipped in the glens,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: in the woods, in his home. And I think as
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: we progress and we come into Celtic times, there was
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Cernunnos and Hearn. Hearn is the is the forerunner of
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: Robin Hood. And Cernunnos is the great horned god, the
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: consort of nature, the dying and rebirthing god. And it's
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: really fun to think about why would a god have
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: antlers or horns? Because growing up, deer hunting or going
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: in the woods looking for deer and And thinking about
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: how deer have these, are a little bit different than
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: cattle or other horned creatures. Their antlers actually grow each year.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Right now they're in velvet. You can see them, if
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: you see them around, they're growing their antlers. But each
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: year around the winter solstice, the antlers, after the winter solstice,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: when the nights are really getting long, it's very cold,
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: when nature appears to be dying, the antlers fall off.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: And then each spring or around June, they begin to
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: grow back. And, and so there's this living example of
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: what it means to die and reborn because just a
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: few weeks or months before they lose their antlers, they're
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: at the height of the rut and their, their necks
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: are swollen. And every year I go up to Colorado
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: in October to teach and, and, We go to Rocky
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Mountain National Park to see the elk rut. And there's
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: just something about the majesty of those bulls and their
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: herds of cows and the bugling and the fighting and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: the carrying on. It's just massive. And then in a
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: few months, they don't have anything on their head and
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: it's a scary time. So if we think about how
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: all these different iterations of basically the same motif plays
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: out from ancient, ancient history and then into modernity with
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: images like Bigfoot or the Sasquatch that we can see
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: in everything from coolers to beef jerky to just about
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Even my own clinic, I use Bigfoot as a sort
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: of idea that when people see Bigfoot in Madison, Mississippi,
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: they're probably around therapy anyway because they use it for
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: many other things here. And I saw Mike over there.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: He's the Bigfoot guy, which is kind of a weird
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: way to be known as a clinician. I love that.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: But what's so.
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: It's your brand, Mike.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It's my brand, my Bigfoot brand. I guess it was
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: with the beard. But to think about the way that Pan,
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: in a lot of ways, became the exemplar of what
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: was unacceptable. So growing up with goats, goats are one
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: of the strangest domesticated creatures because they produce meat and
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: milk like cattle. They're pack animals like horses, and they're really,
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: really intelligent. And they have weird eyes. I don't know
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: if you've ever seen, they have kind of creepy eyes,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: like very creepy. I was telling Deb, it's about 100
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: degrees with the heat index here. And so everything, and
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: we've been getting a ton of rain, so everything is
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: just incredibly verdant and rich right now. And so what
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: they'll do is they'll turn a herd of goats into a,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: into a piece of woodland, and it's a very safe
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: way or kind of non-invasive way to clean the woods up,
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: especially on poison ivy. They eat poison ivy. They love it.
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: But they clear everything up to about six feet tall.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: They'll clear everything up. They'll raise up on their back
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: legs and eat everything up to that height. And so
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: they clean woods out beautifully. And so... But the thing
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: is about a goat is that they're incredibly curious and
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: they're incredibly wild. They want to go and do whatever
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: they want to go and do. And it's nearly impossible
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: to keep them contained. And so when I was talking
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: about the sort of the transition of Pan from being
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: all and representing the natural world to when the church
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: came later, and use Pam as the prototype.
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Pam is the cooking spray.
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, not the cooking spray.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: That was not what we're talking about.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: Pam would be funny, though. But not the cooking spray,
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: but the ancient God, Pam, as the prototype for Satan,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: as to what is not acceptable. And I think the
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: use of the goat It's not, you know, it's an
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: inference at best, but it seems that the goat does
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: represent wildness in its almost most unacceptable form because it's useful,
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: but just barely, just barely. And I think that was
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: a way of taking the folks who were still of,
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: affiliated or still had affection for Pan. Now you've got
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: me saying Pam every two seconds. Of course, I said
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it first. They had an affinity for cooking oil. But no, seriously,
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: the ones that had an affinity for Pan as being
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: outside as well, pagan. And pagan being rural or country folks.
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: And In a lot of ways, many of these archetypal
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: images or deities continue to this day. Cronunos is still regarded,
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: as is a lot of these deities, these images. Bigfoot
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: is one of them.
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: So I want to just kind of jump to that
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: for a second because we've just had this wonderful, you've
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: just taken us on this wonderful kind of exploration of these,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: the way that this has shown up, this archetype has
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: shown up in mythology and religions and ancient times. But again,
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: the thing about archetypes is they just show up everywhere. So,
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: I mean, I have another couple examples. I'm thinking of
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: the green man and kind of English folklore.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: But then if you really want to find an archetype,
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: look in sort of popular culture. And that's where he
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: shows up in Bigfoot. And I'd love to hear more
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: about what you know about Bigfoot. And I have a
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: particular question about Bigfoot, Mike, that I'm holding.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: That I'm going to ask you about. But also, you know,
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: as you talk about like Tarzan and other examples of
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: it showing up just in around us, because that's how
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: archetypes are.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: They're constantly... reconstituting themselves. The energy is, you know, I
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: think of the archetype as a verb. It's in action.
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: It's doing something or it's in potential. It has a
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: potential for action. And when it's engaged, then it is
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: in action. And the way it manifests is through an image,
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: an archetypal image. And what's interesting, if we look at
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: like Robert Edgar's The Green Man and The Norseman, I
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: think that I get them flipped on the name, but
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: The Norseman and The Green Knight, I said, that just
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: recently came out in the last several years. Both great examples,
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: one from the Arthurian cycle and the other, the berserkers
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: of Norse history. So I think you're right. The archetypal
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: images are always coming in new ways. I kind of
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: think of it in my own life as like, do
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: you see me now? Do you see me now? Do
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: you see me now? It's like trying to get my
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: attention by hitting different channels.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: And by the way, if it can't get your attention
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: because it's showing up in TV and your friends are
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: talking about it and here's an ancient myth, it's going
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: to show up in your life. won't it?
