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Patience is Not Passivity · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We need to be mindful that patience includes agency. With patience,
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: the white knuckling or the all presupposes patience without agency.
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: But we have a choice. We have choice. So the
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: essence of patience includes agency, a choice at any point.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: So the agency is we're choosing to stay there. This
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: is not being done to us. Welcome to This Jungian Life,
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: conversations with Jungian analysts on the unseen forces shaping our
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: lives and what it means to be truly human in
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: today's complex world. I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Thanks so much for joining us today. We're delighted to
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: have Dr. Warren Sabilla with us.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Sabilla is a Jungian analyst in practice in South Bend,
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: and he also has a deep knowledge of Zen Buddhism.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: In addition, he is an avid triathlete, and he's currently
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: competing in Ironman distance triathlons, which is perhaps the most
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: amazing thing to me on his very impressive CV. So
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk today about a topic that you've
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: been thinking about, which we've never covered on the podcast before.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: We're going to talk about patience. And we're going to
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: be discussing it as a particular psychological virtue that is
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: really necessary, I would say, for the process of transformation.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Yes. So would you just start by telling us how
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: you came to write this paper?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Yes. I've been thinking about the... idea for quite a
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: while and in terms of the being necessary, but also
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the absence of patients. And within a span of four
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: or five days, two different drivers showed me the middle finger.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: And that to me was proved positive that it was
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: time to put pen to paper and put some of
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: these ideas down. And that's how the paper began.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: You heard the call of Psyche.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: That's right. In the middle of traffic.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: I love that.
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: There is the mark of somebody who's really able to
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: rise above and go down deep to give yourself the
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: message that this is a call to consider and contemplate
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: and write about patience.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: Rather than returning the gesture, shall we say.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: I'd thought of an alternative title, which would be something
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: like sitting at the well of, and leaving it at that.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Sitting at the well.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: A seat at the, the, the possibility of change transformation.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, that's an interesting image to start with. I, I,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: what is, I feel like there's a fairy tale that
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: may contain that image, or perhaps it's an alchemical image
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: as well. But the sense that you're waiting for what
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: comes up, right? And that it might require a lot
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: of patience. So what is patience?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Patience is living one's life with eyes, ears, heart wide open.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: I'm also going back to the image of sitting by
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: the well. and some of the other things you discuss
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: in the paper, but how hard it is to wait.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 3: How hard it is to simply do nothing. In the
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: case of something that's ambivalent, ambiguous, or anxious, as Jim
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Hollis likes to say, the three A's, to sit and
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: go inward rather than think about what should I do
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: about this.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's the practice. of learning to be quiet amidst
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: noise or big feelings, to learn to, as Blake said,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: to see through the eye rather than with the eye.
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: I think what I'm wanting to circle around and what
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: you do such a wonderful job of in the paper
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: you sent us is... What the nature of that sitting
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: with and going inward is, that it's more than just
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: passivity of like, well, you know, I just, okay, then
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: I just give up then. I'll wait and see if
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: something happens. It's not that. It's not gritting your teeth,
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of sort of bare knuckling through it.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: It's not despair. It is something else altogether of a
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: finding something within and knowing that there's a certain quality
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: of enduring, that we are doing something paradoxically enough by
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: doing nothing. And the example I think of, of course
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: it's out there now with the movie, is the Odyssey
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: and Penelope's task. Of weaving the shroud every day and
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: then taking it apart, undoing it for 20 years. And
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: what exactly was she doing? She was being patient.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm reminded of Jung describing active imagination as giving
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: the ego a seat at the table. That's being one voice,
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: one listening amongst many.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: You know, one of the things that came up for
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  Speaker 2: me as I was thinking about this topic is how
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: necessary patience is for an analytic process. So I think,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: you know, most of the time people come to us
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: and they feel a certain urgency, very understandable urgency, because
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: they're really suffering. I mean, you don't usually go to
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: analysis unless you're suffering. So you come in and you
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: want an answer and also sometimes we'll have an insight,
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: you know, or an insight will grow from the process
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: and people say, well, okay, but what do I do?
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: You know, and it's understandable that there's a rush to
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: want to take an action, but it's this notion, I think,
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: that we're trying to circle around here that patience, it's
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: something like what we talk about when we say holding
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: the tension of the opposites. It's not collapsing into doing,
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: and it's also not collapsing into despair. And in that
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: tension between those two things, you might have to sit
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: and wait, but something can change and happen that is
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: not under the conscious direction of the ego. So in
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: that sense, it's kind of like, well, patience is related
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: to the transcendent function, isn't it? And then I would
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: also say, you know, the other thing I thought of
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: was that good heart paper, you know, the secure symbolizing field,
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: you know, that we all have to read in training.
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: It's a wonderful paper. But I think that that's also
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: captures that idea. And, you know, so if you think
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: about the secure symbolizing field, it's like you're not going
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: to fly to action. let's say in analysis, you know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: you're holding some tension. It's very painful. You're not going
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: to try to fix it. You're not going to rush
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: to some solution. And you're not just going to sort
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: of give up and say, well, there's nothing to do here.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: And I'm just going to collapse into depression, let's say.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: But I'm going to stay with this incredibly uncomfortable feeling. And,
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: you know, when I did the etymology on patience and
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: it's like, Bearing, supporting, suffering. And of course, suffering kind
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: of means to sort of, I would have to look
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: that up again, the etymology of it. But I think
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: it means to sort of bear up under something, to
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: suffer something. Literally means to, you know, that sense of
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: the word, I'm suffering it. It's happening and I'm bearing it.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: And so I think there's something about this word that
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: I sometimes use for myself. about tolerating. So for example,
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: I'll just share a personal example. I'm actually kind of
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: conflict diverse. I don't really like conflict. And so when
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: I have to, you know, make that phone call to
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: the customer service line and sort of, you know, say, hey,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: you know, this was an incorrect charge and I, you know,
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: whatever it is, those kinds of things. I hate doing
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: those kinds of things. It makes me very uncomfortable and
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: I don't want to do that. And, you know, it's
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: an embodied feeling. of discomfort. And what I have to
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: kind of do in those moments is talk myself through
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: it by saying, this is uncomfortable and you can tolerate it.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Yes.
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  Speaker 2: And that changes the frame for me because I think otherwise,
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  Speaker 2: when I'm aware of feeling discomfort, I feel like I
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: have to discharge it somehow. I have to collapse the tension.
