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DRAGON: The Archetypal Monster and Ally Within · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: we are going to talk about a topic that, to
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: our astonishment, we have never addressed before. And the name
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: of this topic is dragons. And thank you very much
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: to the listener who wrote in and said, how come
• 0:55
  Speaker 4: you haven't ever discussed this? So dragons, as it turns out,
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: are universal products of mythology today. the imaginal unconscious. There
• 1:09
  Speaker 4: are dragon stories, dragon images, dragon myths on all continents
• 1:15
  Speaker 4: except Antarctica. And who knows, we may discover that the
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: penguins have their own dragon mythology somewhere down the line.
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: So here is a major product of the mythical mind.
• 1:31
  Speaker 4: And we will address the questions here. of how and
• 1:35
  Speaker 4: where dragons are alive inside us.
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: So this is interesting because the existence of dragons in
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: pretty much every culture, and I'm gonna talk a little
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: bit more about that in a second, really is perhaps
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: evidence for the existence of the collective unconscious, right? So
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: when we talk about the collective unconscious, we talk about
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: this universal substrate that has a tendency to generate similar
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: images across times and cultures. So if there were ever
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: an image that kind of fit this category, I think
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: dragon is it. So I'm thinking of this book called
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: An Instinct for Dragons by an anthropologist named David E. Jones.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: And he says there are dragons in every culture, including
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: the Inuits, who've never seen a reptile.
• 2:29
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: And so why? And his hypothesis, by the way, I
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: just think it's really interesting, is that dragons represent an
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: amalgam of the principal predators of ancestral humans. So that
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: in other words, it's a sort of evolutionary thing. It's like, oh,
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: watch out for scaly things, things with long tails, you know,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: things that breathe fire. But, you know, watch out for
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: these things, right?
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think Carl Sagan, a scientist, also had
• 3:03
  Speaker 4: a similar idea that we have what he called fossil
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  Speaker 4: memories that might be related to creatures that are alive today,
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  Speaker 4: like lizards or Komodo dragons, snakes, alligators. And I think
• 3:17
  Speaker 4: there is something to this because I'm remembering that a
• 3:22
  Speaker 4: while back we did an episode on alligators and crocodiles.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: And those show up a lot in dreams of people
• 3:32
  Speaker 4: that have, you know, live in areas where we know
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: about them, but we have no real lived experience with them.
• 3:40
  Speaker 4: But I also think it's what you said, Lisa, there's
• 3:44
  Speaker 4: somewhere in the collective unconscious, in the imagination, we recognize dragons.
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: They're just animals. there.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: And of course, the other appealing hypothesis that I just have,
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: because I'm definitely one of those kids who loved dinosaurs
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: when I was a kid, and I never grew out
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: of that. I still love dinosaurs. It's so intriguing because
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: you go to the museums and you see the fossils,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: and you think about these enormous bones poking out of
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  Speaker 2: the ground that people at some point You know, places
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: like the Gobi Desert or something or different parts of
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  Speaker 2: the world found these. And, like, how could they not
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: hypothesize the existence of dragons based on to the extent
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: that they ever found those? So that's a popular and,
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  Speaker 2: to me, an interesting hypothesis as well. But I never
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: heard that about fossil memories. But I think that's very similar, actually,
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  Speaker 2: to the idea of the collective unconscious.
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  Speaker 4: Yes, exactly. We need dragons. Mm-hmm. And that's why on
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: six continents, there are stories about dragons.
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  Speaker 5: So it makes it all the more interesting that this
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  Speaker 5: vestigial memory of anything that could prey upon us as
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  Speaker 5: human beings and how we might escape that or kill it. Now,
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  Speaker 5: in the general psyche on the planet, dragons have become allies, friends, protectors.
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  Speaker 5: war machines, magical, and that human beings have this relationship,
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  Speaker 5: and I guess in Game of Thrones, this capacity to
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  Speaker 5: master the dragons, to master the dangerous.
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  Speaker 3: Only some.