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And when it shows up in your life, sometimes
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: it's not a pleasant experience, and sometimes it is.
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: You know, what you're saying, Mike, you know, pops up
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: in me how, you know, the tricky thing about archetypes
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: is that they have a positive and a negative aspect
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: from our point of view as human beings.
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: And that that's our ambivalent relationship with all of these
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: wild men, whether it's Enkidu or Pan or Bigfoot and
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: the list, the green man, the list goes on and on,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: how to be in relationship with it without being subsumed
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: by it.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: Right, without being possessed. Exactly.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: That what if I just go wild? What if I
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: just lose control? my ego, my common sense, and turn
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: into a mindless, foraging creature. And you touch on Tarzan
• 32:06
  Speaker 3: as a wonderful example of combining both the civilized aspect
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: of humanity and representing that with his having grown up
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: among the apes in Africa, of how the wild man
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: and civilization resolved, at least partially, the split.
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: Before we set you off, I want to build on
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: what Deb said, and then I want to pass it
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: back to you, because I think, Deb, you picked up
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: on something really important. We're always talking about You know,
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Jung said that the numinous heals, right? And the approach
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: to the numinous is the thing that heals. And of course,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: archetypes are numinous. So we're always talking about archetypes and
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: hushed tones. But the truth is that archetypes, when they
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: get constellated, can be very, very, very dangerous. And they
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: can take us individuals and civilizations to dark places. So
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: the question is, there's this energetic content in the psyche
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: that can either be destructive or, if related to correctly,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: it can be healing. And now, Mike, with that, I
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: pass it off to you, and I'd love to hear
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: what you have to say to that.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Okay. So what you're saying is exactly right, Lisa. I mean... Good.
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: I'm glad you agree.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: Of course I do. So... So this part is a
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: little tough to talk about, but I think it might
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: be useful to talk about because it sort of operationalizes
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: and maybe explains a little bit about why in the
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: world I would write about such a crazy thing anyway.
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: It's because what you were just talking about, what y'all
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: were just describing, is in a sense what I understand
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: now is that I got a little bit possessed by
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: an archetype. I shouldn't have qualified it. It wasn't a
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: little bit. It was a lot. And for the first
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: decade of my life, wildness in the sense of being
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: wild was exactly how I lived my life.
• 34:09
  Speaker 2: You mean as an adult, like the first decade?
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: As an adult.
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Many years ago, many years ago, from drinking to flat-footed
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: addiction to ending up homeless by just allowing... sort of
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: the base desires to run the show. Whatever seemed like
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: the most fun thing to do was basically how I
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: lived my life. And with no concern for what the
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: consequence may be. And everything from working as a bouncer,
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: which is a strange thing to say as a Jungian analyst.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I was a bouncer for years. I love that. For
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: some strange bands. But what that ended up doing is
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: it was on one, as you were saying, Deb, it
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: was on one pole of the archetype. It was on
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: the out-of-control side, as I like to think of it.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: And what ended up happening was all of that ran
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: its course. All of that became an enantiodromia. I took
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: it so far to one side. And like Heraclitus said,
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: it turned around to its opposite. And what that means
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: is that I thought I was living a life of
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: fun and freedom and the ability to do whatever I chose.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: But in reality, it became a prison where I didn't
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: really actually have a choice. So interesting when we talk
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: about Blythe's Iron John being put in the cage. In
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: a sense, the wild man was in a cage. It's
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: still wild. It's still feral.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: But it's no longer able to go. And so what
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: ended up happening was the opportunity to come into relationship
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: with that energy in a new way over time.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: So you were possessed. by the archetype, you experienced its
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: negative pull because you were wild in the sense of
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: out of control. And that was to a destructive degree.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: It was persistent. But then what happened was, and you
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: talk about this beautifully because you were able to hold
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the tension of the opposites, the healing part of the
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: archetype came forward. And I want to just, I want
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: to lean into that for just a second. You know,
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: we've mentioned We've mentioned the fairy tale Iron John a
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: few times, and I wonder if we can just rest
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: into it just a bit more. So there's a kingdom
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: and there's this wild man. The king has captured the
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: wild man and put him in a prison. And the
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: little prince has a ball, I think it's a golden ball,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: and it rolls up near the prison and the wild
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: man takes it. And he says to the prince, I'll
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: give it back to you, but you have to bring
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: me the key. And the key happens to be under
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: your mother's pillow. How's that for you? So the key
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: to liberate these kind of primordial masculine instincts are under
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: the mother's pillow. So the little prince goes and gets
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: the key and then lets the wild men out, retrieves
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: his ball, but then he realizes he's going to get
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: in bad trouble. So he goes with the wild men
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: to the woods and he's sort of initiated into his
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: own masculine depths, I want to say, in the forest.