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  Speaker 2: I have to fix it. I have to restore this
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  Speaker 2: equilibrium where everyone around me is happy. So, you know,
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  Speaker 2: especially in moments of conflict, I'll say, no, you just
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: have to tolerate the discomfort of knowing that this other
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  Speaker 2: person's unhappy with you. But that's doable. It takes patience.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Yes. As I write in the paper, the first noble
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: truth is, This is unsatisfactory. Those are in the instructions
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  Speaker 1: from the first moment forward. This is unsatisfactory. Right.
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  Speaker 2: This is uncomfortable.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Uncomfortable. I like to use the, or at least keep
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  Speaker 1: in mind, the three spinsters. One creates the yarn, one
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  Speaker 1: weaves it, and one cuts it. And when we're out
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  Speaker 1: of balance in one manner or another, it's because that
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  Speaker 1: sequence has been somehow interrupted. We want things too quickly,
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  Speaker 1: or we cut it too short, and we don't sit
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  Speaker 1: in the weaving one way or another, beginning and middle
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  Speaker 1: and an end.
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  Speaker 2: Wow, I never thought about it that way. I'm just
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  Speaker 2: trying to digest that so that we've... We're not just
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: letting fate take its course, would you say? I'm trying
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  Speaker 2: to feel into that metaphor.
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  Speaker 1: Well, that would be life without an eye toward the yarn.
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  Speaker 1: With a relationship to the yarn, there's a beginning, a middle,
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  Speaker 1: and an end. So anxiety is, from that vantage point,
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  Speaker 1: is cutting the yarn too soon. Nothing gets... woven, nothing
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  Speaker 1: gets metabolized, nothing gets experienced. It's, you know, the extreme
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  Speaker 1: would be, of course, the agoraphobia, where you create a
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  Speaker 1: small world so that you don't have to enter into
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  Speaker 1: the scary world. Just as an example.
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  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the relationship between because words like we
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  Speaker 3: have to bear it or we have to endure it
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  Speaker 3: can often kind of call up a kind of our
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  Speaker 3: inner stoic of, okay, then I'll just sit here and wait,
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  Speaker 3: versus how can I be with myself and with this situation,
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  Speaker 3: feel it, know what I'm feeling, and still companion myself
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  Speaker 3: through it. and know that there's no guaranteed outcome. You know,
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  Speaker 3: that just because I'm sitting by the well and waiting
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  Speaker 3: and I'm hoping that something will come to alleviate the
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  Speaker 3: situation that I'm enduring, that there's no guarantee, but I'm
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: going to find a place where I have some equanimity.
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  Speaker 3: It's almost like an active imagination of letting my ego
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  Speaker 3: feel whatever it's feeling and attuning to something greater, deeper, different,
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  Speaker 3: and being in both of those spaces. So it has
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: to do with holding the tension and the relationship of
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  Speaker 3: the ego to psyche, to something larger.
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  Speaker 2: Okay.
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  Speaker 3: My ego doesn't like it. And here we are.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: I really like that, Deb, because you're right. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: there's that, you know, it's not a white knuckling. It's not,
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to grip my teeth and, you know, grip
• 14:14
  Speaker 2: the handlebars and close my eyes until it's over. It
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: is a settling into something. The best way that I
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: can think about it, and maybe other people who practice
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: yoga will get this, when you're in yoga class and
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: you go into a really difficult pose and the yoga
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: teacher just kind of calmly intones that you just be
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: with the discomfort. But that's exactly it. It's like, okay,
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: I'm here. This is, you know, excruciating. And I'm just
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: going to stay here and just, you know, kind of breathe.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: Well, we need to be mindful that patience, includes agency.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: With patients, the white knuckling or the all presupposes patients
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: without agency, but we have a choice. We have choice.
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: So the essence of patience includes agency, a choice at
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: any point.
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: So the agency is we're choosing to stay there. This
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: is not being done to us. The only agency we
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: might have in a particular situation like this, well, and
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: let's use a simple one. Let's say being in a
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: traffic jam. And actually, I mean, that's a pretty good one,
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: I think, to play with because it's really accessible to
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: most of us. So there's that, you're stuck in traffic. And,
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: you know, what always really makes me very anxious is
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: when I'm going somewhere and I have to be somewhere
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: on time. And there's traffic. Let's say I'm, you know,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: trying to catch a plane or something and there's traffic.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: And there is not a thing in the world that
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: you can do about it. But I can sometimes feel
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: that fretfulness and that kind of rising tension and anxiety. And,
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: you know, some people, some people perhaps in my own family,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: I find that very, very difficult to tolerate. I'm a
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: little better, actually. As long as I don't think I'm,
• 16:19
  Speaker 2: you know, about to miss a plane, I can usually
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: just be like, here I am, you know, but I,
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: you know, not all the time, but sometimes. But again,
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: the agency and the situation, I can't make the traffic
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: go faster, but the agency might be to just sort
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: of a sense of accepting that this is where I
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: am right now.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about the radical nature of that, of just
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: radically accepting, which doesn't deny this situation sucks. And yet
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: it's not engaging in any of ego's sort of entitlements.
• 16:57
  Speaker 3: And this is hilarious that you picked that situation, Lisa,
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: because that is exactly where I was yesterday. Yeah. Getting
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: off Cape Cod on a Sunday is notorious.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sure it is.
• 17:09
  Speaker 3: Everybody's going back home. And so I thought, well, okay,
• 17:14
  Speaker 3: I know what I'm getting into. No, I didn't.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: No, I didn't.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: So there I was, alone, basically, in the car with
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: just me. So what will be the process? Where's the agency?
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: and how much and what can we do, all the
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: flavors of what we could do, what I could do
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: between me and me. Here I am with me for solace, comfort, adjustment.
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: What kind of relationship am I going to have with this?
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: It takes an hour to get off Cape Cod.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Well, there, as with the origin of the paper, the traffic,
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: and then it becomes a question of, as Jung says,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: with synchronicity, the meaning, the meaning-making. What is this situation
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: trying to teach, show, or mirror back to us?
• 18:24
  Speaker 3: What will I learn from this?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 18:27
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about the fairy tale. You pick A
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: fairy tale that as a child, this was one of
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: my most favorite fairy tales. Six Swans. It's a wonderful
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: amplification of the concept. And maybe you could give us
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: an abbreviated version of the tale.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: For listeners who aren't familiar with it or only hazily
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: recall it.
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: Well, there's the young woman and her six brothers. And
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: the six brothers are enchanted. And her task is to
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: take the star flowers and weave them together to make
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: shirts for each of her brothers. And in that process...