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  Speaker 5: Only some. But that seems like quite a remarkable evolution,
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  Speaker 5: that we don't have to kill them, quote-unquote, anymore, that
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  Speaker 5: we can have a relationship with them.
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  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: I think that's you're hitting on the major question is
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  Speaker 4: since dragons are there as the quintessential emblem of fantasy,
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  Speaker 4: what is it that we do? How do we relate
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  Speaker 4: to a dragon? Do we kill it? Do we communicate
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  Speaker 4: with it? Do we befriend it? Do we master it?
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  Speaker 4: What is the right relationship with a dragon?
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  Speaker 2: Well, maybe we should talk first about what dragons signify.
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  Speaker 2: And it's a wide range, like many of these big symbols.
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  Speaker 4: Yes. What I think where the main divide is, historically
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: and culturally, is the divide between East and West. In
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  Speaker 4: Western lore, mythology, etc., The dragons are enemies, and they
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  Speaker 4: represent often chaos and untamed, cold, unrelated, dangerous energy. They hoard.
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  Speaker 4: They do all these things. So they're Basically, they are
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: in the enemy camp, something of insecurity and fear represented
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  Speaker 4: as a dragon that has to be conquered. Whereas overall,
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: in the East, China, Japan, the dragon is a very,
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  Speaker 4: very positive symbol. Only the emperor was allowed to have
• 7:26
  Speaker 4: dragon emblems on clothing or other places. and that dragons
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  Speaker 4: represent transcendent, glorious powers that are not accessible or part
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: of the provenance of, you know, sort of ordinary mortals.
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  Speaker 5: I think that the dragons in the West seem to
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  Speaker 5: be this amalgam of personal failings, that all the seven
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: deadly sins are something that dragons do. Which also anthropomorphizes them.
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  Speaker 5: I mean, they're these big reptiles, but they're greedy. And
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  Speaker 5: they're greedy for things that human beings want, like gold.
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  Speaker 5: And they're not greedy for things that they might munch on,
• 8:12
  Speaker 5: like cattle. And they grab princesses, and God knows what
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  Speaker 5: they do with them, but they want all of them.
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  Speaker 4: Yes. They have a... Dragons have a thing for princesses
• 8:24
  Speaker 4: and it has to be a princess, not a shepherdess.
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  Speaker 5: They're all human desires that the dragon has in exaggerated excess.
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  Speaker 2: There actually aren't that many fairy tales that contain dragons.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, we think of that as the kind of
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: quintessential fairy tale image, but. I think in Grimm's there
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  Speaker 2: may be a dragon or two, but there's not a
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: ton of dragons in Grimm's.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's only one story in Grimm's that I found,
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  Speaker 4: which has to do with a boy and his grandmother,
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  Speaker 4: where he has to track the dragon down, and there
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: it is lurking in a cave, and the dragon's grandmother
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: helps him. But you're right, there's not a lot. But
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  Speaker 4: I wanted to backtrack for a sec of these two aspects,
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  Speaker 4: I think, of the archetypal image of the dragon that
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: are represented by East and West. And that we know
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: archetypal images have both a positive and a negative valence
• 9:29
  Speaker 4: from the point of view of ego. So in the West,
• 9:32
  Speaker 4: that aspect of the dragon that's negative, enemy, chaotic, and
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  Speaker 4: unconscious has been used as a basis for many a myth.
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  Speaker 4: And in the East, the positive, glorious, golden, transcendent, flying
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  Speaker 4: aspects of the dragon have been seized on by the
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: collective imagination.
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  Speaker 2: And in the East, they're really an image of the
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: life force.
• 9:59
  Speaker 5: Of the self, absolutely.
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  Speaker 4: The images from the East of dragons and their dragon
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  Speaker 4: dances and paper dragons and so on, those images are
• 10:13
  Speaker 4: beautiful beyond almost anything of You can see that artist
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: after artist has had a wonderful time on China, embroidery, ceramics,
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  Speaker 4: with dragon images.
