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The Heart of Transformation with Michael Meade · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: One of the great things about Carl Jung is he
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  Speaker 1: gave so many powerful, cogent, graspable ideas about the essence
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: of a person. And so we really are falling back
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  Speaker 1: into our own essence. And the more people that understand
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  Speaker 1: there's a deep self, deep soul, There's many words you
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  Speaker 1: can use. It has its own core image, and that's
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  Speaker 1: the source of imagination, and that's where the new world
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  Speaker 1: is born in the depths of the individual soul.
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  Speaker 2: Welcome to This Jungian Life, conversations with Jungian analysts on
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  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.
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  Speaker 2: Well, today is a very special podcast because we have
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  Speaker 2: one of my favorite authors on Michael Mead is a
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  Speaker 2: renowned storyteller, author, and scholar of mythology, psychology, and anthropology.
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  Speaker 2: With spellbinding interpretations and a unique street-savvy perceptiveness, he connects
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  Speaker 2: ancient myths to the dilemmas we face today, finding illuminating
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  Speaker 2: and healing ways to bridge the timeless with the present.
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  Speaker 2: Michael is the author of The Heart of Transformation. That's
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  Speaker 2: his new book. We're going to be focusing on that today.
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  Speaker 2: It is available now. Awakening the Soul, The Genius Myth,
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: Fate and Destiny, Why the World Doesn't End, and The
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  Speaker 2: Water of Life. And he's the creator of the Living
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  Speaker 2: Myth podcast, which is an excellent podcast, and the founder
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  Speaker 2: of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation. So Michael, thank you so much.
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  Speaker 2: I'm thrilled that we finally got this chance to get
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  Speaker 2: you on the podcast. We're really looking forward to talking
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  Speaker 2: about your new book. So maybe just... Start off letting
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  Speaker 2: us know what prompted you to write this book.
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  Speaker 1: Well, good to be with you and thank you for
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  Speaker 1: having me. I was thinking a lot about transformation and
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  Speaker 1: particularly the idea that we're living during this time when
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  Speaker 1: culture is unraveling and nature is rattling. And that seems
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  Speaker 1: to me to be an unusual combination. The world has
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  Speaker 1: gone through many cycles. and many ends of periods or
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  Speaker 1: ends of the era. And I think we're at the
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  Speaker 1: end of an era. And so I thought transformation is
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  Speaker 1: the thing to understand. In other words, transformation simply means
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  Speaker 1: to transit from one form to another. And one way
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  Speaker 1: that I was thinking about it is the world that
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  Speaker 1: we thought we had is gone. I know some people
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  Speaker 1: are trying to bring it back, but it's gone. And
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  Speaker 1: we haven't yet gotten clear vision of the world that's coming.
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  Speaker 1: And I'm saying that there's a world coming because in mythology,
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  Speaker 1: the world can't end. Or in mythology, it ends all
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  Speaker 1: the time and begins again. And the word end doesn't
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  Speaker 1: mean finito, good night, over and out. The word end
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  Speaker 1: means loose end or remnant. That's the meaning of the
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  Speaker 1: word end. And since from the loose ends and the
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  Speaker 1: remnants of the previous world, then there's a transformation from
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  Speaker 1: those loose ends into the reweaving of the next world.
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  Speaker 1: And in nature, so part of the book is about
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  Speaker 1: reading the text of nature. And nature, like in the
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  Speaker 1: case of a forest, will grow this really diverse, you know,
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  Speaker 1: biological thing with really big trees reaching for the sun.
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  Speaker 1: And then they fall down and rot into the earth
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  Speaker 1: and they become the nourishment for the next bunch of
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  Speaker 1: trees growing up. And so all of our ancestors were
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  Speaker 1: very close to nature and they saw this process and
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  Speaker 1: they understood that the world does that as well. And
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  Speaker 1: then modern scientists kind of catch up to it partially
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  Speaker 1: by realizing that stars die and other stars are born.
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  Speaker 1: And so then I begin the book by saying transformation
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  Speaker 1: is the way of the world. It's the way of
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  Speaker 1: the cosmos. And it's the aim of the human soul
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  Speaker 1: was something that I think I wrote into the book. Hello.
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  Speaker 2: I want to let This Jungian Life listeners know about
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  Speaker 2: a very special opportunity. This winter solstice, the Cosmos Institute
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  Speaker 2: will convene its inaugural residential colloquium in Ascona, Switzerland, in
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  Speaker 2: the magical landscape where Monte Verita and Erinos rose to
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  Speaker 2: legendary prominence as centers of artistic, spiritual, and intellectual life.
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  Speaker 2: An intimate company of scholars and participants will gather at
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  Speaker 2: Hotel Ascona, high above Lago Maggiore for five winter days
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  Speaker 2: of exceptional depth and beauty. Distinguished speakers, including Gary Lachman
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  Speaker 2: and Lawrence Hillman, will offer extended lectures while shared meals,
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  Speaker 2: unhurried conversation, and time for reflection sustain the life of
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  Speaker 2: the gathering. I will also be among those presenting. A
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  Speaker 2: highlight will be a visit to Erinos, where Jung, Marie-Louise
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  Speaker 2: von Franz, Mircea Eliade, Henri Corbin, James Hellman and others
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  Speaker 2: developed work that profoundly shaped depth psychology, archetypal thought, and
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  Speaker 2: symbolic imagination. Registration closes November 21st, and you can visit cosmosinstitute.org
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  Speaker 2: to learn more. That's Cosmos with a K. We'll put
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  Speaker 2: that in the show notes, and you should know that
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  Speaker 2: listeners of This Jungian Life get a 15% discount on registration.
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  Speaker 2: So I hope to see some of you in Switzerland
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  Speaker 2: this December.
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  Speaker 3: I'm curious about so many, so many things in the book,
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  Speaker 3: but how difficult it is always, I think, to be
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  Speaker 3: in the in-between stage. One thing is gone, and I
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  Speaker 3: agree with you. Things are coming to an end. but
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  Speaker 3: we can't see what's coming. And you do such a
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  Speaker 3: wonderful job of using the process of the pupa stage
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  Speaker 3: for in between what was a caterpillar and what will
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  Speaker 3: be a butterfly of this period of darkness, nothingness, descent.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm wondering what and how do we manage that?
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  Speaker 3: Without trying to force something into being, how do we
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  Speaker 3: adjust to being lost, confused, disoriented, sad, upset, all of
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  Speaker 3: those kinds of words?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think that's where we are collectively. And,
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  Speaker 1: you know, I think I wrote into the book, the
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  Speaker 1: larva has no idea of the butterfly.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: The cells of the larva are completely different from the
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  Speaker 1: cells of the butterflies. It's like two beings in one.
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  Speaker 1: And there's a point early on in the book where
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  Speaker 1: I talk about that as the ego and the deep self.
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  Speaker 1: We mimic that in our own selves. But I think
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  Speaker 1: key to being alive right now is accepting the condition
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  Speaker 1: of not knowing. So at several points in the book,
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  Speaker 1: I come back to this idea. On one level, it's
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  Speaker 1: pretty simple. Unless we acknowledge not knowing, We cannot know
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  Speaker 1: any more than we know now. Not knowing is the
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  Speaker 1: required step before knowing more or learning more. So not
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  Speaker 1: knowing is the natural place to be when everything is collapsing.
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  Speaker 1: In the book, I describe apocalypse with this original meaning,
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  Speaker 1: which is collapse renewal. And so we're witnessing in nature
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  Speaker 1: the collapse of institutions and culture, and that's hard to
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  Speaker 1: watch and it's painful And it causes people to suffer,
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  Speaker 1: I mean, meaningful anxiety and depression and all kinds of things.
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  Speaker 1: But then I'm using the notion that if we can
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  Speaker 1: accept that we don't know, then we're in the middle
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  Speaker 1: stage of a rite of passage. The second part of
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  Speaker 1: the book is looking at transformation through the human psyche
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  Speaker 1: and using rite of passage or initiation as the archetypal
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  Speaker 1: frame for it. And the middle of an initiatory process
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  Speaker 1: or rite of passage is liminality, the liminal space in between.
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  Speaker 1: And that's the space in which the transformation occurs. No one,
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  Speaker 1: even the scientists looking into the cocoon, cannot see the
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  Speaker 1: moment of transformation. It's a mystery and it remains invisible
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  Speaker 1: but can be experienced. And I think that's where we
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  Speaker 1: all are now.
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  Speaker 3: You talk about imaginal cells. And it feels like, you know,
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  Speaker 3: that really lit me up as a sort of a
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  Speaker 3: biological reality. But the parallels to human psychology are wonderful.
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  Speaker 3: Can we call upon those imaginal selves to help us
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  Speaker 3: out while we're in this dark, liminal space of becoming?
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  Speaker 1: We know not what. Emphatically, yes.