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: she is to remain silent and it has the a
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: bit of the flavor of job in that she's teased
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: and tormented and you know why are you not talking
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: and you must be the cause of all of this
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: and and as much fairy tales do, it comes down
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: to the last moment and the shirts are woven and
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: put onto her brothers and all are made human again.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: Right, as she's about to be put to death for the.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: Correct.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: That's right. She's been wrongly accused of killing and eating
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: her children. And she hasn't been able to defend herself
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: because she has to stay silent. She has a wicked mother-in-law,
• 20:17
  Speaker 2: and that is another episode.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: My favorite part as a child of this tale, and
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: it was so wonderful to read your paper and think
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: about the patience part of it, and what I was
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: thinking about it was the vindication part of it. That
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: She throws these star flower shirts for the swans all
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: fly in. She's about to be burned at the stake.
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: She throws a shirt on each brother, but she didn't
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: quite have time to finish the very last shirt, and
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: it's missing a sleeve. And the magic as a child
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: for me in that was that there was the vindication,
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: the evidence, of what she had done, that there would
• 21:10
  Speaker 3: still be that one swan's wing as testimony to what
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: had been and what she did.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: It's a wonderful fairy tale. It is.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: And it is the perfect one to illustrate this process
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: of patience, that there's no quick promised reward. You know,
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: in a way, it's not like the marshmallow test, you know,
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: that we've heard so much about. You put a marshmallow
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: on the table and you see if the little kid can,
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: you know, can wait. Because that's about, I'm going to
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: get a reward really soon and I just have to
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: manage myself for a minute or two. But patience, you
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: don't know that the outcome is not assured. There isn't
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: a kind of, it's not just about, I just have
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: to withstand this and then I get to eat the marshmallow.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: This is really about I think in a way, Deb,
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: going back to what you talked about before, just kind
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: of really being with yourself.
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: That the endeavor itself will have a reward. It takes
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: us off of thinking about outcome. That, oh, okay, well,
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: you know, in the tale, if she can knit these
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: sweaters for her swan brothers, it will transform them. So
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: it's transactional. If you do this, then that will happen.
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: But I think the essence of it is the outcome
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: is not guaranteed. This is not cause and effect. And
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: the gift in it can be and will be finding
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: more of yourself and the self with a capital S,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: which I think can often sound very sort of up
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: in the air and you know, oh, that's a nice idea,
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: but it's not real. And I think when people come
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: in for therapy, for an analytic or depth psychology process,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: it sounds good, but it sounds a little sort of
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: far out there, a little woo-woo, a little, yeah, right.
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, great.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: There's much more of me and all that stuff. Okay, okay.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: But right now, what I need to do is figure
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: something out or feel less anxious, less depressed, what have you.
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: The process of developing patience is what I'm circling around.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: The process of developing it is a wonderful idea and
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: something we can practice.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: One lens that I look at patience with is time,
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: you know, chronos. everyday time as compared to Kairos. And
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: I'll tell a funny story here. My first analytic session,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: I wanted, you know, I showed up on time, of course,
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: but I wanted things to, let's go, let's go, let's go.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: So this is your first session as an analyst, is
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: that right? Or as an analyzand?
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: As an analyzan, I have this pie-in-the-sky idea that I'm
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: going to train to be an analyst and, well, I've
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: got to start my hours. Let's go, let's go, let's
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: get this going. And so I have my hour, and
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: then I go out to my vehicle, and the battery's dead.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: There you go. Welcome to the journey. That's great.
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: A message from Psyche.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: I had to go back in, knock on the door
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: and say, oh, by the way, this is well before
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: cell phones and et cetera. And yeah, I needed to
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: just sit for a while.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: I remember my first sessions, too, and the analyst saying, well,
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: let's look at your dreams. And I'm like, what? Why
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: would we do that? I'm in a whole new city.
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: My job isn't going well. I had a whole list
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: of things. And you want me to bring in dreams.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Which I did. But it's a great example. Both of
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: these are great examples of It's going to be something else.
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: It's going to come from another realm.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: You know, we had Oliver Berkman on the podcast now
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: several years ago when his book came out. His book
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: was called 4,000 Weeks. And it was, you know, really
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: about time and how little time there is. And, you know,
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: I remember him making this really interesting point that I'm
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: sure he makes in that book as well is that,
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: you know, When you're used to things going slowly, you
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: actually have a lot more patience. It's when things go
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: faster that your patience erodes. So, you know, for example,
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: it might take you all afternoon to cook a big
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: pot of soup, right? But when you're heating it up
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: the next day for lunch and you put it in
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: the microwave, that like 90 seconds in the microwave, it's like,
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: come on, hurry up, you know? And it's true. I mean,
• 26:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it used to be that if
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: you wanted to see a certain movie, you know, back
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: in the day, you had to like get the TV guide, right?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: An old movie, you'd get the TV guide and you'd
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: see if the movie was going to be on that week.
• 26:57
  Speaker 2: And then you could go to Blockbuster and like get
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: the VHS and then you could order it from Netflix
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: and it would be like just waiting for you. And
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: now you can watch whatever you want on streaming. And
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: when you, you know, when you click, you know, watch
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: now and it takes like, 10 seconds to load, you're like,
• 27:16
  Speaker 2: why is it taking so long? It's actually like the
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: faster life comes at us, actually the less patience we have.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Yes. That's a very good point.
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: It's an interesting phenomenon of modern life.
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: There again, the spinsters, if you get too far out
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: on either end, the ego loses its footing.
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: You know, I think I want to read a little
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: bit from your paper that's related to this. So we
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: keep on talking about your paper, which is going to
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: be published in the fall. Is that right?
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: November in Psychological Perspectives. Okay.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: So unfortunately, we can't share it all with you now,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: but you can trust us that it's a lot of
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: fun to read and you can check out Psychological Perspectives
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: in November. So I just want to talk a little
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: bit about what you were mentioning before about Kronos and Kairos.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: You say, the Greek imagination distinguished between two kinds of time.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Kronos is quantitative time, the ticking of a clock, the
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: calendar pages turning, the measurable duration of Prometheus's days on
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: the rock or the slow erosion of a shoreline by waves.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful image. Kairos, by contrast, is qualitative time,
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: the ripe moment, the opportune opening when something can happen
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: that could not happen before. Kronos is the succession of days.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: Kairos is the day that matters.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: You know what came up for me? This may be
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: a little bit of a stretch, but I think I
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: will bring it in anyway, is one of the kind
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: of stories from biography that really grips me is the
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: tale that is well-known from the play The Miracle Worker,
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: which is about the relationship between Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller. And,
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: you know, Helen Keller had scarlet fever as a child
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: and she wound up losing her hearing and her eyesight.