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  Speaker 5: What I would submit is that in Europe, the European
• 10:34
  Speaker 5: culture has been so defined by Judeo-Christian mythos. And Judeo-Christian
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: mythos is tied to the Middle East. And the primary representation,
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  Speaker 5: the ancient representation of the dragon image in the Middle East,
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  Speaker 5: is the goddess Tiamat, who defeats Marduk.
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  Speaker 2: No, Marduk kills Tiamat.
• 10:55
  Speaker 5: Oh, excuse me, challenges Marduk. But that the goddess Tiamat
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  Speaker 5: is malevolent, chaotic, destructive, dangerous, threatens all order and all life.
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  Speaker 5: That's part of that Middle Eastern archetypal structure, which I
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  Speaker 5: would imagine also influences some of the the mythos that
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  Speaker 5: comes from the Middle East through Judaism and into European culture.
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  Speaker 2: Tiamat is a really important dragon image, and she's a
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  Speaker 2: Babylonian goddess. She's also a creatrix. So she gives birth
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  Speaker 2: to the other gods, but she's associated with the salt water.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: She's a kind of personification of the waters. But she
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: is an image, as you were saying, Joseph, she's really
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  Speaker 2: an image of kind of primordial chaos. And that's why
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  Speaker 2: when Marduk defeats her, it's this image that we find
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  Speaker 2: again and again and again in mythology. In a Jungian interpretation,
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  Speaker 2: it really kind of corresponds to the development of the
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  Speaker 2: ego that arises out of the maternal chaos of the unconscious.
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  Speaker 2: So it's sort of the championing of the ego over
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  Speaker 2: the unconscious, which is an important early stage of development.
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  Speaker 2: We have to constellate an ego out of the primordial
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  Speaker 2: ocean of the unconscious. So it's a universal thing that
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  Speaker 2: hopefully we all do. You know, I think, Joseph, your
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  Speaker 2: point about the Judeo-Christian tradition is really important too, because
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  Speaker 2: especially in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we really sort of demonized
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  Speaker 2: that primordial mother, and she becomes associated with evil. And
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  Speaker 2: so then you get stories like St. George and the Dragon,
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  Speaker 2: which is really about defeating that and keeping it down.
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  Speaker 2: It's this really ambivalent relationship that the West has with the,
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  Speaker 2: I want to say, the kind of creative feminine principle,
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  Speaker 2: which is often read as threatening.
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  Speaker 5: That idea of the creative feminine, I think, drops out
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  Speaker 5: a little bit when we get to St. George and
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  Speaker 5: the dragon. It seems more that the Judeo-Christian world as
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  Speaker 5: it manifests in Europe has become so anti-instinct, anti-body, anti-sex,
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  Speaker 5: and all of the seven deadly sins which are basically
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  Speaker 5: come out of the body in its fight to thrive.
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  Speaker 5: In a lot of ways, eat as much as you can,
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  Speaker 5: reproduce as much as you can, protect yourself as much
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  Speaker 5: as you can. All that stuff needs to be sublimated
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  Speaker 5: in one sense. And this is even part of the
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  Speaker 5: ancient world, the Code of Hammurabi, that at some point
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  Speaker 5: in order to have a civilization, there need to be
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  Speaker 5: rules of conduct, if nothing else, that we can't respond
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  Speaker 5: from pure animal instincts and still tolerate these complicated civilizations
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  Speaker 5: that we're embedded in. So I think the rise of
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  Speaker 5: this need to contain the first impulse, or what we
• 14:11
  Speaker 5: might say is an antisocial impulse, and for that to
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  Speaker 5: be symbolized as the defeat of the dragon, which comes
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  Speaker 5: to be called Satan in Christianity, is part of that
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  Speaker 5: civilization so different I'm not familiar with the evolution of
• 14:30
  Speaker 5: the image of the dragon, but in the East, the
• 14:33
  Speaker 5: idea of the taming of the instincts and putting them
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: in service to life. Such a different approach, but I
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  Speaker 5: don't know how they got to that and whether it was,
• 14:45
  Speaker 5: I would imagine it was a little more turbulent than
• 14:50
  Speaker 5: the elegant end product of that.