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  Speaker 2: Okay. You know, Michael, one of the things I really
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  Speaker 2: appreciate about the book, because, of course, we are in
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  Speaker 2: this moment of collapse and transition. I think that, you know,
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  Speaker 2: people say, oh, well, there's always something going on. But
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  Speaker 2: this does feel, I think, like an especially difficult passage
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  Speaker 2: for the planet and for our species. And, you know,
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  Speaker 2: some people have referred to it as the metacrisis. And
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  Speaker 2: I loved the essential optimism of your framing that, as
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  Speaker 2: you say, transformation is the way of the world and
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  Speaker 2: it's the way of the psyche. And this is just
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  Speaker 2: another iteration of it. And if we can somehow trust that,
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  Speaker 2: even in the not knowing, it does allow us to
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  Speaker 2: approach this moment with some optimism. You know, I've talked
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  Speaker 2: about this before on the podcast, so it may be
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  Speaker 2: repeat for people who are longtime listeners, but when my
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  Speaker 2: kids were little, we used to raise monarch butterflies. So
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  Speaker 2: we would go and collect the eggs and, you know,
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  Speaker 2: and then they'd hatch and there'd be these little caterpillars
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  Speaker 2: and I would watch them grow and grow and grow
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  Speaker 2: and they'd go through all these stages. And now I
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  Speaker 2: can't remember the fancy word for this. Oh, instar is
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  Speaker 2: the different stages of the caterpillar.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: And then they would pupate and that was a fascinating
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  Speaker 2: thing to watch. Like, they would hang upside down and
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  Speaker 2: I'd always think, like, what, you know, what prompted them
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  Speaker 2: to decide, hey, I'm going to stop eating and I'm
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  Speaker 2: just going to hang upside down. And then What happens is,
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  Speaker 2: as you know, they digest themselves from the inside. And
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  Speaker 2: I would watch them do this and think, boy, that
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  Speaker 2: must like suck. Like, does that hurt? Is it frightening?
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  Speaker 2: It's probably uncomfortable at some level, whatever the interiority of
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  Speaker 2: the caterpillar is. And then this thing happens where they
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  Speaker 2: start wriggling and the husk of the caterpillar falls away.
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  Speaker 2: And then there's this beautiful kind of jade green chrysalis
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  Speaker 2: that's there. And I used to kind of you know,
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  Speaker 2: I would sometimes move the chrysalids to get them in
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  Speaker 2: a different, better place for kind of watching the transformation.
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  Speaker 2: And so one time, and I can't remember exactly how
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  Speaker 2: this happened, but I punctured one of them accidentally with
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  Speaker 2: a pen and just clear ooze came out. You know,
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  Speaker 2: and if you hold them up to the light, you
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  Speaker 2: can see they're just, it's just a sack of jelly.
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  Speaker 2: And that's where those imaginal cells are. I loved... I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I obviously kind of learned a lot about it through
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  Speaker 2: that weird hobby that I had for a number of years.
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  Speaker 2: But boy, you went really deep with this metaphor and
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  Speaker 2: I learned all kinds of new things. And it is
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  Speaker 2: such a it's such an incredibly eloquent metaphor for a
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  Speaker 2: psychological process.
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  Speaker 3: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And in particular, the fact that the old caterpillar cells
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  Speaker 2: resist the the I don't know if it's like an
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  Speaker 2: immune response to the imaginal cells that contain the new
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  Speaker 2: being of the butterfly. But I mean, it's like, God,
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  Speaker 2: you know, God, we know about that, don't we?
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  Speaker 1: It's all in there.
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  Speaker 2: It's all in there.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, it's amazing that the biologists working on this,
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  Speaker 1: modern biologists, and they have microscopes going into the cocoon
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  Speaker 1: and everything. And they have to name, when they realize
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  Speaker 1: the cells are completely different cells, larva cells and butterfly cells,
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  Speaker 1: they have to give them a name. And they call
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  Speaker 1: them imaginal disks, imaginal cells, as if something in them
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  Speaker 1: says imagination is at the root of transformation, that you
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  Speaker 1: can read it in the text of nature. And so
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  Speaker 1: that's just all by itself wonderful.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It's like you can't make it up,
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  Speaker 2: can you? No.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, then you have the idea that in
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  Speaker 1: ancient Greek, the word psyche means butterfly or human soul.
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  Speaker 1: And you can't make that up either. And so we
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  Speaker 1: are wedded to that process. The big difference is the
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  Speaker 1: larva doesn't have a choice. The larva gets a signal
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  Speaker 1: we don't know from where to completely stop and enclose
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  Speaker 1: itself into the cocoon where it will deconstruct totally. Humans
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  Speaker 1: actually have a calling to do that, but have a
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  Speaker 1: choice not to do it. And now I think we
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  Speaker 1: really have less choice I think the period we're in
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  Speaker 1: now is about a transformation of humanity as well as
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  Speaker 1: a transformation of nature. But the script is written in
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  Speaker 1: the caterpillar and butterfly story because they figured out that
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  Speaker 1: the cells of the caterpillar are trying to kill the
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  Speaker 1: imaginal cells in an immune reaction of seeing it as
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  Speaker 1: the other. And so there's a tremendous resistance. So put
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  Speaker 1: that into the psychology of the human being. We all
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  Speaker 1: want to transform and change. I mean, the evidence of
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  Speaker 1: that is in the materialistic culture where advertising is all
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  Speaker 1: about how you can change to have a better life.
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  Speaker 1: So everybody understands we're all trying to have a better body,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: a better mind, a better whatever. But we resist the
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  Speaker 1: exact change that we most desire. And I think the
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  Speaker 1: story of the caterpillar and the butterfly makes it clear.
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  Speaker 1: resistance is natural.
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  Speaker 2: That's great.
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  Speaker 1: And then, you know, scientists the way they are, they
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  Speaker 1: decided to try and interfere with the process and take
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  Speaker 1: some of the butterflies out before they were fully formed
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  Speaker 1: so that they weren't endangered by the attack of the
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  Speaker 1: cells of the larva. When they took the butterfly out prematurely,
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  Speaker 1: it couldn't fly. So that says that the resistance to
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  Speaker 1: change is what gives the butterfly the strength to break
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  Speaker 1: the cocoon and then fly. So the resistance we have
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  Speaker 1: to changing, if we understood it more psychologically, we could
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  Speaker 1: realize is there to strengthen us for the transformation that
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  Speaker 1: we're really trying to undergo. So that's why I started
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  Speaker 1: the whole book with the larva and the butterfly as
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  Speaker 1: the fantastic story of nature. And of course, the metamorphosis
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  Speaker 1: of butterfly was a major metaphor and symbol throughout the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: history of humanity, and particularly during the Renaissance. It was
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  Speaker 1: a major image for the Renaissance. And I think we
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  Speaker 1: are on the potential edge of the next Renaissance if
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  Speaker 1: we can manage to transform and assist the Earth in
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  Speaker 1: its attempt to transform. We could be eventually in a
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  Speaker 1: new Renaissance.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, I was really taken with what you did with
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  Speaker 3: the image of the butterfly, because it seems almost, you know,
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  Speaker 3: that we've all heard that story before, but you took
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  Speaker 3: it to a new level, especially with some of the
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  Speaker 3: science behind it, so that the magic is really there.
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  Speaker 3: It's a mystery and it's magic. And if we're on
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  Speaker 3: the edge, we hope, of a renaissance, clearly that will
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  Speaker 3: not occur from without. It is not going to occur
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  Speaker 3: by spending more time on our phones or going shopping.
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  Speaker 3: How will it occur and how can each of us
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  Speaker 3: find some of those imaginal cells that are somewhere within
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  Speaker 3: us as they are in the pupa or chrysalis?
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  Speaker 1: So one argument I make is that Society does not
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  Speaker 1: change at the level of society. That even though many
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: of us have hoped and there's still possibility for meaningful
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: political changes, it doesn't change society. It changes the tenor
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  Speaker 1: of things at a given time. It can only change
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  Speaker 1: society from the individual soul at the individual soul level.
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  Speaker 1: I make that argument because I think there's a secret
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  Speaker 1: and meaningful connection between the uniqueness of the individual soul
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  Speaker 1: and the collective. And so the Renaissance, for instance, I
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  Speaker 1: don't think over in Italy, people were walking around saying,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: I think we should do art differently. And why not?
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  Speaker 1: They weren't talking to each other that way. Some people
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: were waking up with visions that were compelling them to
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: do art in different ways and architecture in different ways
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: and even science in different ways. And so in the book,
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: there's a chapter that leads into the idea of human genius.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: And to me, the greatest example of diversity in human
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: culture is the idea of genius, which is an old
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: Latin word that means the spirit that's already there. Genius
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean IAQ or great talent. It can mean that.
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  Speaker 1: But its real meaning is each soul is born with
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  Speaker 1: the spirit that's already there when they come in. And
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: that is their genius. And it has gifts. It can
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: have talents. And it has an aim. And so my
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  Speaker 1: argument somewhere in the book is that if enough people
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: awaken to their calling in life, they will find the
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: purpose and find the courage to live it. And when
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: enough people do that, then you get a change in
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: society and a change in culture. And so back to
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  Speaker 1: the imaginal cells, that the imaginal cell that is the
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: unseen root of the butterfly exists in each person. as
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: what is called the imago in psychology, which is the
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: same thing again, an image at the core of the
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  Speaker 1: person that came in before they were actually born. And
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  Speaker 1: that same imagination is what connects us back to the cosmos.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: And I go at that several ways in the book.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: Can I share a quote from your book? Yes, please.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: I love quotes, Michael. And I have a lot of
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: quotes from you in my storehouse of quotes. Nature only
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: makes originals, and each human soul enters the world with
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  Speaker 2: a distinct core of imagination and specific arrangement of abilities
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  Speaker 2: and gifts intended to become known and be freely given
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: in turn. The uniqueness of the individual soul is a
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  Speaker 2: gift of nature that makes each person valuable and every
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: life meaningful.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. Here we are losing meaning all over the world.