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: And because it happened when she was so young, she
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: couldn't really speak at the time it happened. So she
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: didn't have words. So she kind of was like roaming
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: around her parents' house, almost like a little wild animal,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of grabbing food off of others' plates
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: and everything like that. So they, you know, there were
• 29:31
  Speaker 2: these new ways of communicating.
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: So the family hired Annie Sullivan to come and Annie
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: was kind of ferocious. She was fierce. And she insisted that,
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: you know, Helen would sit down and put her napkin
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: on her lap and eat with a fork. And Helen
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: just rebelled against this. And they did this over and
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: over and over again. And all the time, Annie would
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: be spelling things into her hand, making letters, you know,
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: by the way her hand was shaped and spelling the
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: words into the hand. And Helen got to the point
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: where she could, you know, spell the word for doll
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: and Annie would give her the doll. But there was
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: some connection that was missing, right? So that's Kronos. This
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: day upon day upon day upon day, they're doing this
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: again and again and again. And then one day, Helen
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: had a massive tantrum and she spilled all those. She
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: spilled the water jug and Annie grabbed her, said, you're
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: coming with me to fill it back up. Dragged her
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: out to the water pump and is pumping the pump
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: and helping Helen pump the water, spelling water into her palm. Oh,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: my goodness. And then this is the Kairos moment because
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: something happened. Helen understood that this was language.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: This wasn't just you make these shapes and you get
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: your doll. This is a whole world.
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: And everything changed.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: Reminds me of those clips of the young baby, you know,
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: being able to hear for the first time. They put
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: the hearing aids in or see for the first time.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: And it just cannot help but be deeply, deeply moved. Yeah.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The whole world becomes technicolor instead of.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: So it's a real moment of Kairos. Yeah.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Of the light dawns. The third thing happens. The meaning
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: is there. And in the story that you were telling, Lisa,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: after that, Helen runs around and touches a tree and
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: touches this and goes here, here. What's this?
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: What's this?
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: What's this?
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: And Annie's spelling into her hand.
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: There are words for all of these things. Oh, she
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: was so excited by language itself.
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 31:56
  Speaker 3: And that's what lights up that moment of kairos, of enlightenment,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: of meaning, of a different order of things.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: And it's a revelation.
• 32:10
  Speaker 3: Exactly. It's real epiphany.
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: For me, this is really the essence of analytical psychology.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: It's the psyche becoming, not manufactured by ego, but it
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: is the process of experiencing psyche as it is becoming. Now,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: one of the most accepted definitions of a koan from
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: the Zen Buddhist tradition, it's the profundity of the present
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: moment becoming the present moment. All verbs, no nouns. The
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: experience of witnessing Psyche becoming the Kairos out of Kronos.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: And, you know, I do find that there's, I don't
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: know if this is just me, but I do find
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: that a lot of times, you know, the people I'm
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: working with will get to this moment and they'll say,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: but what do I do? What do I do? How
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: do I get there? You know, it's that sense that like, well,
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: we just have to keep on sort of showing up.
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: You know, we show up both here every week and
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: you show up for yourself. Every morning when you write
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: down your dreams and you every day, little by little,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: like Annie, you know, setting limits with Helen, you know,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: every day you notice. You notice yourself and you notice
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: those patterns and you think about it and you reflect,
• 33:46
  Speaker 2: you know. And there is no... Here's a list. First
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: you do number one, then you do number two, then
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: you do... There's no recipe for this. There's no instruction booklet.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: But if you sort of stay with it, something might
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: one day just open up.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: It seems to me this is the motif of a
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: lot of fairy tales. I'm in an area that you
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: know so well, Lisa, but I'm thinking about stories like
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: the handless maiden, where eventually this poor handicapped protagonist has
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: to go off by herself with her baby for some
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: number of years. Rapunzel wanders around in the woods for
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: 20 years or something like that, and she finally meets
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: up with her prince. Snow White, lying in her glass-topped
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: supposed coffin. And eventually, the life-giving other, represented as a prince,
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: appears in Sleeping Beauty. The would-be savior has to wait
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: a hundred years, and then the time has come for
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: the Hedge of Thorns to open.
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: Another example of that is the Nixie at the Mill Pond,
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: you know, where there's just time that has to pass.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: There's just time. There isn't a shortcut.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: Where somehow, I think these are all images of that
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: something is germinating in the unconscious. It feels, and nothing's happening.
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm just, the handless maiden is just struggling
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: through every day. Eventually her hands grow back. But in
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: the meantime, it's a struggle. And day in and day out,
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: like Annie Sullivan, tapping words into Helen's hand, something can change.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: And as Jung says, the unconscious shows us the same
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: face that we show it. It's the companioning of that process.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: It's very encouraging that so many fairy tales give us
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: images of Of time and waiting and showing up every
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: day to do same old, same old. My story about
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: this is my story of transformation. When I was a
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: little girl, I wanted to help my mother in the kitchen.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: And my mother did not suffer just little kids being
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: little kids. If you want to help in the kitchen,
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: here's your job. and you get to do it, but
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: if you're going to fiddle around or be impatient or
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: not do it right, you're fired. All very decently, but
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: there's work to be done here. So this day, she
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: stood me on a chair in front of the stove
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: where something was heating, and she said, here, stir this
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: until it becomes thick and glossy. And I looked at
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: that stuff in the pot and went, You know, this is.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Never going to happen.
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: This stuff in the pot becoming thick and glossy, absolutely
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: outside my frame of reference. But I knew that if
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: I wanted a job, I better do the job I'd
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: been assigned. And it took forever. And I kept calling
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: her over. And she'd say, yes, yes, keep stirring. Keep stirring.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Keep stirring. And eventually some steam rose up off the
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: top of this stuff in the pot. And I called
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: her over and maybe.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: This is it.