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: And the other fairy tale that I wanted to bring in,
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: it's a Native American fairy tale. It's called The Chinoo
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: Who Stayed to Dinner. And again, I wanted to see
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: if I can bring it in really quickly. There's a couple.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Her name is Nesua and his name is Toma. And
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: they're alone in the middle of the forest. And one
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: day Toma's out hunting or something and Nesua's there alone
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: and a Chinoo comes in. Well, a Chinoo is a
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: wild man. He's He has a heart of ice and
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: they're cannibalistic. So she's terrified, but she's tricky. And when
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: she sees him, she says, Father, it's so good to
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: see you. We didn't know where you were. Come in
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: and sit by the fire. And the Chinoo is just
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: sort of confused and he does happen to be kind
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: of tired. So he comes and sits down and she
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: feeds him and all this stuff. And when Toma comes back,
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: she kind of signals the ruse to Toma. And so
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: they sort of live with him in this very frightening
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: kind of truce. Neither one, they can't go to sleep
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: at the same time. They can't leave. And eventually the
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: food runs out. And then the Chinoo says, let's go,
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: let's go find some food. So he takes Toma out
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: and he can He puts on his snowshoes and he
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: can go as fast as the wind and he's carrying Toma.
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: So he has these like supernatural abilities that now are
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: harnessed in service to the couple. And he takes Toma
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: to this magical spring. And it's, you know, it's winter
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: in the north, but this spring is warm and verdant
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: around it. And he does this dance. And from the
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: depths of the spring arises this kind of, fantastical lizard, which,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: by the way, is not something that the native peoples
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: would have eaten. But he kills the lizard, he packs
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: up the meat, and then he throws the remains back
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: in the water where it will renew itself. And then
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: like that. And the story has a fantastic ending, but
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to go there because the point I
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: want to make is This thing that can be so
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: destructive and cannibalistic also is the source of nourishment and
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: life-renewing nourishment.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: And that's kind of what happened to you. Is it
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: like had you in its grips and then it bestowed
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: its gifts upon you? Wow.
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: Thinking of it that way, it's pretty amazing. I hadn't
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: thought about it. I meant the story, the Chino story.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Because a lot of times we talk as Jungians about
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: holding the tension of the opposites, holding the tension of
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: the opposites. What in the world does that even mean?
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: How does one do that? It's simple on one hand,
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: but it's not that easy. And for me, the opposites
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: were simple. It's a bit embarrassing to say, but the
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: point was I can either keep living this life or not,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: or I can return to the life that put me
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: in this bind to begin with. And neither of those
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: two options were very good. And so just sort of
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: having that ambivalence of bouncing back and forth between those
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: two places, eventually never landing on either pole, but holding
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: both as potentials.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: What ended up happening was the strangest thing ever. I
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: started to laugh. Just laugh like a crazy person.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: And what I heard in my mind was the words,
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: everyone else in your life has fired you. Don't you
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: think it's time you fired yourself? And what that was
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: to me was the right-sizedness.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the relativization of the ego.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: Firing your ego.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: Fire my ego. And in the firing of the ego,
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: the simplicity was hilarious. And that was the freedom. It's interesting,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: many years later, I was reading the Beatitudes in Luke,
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: and it said, Blessed are they that mourn, for they
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: shall laugh. And I experienced that. And what's been strange
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: is that that precipitated a series of events that over
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: time has me talking with you nice folks today, which
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I would have never, ever in a million years imagined.
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: You know, people often ask me, what is the purpose
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: of analysis or Jungian analysis? And to me, when all
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: goes well, is that we can come into contact with
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: the numinous. And that is what happened for me. And
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: that's why I chose to do this, is because this is,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: I know it helps. I know it can lead to
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: some freedom. And what's been interesting is that the other
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: side of the pole of wildness, the The natural part
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: seems to have come into balance. There's always the desire
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: to be out of control, to lose my temper in
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: traffic or to get upset about something in a demonstrative way.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: But there's always the choice to be natural. And not
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: that things are perfect or that everything, I'm going to
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: make certain that we say that, but that this is
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: anything particularly special. It's not. it's particularly that the experience
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: is possible.
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: I'm really taken in and moved by your personal story
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: that is touching and relatable in a way that when
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: we say hold the tension of the opposites, It doesn't
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: carry that kind of human experiential aspect at all. And
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: there it is, of how do we suffer? How do
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: we suffer the not knowing, the having to undergo a
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: kind of transformation? And what I think the essence of
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: it is in Jungian analysis and just human beings, is
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: letting go.
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: Of the ego.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: You kind of fired your ego. And I'm part of
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: something else. My ego is not who I am altogether.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: There is ego, and hooray for that. Somebody's got to
• 45:04
  Speaker 3: go and make sure that the car gets an oil
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: change and the sidewalk gets shoveled, at least up here
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: in the north. But that's the essential transformation is that
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: realization that we are undergirded by what Jung called the self.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: That's our wholeness. And my image for it, see, if
• 45:32
  Speaker 3: you think, you should pardon the expression, if this holds water,
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: because my image for it is the Gulf Stream. That
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: if we were all in boats somewhere out in the
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: Atlantic and not knowing where we were or how to
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: get there from here, and then one day we noticed
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: that somehow the rowing was easier, the paddling was easier. Whoa,
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm really paddling along, but I'm also being taken.
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: And what a relief and what an epiphany it is
• 46:15
  Speaker 3: to say, I can't see it, but it's happening. Something
• 46:23
  Speaker 3: is taking me in a direction. And it's a surprise.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: It's a beautiful surprise.
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: It's a beautiful surprise.
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: Deb, I love that. I love that image. And Mike,
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I have a question. So you had this literally this
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: sort of it happened all of a sudden that you
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: were contemplating this insoluble dilemma. And then you started laughing.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: What happened between then and you becoming a Jungian analyst?