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  Speaker 1: I mean, really, the institutions are hollowing out. And even
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: when they can stand, they can't change as fast as
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: everything else is changing. We're not protected by the institutions anymore.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: We're even sometimes attacked by them. And so where do
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: we fall back, but where? And one of the great
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: things about Carl Jung is he gave so many powerful, cogent,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: graspable ideas about the essence of a person. And so
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: we really are falling back into our own essence. And
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: the more people that understand there's a deep self, deep soul,
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: as many words you can use, it has its own
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: core image. And that's the source of imagination. And that's
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: where the new world is born in the depths of
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: the individual soul. And so that's very different than trying
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: to hope or imagine that people reach an agreement at
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: some international level, which is not likely to happen. We
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: could reach the agreement that we should be reinforcing and
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: supporting each other's souls. That could give rise to an
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: endless amount of imagination because each person is unique and
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: can uniquely have their own worldview. The worldview that we
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: all shared for so long, Western worldview, is gone.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: It's gone even.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: In geopolitics, you can see that it's gone. But where
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: does it go when it's no longer inscribed at a
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: societal level? We go back down to the elemental, back
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: down to the depth of the soul and the depth
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: of the self, and both in terms of protecting the individual,
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: not being so afraid, not being so anxious. I think
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: somewhere in the book, I describe anxiety as the distance
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: between the ego and the deep self. That's one way
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: to understand anxiety. If we have a connection to the
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: deep self, We can breathe back down there, and we're
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: not as anxious as we might be by all that's
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: happening so rapidly in the world.
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:13
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, Jung says that if we want to
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: change the world, how do we do it? One person
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: at a time.
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: Change the soul, change the world. Yeah.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: And I'm thinking about those imaginal cells as the mirror
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: neurons or the special chemistry cells that we have to
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: affect one another. Yes. That as we see things differently,
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: act differently, imagine more broadly and creatively, we spark that
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: in other people. Because it seems initially, or it can
• 22:54
  Speaker 3: seem sort of so sad that, yes, but one person
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: changing isn't going to remedy a collective problem. And yet
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: it does and it can and then we find other
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: people and we grow something that is different at an
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: interpersonal level.
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then we trust that we are secretly interconnected.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: And that's what starts to come in play. And then
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: I add the genius to it because genius has endless manifestations.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: So there's people who have a genius for going into nature.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: I've met people who are figuring out how to get
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: the heavy metals out of streams and purify the streams.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: And they're finding new ways. Matter of fact, they're using
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: mushrooms to get the heavy metals out. You know, someone
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: figured that out. I'm not going to figure that out,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: but someone did. And someone else is figuring out different
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: forms of healing or adaptations that can happen to psychological healing,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: but also in more medical type healing. And someone else
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: is refining the ways that we help a person die.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: And all those things make people more connected and more
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: full of imagination. And I think there's endless possibilities there.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: And I think, you know, I call it the second
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: level of hope, which is really imagination is the second
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: level of hope.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: What's the first level of hope?
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: False hope.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, right.
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: Most of our initial hopes are false. They're naive hopes,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: you could call them, naive hope. You know, I hoped
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I would be the tallest kid in the class or
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: I hoped I could be the most beautiful or the
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: smartest and all those things that everybody's told in a
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: kind of excessive way that don't pan out and that eventually, no,
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just myself, you know, and maybe frail at times
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: and certainly uncertain at times, but less so when I
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: get down to the root and realize there's something in
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: me that's been here all along and that it has
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: its own sense of the world and it has its
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: own aims So there's another chapter that goes into calling.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: And I'm suggesting that when the institutions are becoming hollow,
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: there's an acceleration of calling. Yeah, it's like the butterfly speaking, saying,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: look over here, try this route.
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: I think there's a lot to that. And you talk
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: about life crises and suffering as the necessary impetus. to
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: pierce the hard shell of the ego and awaken us, again,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: like the butterfly metaphor, to something deeper, greater, much more beautiful.
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: But if we could think our way through it, we
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: probably wouldn't be in such a number of messes.
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: Or we would be helping AI, which is trying to
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: think its way through it and creating ever more disconnection
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: from the soul. and from the deep self. And again,
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: the soul and the deep self is the antithesis of
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the drive inside of AI. I call it authentic intelligence.
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: That is a wonderful statement that I just want to highlight.
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: AI is probably just a new peak of thinking. And
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: it's dangers, it's futility, it's unhuman characteristics. It's not who
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: we are.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Well, it's who part of us has been trying to
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: be for hundreds of years, going back to Descartes and
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: even earlier than that. And it represents a loss of soul.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: So to me, I would have predicted that the AI
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: agents are going to turn against their creator because they
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: don't have understanding. They don't have heart and they don't
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: have soul. And so naturally, they're going to go towards
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: chaos rather than towards creativity, you know, if left on
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: their own. I think it's predictable.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: Michael, we've been talking a little bit about genius, and
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: we have a question actually from one of our Patreon
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: supporters that's relevant to that. So I want to just
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: take a second and toss you this question. Our patron,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Bo B., asks, what is the difference between and potential
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: overlap between intelligence and genius.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's good. Well, it's interesting, you know, because intelligence
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: has gotten dumbed down because of IQ, right? Before there
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: was artificial intelligence, there was intelligence quotient, as if you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: could quantify intelligence. And if my mind is right, the
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: oldest meaning of intelligence had to do with understanding. not
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: factual knowledge. And so that we have been dumbing down
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: for centuries into the idea, and it's there with, you know,
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: the brain is a miraculous thing, but not so much
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: as the heart. So the reason it's called the heart
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: of transformation and has a burning heart in the sky
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: on the cover of the book is because it's the
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: heart that's missing. And the old idea was that there
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: was a heart within the heart. There's the heart that
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: pumps the blood. And then there's the inner heart, the
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: heart they call the heart within the heart that has
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: its own eyes, that sees the world in its own
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: unique way. And it is the source of an embodied intelligence.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I'm just thinking of James Hillman. The last thing I
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: think that he wrote was the thought within the heart.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: His writings about the idea that there's thought in the heart.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: And the intelligence of the heart is what we bring
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: uniquely into the world, each one of us. And so
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: in the book, I'm constantly going back to the heart
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: or especially the heart within the heart because people have
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: decided that the human brain is a mechanism. And then AI,
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I forget how the details, I'm not good at those
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: kind of details, but the human brain can move at
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: the rate when it's changing or at the rate of
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: 30 meters per second, and AI can move at 300
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: million meters per second. And that makes them conclude that
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: human intelligence is hopeless and small compared to AI. And
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I think it's the other way around, because human intelligence
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: has to do with understanding and depth, and its connection
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: is to the heart, not the brain. And the heart
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: is the source of all of the things that are immeasurable, unquantifiable,
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: and it's those things that make us human and keep
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: us alive.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: The mystery.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: The core mystery. which I keep referring to in the book,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: starting with the caterpillar or the butterfly, the core mystery
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: of life is life, death, rebirth, or life, death, renewal.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And the people that are so committed to the quantifiable
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: data-based sense of life in the world do not understand
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: that we are all in this process of life, death,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: and rebirth, that that actually is human nature just the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: way it's nature nature. And I think the way we
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: get out of the track of AI, which self-identifies as artificial,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: and the new thing is AGI, artificial general intelligence. And
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: they think they're improving their description by that, but it's artificial,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: it's overly general, and it's not that intelligent. And therefore
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: it's dangerous. So it's like the epitome of the process
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Of the Cartesian split, for instance.
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is absolutely the epitome of that.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: Split the subject and make everything else an object and
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: try to dominate the world. And what happens is a
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: loss of soul.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: So it's almost like the answer is to just get
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: more human.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: More deeply human. And especially including the art.
• 31:16
  Speaker 3: I'm picking up on the Cartesian split. That was, I think,
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: therefore I am. And how that has led us down
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: a road that's gone way too far into all of
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: us thinking in polarities. We think rather than we feel.
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: We quantify. We have data. We have beginnings and ends.