• 37:53
  Speaker 3: Is this it? And she said, well, okay, just keep stirring.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: It's okay. And when the moment of transformation came, it
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: came in a minute. It was cornstarch pudding. And the
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: thickening happens quickly. And she came over, took the pot
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: out of my hand, started really sort of stirring it
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: very vigorously and so on. But I'm thinking about that
• 38:19
  Speaker 3: as a possible metaphor that when the transformation comes, it's
• 38:25
  Speaker 3: not subtle. There's a palpable, noticeable difference that correlates to
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: these moments in fairy tales, you know, in the example
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: you give also of Prometheus tied to the rock, the
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: transformation is unmistakable.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Yes, in Ironman triathlon circles, you will hear fellow athletes say,
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: keep moving forward.
• 39:01
  Speaker 3: Just keep moving forward.
• 39:03
  Speaker 1: As a mantra.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: And it's not meant to encourage manic screaming forward because
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: you'll injure yourself. And it's meant as encouragement from stopping.
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: It reinforces that space in between of stirring. stirring this
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: is impossible stir impossible yes and many many of the
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: the difficulty especially on the run because it's dark by
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: that point and they have out in backs and they
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: have a timer at the end so they know that
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: you've And there are no fans. There's nobody applauding. There's
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: bright light that makes all kinds of noise. It's those
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: dark moments where you keep stirring, keep stirring, keep stirring.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And eventually, you can begin to hear the faint sounds
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: of humanity and some lights and the finish line.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: Then it's... it's been prepared.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Wow. You know, and I'm thinking also, you're saying that
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: they say in Ironmans, keep moving.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I love that.
• 40:28
  Speaker 2: And it's very similar to what they say in 12-step programs,
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: which is keep coming back.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: And do the next right thing. Just do the next
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: right thing, which is another step moving forward.
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think, again, we're talking about any transformation, right?
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: Just keep coming back, just keep showing up. And And
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: you talked about sort of the relationship between trust and patience,
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: because in some sense, they're very close together. You kind
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: of have to have some trust to have patience. You know,
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: trust is that thing that allows us to not go
• 41:04
  Speaker 2: to this kind of manic defense, right? It lets us
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: quiet ourselves a little bit and to keep putting, you know,
• 41:14
  Speaker 2: one foot in front of another or keep stirring the
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: pot or keep, or just go to another meeting. And
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: by the way, it reminds me of what Jung says,
• 41:22
  Speaker 2: that we don't solve our problems, we grow larger than them, right? So,
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm thinking about difficult things that I was
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: dealing with and did I solve them? No, but then, well,
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: and I'm also thinking of that beautiful Rilke quote, you may,
• 41:35
  Speaker 2: you know, if you live the problems, you may wake
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: up one day far into the future and realize that
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: you're just in a different relationship. It's not like you've
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: found the answer and that's it. But your life is different.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about patience also as being in service to something.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: In The Sixth Swan's Tale, she's in service to her brothers,
• 42:06
  Speaker 3: which are, you know, from a Jungian point of view,
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: they are images of other parts of herself. I was
• 42:13
  Speaker 3: in service to stirring that pot. and somehow proving myself,
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: proving that I could do it. Not because the task
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: itself was difficult, but I was up against myself. I mean,
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: a more boring and seemingly rewardless endeavor I could not imagine.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: But I was just determined that I wouldn't give up.
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: You're in service to something when you are doing a
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: triathlon or marathon runners, what are we in service to
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: that makes it worth the hanging in there?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: There I would say it is the, again, companioning of
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: the opposite, making room for the opposite, making room for
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: that which seemingly is, again, fill in the blank, too
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: difficult to distant to etc. And it's gradually, very, very
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: gradually companioning the opposite, the other.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: I really like that. Companioning the opposite. And that there is, well,
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: but there is something fascinating about that, isn't there? We
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: are fascinated by the opposite. It's not as if we
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: just ignore it or reject it there's something that beckons
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: us inherent possibility that we we just glimpse we sense
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: we hope and of course the example you gave Lisa
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: comes up again of Annie courting the opposite that her
• 44:14
  Speaker 3: perseverance her patience would get through. It would make a difference.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: There would be meaning of that opposite. We can make
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: a change. Helen Keller certainly got it. I saw the
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: change in this very homespun example of a pot of pudding.
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: But we know about transformation as possible. Something in us knows.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I can give an example. Training for my first Ironman,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: the swim by far was the most difficult. And I
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: was so clumsy. I mean, we're not meant to, as humans,
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: we're not meant to swim.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: Damn right.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, and I was just so clumsy and, but determined.
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: And I had hired a coach and we were doing
• 45:12
  Speaker 1: some extra swim lessons on a Sunday afternoon and And
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: he finally said, stop, stop. And he looked at me
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: and he said, you really don't look like you're having fun.
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: You really don't look like you're having fun. At that moment,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: it was like a lightning bolt struck. And I remembered,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: I never learned to swim. I was thrown off the
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: back of a boat at midnight into dark water. And
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: I had never learned to swim. I mean, I struggled.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I got myself back to the boat and I had
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: been repeating the idea of Jung's idea of a complex.
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: I was repeating that pattern and it was his, the
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: grace that he showed me to mirror back and had
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: a good cry. And from that moment forward, swimming became
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: so much easier. I was never, I was never, But
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: I could swim for hours and hours and hours because
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: I was able to companion that other in a very,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: very different. And I don't know that I would have
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: gotten there except.
• 46:28
  Speaker 2: Except like that.
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: Except like that. And those moments of pronos and showing
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: up and doing it and trusting. And by grace, you know,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: my coach says what he needed to say in those
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: 30 seconds.
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: And.
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: I find that really moving, Warren, partly because I think
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: there's something about how the experience of patience is actually embodied.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: It is like a different subjective feeling in the body
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: to sit and say, well, you know, and kind of
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: back to the thing that I can identify, which is,
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: you know, yoga. It's like, this is killing me, but okay,
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: it's my job to just be here right now. you know,
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: for the next 90 seconds or whatever. And it is
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: a different embodied experience to be sitting with something difficult
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: with patience rather than either the despair or the kind
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: of manic attempt to flee it. So your body found
• 47:39
  Speaker 2: that place. And again, it's another moment of Kairos that
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: the coach said just the right thing at just the
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: right moment.
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: I found my way to endurance sports in the middle
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: of analytic training. I believe that it was Psyche's way
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: of saying, oh, by the way, you kind of need
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: to include this body. thing. And it's just been invaluable.
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: What's the thing that you find makes you lose your patience?
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: When do you lose your patience? I mean, I know
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: that the three of us are Jungian analysts and we're
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: incredibly individuated and we have reached the next stage of
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: enlightenment and we never, ever lose our patience. But If
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: there were something that made you lose your patience, what
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: would it be?