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: Well, and I don't think, and I might be wrong
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: about this, but I don't think the dragons in the
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: East are without some ambiguity.
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  Speaker 5: They're dangerous.
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: Right, they're dangerous. They're not pussycats.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: And they're not human.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: No, and they have a lot of resemblances. We have
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: lots of characteristics of dragons, what they're like, what they do.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: And in the East, they have staghorns, camel head, serpent neck,
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: The belly of a clam, of all things, scales of
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: a carp, tiger feet, cow ears, eagle claws, and they're
• 15:28
  Speaker 4: reaching for the moon pearl of wisdom. They're also associated
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: with rain and having power over the rain. And so
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: we get dragon dances. And now today and throughout time,
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: there have been dragon boat races. Mm-hmm. but they are
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: associated with auspicious power. But I think the theme running
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: through this part of our discussion is what is the
• 15:56
  Speaker 4: relationship between the ego and the unconscious?
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: And I want to just, I have a quote here
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  Speaker 2: from Yolanda Yacobi who writes the creation of the world
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: through the dismemberment of the maternal dragon is therefore the
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: archetypal ground pattern of for the task of the first
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: phase of individuation. That's kind of what we were saying before,
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: that you sort of have to defeat the dragon in
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: some sense, the mother dragon, the mother unconscious.
• 16:28
  Speaker 5: And so what that means to put it down into
• 16:32
  Speaker 5: our own lived experiences, when we think of the mother,
• 16:36
  Speaker 5: the mother, that's from the perspective of the infant. So,
• 16:41
  Speaker 5: you know, we're born and we're just piles of howling
• 16:44
  Speaker 5: instinct without any regulation and we have to be helped
• 16:49
  Speaker 5: and raised. But that first experience of the newborn infant
• 16:54
  Speaker 5: to the mother is a realm of overwhelming instinct. And
• 16:59
  Speaker 5: because those pre-verbal memories are still alive in all of us,
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: that there is a Primal early image of the mother
• 17:14
  Speaker 5: beckons us to become howling infants once again. So to
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: defeat the mother is actually to defeat the attraction to
• 17:24
  Speaker 5: wanting to collapse back into that howling state.
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  Speaker 2: This kind of regression.
• 17:31
  Speaker 5: Yes, we lose consciousness and then we start behaving in
• 17:34
  Speaker 5: all kinds of illegal and devastating ways. So what we're
• 17:40
  Speaker 5: really fighting... which is something to think about is the
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: desire to fall into the dragon, to nurse at the dragon,
• 17:48
  Speaker 5: to become a child, once again, a dangerous child.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 4: And that is what Jung basically says is that when
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: fighting the dragon, we are fighting the temptation to regress.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: You have some good quotes there, don't you?
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and so we have the dragon, the regression, or
• 18:13
  Speaker 4: a symbol of regression, and then we have the hero.
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  Speaker 4: And Jung says the hero represents the good, favorable action
• 18:21
  Speaker 4: of the unconscious, while the dragon is its negative and
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: unfavorable action. Not birth, but a devouring. Not a beneficial
• 18:31
  Speaker 4: and constructive deed, but greedy retention and destruction. And our heroes,
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: and they're always male heroes, have to face that challenge
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: of early adulthood by facing those chaotic, primal, regressive tendencies
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: of the unconscious and to develop boldness and courage and
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: stand against those forces of, of chaos.
• 19:06
  Speaker 2: Um, just to kind of translate that, it's such a great,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: great quote, but to sort of translate it, if let's say,
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: you know, you have a young person who's, uh, about
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: to finish college and has no idea what he wants
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: to do. He, you know, he doesn't have any plans,
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: he doesn't have a job. And so, The regressive tendency
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: would maybe be to see if he could stay in
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: college longer. Maybe he can engineer some way to add
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: on an extra semester, for example. And the images of
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: what he's going to do afterwards is like, well, maybe
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: I'm going to move back home. And it's a kind
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: of regressing back to a childlike state of dependence or
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: staying in a childlike state. instead of overcoming the fear.