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: Everything's very logical. And how to surmount the polarities of
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: those people are wrong and my people are right. These
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: things are good. Those things are bad. This way of
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: living is better than somebody else's way of living. And
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: we're inside ourselves and what can enable us to have
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: a unifying third, that rather than this or that, right, wrong, good, bad, up, down,
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: that we don't fall into those kinds of polarities.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Or if we do, realizing that a polarity has an
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: underlying aim. So the tension of the opposites, it used
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: to be called, or the oppositorium, because the world begins
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: with opposites, right? In order for life to happen, the
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: world to be, light had to be separated. And that's
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: when the earth appears and so on. And so from
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: a creation point of view, the tension of the opposites
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: is a creative process, not just supposed to produce a
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: winner and a loser. It's supposed to produce a third
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: thing that wasn't yet seen or imagined or present. And so,
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: but ever since it started before Descartes, I think in,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: I have a chapter where I trace it back, even
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: though you could go further, I pick it up at
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: 869 in the second council of Constantinople in Turkey, where
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: the Catholic church decided because the soul was causing problems.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: The old idea was a trinity, and you had the body,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the mind, the body, the soul, and the mind, and
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: the soul was keeping the other two together, or they
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: called it body, soul, and spirit. And soul is what
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: kept body and spirit together, the third thing. And of course,
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: in mythology, it's always the third thing. But when they
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: were enforcing the dogmas and the doctrines, it was the
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: soul that was causing the problem, because people, felt they
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: had a soul. They were embodied. They were connected to
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: the earth where they lived, and they had these old
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: understandings that were like lunar knowledge and bodily knowledge, and
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't let that go. And so they decided to
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: get the soul out of the Trinity. And that was
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: the beginning of the split. And really, it's one way
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: to see the beginning of the loss of soul, which
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: leads eventually to Descartes. And I could see when Descartes
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: is saying, I think therefore I am, I could see
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: someone therefore nearby going, I dance, therefore I am. And
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: someone else is, I cry, therefore I am. It was
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: so narrow, but people bought into it and they've been
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: buying into it ever since. And I think AI is
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: the extreme manifestation of that dissociation. And that one of
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: our jobs as people trying to be awake in a
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: critical time is to bring more soul back into the world.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: And in that sense, soul means that substance that is undefinable,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: but you can tell it when it's present and when
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: it's absent, that which unifies us secretly and makes us
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: brothers and sisters soul to soul. And that makes us
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: also the companions of the animal soul to soul, and
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: also the secret connection to nature and all of the
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: forests and all, because it has a soul. And then
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: in the Renaissance, they re-imagined it as this connection to
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: the soul of the world, from the individual soul to
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: the soul of the world. And we have to, I think,
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: find our way back to that, or we will be
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: living more intensely in never-ending polarization, where someone or some
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: group has to be made other for the other group
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: to exist, and where humans have to make nature other.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: We've been alienated from our own nature because it is
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: our human nature, to be secretly connected to nature and
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: to the soul of the world, according to the old,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: the old thinkers and all the old artists and all
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: the current people with real imagination.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: So that word, imagination, it keeps on coming up in
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: this discussion again and again and again. Yeah. And I
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: want to ask you, you know, how do you define
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: imagination and And why is it so important in this
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: process of transformation? Let's talk a little bit about imagination.
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: So a number of ideas. One is that imagination is
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: the deepest power of the human soul. Another, in mythology,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: it is said that nothing can exist unless it has
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: first been imagined. So imagination precedes existence.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's literally a creative force.
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: It is a creative force.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: And it's a force of image as well as idea.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: You know, the ancient Greek words, idea comes from the
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: Greek idein, I-D-E-I-N. But idein meant image and idea at
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: the same time. And so image is the other side
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: of an idea. It's the side that has a substance,
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: that has appearance, that has vision. And so imagination is
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: the source of vision. And part of what's missing now
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: is the kind of vision that reconnects people to the
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: living pulse of the world. Because AI is not going
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: to do that. I know that some people are thinking
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: that it's going to have this, its own transformation where
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: it becomes sentient. That's delusional as far as I'm concerned.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: You can't pile up enough data to make something whole.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Wholeness requires core imagination and a deep sense of connection,
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: which is, you know, by definition lacking from the AI realm.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: And so in a way, you could see AI as
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: an extreme symptom of what's missing.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: And so we need renewed imagination. Before we can have
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: a new world, we need a new worldview. And that
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: comes as visions. And so in the book, I get
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: into visions at various times. I go back to Prometheus.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I go back to the old idea that people become seers.
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: And I redefine prophecy. with this old meaning, because prophecy
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean simply to see the future, it means to
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: connect the ancient past to the future.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, which is exactly what you do, right? And
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: that's what you do in this book.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that we have to reconnect to ancient, because ancient
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean simply old, it means original. And so we're
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: disconnected from the source of life in an objective sense, right?
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: in a modern cultural sense, in a materialistic sense, in
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: an overly rational sense. And then our souls are secretly
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: connected to the source of life. And from there arises imagination,
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: which will give us hints of where to go and
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: what's coming, what's trying to come into consciousness. Because it
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: has to be imagined before it can be known. And
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: it's trying to be known. I mean, I can't prove it,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: but I think in the midst of everything changing, we
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: are being called to participate in the transformation of humanity.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: And I would say, and you say you can't prove it,
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: but I know that your work has been tremendously popular
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: and increasingly so. And mysteriously, our little podcast has caught on.
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: And the only way that I can explain that to
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: myself is that people are actually hungry for these ideas.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: Yes. Soul. People want that soul connection because that gives
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: people courage and courage is a word of the heart.
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: Courage comes from the heart and it gives people a
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: heart to live more meaningfully. And that's the response to
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the dissociation, the polarization, and the diminishing of the quality
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: of the world. There's really an opportunity. And I have
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: several stories in the book where it becomes collapse renewal,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: where it just shows that in the middle of the collapse,
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: it doesn't go collapse and then it starts again. While
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: it's collapsing like a forest, there's seeds that are waking
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: up and growing, and some of them are in us.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: And that takes the form of imagination, vision, and then
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: the courage to change and the courage to live a
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: bigger life. And under AI, I think everybody gets smaller
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: and subsumed into a kind of measurable, quantified, limited world
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: when our souls want to be awakened to an immeasurable
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: connection to ancient things and even future things and become
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: vehicles of change and imagination and healing. I think that's
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: the response of the soul. Yeah.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: The book has so many wonderful stories and we are
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: story-making creatures. And the overarching theme that we've just been
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: talking about is that we need to look in here,
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: not out there. And, you know, so I thought, oh, okay,
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: then what should we do? Should we all be going
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: to yoga classes or learning how to meditate or, you know,
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: painting things on our bedroom walls. But what I think
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: you go and expand or correct me on this is
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: simply start. Just seek, look.
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: Around, move.
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: And my own homegrown analogy for this is Lewis and Clark.
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: The adventurers who just went west and they did not
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: know what they were going to see.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Just start.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: Be kind to someone. Maybe take a class. Maybe read
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: your book. But it is not out there.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: That's been a heavily advertised misunderstanding of the nature of humanity.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: So again, I go back to genius. You know, it
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: came down to two real theories about the nature of
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: the human soul. Either it's a blank soul that enters
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the world and then your parents write on your soul
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: and then your siblings do and your schoolmates do and
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: your culture does and you're the sum total of that.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: And then you have to go out in the world
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: to make something of yourself. It's either that or each
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: soul comes in uniquely formed with this core of imagination
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: and genius and a kind of a expectation of a
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: calling in life and a person that's woven into the purpose,
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: woven into the depths of their soul. And when that happens,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: then the various experiences in life, whether they be tragic
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and or beautiful, are there to awaken us to who
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: we already are in our essence. And the calling is
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: calling to who we already are. And when you're on
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: that road, then it means that, yes, we start out
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: not knowing because when we're born, we forget. When we're
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: born into time, we lose and forget our connection to
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: the timeless things that are woven inside of us. So
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: I have one whole chapter called The Divine Word. And
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: the idea that we each have a divine word in us,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: which is another way of expressing the imagination and the
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: core of creativity that's in each person. And that when
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: the world gets in this kind of desperate state, we
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: have to remember or at least trust that there's something
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: like that in us. And then in the second part
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: of the book, I make the suggestion that if we
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: look back over our life, and I'm applying this to
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: anyone that would be at least 18 years of age,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: you look back and there are indelible occasions that mark
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: us and make us. And if a person goes to
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: those places that are indelible, they find imagination, they find
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: hidden elements of calling and genius, and they find a
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: kind of core sense of meaning and purpose that's trying
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: to awaken. And it may be in a dark period
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: early in life or a loss or something, but just
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: like in the cocoon, the butterfly is in there trying
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: to wake up inside the darkness. And our soul is
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: trying to awaken inside the dark times in which we
• 44:30
  Speaker 1: now live.
• 44:31
  Speaker 2: I'm just looking here lovingly at all of the things
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: I've highlighted from your book, that are, you know, I
• 44:38
  Speaker 2: want to sort of pick up on what you're saying.
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: One of the things that you talk about, which I
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: think is related to what you were just saying, is
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: talents and gifts. Could you just speak a little bit
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: about that?
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: So I love etymology, the study of words.
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: That is very clear in the book.
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: Comes across, yeah.
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: We do too, though. We love our etymology.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: And of course, and I consider words to be stories.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: They are.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And so like, The word myth or mythos or muthos
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: is the ancient Greek, has two meanings. One, story or
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: tell the story. And the other meaning is emergent truth.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: So here's a word that means emergent truth that has
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: come in the modern times to mean something provably false.
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: And so words have lives and they can go through
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: an arc of transformation as well. And so I happened
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: to notice one day that the word talent If you
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: move just two letters, it becomes latent. And latent means
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: present but held back. And so that caused me to
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: start thinking about talents as something latent in the soul
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: that's held back until it can awaken.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Like those imaginal cells.