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Well, first of all, if I don't get enough sleep.
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Yep. I know I'm primed. And it could be anything then. Right. Boy,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: that's a very good question. I would say intolerance.
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: Like the other people's intolerance makes you lose your patience? Yeah.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Short-sighted. intolerance that gets under my skin very quickly.
• 49:15
  Speaker 2: Well, I know what it is for you. me.
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: It's all the tech stuff. Lisa's laughing because I am
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: well-known here. And to Jana, our producer, who is forever
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: patient and helpful, but the And I think it's because
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: it's non-human, and sometimes things just go wrong for, quote,
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: no reason. Sometimes it's operator error here, I will confess.
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: But other times, funny things, glitchy things, the Internet goes off,
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: and it's not, quote, supposed to be that way, unquote.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: And so it's unfair, and I would like an explanation.
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: And you're certainly owed one.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: Exactly so. There's a great example, really, of an ego stance,
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: of it's not right, it's not the way it's supposed
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: to be. Thought we had a deal that if I
• 50:27
  Speaker 3: had all these things plugged in just right, that the
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Internet is going.
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: To be there.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Of going back to that place where I want things
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: to make sense and I want accountability. I don't know
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: with whom, the angel of the internet or something perhaps.
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: But there's no other there that I can have a
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: confrontation or a conversation with. There's no way. So I'm
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: thrown back to myself. What am I going to do
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: between me and me, given that this is beyond my
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: powers to understand, let alone rectify? Oh, darn, I hate that.
• 51:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm thinking about what it is for me, like
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: what really makes me lose my patience. And You know,
• 51:25
  Speaker 2: I mean, certainly I can relate, Warren, you brought up
• 51:27
  Speaker 2: feeling tired. I mean, when I'm like, you know, like
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: when I'm hangry, you know, like that irritable, hungry feeling,
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: that definitely, definitely comes up. But then, you know, it
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: is something, you know, it's interesting because that irritation that
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: can come up with when you sort of have a
• 51:42
  Speaker 2: short fuse, it's always like that's always something that really
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: comes up from the body and it comes up from
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: the unconscious. And I often am not really aware until
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: later of what was really underneath it for me. I mean,
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: I think like when there's a situation that's causing me,
• 52:01
  Speaker 2: you know, fear, for example, or anger, like maybe with
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: someone that I love or care about, you know, that
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: can get translated into me having a short fuse. And,
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: you know, about something silly. And then later on, I'm like, oh,
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: I think that that was really... So it can almost
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: be like a surface level manifestation of an inner disequilibrium.
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: Or like, to put it in more human language, just
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: like painful feelings, you know? Yes.
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: There are experiences of powerlessness from ego's point of view.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: The antidote for me that I've been sitting with for
• 52:40
  Speaker 1: the better part of a year now is to reflect
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: on the patience of psyche. Hmm. That is just absolutely
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: stunning to me.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, for Pete's sake, at some point it would
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: have said, look, we're up. We're done with it. They're
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: not getting it. They're not listening.
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, God. Oh, God.
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: But the patience of to be there again and again,
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: another dream, another experience, another happening. I'm still here. Let's
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: do this. I mean, that is, I'm not even sure
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: how to capture that, but just the idea of It's
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: stunning to me. It's absolutely stunning.
• 53:24
  Speaker 2: I love that. You know, there's a line in Whitmont
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: and Pereira's Portal of the Source that always gets me.
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: And it's, you know, it's that the guiding unconscious never ceases.
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: Whether you're listening or not, whether you pay attention or not,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: whether you ever remember a dream or not, it sends
• 53:45
  Speaker 2: you a dream every night. And you're right. It's like
• 53:50
  Speaker 2: the dream maker, as we like to call it, has
• 53:55
  Speaker 2: endless patience. And it's always there for you. That's beautiful.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: I like that you brought that up. Even when we're
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: not so nice to it.
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: Exactly.
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But there's a quality of engagement here. I'm thinking
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: about what you just said, Lisa, even when you're not
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: so nice to it. The there-ness of it. You know,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: Annie Sullivan was there for Helen Keller despite her, you know,
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: horrible wild child behavior. She couldn't help. We stay engaged.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm thinking of the marathons or triathlons of
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: just keep putting one foot in front of the other.
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: We don't let go. We don't give up. We keep
• 54:53
  Speaker 3: going somehow. We stay engaged.
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so as with Pandora, it's patience, however faint, also
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: includes hope.
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I loved your discussion of hope. And I, yeah,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: I thought it was really, I circled something. Here we go.
• 55:21
  Speaker 2: Hope is capable of sustaining endurance or of seducing us
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: into fantasy depending on its relation to reality, which I
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: really like. Because it's true, it can seduce you into fantasy,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: but it can also, you know, it's a little bit,
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: it's funny, we were talking about faith before. I mean,
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: faith and hope are obviously kind of connected, you know.
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: It's like, well, I don't know that this is going
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: to work, but I hope it's going to work, you know,
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: and maybe I'll just kind of keep doing it. And see,
• 55:50
  Speaker 2: you know, a couple other images from fairy tales come
• 55:52
  Speaker 2: to mind that I think could be helpful here. There's,
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: I think it's a Scottish fairy tale called Tamlin. And yeah,
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: and I believe it's a young man is stolen away
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: by the queen of the she. And his lover, his fiance,
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: tries to figure out how to get him back. And
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: she's told that she has to wait until the the
• 56:15
  Speaker 2: the fey pass on you know some special night and
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: then she has to pull him off the horse and
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: then hold him and he's going to change into you
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: know a raging fire and a a writhing serpent and
• 56:29
  Speaker 2: a ferocious lion and she just has to keep holding
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: on and and there is something kind of instructive both
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: i think in terms of you know how we are
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: with ourselves you know because Because like when you're going
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: through something, you might have to companion yourself while you
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: are really going through some pretty awful stuff. But also
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: this can apply interpersonally when you're acting as a container
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: for a loved one who's going through something. Like let's
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: say your teenage kid is going through something. You're just
• 57:10
  Speaker 2: going to be a container and let them rage. Of course,
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: I was very, very good at when my kids were
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: going through stuff, just staying incredibly calm and patient and never,
• 57:21
  Speaker 2: ever losing my patience. Not. But the idea of that
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: as an image is inspiring.