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: I don't, you know.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Well, first we have to go back to all of
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: a sudden.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden was after four years. four years
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: of not being able to hold that tension. But when
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: it happened, when the tension like ripped it, it did,
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: it all of a sudden start laughing. I think that's
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: important because sometimes when people are struggling, they think it's
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: going to happen like a burning bush or something, but
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: it doesn't necessarily. But what happened between then and now
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: was really, you know, it's funny, Deb, My image is
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: really similar to yours, but it's a more southern image.
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Imagine that. But it's of a river. And you can
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: see the river, but you can't necessarily see the current,
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: kind of like your Gulf Stream. But you can get
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: the job of the ego is to stay in the stream,
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: not to get sucked into the eddies, not to get
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: beached on the side, but just stay in the middle.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: and allow it to sweep you or carry you along.
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: And I think that is a co-creation between ego and self.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: Ego is necessary. It's absolutely necessary. But it's necessary to
• 48:11
  Speaker 1: choose that which is higher. And I think that too
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: answers a little bit of your question, Lisa, which is
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: what's happened between then and now is a whole lot
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: of staying in the middle of the river or trying
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: to and getting swept to the side and having to
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: swim back in. and start over again. But it's also
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: been willing to recognize that even though I thought for
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: the first 30-odd years of my life that this whole
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: thing was for me, the world, everything, it was for me.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: I was the center of it all. Copernicus or Galileo,
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: that fella didn't know what he was talking about. This
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: thing absolutely rotates around me. What I've since learned is
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: that it doesn't. Not even close. And the best thing
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: we can that I could do with this newfound freedom
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: was to try and be of service. Best I know how. Yeah,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: that's that's that's. And so I've just chosen that.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: That's great. So can we talk a little bit about.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: Bigfoot? Let's please. Give it all for me. I would
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: love that.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Well, I still do have my big question that I've
• 49:31
  Speaker 2: got a little bullet in the chamber here, Mike. But
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: I'm wondering, can you just tell us a little bit
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: about a bit, just, yeah, just like a natural history
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: of Bigfoot and are you a believer and have you
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: ever seen it?
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: All that good stuff. Well, I could start out by
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: saying that Bigfoot is 100% absolutely true. I just don't
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: have any idea how it's true.
• 49:55
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense? It's true in the sense of
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: an image. It's true in the sense of it builds something.
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: Whether it's an actual animal or humanoid or hominid living
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: in the wilderness areas of our country or in the world,
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know. It's kind of fun
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: to think about. It's kind of like we were talking
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: about Loch Ness Monster, right, Deb? The idea of it
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: maybe being there is kind of the fun part. One
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: thing that's also kind of interesting for me, at least
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: being from Mississippi, is the first Western account written down
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: of a Bigfoot was in Natchez, Mississippi about 300 years ago.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: And I got so sad that I happened to be,
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: talk about a synchronicity, I happened to be in Natchez
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: the weekend they were celebrating Bigfoot's 300th birthday. And I
• 50:56
  Speaker 1: found out about it two days later. I was in
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: town and just did not know that it was happening.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: It was right in the middle of writing this too.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: It would have been really kind of helpful to have
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: been there. And I guess I got close. I just
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: didn't listen all the way. But, you know, it's interesting
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: to me how people that I wouldn't have wouldn't have
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: thought about, like Teddy Roosevelt and Jane Goodall and really
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: famous folks have had ideas about the reality or the
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: potentiality of a Sasquatch or Bigfoot. It's kind of neat.
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: Well, what's, you know, what do you see as the
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: phenomenology of, you know, current, you know, people that go
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: searching for Bigfoot or participate in communities online? you know, of,
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: of believers? I mean, what is it, what, what is
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: our fascination with Bigfoot? What's your fascination with it?
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: Well, my, my fascination with it is, and maybe it's
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: theirs too. I don't want to speak for folks, but, but,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: you know, Jung wrote a, an essay about the UFO and,
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: and that was really late in his life, sometime in
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: the fifties. And, What he posited, because after World War II,
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: all these cylindrical and saucer-shaped objects were being reported in
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: the sky with some frequency. And what he suggested was that,
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: without whether it was real or not, but what it was,
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: was is it a projection of the self? Are we
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: looking out there? Are we putting something in here or
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: out there looking for something higher or more? And for me,
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: what Bigfoot is, is a projection of our own naturalness
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: or our own relationship with nature. And I think that's
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: why it works in branding, why it works in just
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: about every way we can think. In modernity, we have
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: grown so far removed from our food, from the production
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: of our food, from our lives grounded on planet Earth,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: that it is a way of reminding us, hey, it's
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: not just the hairy creature that belongs in the woods
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: or in the fields or in the nature, but we
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: do too. That's a part of our lives as well,
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: and I think that people have a deep desire for
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: that sense of connection. And that might explain some of
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: why people are fascinated. I mean, they're long running television shows,
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: so many different avenues for this. And it made in
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: the community and relationship that must develop around it. And
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: the great fun people probably have arguing about the reality
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: and who and what it's, it's since I think it,
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: at the end of the day, it's about relationship or
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: the lack of. Okay. Okay.
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: So, so here's my question.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: Bigfoot pornography.
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: Yes. Bigfoot pornography. Yes.
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: It's.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Tell me more. I need to hear more.
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Where do you start?
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: So, um, I mean, first of all, is it a Bigfoot?