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: Like the imaginal cells are what used to be called
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: the gold inside the heart. And so our talents are
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: golden things. Well, then I'm researching, and the word talent
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: comes from the German word And it's really the name
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: of the weight used to measure gold or silver. So
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: a talent was put on one side of the scale
• 46:11
  Speaker 1: to measure the amount of gold or silver on the
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: other side. And so that led me to realize that
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: a talent has weight. A talent is connected to gold,
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: but it has weight. And if a person doesn't awaken
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: to their talent and learn how to use it and
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: give it, it then becomes a weight on their soul.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: And the old description of Depression was a weight that's
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: pulling down the spirit of life. And so a talent
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: unexpressed or unused will become a weight on the soul. Yeah.
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: And both Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz say an unused
• 46:46
  Speaker 2: talent becomes a poison. So I'm paraphrasing, but there's something
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: like that. And so it goes again to the uniqueness
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: of each person and that there is something that we
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: need to develop and connect to and give and that
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: that doing so makes our life meaningful it contributes to
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: the transformation of this current moment and it it allows
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: us to live live our life fully and sort of
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: become become the butterfly instead of staying in the pupa.
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: And it turns out that The more you give a
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: talent freely, the more access to the talent you have.
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: It's the opposite of economic theories that a talent freely
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: given gets bigger and a person becomes a greater channel
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: or vehicle for imagination and creativity and connectivity because most
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: talents connect people if they use properly.
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: We catch fire from one another. We come alive from
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: one another. But I think lest we devolve somehow into
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: thinking that a talent means, you know, I have to
• 48:08
  Speaker 3: achieve something big in life, whether it be the proverbial
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: corner office or, you know, some particular kind of car,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: et cetera, that we don't mean that. We're not talking
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: about outer world success or or outer world discernible achievements
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: that we can point to, but something that is innate
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: in each one of us, a core sense of aliveness, soul, kindness,
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: and being whole. There's a lot of humility, in other words,
• 48:52
  Speaker 3: in talent. Yeah.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Well, trying to work with one's talent will be ugly
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: because the talent is, that's the one word, the more general,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I guess, word would be gift. So I start with
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: the idea that each soul is gifted and talent is
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: one way to talk about the gift. But the gifts
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: were given to us before we were born. If we
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: accept the old idea of the soul being unique and ain't.
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: And so it's natural for us to give from them,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: give that which has been given to us, we give
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: from that to others. And that is a humbling process
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: when a person begins to realize that, well, in mythological terms,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: it's pretty simple. All of our gifts have a divine origin.
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: And so this is another thing that's lost, and I
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: think therefore I am. How about you are a gift
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: of life to give freely that which was given to you?
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: You know, Descartes was a particularly isolated person. His mother
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: died shortly after his birth. His father never farmed him
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: out to be taking care of somebody. He lived mostly
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: alone in one of those old, cold, dark castles. And
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: they only think he had one very brief human relationship
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in his whole life.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: Wow. I did not know that.
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: He's the one who comes up with, I think, therefore,
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: because that's all he was doing. His body had never
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: been blessed the way mothers can bless the child's body.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: His other qualities had never been accepted by anyone. And
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: he was left in some old castle with his ideas.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: And he was a great thinker. And so he worked
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: that through. But everyone else should have been saying, okay, okay,
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: we understand. That's part of your gift and that's all
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: you got. You don't have the other things. So we'll
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: allow you to have your theory, but we're not going
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: to follow that because we know that there's someone else
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: who has a completely different orientation to life who's saying,
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: I love, therefore I am. And you know what I mean.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: But there's been this whole cultural drift in that direction, right? And,
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: you know, I love the way you're talking about it
• 51:03
  Speaker 2: because you're talking about it really from the point of
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: view of a mythologist and frankly, a poet, you know.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: But it seems to me that you're making the same
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: point that the psychiatrist Ian McGilchrist makes when he traces
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: the development of human culture. And he looks at it
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: through the standpoint of the right hemisphere and the left
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: hemisphere and that, you know, the right hemisphere is much
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: more holistic and embodied and has to do with that
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: which is implicit. And over the course of history, we've
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: gotten more and more and more and more left-brained. So that,
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: you know, as you said earlier, you know, that AI
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: is kind of a symptom. Well, Descartes was a symptom too.
• 51:53
  Speaker 2: We're increasingly in that kind of hall of mirrors, I think,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: that McGilchrist talks about. So, but we need to take
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: a stand. for the other perspectives. And one of the
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: things I love about the point you make in the book,
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: and you said it here, is like, kind of the
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: worse things get, the more urgent the calling feels. So
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: the more crisis is erupting around us, the more we
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: feel called to reconnect with that sense of soul. And
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: that's the positive thing.
• 52:28
  Speaker 1: The part of us that feels the polarization in our
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: own hearts and souls that we suffer because of that.
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: We feel the pain of that. And now we feel
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: the pain of the earth with all it's being exploited.
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: Of course, AI is the greatest misuse of resources probably
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: in the history of the world. It requires so much
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: earth and water and energy be channeled and destroy natural
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: habitats and even human communities. to get it to do
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: its dissociated thinking process. And so in a way, it's
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: helpful as a symptom to say, go the other way.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: Go to the places where we're connected most and live
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: those things. And so, yeah, I don't know that you
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: can take it any further than they're taking it with AI.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: And there is the old idea of an antiadromium, which
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: is it can only go so far that way before
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: it has to swing around. The other thing in the
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: book is I talk about the old Greek term metanoia,
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: which means to turn it around. And the idea there
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: is you can't really turn things around just by changing
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: your mind. It has to be a transformation of the
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: heart that in turn changes the mind that turns everything around.
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: And so we're in this moment or this question of
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: can we turn things around before the AI agents, you know,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: do the most destructive things they can do. And it
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: all fits right back into the idea of apocalypse, which is, again,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: doesn't mean end of the world. It means, has two
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: great meanings. One is lifting the veil. So the veil
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: lifts and you see behind the scenes, the stuff that
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: used to be done in the back rooms of politics
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: is done right on the TV screen. It's all out
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: in front. The corruption is out in front. I think
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: the polarization is out of front. The exaggerated overuse of
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: rationality is out in front. The othering of what doesn't
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: fit and who doesn't fit is out in front. And
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: I think all of that fits under the idea of apocalypse.
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: But then the second big idea in apocalypse is that
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: it's collapse and renewal. And the first stage has more
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: collapse in it The second stage has more renewal in it.
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: And it has a name. It was called apocastasis.
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: Apocastasis. Yes.
• 55:00
  Speaker 1: The rebuilding and returning into the order of nature. And
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: so myth is full of ideas about how this could
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: turn around. And I have a whole chapter where I
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: go through Descartes and get into literalization and over-rationalization. And
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: then the world doubles when you get to psychology. The
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: first world is singular. You can measure in each different thing,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: the length of things and all that. And then you
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: get to the second world, which is not logical, it's psychological.
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: And the world doubles. And it's the outside and the inside.
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: It's you and me. It's me and my deeper self.
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: And then also the terms start to double, you know,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: and you get passive aggressive. And you get these words
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: that are doubly and mythology triples the world. And now
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: you're down to you, me, and the divine, or you, me,
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: and the blessing of nature, or the human soul that
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: is imaginal as well as rational, and then is imbued
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: at times with divine energy and deep imagination that reviews
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and can renew everything. And so I'm arguing at times
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: for a return of the mythological.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 56:19
  Speaker 3: You know, I think it can be hard if we're
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: stuck in a polarity to say, well, where would I
• 56:28
  Speaker 3: begin to find this mythological layer in myself? Well, where
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: do I begin to find this thing called soul? Where
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: do I start? And I know people come into our
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: consulting rooms all the time, and everyone in the room knows.
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: that the task is going to be, you know, how
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: to help that person find more of himself or herself
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: and his or her own aliveness and soul. But it
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: seems like kind of drilling for water in the desert
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: at times. It ain't going to happen. And I'm thinking
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: about how to begin.
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's interesting. You know, I've worked a lot with
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: at-risk people. groups and I started out working with at-risk youth.
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: And of course, right now, all youth are at risk.
• 57:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, we're all at risk and youth are really
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: at risk because they're walking into a world and they're
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: being told that the world might end at any time.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: And they're being told that if it continues, it's going
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: to be run by AI and you may never have
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: a job. Imagine being young with that. And the reason
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: I started working with Genius is I was working with
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: at-risk youth who were dying really young because they were
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: living on the street. They were in violence or drugs
• 57:48
  Speaker 1: and in gangs and all that. And I realized I
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: may never see this young person again. How do I
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: get their attention at a meaningful level? Yes. And I
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: remembered the idea of genius. And I would suggest to them,
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: you know, do you know you have genius like straight up?
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? Because they knew the word. And
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: I said, well, it means you come in gifted and
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: aimed and your life has meaning from the beginning. And
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I was surprised almost all of them would respond to that.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: They Tell me more about that. Or how do I
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: have genius? And then you're, and all of a sudden
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: you're in the conversation because they're asking questions. And the
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: next thing we're talking about what is alive in them
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: or gifted in them that they didn't know about, but
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: now they're asking questions about. And that turned out to
• 58:31
  Speaker 1: be like an invaluable way to get connected to young people.
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: But for anyone else, boy, you know, dreams. I mean,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: dreams are the universal evidence Of another world. I have
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: another chapter in the book called An Other World. And
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: I kind of give the background for the other world,
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: which was the Irish reference. You know, they used to
• 58:55
  Speaker 1: say what people call the real world used to be
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: called the front of the world. It was the manifestation
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: that came from the world behind the world. And the
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: world behind the world was the world of eternal things, archetypes,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: we could call it. And all of the inspirations and
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: all the creative energies that pour into the world come
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: from the world behind the world. But the Irish simply
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: called it the other world, which was a helpful thing.