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: And the other one that comes up for me is
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: the fairy tale, The Princess Who Changed Her Fate, which
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: is a Greek fairy tale. And at the end, she
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: has to stand. She has to climb up the mountain.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: And then she has to find her fate, which takes
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: a while. And then she just has to stay there
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: and engage with her fate until her fate will accept
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: her gift. Again, it's like, how do you do that?
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: How do you change your fate? Well, you just got
• 57:58
  Speaker 2: to stand there and just keep on engaging it. You
• 58:02
  Speaker 2: just got to keep moving.
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: The relationship with the self. Yeah.
• 58:07
  Speaker 3: And something takes us there. You know, sometimes it's, There
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: is nothing further that can be done, as in the
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: fairy tale Lisa was just referencing. She's had a miserable
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: time of it. She's been bouncing all over the place,
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: and everywhere she goes, horrible things happen. Crockery gets broken,
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: all kinds of things get destroyed, and she's at the
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: end of her rope. And so she finds the Palace
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: of the Fates, And one after another, these fates come
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: down and they look at her and they say, no, sorry,
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: I'm not your fate, sorry. But I think wanting to
• 58:51
  Speaker 3: try to touch on how it is and that it
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: is that we have a knowing about when it is
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: worthwhile to to endure, to engage, to hold on, to persist,
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: that we are serving something that is a knowing. That
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: this is not just sort of a fruitless endeavor. It's meaningless.
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: It serves no purpose. I'm just perseverating. But we know,
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: at some level, we know that.
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: This is.
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: Development in ourselves. It has worth. And we're serving something
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: in ourselves or in the task we're engaged in, whether it's,
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: you know, for you it was swimming or the running
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: part of triathlons. I honestly don't know what a triathlon is,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: but whatever it is. But There is worth in it
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: because it deepens you and things deepen all of us
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 3: into ourselves. You know, or Annie Sullivan persisting with Helen.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: Penelope weaving and unweaving the shroud. And that if we
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: can sense into that meaning of how do I engage this,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 3: whether it's sitting in traffic or holding a yoga pose
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: or any of these things, we're deepening ourselves. And there
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: is something in us that knows that.
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: Well, there, of course, we're talking about Jung's notion of individuation.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: And which includes, you know, teleology. But there's another very
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: fine point that does not get enough attention that Jung made,
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: which is, he used the Latin term, spiritus rector. It
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: really does not get it. That's the inner spiritual knowing
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: along the way. And that doesn't, often that doesn't get
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 1: the light of day, but that, And that's part of
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: how he tried to get at that knowing and that
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 1: it's right despite the difficulties.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: Yes, it's right despite the difficulties.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 3: I want to read the quote that you have in
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: your paper from Jung, follows right along this. And Jung said,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 3: not that heroic demands are never put on us, on
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 3: the contrary. And this is just what is so irritating
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: and irksome. The banal everyday makes banal demands upon our patience,
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: our devotion, perseverance, self-sacrifice. And for us to fulfill these
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: demands as we must, humbly and without courting applause through
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: heroic gestures, a heroism is needed that cannot be seen
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: from the outside. It does not glitter, is not belotted,
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 3: and it always seeks concealment in everyday attire. These are
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 3: the demands which, if not fulfilled, are the cause of neurosis.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 3: And I like that the very end of that is,
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: if we don't meet the challenge, there's a price to
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: pay of neurosis. That the energy that we could have
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: for deepening into ourselves, If it's avoided, problems ensue.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: Right. And recognizing the quote, the everyday-ness. There's no Latin terms.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: There's no Greek terms. There's no alchemical reference. There's no,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: he doesn't spend three paragraphs to say one thing. It's
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: the everyday-ness of that.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 2: Just keep moving.
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: That is meaningful.
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. So I love what you've brought today, this idea
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: that patience is required. I mean, the patience is kind
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: of a fundamental psychological virtue without which there cannot be
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: transformation and growth. And that we find abundant opportunities to
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: kind of confront that or practice it in day-to-day life,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: but also at moments of difficulty, at moments of stress
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: and challenge and in the consulting room. And perhaps if
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: we're doing an Ironman, which I will not be doing.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: But I love that you're doing it. And maybe this
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: is a good time to switch to a dream.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: Today, our dreamer is a man. He's 73 years old,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: and he is a retired artist. And he has entitled
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 3: his dream, Red Book I Just Found. And here's the dream.
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: I was sitting at a table opposite of a real
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: menacing man. We both had loaded revolvers in front of us.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: We were waiting for someone to come, not quite sure who.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 3: but at any time he could reach for his revolver
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: to shoot me and I had to be faster. At
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 3: some point I woke. For context, he says, I had
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: just found a copy of the Red Book online and
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: started looking into it. Then this morning I turned on
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: YouTube and my first recommendation was the Red Book by
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: your channel, and you talked about him having a revolver
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: by his bedside. Then I wanted to register for your
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: September 13 event, but it was full, so I was disappointed.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 3: The feelings in the dream, he says, were dread and tension.
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 3: And then he adds, I was sitting at the table,
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 3: not sure who the bad guy was. My revolver looked
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: very real, as well as his. His looked like a
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: better model.
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: So this is a dreamer who kind of experienced a
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 2: synchronicity that he, you know, he shortly, I guess, after
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: having this dream, he heard this story about Jung and
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: his time of confrontation with the unconscious who thought he
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: was going mad and at one point kind of had
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: a revolver by the bedside. If I can't figure this out,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: I've got this other way.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: The first thing that comes up for me about this
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: dream is that it looks like we might have a
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 2: shadow figure.
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: Yes, I would agree. And the dream nicely frames the
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: tension of the opposites and the task of going from
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: two to three.
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 2: So, wait, say more. How would it go to three?
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: Say more about that.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: They're waiting for the third to come in.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're waiting for a third person.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's interesting. Oh, that's great. That's great. Yeah.
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: So they're like waiting for the transcendent function. It's actually
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: all about patience. They just have to sit there with
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: their loaded pistols until something else happens. Oh, that's great.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: I love it.
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: For me, the gun is the quintessential, in 21st century,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: the quintessential example of the black and whiteness. My way
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: or no way. And it forecloses on all that makes
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: us truly human. Language, symbolic functioning, agreeing to disagree, patience.
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: And so here they're loaded. They're in front of them.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: And they're sitting and embodying the tension. and embodying it,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 1: waiting for the third.
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a great example of the tension of the opposites.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: I think we can all relate to that, of like,
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: you know, at any time, this other figure could reach
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: for his gun and shoot me. I had to be faster.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Haven't we all seen those moments in Westerns where they're
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: facing off against each other and who's going to draw first?