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: It's a Bigfoot. It's a Bigfoot. And I'm embarrassed to
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: say that it's big everything. Everything's big. And what was
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: interesting is it's not just, it's novels, Bigfoot novels, explicit novels,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: and video. I assume it's like people in suits. When
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: I teach on this, it's funny, and when I say
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: this part about the pornography, just as sort of a
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: lighten-up moment, it's funny. I have this picture of, I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: wish I could find it, with Bigfoot on his side,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: and he's got a raccoon in front of the, you know,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: the parts he wants to keep hidden. But that's kind
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: of what it is. It's just, I don't know if
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: it's a fetish or a paraphernalia. I don't know what
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: it is, but it's strange. That was your big question?
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: That was my big question. Thank you for satisfying my curiosity.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: That's the one that's got me the most embarrassed. It's like, Ali,
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: I can't believe I wrote about Bigfoot porn.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: You only mentioned it. I was like, I want to
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: hear more.
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: But what I think is really especially interesting is that
• 55:59
  Speaker 3: you were so interested in at least a.
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we need to spend some time there.
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: But, you know, I'm thinking about, you know, of course,
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: Bookfoot is real. Sasquatch is real. The Yeti is real.
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: It's been with us from time immemorial. The mistake we
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: make is insisting that it be in concrete reality, concrete time,
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: rather than an imaginal, And then we can symbolize it.
• 56:36
  Speaker 3: You know, otherwise we're kind of stuck hunting for something
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: that we want to hold in our egos. We want
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: to see it. We want to photograph it. That does
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: not have to do with mystery and imagination and the symbolic.
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: Force.
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: That this archetypal image can afford us. You know, you've
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: talked about homeless people and the young men who would
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: have been felons had they been adults. And, of course,
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking, too, about those other outside cut-off people who
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: wear suits every day and work in cubicles somewhere. and
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: how they can make Bigfoot real, how Bigfoot can call
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: to them. How do we access that part of ourselves,
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: our natural beings, our wonderful wildness, without descending into bestiality.
• 57:52
  Speaker 2: Or Or hopefully.
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: You went back to the porn thing. That's why I
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: was like, what?
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: We have to thread that needle.
• 58:06
  Speaker 1: That's the thing. When you introduced me, you were talking
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: about the photography. And that's one of the things that
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: I think for me has become an art form or
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: a creative outlet to find people. The piece of grass
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: growing between two cracks in the concrete. To find the
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: place where there's a green space in the middle of
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: a giant city. To go and find that place, even
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: within ourselves, that is still very natural. And to be
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: in contact with it. I think you and I, we
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: all have been using the word relationship a lot. And
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: relationship to me begins with curiosity. And once anything, once
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: a relationship loses its curiosity, it's hard, it's very difficult
• 59:05
  Speaker 1: to maintain because then we know and then it's concretized.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: like you said about Bigfoot. But there are places within
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: ourselves and within the world around us that we can
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: be curious about. I remember years ago, the IRSJA met
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: in Chicago and I went to the Field Museum And
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: I was struck by the, I don't know if they
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: were real or I'm assuming they were real, the stuffed
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: mammoths and saber-toothed tigers. But I recall the way it
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: ignited my memory, I mean, my imagination. And it was
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: almost like a memory because these creatures at one time
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: roamed the earth. And what was that like to be
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: in a place with these behemoths, these giants? But I
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: think that, you know, when I think about... Mm-hmm. the
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: folks who are in cubicles or having to wear a
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: suit every day. And I imagine nature might at times
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: feel very far away. But even in the biggest city,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: you can see the sky.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: You know, you talk about curiosity and the necessity of curiosity.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: And you make this point about the relationship between curiosity
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: and mystery. That if there's no mystery, then there's no
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: curiosity either. And I really liked that point. I think
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: you're right. I think it's fun to think about whether
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: or not Bigfoot exists or whether aliens exist or the
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: Loch Ness Monster. Because there's a little bit of mystery
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: in it. And we don't have much space for mystery
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: in our modern lives, do we?
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: Not much at all. And the mystery to me, there's
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: freedom in not knowing. There's freedom... And having that open question.
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: Because once I know, it's hard to fire the ego.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Because once I know, it's almost like I've grasped it.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: Once I've named a thing, I can kind of own
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: the thing and just set it aside. But if it
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: remains open, then the energy channels are open and it
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: can continue to flow and feed us. When it gets
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: closed down is when it's difficult.
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking two things. One, we've been talking about, which is,
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 3: but the idea of taming and in conjunction with the
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: mystery and the Kairos time that you mentioned, Mike, in
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: your thesis versus Kronos time. But that idea of being
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: in a conscious relationship with wildness sounds like sort of
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: an oxymoron. And yet we have to find it. We
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: have to have mystery and imagination and wildness in our lives.
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: You know, many years ago, I was working with a doctor.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: And we were talking about this notion of mystery. And
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: he was a very educated man, very good man. And
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: he asked me, he's like, well, there's just not much
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: mystery left. And I was like, well, I was like, Doc,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: can you set a bone? And he's like, yeah, I
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: can set it. I was like, can you make it knit?
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: What makes it knit? Why does the bone, I mean,
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: we can understand that there's some science, but what is
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: the thing that makes the bone grow back together?
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: And he couldn't answer. And I think that is a beautiful,
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: What makes the seed germinate? What makes a baby grow?
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: What is it behind all of it? Because science does,
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's both and. I think qualitative and quantitative
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: are both very necessary. But when we go too far
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: to one side on the quantitative, what ends up happening
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: is we wring all the joy out of life. If
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: we can explain it, there's no, it becomes a little dry.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: But I love mystery.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I love that. What makes the bone knit? You
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: can set the bone, but how do you knit it?