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: And they could say in any moment, in one step,
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: you could go from this literal limited world into the
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: unlimited world. great imaginal other world, that that is our
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: secret connection is to the other world. And I'm now
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: imagining awakening to the notion of another world is like
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: the opposite and reaction to the fear of the AI world.
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: The AI world defines itself as artificial. The other world
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: defines itself as eternal and divine. And I think we're
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: stretched between those two. And so anything that gets a
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: person to talk about that part of themselves, and that
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: could be a dream that they have, or a broken heart,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: or a radical fear, because fear has images. And so
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: there's that old idea. Well, Jung once wrote that genius
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: hides behind the wound. And that tells us that the
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: easiest way to get to the genius of a person
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: may be to engaging their woundedness. And everybody's wounded in
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: case people hadn't gotten the memo. Everyone who is human
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: has been abandoned. Everyone who is human is wounded. And
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: everyone who is human is gifted. And we're here to sort,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I have a whole section called Gifts and Wounds, how
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: to work with the gifts and how to heal the wounds.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: That's why we're here.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And what I love about this part about our
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 3: discussion is, We can do this for and with one another.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: This is not complicated. Can we see another person? Can
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: we just reach out? Can we hear their story? Can
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: we make a connection? Can we just be kind?
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah. People, you know, we're so affected by polarity that
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: the story people think we're living is everything is polarized.
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: But really, The polarization is part of a bigger story
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: in which polarization leads to recreation. And so I work
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 1: with stories a lot and I'll get a room full
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: of people into a story. And once you're in the story,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: you realize, oh, the person in the opposite place from
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: me is in the same story I'm in. We're just
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: in opposite places. And that's again why I think mythology
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: is helpful because it's all about stories. We have to
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: work ourselves back into the story of the world.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: And that mythological perspective that you hold and you translate
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: so well for us, it really is part of the
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: medicine for the conundrum that we're in, is to find
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: this other perspective, like you said, that it triples the world.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: It's suddenly we're three-dimensional. Suddenly we're related to something larger
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: than us. That's what a mythological view does. You know,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: there's a story, speaking of stories, there's a story in
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 2: the book that was new to me that I loved.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: And I'm wondering if you could tell us about it.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: It was the discovery of the Lascaux Caves. Yeah.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: So this is the beginning of the first part of
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: the book is transformation seen through nature, reading the text
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: of nature. The second is transformation seen through the awakening
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: of the soul as in rite of passage. And the
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: third part is transformation as seen through cultural change. And
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: so where am I going to start? And I love
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: this idea that in the middle of World War II
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: in France, while the bombs are heavily, bombs are coming
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: down on Paris in whatever, all the terrible thing that
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: was happening there was really destructive. People called it a
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: world war. They thought it might be the end of
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: the world. And while that is happening, Not that far
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: away in southern France, there's four boys who are like
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: 13 and 14 and 15 years old. And they're going
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: out into the forest because of a legend in the
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: neighborhood that there's a hidden treasure of gold in a
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: tunnel underneath the forest somewhere. And they're going out with
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: their dog looking for a literal gold treasure.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: And of course, there's always treasure, right?
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: And the goal, right? Yeah. And they're being literal about it.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: And so the dog finds this kind of opening in
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: the ground, which was caused by an oak tree that
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 1: got blown over the previous winter in a storm. And
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: the boys are looking and they say, well, it looks
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: like it could go down to a tunnel. And they
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: start throwing rocks and they don't hear anything. So they
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: know it's deep. So they begin this descent into the earth.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: While the earth just north of them, 180 miles north,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: is being torn up with bombs and hell is all
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: broken loose up there. They go down into the earth
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: and it's completely dark and narrow. They brought some lantern
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: with them. They wind up in an opening and they're
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: down there and they turn on the lantern and all
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: of a sudden the cave is full of animals and
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: beasts and and men combined with animals, and they're all
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: flickering and moving on the walls. And it was the
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: Cave of Lascaux, which at the time was the oldest
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: discovery of art, of human art. And so it was
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: believed to be the origins of human art. That is
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: to say, in the middle of the tearing apart of
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: World War II, there was a discovery of the origins
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: of human art in the depth of the earth.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: Art and connection with spirit, right? Because of course those...
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: those caves were profoundly spiritual places.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, it turns out that in examining all this,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: the only footsteps, ancient footsteps and prints they can find
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: are of young people.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: That's amazing.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: So that reveals that it was an initiatory site. It
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: was part of a rite of passage, which then you
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: can find by studying other cultures, that going into a
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: cave or into the depths of the earth was a
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: way part of the beginning of a rite of passage.
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: And in this case, it was a rite of passage
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: into imagination and art as part of the living center
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: of the earth. And so that reveals the part of
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: the essence of rite of passage, which each girl and
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: each boy would be separated from family and from childhood.
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: And then they would be as if moved from the
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: lap of their mother to the lap of mother earth.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: And there they would be exposed to spirit, and their
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: natural connection to art, creativity, and the heart of the earth.
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: And so I just wanted to tell that story.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 2: I found it very moving. And one of the things
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: also is that even though France was in the middle
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: of the war, people all over the world got really
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: interested in this and they wanted to come see it.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: And then it was so touching to hear that the
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: boys were standing guard protecting it.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Like people understood how precious it was.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: Yes, yes. And it became, that knowledge moved, not like
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: the speed of knowledge now, but it moved around the
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 1: earth that while World War II was going on, there
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: was a discovery, a reconnection to the origins of creativity
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: and spirit in the depths of the earth, as if
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: some depth of revelation was coming during the devastation of
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: the bombing that was happening. So you could take that
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: and then put us there and say we're in a
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: new level of the world being torn apart, even more radically.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: And therefore, we could say there are things nearby waiting
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: to be discovered that have to do with our deep
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: connection to the earth and our shared connection with the
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: earth in terms of creativity and some awakening that's trying
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: to happen from within us and below us. I was
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: using it that way to open the last part of
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: the book.
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's going to happen down there in the dark.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: Not up there in the light, but here is this
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: wonderful expression. And the artists used the surfaces of the
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: walls of the cave as part of what they were depicting.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: And it's magical. What you can see now is a...
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 3: recreation of the original cave because people and carbon dioxide
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: that we exhale will ruin the original cave paintings. But
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: it is such a beautiful parallel to what happens inside us.
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: It's a discovery in our depths, and it's really there,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: just like the Lascaux Cave. And by the way, that
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: is by far not the only cave.
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: Not the oldest either. Not the oldest.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: And then there are the hinges.
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 1: It was so important at the time that they not
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: only made a replica to save the original, but they
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: also built one that could travel. And it went around
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: the world so that people would enter as if they
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 1: were going into the earth.
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: Isn't that great?
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: But they mostly missed it. The idea was this is
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: what our ancestors did in the rite of passage that
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: awakened the heart within the heart and gave each person
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 1: a bodily and imaginative form experience of being connected to
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: the heart of the earth and also to the pulse
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: of nature. And modern people don't have that. And therefore,
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: we wind up in a dissociated, polarized situation. And that
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: was the natural experience of girls and boys throughout the world.
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: Not always in a cave, sometimes, you know, in some
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: other part of the forest or something. But the idea
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: that young people would be placed in a position where
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: they could awaken and have their own vision. Because each
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 1: of those boys came out, when they interviewed them, they
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: each have a different story. Because they each saw the
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: visionary thing through the eyes of their own heart. And
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: their hearts were moved. And that's why they wanted to
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: protect it. And they slept by it and so on.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: And they tried to keep it secret. They couldn't help
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 1: but speak about it. And as soon as the word
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: went out, everybody wanted to be in there, like it's
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: the antidote to world war. And yeah, we need to
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: find those caves of the heart.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 2: It's a real potent metaphor, I think, for the world
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: of the archetypes. Because the archetypal world is alive in us.
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: It's bequeathed to us as our birthright. We inherit it.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: And it is filled with beauty and mystery, and it's
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 2: indescribably ancient.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: Yes. And immediate. Yes. The archetype acts as the ancient
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and immediate pulsing and inevitable moving of life.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: It's not in some museum. It's in our heart, as
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: you would say.
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And so in the book, I go into the
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: difference between archetypes and pulsing. paradigm shifts because there's a
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: way of looking at AI as the most radical paradigm shift.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: And one difference between paradigm and archetype, they're related words,
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: but the paradigm is something new that replaces the old.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: And the archetype is something ancient that renews the present.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: They're two different orders and two different qualities. And And
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I was following Jung in the book when I was
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: talking about how the collapse of the world awakens the
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: deep archetype of the self. The wholeness of the self
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 1: awakens when the wholeness is completely missing in the outside world.
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 1: That's the balancing dynamic of nature expressing itself through humans.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: And so I was suggesting that two of the archetypes
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: that make the most sense now are the archetype of
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: the self If I have a deep sense of self
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: in myself, if I feel connected to that, then I
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: can handle the sense of overwhelm that comes. I can
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: deal with the anxieties and the fears as they come
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 1: because I can breathe down and feel down and settle
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: down into myself. And the self is not overwhelmed by
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: the changes in the world. It's actually quite knowledgeable about them.