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: You know, Jung talks in Volume 5, he talks about
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: fear a lot. Because what we have to do to
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: face the dragon is overcome our fear.
• 20:02
  Speaker 4: And in the battle with the dragon, this is another
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: short quote from Jung, the hero has much in common.
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: With the dragon he fights. Or rather, he takes over
• 20:14
  Speaker 4: some of its qualities. Invulnerability, snake's eyes, etc. So if
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: you can fight the regressive tendency, it's empowering.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: And there again, I think we see the opposites. And
• 20:30
  Speaker 4: one is, it looks like it's being defeated, but in
• 20:37
  Speaker 4: the defeat, the hero absorbs some of those qualities.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: Becomes more dragon-like.
• 20:44
  Speaker 4: Exactly. Now you too can breathe fire.
• 20:47
  Speaker 5: So the example that you'd given, Lisa, is a collapse
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: into a kind of a dependency on the mother. But also,
• 20:59
  Speaker 5: depending on how far we regress, we also can regress
• 21:04
  Speaker 5: to a more borderline state, which is a chaotic state,
• 21:08
  Speaker 5: which is even more dangerous. And then we're in the
• 21:10
  Speaker 5: world of the self-saboteur. Why is it that things are
• 21:16
  Speaker 5: going well and something wells up inside of me and
• 21:20
  Speaker 5: I have an impulse to say something that's going to
• 21:24
  Speaker 5: create chaos or to be provocative in some way or
• 21:27
  Speaker 5: to make infantile demands and to foster a kind of
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: chaotic wildness in my relationship, at work, at school. And
• 21:40
  Speaker 5: that's also this unfortunate regression to that very, very, very
• 21:47
  Speaker 5: early state. which isn't as peaceful as wanting to play
• 21:51
  Speaker 5: video games in the basement, but is actually much more terrifying.
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 21:58
  Speaker 5: Now, the other side of the dragon is also, as
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: we were saying, the dragons can have a protective aspect
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: that in Hinduism, Naga is a central figure. In Buddhism,
• 22:12
  Speaker 5: that is the protector of those who are in right relationship.
• 22:18
  Speaker 4: Hmm.
• 22:18
  Speaker 5: She is a goddess of water and fertility and the
• 22:22
  Speaker 5: earth and wisdom. And she protects the treasures, material and spiritual.
• 22:29
  Speaker 5: So I think later in life, once we've kind of
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: differentiated from the seduction of the dragon, we can have
• 22:38
  Speaker 5: a relationship with the unconscious. And the unconscious is also
• 22:43
  Speaker 5: the source of creativity and treasures and instincts that can
• 22:47
  Speaker 5: save your hide.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: Like if we know it's not going to devour us,
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: then we can harness ourselves to it in a way
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: that's incredibly powerfully creative, which I think is part of
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: the appeal of shows like House of the Dragon, which
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: was the kind of prequel to Game of Thrones, which
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: I really enjoyed. I have to say, I started off thinking, oh,
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: you know, but then I really got into it. And
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: they do a lot with dragons. And there's this wonderful image.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: And of course, this is another popular books, too. But
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: they do this wonderful– there's this wonderful thing where if
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: you're a Targaryen and you can speak– what's the language?
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: High Valyrian or something. You can sort of tame– you
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: can bind a dragon to you.
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: Ah.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: And then you become a dragon rider. And it's this
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: really stupendous thing. And there are these aerial fights and
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: all these great– special effects. You see these kinds of
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: swooping beasts in the air, bellowing loudly. And it's, but
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: it's a wonderful image, I think, of just what we
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: were saying that, that, you know, with the right relationship,
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: you could have access to the vast life energy of
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: the unconscious, of the creative unconscious that the dragon represents.
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 24:14
  Speaker 5: The thing that they say when they approach the dragon
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: in that television series is, serve me.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: Ah, okay.
• 24:22
  Speaker 5: And the dragon, a number of the situations, the dragon
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: looks up, considers, and then belches flame.
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes.
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: If you're not the right kind of Targaryen, it's not
• 24:35
  Speaker 5: going to go well.