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I was talking with an obstetrician at one point,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: and he took the time to explain to me what
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: happens at the moment of birth. And I cannot now
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: do it justice, but he went into a lot of
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 2: detail about how the baby goes from basically breathing in
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 2: amniotic fluid to like that. The lungs open, the air
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: comes in, all of that architecture between the lungs and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: the heart just suddenly turns on. And I remember he
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: described it to me. I'll never forget it. It just
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: sort of, he was filled with awe and like, this
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: is what he does every day. And he said, you know, like,
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: you're going to tell me there's not some greater intelligence
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 2: somewhere in the universe that all of that happens perfectly?
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: Anytime a baby's born? And it was awe and mystery.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: How does that happen?
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: And awe, to me, awe is one of the emotional
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: experiences that puts the ego in its proper place. If
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: we're standing on the edge where Ansel Adams took his
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: picture of, you know, of the beautiful granite mountain that
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I can't think of the name of right now.
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: Yosemite?
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, in Yosemite.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 3: El Capitan?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: El Capitan, yeah. And that, I remember going up there
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: one time at Labor Day, right before the park closed down.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: And we were driving up there, and it took forever.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: My wife and I were heading. There was so many people.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: And I was like, man, this ain't going to be
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: any fun. All these people are going to be up
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: here yelling and carrying on and doing. We got up there,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: and it was like a church. It was like at
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the cathedral. Everything was silent and everyone was so reverent
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: because of the sense of awe. And the awe, to me,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: allows the ego to find its proper relationship with self.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 2: And I think that is an aspect of what reconnecting
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: with wildness can do for us.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: And that might be a good place to stop and
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: transition to a dream. Today's dreamer is a man who's
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: 52 years old, and he is a filmmaker, an actor,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: a writer, and a sound engineer. And he calls his
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: dream divine inspiration. He says, it starts from a sense
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: of longing for inspiration after a long drought. From there,
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: I begin to write on the ground, which is green tile,
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: though I'm outdoors. I write with my finger, but it
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: appears like black paint. And I write without thinking and
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: without stopping, one word after another, words coming out like
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 2: stream of consciousness poetry. As I write, I'm moving in patterns.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: So the sentences aren't straight lines, but form patterns. And gradually,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: I'm realizing that the words are also creating a picture
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 2: when viewed from high above. So it's not just poetry,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 2: but visual art. I also realize that the words won't
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 2: be permanent, but eventually washed out by the rain or
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 2: people stepping on it. But I carry on despite this. Eventually,
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 2: people start to notice, and the words change, becoming a story.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 2: And not just words, but little pictures. I'm drawing with
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: the flick of a wrist, an apple, a tiny bear, etc.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: And as I grow my audience, they begin to recognize
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 2: the story as Harry Potter. And this inspires a whole
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: Harry Potter-themed Mardi Gras crew to form around it. Meanwhile, J.K.
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: Rowling has become uninspired by Harry Potter and decides to
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: write a new novel in an invented language, one of
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: strange runts and utterances, a la some of James Joyce's
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: later work. The world is perplexed and it is not well-received.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: As to my own work, I too grow restless, especially
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: as I realize I'm just rewriting Harry Potter. So as
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 2: the parade continues around me, I notice a woman with
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 2: a vintage yellow wooden skateboard, and I offer to buy
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: it off her on the spot. She accepts, and I
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: ride off, determined to not stop moving until I'm far,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: far away in another country where no one knows me
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: and where I can start all over again. For context,
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: he says, I have been a writer, actor, musician, and filmmaker,
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: and am currently hoping to be as divinely inspired as
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: I was in the dream. Also, there were many times
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: in the dream where I was watching the protagonist as
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: though in a film. In fact, by the end, the
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 2: whole dream seemed to be a documentary about people who
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: were divinely inspired to do something extreme without second-guessing themselves.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: The main feelings in the dream were divine inspiration, wonder,
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: and transformation. And he writes, I do occasionally write stream
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: of conscious, but it never comes out as coherent, wise,
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: and profound as in the dream. I am also in
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: a place in my life where I've returned to my
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: hometown mainly to care for elderly people. parents and ended
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: up staying for years restless but getting more and more
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: settled here. One of the things that I notice in
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: this dream is that there's a pattern of creating something
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 2: and then It's very exciting, and then it's either going
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: to get washed away or stepped on or stop being inspiring.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: So there's this kind of, I mean, I could imagine
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: it a couple different ways, actually, but it feels like
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: a circular process. You get inspired, you create something, it dissipates,
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 2: the excitement around it dissipates, you start again. And that,
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: I think, could either be, you know, sort of a
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 2: profound experience image of what's sometimes called the great round
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: of creation and destruction. You know, you're writing this incredible
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: thing and it's just going to get washed away with
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: the rain, which of course, you know, there are the
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 2: sidewalk artists that do incredible work in chalk and then
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 2: they do get washed away. It reminds me a little
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: bit of a sand mandala, which, you know, it's incredibly intricate.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: And then the whole purpose of it is to just
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 2: kind of sweep it up at the end. But it
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 2: also could be something a little bit. So that's a
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: very positive sense of that pattern. But it could also
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 2: feel a little bit something like pu-erh. There could be
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: something of that in it, too. Sort of just never
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: really dropping in and committing. And I think maybe both
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: elements are there, possibly. You know, he's going to start
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: again somewhere totally new. You know, that's how the dream ends.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: So it feels recursive. It feels like it kind of
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: keeps repeating that theme.
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 3: I'm starting right from the beginning, the longing for inspiration
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 3: after a long drought. That that is the psychic situation.