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: So that's one of the archetypes that we can call
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: upon And the other is the archetype of creativity or
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: the creator, that as everything's falling apart, the creative archetype
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: wakes up. And as, you know, in the awakening in
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: the sense of the revelation of the cave of Lascaux
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: during the collapse during World War II, they're not dissociated,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 1: they're connected. So creativity and the connection to the deep
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: self are two of the key archetypes right now, as
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 1: far as I can tell. Yeah.
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: You know, Jung says that we have five instincts, and
• 1:12:48
  Speaker 3: one of them is creativity. So I think that's just
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 3: such a remarkable thing that of basic five, one of
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: them is our innate urge to create, like our forebears
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 3: did all around the world with cave paintings, building hinges.
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 3: There are so many hinges in Ireland. They're in farmer's fields.
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: And it testifies to the power of these archetypes, the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 3: urge to create, the urge to connect, and the urge
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: to find something that embraces interior, exterior, heart, mind, soul,
• 1:13:33
  Speaker 3: that there it just is.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: It's innate in us.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: And people, I think, really need to be reassured of that.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: It's really, really there.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: We can promise you it's really, really there.
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: I think we're being called to become agents of recreation
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: as opposed to uncontrollable, misguided AI agents. I think the
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: metaphors of the moment kind of speak that way. And that, yeah,
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 1: our ancestors were all participating in creation. The old idea
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: was that the world is recreating itself moment to moment.
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: You know, they found caves much older than Lascaux. And
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: they keep moving back the time of the origin of
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: the world. They're not going to find it because what
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: they're looking for is not something calendrical or time bound.
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: The origins were in the eternal and the divine. And
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: creative energy is the eternal and the divine working through us.
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: And I think This is the time for us to
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: tap into that. And I think I'm following Jung when
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: I'm saying when everything outside collapsed, the wholeness inside tries
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 1: to awaken. And the call to creativity becomes stronger. And
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: creativity is divinely generated, not data-based. And that feels good
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: just to say it.
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 2: Yes. You know, can I read another, like, just gem
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 2: from your book? And then I want to follow that up.
• 1:15:11
  Speaker 2: Each person can be seen as a body wrapped around
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: a soul, imbued with a dream that keeps trying to
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 2: awaken from within. That's just so beautiful. But, you know, again,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 2: I wanted to say the way that you're, the framework
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: that you're providing is, I love what you said before about,
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 2: what did you say, the first kind of hope and
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 2: the second kind of hope? What was that? What did
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: you say?
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: That the first kinds of hope are naive.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: And then the second level of hope is imaginative.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: So you are providing real hope. You're providing that second
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: level of hope amidst all of the crises that we're facing.
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 2: You're really providing a way of looking at this That is,
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 2: it's not just everything's going to be fine and, you know, just,
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 2: you know, trust the people behind the curtain over there.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: What you're saying is this is the way of the world.
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 2: This is the way of the psyche. This is how
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: it's always been. And that the greater the crisis, the
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: stronger the call from within to awaken and transform.
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Based on... understanding of creation, because in creation myths,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: I just want to make a little aside. There are
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: many areas of myth, and the only one that's become
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: well-known or mainstreamed in my lifetime has been the hero's journey,
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: the hero's myth. And unfortunately, the idea was put in
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: there early on that it's the monomyth. the only myth.
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: And it's just a simply mistaken idea. Myth is by
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: its nature multiple. And there's a whole category of creation myths.
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: And inside, there's another category inside creation myths of mistakes
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 1: made at the beginning of creation. And so there's this
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: whole learning about the world that comes through creation myths.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: But the essential idea is that creation myths were about recreation.
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: So if we were a traditional group of people, well,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 1: first of all, no group ever has one creation story.
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 1: Even the Bible has two. So that means creation is
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: so magnificent, so profound, so full of endless things that
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: no story can tell the whole story. So there's all
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: these creation myths often within one traditional group. But they
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: all would be understood as you're hearing the creation story.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: They would tell it in the dark times. They would
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: activate the creation stories, which makes them recreation stories. And
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: so along with the idea that the archetype of creativity
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: is activated in the time of darkness and polarization, the
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: mythology of recreation is waiting to be understood as the
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: way of the world. Is that the world, and I'll
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: go back to the core mystery, which I understand, it
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: used to be called the open secret, that is everything
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: is in the process of life, death, and renewal. And
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 1: we are, and the earth is, and nature is, and
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: the cosmos is. And the sooner we get back into
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: the deeply human conditioned position of being stretched between the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: earth and the heavens, being stretched between that which is
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: dying and that which is being born, as soon as
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: we do that, some of these other things will not
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: be so daunting and we can find our footing in
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: this process of potential renewal in the midst of collapse. Yeah.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: I'm wondering, you know, what you may think about our
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 3: hero myth, and how it has taken such hold in
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: movies and books and stories, and the list goes on
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 3: and on and on, and whether and how it kind
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 3: of reinforces an individualistic and achievement-oriented kind of worldview versus
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: something that is much more circular, like the birth, death, rebirth,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: cycle of life. And Jung, of course, sacrificed in a
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: dream his hero myth. He dreamt that he killed a hero,
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 3: and he was shocked when he awoke and couldn't believe
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 3: such a thing had happened. But it led him to
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: a much more circular myth of a tree in the
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 3: center of a foggy English city. and the light radiated
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: out in all directions, and so did the roads and streets,
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 3: that that might be something that really wants to emerge
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: more than our so-called heroic strivings.
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: If we imagine myth as the emergent truth and the
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: constant reemergence of stories, yeah, maybe we've come to the
• 1:20:33
  Speaker 1: end or close to the end of the usefulness of
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: the hero's myth, which is, it's a great myth, but
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: it has heavily masculine overtones, as it is mostly used,
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: which easily lead to an exit of muscularity and eventually violence.
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: It has a really heavy commitment to the outer world
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 1: that you're going out to find, you know, solve the
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: hero's journey, and you're going to defeat something and bring
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: something back. that usually gets kind of materialized or monetized
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 1: or something. And so it's kind of gotten caught into
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: the culture of individuality and also into the culture of
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: excessive masculinity and so on. So it becomes more of
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 1: a marker. It's still useful at certain points of life
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: and it's a meaningful mythological story, but it was never
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 1: meant to stand as a monomyth or the only story.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: That was really a mistake. And then it's so easily
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: adapted into Hollywood, and then you get all of the
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: ridiculous outcomes of that, which are still being used as
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: muscular forms of political metaphors and so on like that.
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, really, some of the worst things happening in
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 1: the world have some of that quality to them. And
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: so it's time for other things. And so there's a
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: point in the And the last chapter of the first
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: part of the book where I tell the story of
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: the old woman in the cave who is reweaving the
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: world as we speak. And just to bring the feminine
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: back in, that understanding of the world and the fact.
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: And once you get the weaving, then you get not
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: the world wide web, which is horizontal and leaves people
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: more isolated while being connected horizontally. But you get back
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 1: to the web of life. which was the old understanding
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: where we are interconnected with everything else and everyone else
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 1: in the web of life. And when you move one thing,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: everything else gets affected. That's the weaving approach. And so
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: I use that myth partly to reconnect to nature and
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: the web of life, but also bring the feminine back
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 1: in as when everything's falling apart, you can have the
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 1: reweaving process which is different than the muscular setting out
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: on the adventure process.
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 2: You know, Michael, we have another comment from one of our,
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 2: kind of a comment question from one of our Patreon supporters.
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: So if it's okay to hear from them. So this
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: person says, I'm so glad you're having Michael Mead on
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 2: because I'm a huge fan who listens to his podcast
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: and loves how he holds that the unit of transformation
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 2: is the human soul, and that doing our own work
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: is a way of adding to the listening that is
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 2: already ongoing at every moment. And I love being a
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: human being as the make-weight in the scales of the universe,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: even as I sometimes wonder whether this still works when
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 2: so many people are pinched or stomped on by their circumstances.
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean... part of the importance of interconnectivity is
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: realizing that this exaggerated polarization is also vertical. So that
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: all the power and all the resources and all the
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: money is up on top amongst a very few people.
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: And then being pushed further and further down are all
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: the people that don't have access to wealth and don't
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: have access even to opportunity. And so the disparity in
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: the world has become tremendously exaggerated in terms of a
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: vertical alignment as well as the polarization horizontally. And it's
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: like we're being nailed to the cross of history in
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: this kind of separation vertical as well as horizontal. And yeah,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: and it's really heartbreaking. It is literally heartbreaking. And of course,
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: the powers that be are being almost inhuman in the
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: sense of having no empathy, having no sympathy. And then
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: people are foolishly voting for someone who claims they have
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 1: the power to fix things. And that happens in crisis.
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: People get afraid and they grab the thing to hold
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 1: onto that claims it's gonna solve everything. And as that
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: becomes more revealed that it doesn't really work that way,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: hopefully people will start to realize, well, wait a minute,
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 1: maybe there's something in me that I can draw upon.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: And maybe I should get closer to the neighbors and
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: other people because we are ultimately really in this together.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 2: We are.
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 1: And that's almost like all the divisions are proving the opposite.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 1: They do the trade tariffs and it undoes the economy
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: of the world. The interconnectedness is being revealed through the
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 1: brokenness is what I think is going on. And when
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: people realize you change something over here, it could affect everyone.