• 24:36
  Speaker 4: Right, that's right. So this calls up for me, you know,
• 24:41
  Speaker 4: what is the right relationship to dragons to this aspect
• 24:47
  Speaker 4: of the unconscious? And just as in fairy tales, there
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: are a number of ways to relate to dragons, but
• 24:55
  Speaker 4: you have to go in consciously. You can't just walk
• 24:59
  Speaker 4: up to a dragon and say, hey, serve me.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 25:04
  Speaker 4: Joseph, you and I were talking about, there is a
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: theme of befriending this way, where, like Horse and Rider,
• 25:11
  Speaker 4: the hero is the one directing the forces of the dragon,
• 25:17
  Speaker 4: the unconscious. And we were talking about the sci-fi series
• 25:22
  Speaker 4: by Anne McCaffrey of the Dragons of Pern, and the
• 25:28
  Speaker 4: whole series that borrows from Conrad Loren's L-O-R-E-N-Z, who discovered
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: how chicks imprint and that when the chicks hatch, the
• 25:43
  Speaker 4: first thing they see is what they will follow and
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: consider their guiding, more or less, maternal force. It was
• 25:53
  Speaker 4: such a wonderful scene of people gathering around all the
• 25:56
  Speaker 4: dragon eggs hatching and that when the dragons hatch, you
• 26:00
  Speaker 4: simply stand there and wait for one of these little
• 26:03
  Speaker 4: baby dragons. They're so cute to make eye contact with
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: you and bond. It's an interesting image of a kind
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: of primal bonding with a baby dragon that you can befriend.
• 26:22
  Speaker 5: Big, dangerous ducks.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: Another way is you can trick.
• 26:32
  Speaker 4: The dragon. Aside from the usual heroic sword-piercing legends, there's
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: a story, I think, in the Bible or one of
• 26:43
  Speaker 4: the Apocrypha of Daniel and this idol, and it's a dragon.
• 26:51
  Speaker 4: And the way that Daniel kills the dragon is by
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: feeding it cakes made of pitch and hair and fat
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: and And our greedy dragon gulps them all down, and
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: then they explode in the dragon's stomach, which is a gloriously,
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: really horrible, gory end to the dragon. So it calls
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: up various ways of which dragon, what do I do,
• 27:23
  Speaker 4: what are my options? How do I relate to this energy?
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: And that reminds me of another very wonderful, wonderful scene
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: of dragon lore in modern culture, which is Bilbo and
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: Smaug under the Lonely Mountain. And Smaug, this is from
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: The Hobbit. Smaug is lying on his hoard of gold.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: Bilbo makes his way down into Smaug's lair wearing the ring,
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: which renders him invisible. And then he's able to kind
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: of engage in this repartee with Smaug to gather more
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: information and sort of incite Smaug a little bit. And
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: it's not Smaug's ultimate undoing, but it does begin that.
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: So it's a wonderful conversation that Bilbo and Smaug have.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:19
  Speaker 5: And that what Bilbo needs to steal is the jewel
• 28:24
  Speaker 5: of the king.
• 28:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:26
  Speaker 5: So the dragon has collected gold cups and coins and bracelets,
• 28:32
  Speaker 5: but also has laid claim to the authority of kingship.
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: The Arkenstone.
• 28:40
  Speaker 5: The Arkenstone. So that Bilbo's going in as a trickster,
• 28:44
  Speaker 5: as an incredible, confident trickster. It's astounding that he isn't
• 28:51
  Speaker 5: just passing out from anxiety.
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 28:55
  Speaker 5: To reclaim this kind of authority, which is what we
• 28:58
  Speaker 5: were talking about, that something has fallen into the unconscious
• 29:03
  Speaker 5: and that the kingly principle or the capacity for each
• 29:07
  Speaker 5: of us to rule our own internal kingdom has fallen
• 29:13
  Speaker 5: into the hands of these unconscious instinctive impulses and consequently
• 29:18
  Speaker 5: we're just ruled by our baser instincts. But most importantly,
• 29:24
  Speaker 5: is that the Arkenstone has not been destroyed even though
• 29:31
  Speaker 5: the dragon is laying on it. Because it doesn't want to.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: Kill, destroy those things. That's great. That's really great, Joseph.