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 3: And longing, longing is so powerful and we need it.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 3: It pushes us along. It calls to us. We experience
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 3: a lack and a desire, even if we don't know exactly,
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: you know, to what we shall attach that particular desire.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: And what happens in the dream next is that our
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: dream ego experiences something pretty magical. You know, he can
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 3: write with his finger and it comes out like black paint.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 3: It's stream of consciousness poetry. He's moving in patterns. The words,
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: not only that, they create a picture so that you
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 3: can see it from above that there are, he does
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: it just with a little flick of his wrist. And
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: then there are things like apples and a tiny bear
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 3: and so on. And then I think an interesting little
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 3: phrase slipped in here. As I grow my audience, so
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 3: what is not quite in the forefront is, is that
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 3: the desire is to be heard, to be witnessed, to
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 3: be seen? Is that part of it? And they begin
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: to recognize the story is Harry Potter. And then everything
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: kind of goes sour.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: J.K.
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 3: Rowling becomes uninspired by Harry Potter, writes this novel. You know,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 3: we were just talking about the wild man, the Sasquatch.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: So here he is, one of strange grunts and utterances
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: that are unintelligible. The world is perplexed and not well received.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 3: And then the final olysis, the end of the dream, is...
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 3: a woman appears with a vintage wooden yellow skateboard. He
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: buys it and he rides off. And he's not going
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: to stop moving until he's far away in another country
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: where no one knows him, and he'll start all over again. Now,
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 3: the dream experience is kind of echoed by his experience
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: in real life. He's been A writer, an actor, a musician,
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 3: and a filmmaker currently hoping to be divinely inspired as
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: I was in the dream. And yet his divinely inspired
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: work is a little vague and more of an experiential
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 3: occurrence than an accomplishment.
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he has an experience, but he doesn't really
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: produce anything, which, by the way, there's no judgment attached
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 2: to that, right? It might be that the experience is
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 2: the important thing. And that's the difference with, for example,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 2: as I was saying before, a sand mandala, it's not
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: about the finished product. It's about the process. And there
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 2: seems to be a real incredible process here.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: What makes me and the first time I read the stream,
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: and I'm having the same feeling again, that doesn't mean
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: that I'm right, but just noting that that's part of
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: the process, is that unlike doing a sand painting, this
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 3: is not a methodical process. It is being wafted away,
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: words coming out like stream of conscious poetry, patterns, visual art,
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 3: Which makes me wonder a little bit here about being
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 3: wafted away and having that time out of time experience
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 3: versus being in service to something. Like people who do
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: sand paintings. It is in service. It is a ritual.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: It has structure.
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: This does not have structure. And the dream ends with
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: a kind of doubling of what actually happens to him
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: in the dream, his own experience. He gets wafted away,
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: this time by a skateboard. So at least, you know,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: I feel like we come down to Earth, pulled on
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: the special sky hook, and you're on an old yellow
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 3: wooden skateboard. So I'm wondering about how anchored, just the
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 3: question of being anchored.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting that in the associations he's saying
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: he's getting more settled where he is.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: Well, like you did, I was thinking right from the beginning,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: longing for inspiration in a long drought. And I was
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: thinking about the lack of moisture, which to me, the
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: lack of relationship with one's own internal moisture. And it
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: made me wonder about, you know, the physical movements that
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: he was doing. It seems like the way I read it,
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: it started out as words and then it became image.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: And then the whole together became an image when viewed
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 1: from above. So it made me wonder about going down
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: a layer in the sense that we're going down into
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: something more instinctual, more basic, more natural. And the image.
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: As we move along through the dream, it comes to
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: the part where it eventually becomes he's rewriting Harry Potter.
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: And when I think about what is Harry Potter, it's
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: about sort of what we've been talking about, which is
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: a world of mystery and ambiguity and paradox, where the
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: things that we think you know, that wouldn't work in
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: our world aren't working there. So I'm wondering if the
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: moisture that's missing in the beginning could have become from
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: some sort of relationship with that mystery.
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: But it's interesting because J.K. Rowling gets disenchanted. Right. I
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 2: didn't even think about that word when I said it. Right.
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 2: And then so does he. He's like, oh, I'm just,
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 2: you know, so it's almost like the magic loses its magic.
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting. You know, I don't know if this
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 2: is related, but there's something else that's tugging at my
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 2: psyche a little bit. And I know I'm going to
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 2: just sound like the worst pain in the ass therapist
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 2: when I say this, but, you know, so we ask
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: on the forum, what are the main feelings in the dream?
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: And he says, divine inspiration, wonder, and transformation. And this
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 2: is where I'm going to be a stickler. In divine
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 2: inspiration and transformation, neither one of those are feeling states.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: I have a, I kind of, I maybe can give
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: you wonder as a feeling state, but, you know, some
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: people would say, no, that's not a feeling either. I mean,
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: it's like, what is the emotional experience? So I'm struck
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: by the fact that the person filling out the form,
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 2: the dreamer, I had a little hard time identifying the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 2: feeling states, you know, because to say transformation is not
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: a feeling, inspiration is not a feeling. Those are experiences.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 2: but they're not feelings. So maybe that's relating to what
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 2: the point that you're making, Mike. I'm just I'm curious
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: about it.
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: Well, it goes back to the drought, right? Yeah. So
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: if I'm feeling dry or that's I know that's the
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 1: dream state, but it's setting it up and and and.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: What's interesting to me is it leads to a Harry
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Potter-themed Mardi Gras, which I can't make this up. I mean,
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: the Mardi Gras and the carnival in Trinidad is very
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: much related to the wild man. And Papa Boy, the Dionysian,
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: the Bacchanalia of Mardi Gras, it's this time in New Orleans.