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: And if that tension can be held until the person,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: someone to come, someone's going to come. It is a
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: wonderful example of holding the tension of the opposites with
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 3: all those feelings, which he says are dread and tension.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: That the tension won't be collapsed because once one person
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 3: grabs the gun and shoots, there's no more tension. Yes.
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 2: Tensions collapsed. Right. That's right.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: You know, I didn't even see that in it. It's
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: so great because I was really focusing on the other thing.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 2: But that is such a dynamic part of this dream
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 2: is that, you know, sort of that waiting. What I
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 2: was thinking about just to kind of go back to
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: where I started was was this image that this is
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 2: a real confrontation between. So who you know what who
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: who is the who's the dream ego being confronted by?
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: And I said shadow, and as we know, usually... same-sex
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: figures in dreams might represent shadow, which Jung would say
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: are those parts of ourselves that we've kind of disowned.
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: So if I had this dreamer here, I'd really want
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: to know, what does this other man look like? Did
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: he remind you of anybody? Any associations or imaginations even
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: that you might have about this person? Because Because you,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: you know, the unconscious here is showing up. You know,
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: we were talking before, Warren, you brought in the incredible
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: patience of the unconscious. Here the unconscious is showing up
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: in a fairly dramatic way, trying to get your attention.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: You know, in some sense, this dream reminds me a
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 2: little bit of Jacob wrestling with the angel. You know,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: it's like you're having a direct confrontation with some inner
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 2: energy here. And it is showing up because it wants
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: something for you or from you. And it seems to
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 2: be menacing, but that is from the perspective of the ego. So,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 2: you know, working with this in kind of an active
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: imagination way, what does this man want? I would be
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: real interested in that. What does he want?
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: Yes. My attention is also drawn to The absence, for instance,
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: where's the feminine?
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: There are three men, and one of whom is, I
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 1: would have to look up the etymology, but curious about menacing. Men-asing.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: Maybe there's too much men in the room.
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Or maybe there's too much men in the moment. Right.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: And it's time for setting guns aside. And seeing what
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: the feminine has to say, I would be curious. I
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: would wonder, I would want to ask the dreamer, what
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: is menacing? What gets under your skin? What's in day-to-day,
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: keep a log. What's menacing? What's bothering you?
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: I would, what I'm thinking about with this dream is,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: in the context of men menacing and the feminine, is
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 3: that eros is missing. Relatedness is missing. Oh, this is
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: all about power. One of them is menacing or perceived
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: as menacing. Each of them has a gun. It seems
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: this is a dream about being powerful. know.
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: You know, in a way, this confrontation has Eros in it.
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 2: I mean, a hot kind of Eros. But, you know,
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 2: you can't, you know, hate is just sort of the
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: other face of love, right? So, I mean, maybe, maybe it's,
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: but it certainly powers in there, Deb. I agree with you.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: But there's a, there's a connection. There's a connection between
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: these two figures.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: There is a connection, but it feels like one around,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 3: there's going to be a winner and a loser.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 3: Either one draws their gun, or hopefully the man that
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: they're waiting for will come.
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: Do we know it's a man, by the way? I
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: just want to check.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: We do know it's a man. Okay. Okay.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: And I'm curious if the dreamer here would say, what's
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 2: the imagination about what happens when the man comes?
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: Right? Yes.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: We don't know.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: I would also be curious. We learned that he's a
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: retired artist. So presumably he has some experience with the opposites.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: And then he comes into contact with Jung's beautiful volume
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: of the opposites and maybe it takes his imagination or
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 1: invites his imagination to another level which at first feels
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: confrontational but the reality is i would want to emphasize
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 1: he is being seen.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: Yes yes and and building on that i i think
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 2: that's yeah something has shown up you know And Warren,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: you kind of paraphrased that famous quote before about the
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 2: face we turn toward the unconscious is the face that
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 2: looks back at us. And this is a great example
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: of that, right? Like he's, the ego's attitude toward the
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: unconscious is fairly like confrontational, I would say. So what
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 2: you see is the unconscious showing up with a gun.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: And by the way, it's showing up with a better model. Yeah.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe from that vantage point, a sense of unconscious
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: as product as compared to process. That it's confrontational, right, wrong, good, bad, should, shouldn't,
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: as compared to a process which implies a wholeness.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: And it's one of those dreams where there isn't a lysis,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: there isn't a resolution. It kind of ends on a cliffhanger.
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 2: We don't know what's going to happen. And, you know,
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: that's always interesting to track. What's the next dream and
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: the dream after that one? And How does this situation unfold?
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 2: But something has begun here, I think. And I think
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 2: you're right, Warren, you know, this idea that he, oh gosh,
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 2: he finds the Red Book. We don't know any other
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 2: context about this dreamer. Is he familiar with Jung or not?
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: You know, my fantasy that I make up is he's not.
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: And he found this stuff and he's like, wow, what's this?
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 2: So there's the unconscious going, yep, here I am. Let's
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: get it on, you know? And it seems menacing, but
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: you're in for a ride.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Yes, and sentence number one, my soul, my soul, where
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: are you? Are you there? That, I mean, following your point, yes,
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: that would be, wait a minute.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: Here I am with my gun.
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: I'd be curious, too, however, as, you know, in his
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: lived daily life, of where is this dynamic going on?
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: It seems like something was really sparked by the power
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: of the Red Book. But, you know, this confrontation, two
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: people sitting at a table in this kind of thing
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: of who's going to draw first, or will the man
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 3: that we're waiting for show up? I'm curious as to
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: what are the roots in your own life these days
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 3: where that kind of a dynamic is going on? And
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: we're going to settle it with guns.
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: Right, because also the context the dreamer gives us, that
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: was Jung's dream where Siegfried was killed, which he understood
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: to be the hero, that I need to set this
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: hero aside and learn how to die a psychological death
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: so that something else can come forth.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, you know, that does feel really relevant. Like there
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: might be something that needs to be killed off here
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 2: before he can continue this encounter. Some part of, some attitude,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 2: I would say.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: Here is a dream that as we read it, is
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: two lines long. And look how much there is, how
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 3: significant this is. This is the sort of thing where
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: oftentimes people say, oh, you know, I only have these
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 3: little fragments. I hardly remember anything. And some part of
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 3: you is speaking to you.
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there it is. Thanks for listening. To submit a dream,
• 1:17:43
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• 1:17:46
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• 1:17:51
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