• 29:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: In some ways, the dragon is the keeper of these capacities,
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: you know, and it's, the image of the dragon is
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: related to the image of the Ouroboros, which is the
• 29:52
  Speaker 2: serpent eating its tail, right? And part of the significance
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: of the Ouroboros is that The unconscious can be self-fertilizing.
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: It can act upon itself to generate something new.
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: Yes. It's the opus, the work from within, that it
• 30:12
  Speaker 4: is within us to guard and gestate the treasure, the
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: treasure of the self, our potential, our full potential. And
• 30:26
  Speaker 4: that goes back to what you were saying earlier of
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: what's the treasure. And that there's treasure in the unconscious.
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: It's the fount of creativity and intuition and freedom of
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: expression and access to all the parts of ourselves.
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: And that's why, Joseph, I think the point you just
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: made is so important, that the dragon doesn't destroy the horde.
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: It doesn't destroy the treasure. And there's almost a paradoxical
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: way in which the dragon is keeping it for us
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: until we're ready to reclaim it. Which brings me to
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: one of my favorite dragon quotes by the poet Rainer
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: Maria Rilke, who says, Perhaps all the dragons in our
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless. that
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: wants our love.
• 31:26
  Speaker 5: I think that's a great quote that I would associate
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: with the dragons of drama. That there are ways that
• 31:35
  Speaker 5: we can be reduced to incredible instinctive states by overwhelming
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: circumstances and parts of ourselves are split off, precious parts
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: of ourselves. And that We have to be courageous enough
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: to reclaim it, much in the way Kalschad talks about
• 31:54
  Speaker 5: the archetypal defenses. Those, I think, are a different kind
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: of dragon. They are absolutely guarding a treasure. The treasure
• 32:05
  Speaker 5: could be our soul or various feelings, qualities that we've dissociated.
• 32:11
  Speaker 5: And as Kalschad says so elegantly, we have to come
• 32:14
  Speaker 5: before these guardians, the dragon's and somehow retire them with
• 32:19
  Speaker 5: a gold watch. That's a quote from Don. Because they've
• 32:25
  Speaker 5: been doing a good job, it's just that we don't
• 32:29
  Speaker 5: need them to guard the dissociated material anymore. And we
• 32:35
  Speaker 5: need that beautiful potential to come back to us. But
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: we are going to have to grow enough to face
• 32:43
  Speaker 5: whatever it is that, scares us away from knowing what
• 32:48
  Speaker 5: we used to know. Yeah.
• 32:52
  Speaker 4: And on the one hand, dragons are guarding the treasure
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: of our creativity and potential. On the other hand, if
• 33:00
  Speaker 4: they're holding a princess captive, the vulnerable, beautiful, soft part,
• 33:08
  Speaker 4: and the dragon is not defeated. some kind of vital
• 33:13
  Speaker 4: energy is devoured. And that won't be the end of
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: it either. Then the dragons go rampaging around the countryside,
• 33:22
  Speaker 4: gobbling up people here, there, and elsewhere. So we have
• 33:28
  Speaker 4: no choice, really, but to confront the dragons.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: There's a beautiful Armenian fairy tale. It's very involved, but
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: I'll see if I can just summarize the beginning part
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: of it. It's very long. It's called Sun Girl and
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: Dragon Prince. And it starts with kind of a Cinderella setup.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: This girl has an evil stepmother, and the stepmother's very
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: cruel to her and makes her do all of the work.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: And there's also a prince who's been turned into a
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: dragon by– by perhaps another evil stepmother. I can't really remember.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: But the dragon devours a noble girl every day and
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: they run out of noble girls. And so they.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: Take- Limited supply.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Limited supply. So they grab hold of Sun Girl because
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: at that point she's been rewarded for her good deeds
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: with shimmering golden hair. And they notice her and they
• 34:27
  Speaker 2: grab her and they drop her into the dragon's lair.