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: Started in Mobile in the U.S. and then in New
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: Orleans where it set aside a time to live out wildness.
• 1:19:49
  Speaker 1: And it stops immediately at midnight on Ash Wednesday. So
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 1: the second it stops, it's like it's done. But there's
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: a time for... getting in touch with the natural side
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: of things. Again, I realize I'm probably biased because we've
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: been talking about it, but it is right there. And
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: so the part that is also interesting is a vintage
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 1: yellow skateboard. That to me, you know, skateboards were sort
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: of a thing, kind of hard to use on gravel
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: roads and driveways, but those are a a mode of
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: transportation from, from an older time, a youth.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 2: Right. It's, it's like associated kind of with adolescence, right? Right.
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: That's that poor air piece that, that you picked up. And,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if it's, if it's a, it's a
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: way to reconnect to something, some energies from the past.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, I like that.
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 3: And he has returned in a certain sense to the past.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 3: when he says he's returned to his hometown mainly to
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: care for his parents, who are elderly, ended up staying
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: for years restless. And he's more and more settled there.
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: So return to the place of his childhood, return to
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: child position, even as an adult, with elderly parents, and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: feeling more and more settled there. And I'm thinking, you know,
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 3: in the context of all we talked about, about the
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: wild man, that the wild man is of nature. The
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 3: wild man lives in the woods. He knows its fields
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 3: and streams, the animals, the birds, where the creatures sleep
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: at night. It's really an image of profound grounding. And
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 3: this dreamer's dream is one of, you know, things just
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: sort of wafting him into a kind of semi-ecstatic state.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 3: And that whether the inspiration he is longing for is
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: not in these kinds of magical experiences, but the connection
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: with his own natural wild man in and of nature
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: and in and of the ordinary. The caring for his
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: elderly parents back in a hometown, not Hogwarts.
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: I mean, unless he grew up in Hogwarts, you know,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: that could be his hometown. You know what? This dream
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 2: feels really kind of bivalent to me, I think. I can...
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 2: I can see the, oh, this might be a little poor,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: but I can also see like there's some, and Mike,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 2: I think your point is so well taken about the
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: drought and looking for the moisture, but there is something here,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: you know? There is something that wafts him away. There's
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 2: some energy. Mike, I really like what you said about
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: kind of the skateboard maybe puts him in touch with
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: some energies from an earlier time. Again, we could see
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: that as kind of regressive and pu-erh, but... Sometimes that
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: is exactly what we need to be sort of revivified
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: and inspired.
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: That's what happened to me. I mean, Bigfoot came from
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: a childhood of fascination that I ran into as an adult. So.
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 2: There you go.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: Pu-erh, probably, maybe, but also very rejuvenating.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: And healing.
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 3: Healing.
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: And I want to say that he gets the skateboard
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 2: from a woman. Oh, yeah. So there's something there about
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: being in relationship with the feminine part of his psyche,
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 2: what Jung called the anima.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: I wonder, too, about, I'm really struck by Cormac McCarthy's Cuckooley,
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: I think it's the Cuckooley problem, where he, And so
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: when he's writing and things start to devolve, it goes
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 1: from words down to images and then the whole thing's
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: an image. It's the reverse of what McCarthy lays out.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: So he says that.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: Well, you have to tell us what McCarthy lays out.
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: Sorry. So the novelist Cormac McCarthy wrote an essay about
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: how he imagined or how language and writing may have
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 1: created the split between civilized and wild. And in a sense,
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: the act of creating these abstract drawings that relate a
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: thought or an idea created an in-group and an out-group,
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: those that could read and those that couldn't. And that
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: created that split.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: But what I see happening here is almost a reversal
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: of what McCarthy's talking about, where things are not getting
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: more abstract, they're getting less abstract in the sense that
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: the whole, it's not about a word or a drawing
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 1: that means a sound, but he said little bears and Yeah.
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: And little things like that.
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: It's getting more like representational.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: More concrete, more representational. And then the whole thing is
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: an image when looked at from above. I'd love to know, like,
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: if I were the dreamer, I might consider trying to
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 1: draw that image. What was that image that the whole thing,
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: that the Gestalt created? And then thinking about, to me,
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the dream is moving towards death. It's a call for depth.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: It starts with drought and it moves toward depth.
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 2: And I would say, if I had this dreamer here,
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 2: and I'll issue this as an invitation to the dreamer,
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 2: like when I hear a dream, I have to know
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: what the feelings were. I don't know what it is
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 2: about me, but that's just really important. So was it
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: exciting and joyful to do the drawing? How did it
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 2: feel when you realized that there was an audience there?
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 2: What was it? Was there any emotion around the interaction
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 2: with J.K. Rowling? Was there disappointment when you realized that
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: you were just retelling Harry Potter? How did you feel
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 2: toward the woman with the skateboard? And how did it
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 2: feel to zip away? Like, what were the emotions? Was it,
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 2: were you excited? Were you frustrated? Were you angry? Were
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: you disappointed? You know, those are the kinds of things that, Well,
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 2: first of all, if I were working with the dream,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 2: with this dreamer, I would, those things would tell me
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 2: a lot. But I, but I think as the dreamer to,
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 2: to tune into those things and maybe even be curious
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: around why it was a little difficult to tap into
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: those things initially. Like I'm, I'm, I'm just, I'm back
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 2: on that because I'm curious about it. That's all.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: But.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: But we wish this dreamer the best, and may he
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 2: find divine inspiration.
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Yes, thank you.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com. If
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:27:53
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• 1:28:01
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