• 1:26:00
  Speaker 1: And so the next thing is to realize, oh, wait
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: a minute, maybe the fact that we're all connected is
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 1: the point we're supposed to understand. And that means if
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 1: I can live my life in a slightly more creative,
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: slightly more visionary, slightly more authentic way, that affects the
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: people around me and the imaginative comes in and the
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: next thing, we're not quite so lost or we're lost
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: in the right way.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 2: Oh, I love that.
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: Because the old idea was you have to become lost.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: in order to come found.
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 3: And you lived that. You know, what supported you when
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: you were in the depths of your own personal crisis,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 3: which you write about in the book, as a young man?
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 3: Something came, or you found, words get tricky here, but
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: something supported you.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the middle of the book is liminality. I mean,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: when I was working on the book, I began to
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: see the shape of it, realized that in the first
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: section of the book on reading the text of nature,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: it's the cocoon and the darkness of the cocoon that's
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: in the middle of all of that. And then the
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: second part, which is more about the human psyche, the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 1: middle of it is liminality in between, which has a
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: descent in it, just like the larva going into the cocoon.
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: And then I thought, well, I thought maybe I should
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: show how I knew about it or like a credential almost.
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: And so when I was 20, I got drafted into
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: the Vietnam War and I got the letter and then
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: I sent a letter back saying, you know, this is
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: not a just war. It looks like a really foolish
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: war and it's not even a declared war. So I'm
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: not coming. But if you have another war, let me know.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: You know, I thought I was being quite adult. And
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: next thing there was a knock at the door. And
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 1: not long after saying, if you don't go down to
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: the draft board, then you go to prison. So I
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 1: went to the draft board and that didn't work out
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: very well because they said you can sign a conscientious objector,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: which says that you've never been violent and that for
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 1: religious reasons, you're opposed to all kinds of violence. And
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: I said, well, wait a minute. I grew up in
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: a New York neighborhood. To say I was never violent
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: would be a little bit, you know, no one's going
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: to believe that. I said, but secondly, I was raised Catholic.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: And to say that they're against violence would be to
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: misunderstand history. So I really can't sign this thing. So
• 1:28:27
  Speaker 1: now I was back in trouble. It's either go into
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: the military or go into prison. And I was 20.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: And I must say, I had my convictions, but I
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: didn't have the essence of my convictions. I couldn't make
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: that stand. Every one of my family and most people
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: in my neighborhood, everyone thought you have to go to war.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: So I wound up in the army. And then something
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: happened that I didn't anticipate, which in the army, they
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: give you a lot of orders and I'm not good
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 1: on orders. I'm just not good at it. And They'd
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: give me an order, and I'd say, God, that's a
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 1: foolish order. You have a better order? Give me another order.
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 1: And that didn't go over well, and so I got
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: court-martialed a lot, and then I got put into prison.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: And in prison, they give you orders, and I would say,
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: didn't you get the memo? And I was a bad prisoner,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: so then I got put in solitary confinement. And eventually,
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 1: I'm in solitary confinement for months. And in the course
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: of it, something in me said, stop eating. fast against this.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: So I stopped eating too. And now I'm losing weight rapidly.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: And in, I'm all by myself in a solitary cell,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: 24 hours a day going on and on and on. And,
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 1: and I tried to describe in the, in the book,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: how everything I knew fell away. I had nothing. I couldn't,
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't let me communicate with anybody. I was out
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: of communication with anybody I ever knew. I had nothing except,
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: you know, what was in the cell. And, and, and,
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 1: And the things that I relied on that I thought
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: I believed in and all were disappearing too. And so
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 1: then it was down to, you know, am I losing
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: my mind? And then I started to have visitors in
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: the cell that the truth is no one else could
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: see them, but they were really helpful to me and
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: they were characters from mythology. Amazing. And now I had
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: a new question, which is, am I losing my mind
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 1: or am I finding my mind? And in the depths
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 1: of it and the emptiness of it, I decided I
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 1: was finding something in myself that had been there. On
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: my 13th birthday, I had gotten a book of mythology.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: And ever since there, then something had been trying to
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 1: awaken in me. And there I was. It wasn't a
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: bottomless pit. It felt like that at first.
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 2: It was like finding the caves of Lascaux.
• 1:30:47
  Speaker 1: I was in my own cave. And the moving figures
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 1: came out of books, stories I had read. And I realized,
• 1:30:55
  Speaker 1: and that's the imagination at the depth. And I realized,
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: and they were encouraging me to hang on. And because
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: I was, they would wake me up at night. I
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: got moved to a prison cell in a hospital and
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: they would wake me up and say, you're dying. And
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: they say, why do you want to die? And I said,
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: I don't want to die. I just can't live the
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: way you're insisting that I do it. And then they'd say,
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: you're going to die. And then out of the blue,
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: so to speak, Bobby Kennedy, who was the senator of
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: New York at the time, someone got a, I think
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 1: it was one of the guards, got a message to
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 1: him saying, you know, one of your people is wasting
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: away and dying in a prison cell. And he got
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 1: involved and said, if he's not out of there in 40,
• 1:31:39
  Speaker 1: this was down in Panama, if he's not out of
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: there in 48 hours, I'm coming down there. And Time
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: Magazine and Life Magazine were already there trying to figure
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: out what this story, because the story was leaking out.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: And the next thing they were saying, okay, you know,
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 1: you can go home. So I went in there at
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: 153 or 155 pounds. I was 87 pounds when I
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: came out. I was really, you know, barely alive in
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: many ways. But it was my last go. I found
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: something down there that even if I had died, I
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 1: would not have died empty or forsaken. because I found
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 1: this kind of living connection to myth and mythical figures.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 1: And at the time, I didn't realize that was the
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: calling and that was the answer of my own soul
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: to the calling. It took me a while to get
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: semi-healthy and then realize, oh, I have to go this road.
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: Ever since then, you've been freely giving the gifts to
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 2: the world.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: I haven't thought about it that way. But I did
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: in order to understand it, I had to find a framework.
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 1: And I had never been in therapy in my neighborhood
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: where I grew up. If you went to therapy, it
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: meant you were crazy. So no one went. You know,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: remember that old kind of thinking. And I couldn't talk
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: to anyone. I was just like a battle veteran. I
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 1: worked with battle veterans because that's the same thing. You
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 1: come back, your world had been blown up.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 1: And no one can get it. I'm in a completely
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: different world than everyone I knew. And I remembered that
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: I had read about rites of passage. And so I
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: started to study initiation rites of passage and concluded I
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: was in an unfinished rite of passage. Because in rite
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: of passage, you get separation from everything and everyone, and
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 1: then you get ordeals. And I had gotten those two
• 1:33:33
  Speaker 1: things and I didn't get the third thing. And so
• 1:33:36
  Speaker 1: in the book, I use it to explain liminality, dissent,
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 1: and how something down there is waiting to support our lives.
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: And then I also use it to say, We're in
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 1: the middle phase of a collective rite of passage. We're
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: in our own prison cell. We're in our own cocoon.
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: And we're trying to find the imaginal cells and each
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 1: of our individual connection to imagination in order to break out.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 1: And so that's why that's as far... I haven't checked literally.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: It was intended to be in the middle of the book.
• 1:34:11
  Speaker 1: I'll check and see. It's close to the middle of
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: the book anyway. So, yes. So not everybody has that
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 1: kind of story, but everybody has their own experience.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 2: And as you say, we're in a collective moment, and
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 2: your wisdom and your imagination is really a guiding light,
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: I know, for many people. And we just want to
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 2: thank you so much for your generosity in your life
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 2: and here on the podcast with us today. Michael's book
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 2: is The Heart of Transformation. His podcast is The Living
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 2: Myth Podcast. And we'll put more information in the show
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: notes where you can find Michael and find out more
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 2: about his books and his work. And is there anything
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 2: you want to leave us with?
• 1:34:59
  Speaker 1: Well, maybe just that idea that even though it can
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 1: seem hopeless easily any day now, and certainly it's overwhelming
• 1:35:07
  Speaker 1: moment to moment, the soul is not overwhelmed. or the
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 1: deep self. And it's not just that parts of us
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 1: have been through this before. It's also that parts of
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: us are here at this time because we can bring
• 1:35:24
  Speaker 1: something to add to the transformation. That was one of
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: those old ideas. You're born to the time in which
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: you can contribute something. And so I can't prove that,
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 1: but I like the idea. You know, this is what
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: we're here for. We're here for this. To recognize it,
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 1: to feel the heartbreak of it and the overwhelm of it,
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: to taste the darkness of the cocoon, and then to
• 1:35:51
  Speaker 1: bring our instinctive, intuitive, creative selves to bear and to
• 1:35:57
  Speaker 1: assist in the transformation of the earth and of humanity. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: Psyche is going somewhere.
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yes.
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: Yes, and asking us to come along.
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is just beautiful. And I am going to
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 2: really take that with me, that we are here because
• 1:36:19
  Speaker 2: this is the time that needs our gifts. We were
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: born at the right time, even as hard as this
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: time is. So, thank you.
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Thank you both very much.
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com. If
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 2: you enjoyed this episode, give us five stars and a
• 1:36:45
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• 1:36:49
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