• 34:31
  Speaker 2: And she turns around and she speaks to him kindly.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: And he immediately begins weeping and turns into a prince.
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: And then they're married and that's only the beginning of
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: the story. But it's just a beautiful image that it's
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: just her kindness that transforms the dragon of trauma.
• 34:53
  Speaker 4: It's love.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: So there are ways that.
• 35:00
  Speaker 5: In the first half of life, we have to defeat
• 35:03
  Speaker 5: the dragon of wanting to collapse into passivity, returning to
• 35:09
  Speaker 5: this dependency on our parents, but to fight our way
• 35:14
  Speaker 5: so we can stand on our own two hairy legs
• 35:16
  Speaker 5: and kind of start a life. There's a way in
• 35:20
  Speaker 5: which trauma can evoke dragons from the unconscious who will
• 35:25
  Speaker 5: guard our dissociated material, who have to be approached very
• 35:30
  Speaker 5: creatively and at great cost to us. And then there
• 35:35
  Speaker 5: are also the dragons that we have to submit to
• 35:40
  Speaker 5: later on in life because part of the renewal in
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: the second half of life is to be swallowed by
• 35:48
  Speaker 5: our instincts, to face them with an ego that is
• 35:53
  Speaker 5: muscular enough to feel them and tolerate them without acting out.
• 36:00
  Speaker 5: So in alchemy, there's an image of a green dragon.
• 36:04
  Speaker 5: Excuse me. Sometimes it is a dragon, a green lion,
• 36:09
  Speaker 5: sometimes a dragon devouring the sun, which is this experience
• 36:14
  Speaker 5: of our instincts surging up in midlife. And this is
• 36:19
  Speaker 5: where we get the idea of the midlife crisis. And
• 36:23
  Speaker 5: we're running out and getting facelifts and buying new red
• 36:27
  Speaker 5: cars and having affairs and But in a sense, that's
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: the resurgence of the life force in the instinctive self,
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: which brings us back to life. And this time, we
• 36:41
  Speaker 5: have to feel all of those impulses and hold them
• 36:46
  Speaker 5: in a muscular way that we can then purpose them.
• 36:50
  Speaker 5: We can ride the dragon into the second half of life.
• 36:55
  Speaker 4: I really like that. What you're saying and the word
• 37:00
  Speaker 4: facing the dragon in a muscular way, which could be
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: literally with the proverbial sword of the hero. It could
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: be figuring out a trick like Daniel did. And it
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: could be, you know, like you're saying, Lisa, with the
• 37:19
  Speaker 4: fairy tale and the quote, by simply standing your ground
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: with a muscular kind of love, not a, you know,
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: sort of here kitty kitty kind of love, which isn't
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: going to work. But here I am ready to stand
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: and engage without giving ground, without giving way.
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: So I want to bring up a really great image here.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: And this comes from the visions of Christiana Morgan, who
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: worked with Jung for some time. And we recently did
• 37:56
  Speaker 2: a podcast with Christiana's granddaughter, Hillary Morgan. So you can
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: go back and look at that. But she was an
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: exceptional woman who engaged in Jung's practice of active imagination
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: and created this incredible artwork. based on her visions, and
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: kept journals of her visions. And Jung was really inspired
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: by her and did a lot of work with her visions.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: So this is, I'm going to be reading a quote
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: from a book by the Jungian analyst Claire Douglas about
• 38:33
  Speaker 2: Christiana Morgan. And the title of the book is Translate
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: This Darkness. And here's the quote. So she'd had a vision,
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: Christiana had had a vision of a dragon. Christiana's vision
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: showed her that a woman hero's task was not to
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: kill the dragon, but to keep it alive, even as
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: she separated herself from unconscious fusion with it and its power.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: It's not okay to be fused with it. Through entering
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: into conscious relation with her dark dragon, Christiana integrated its
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: power inside herself. She redeemed her raging fire spitting dragon
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: along with the treasure and She said, it in the
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: hope that she would become a beautiful princess and live
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: prettily and happily ever after with and for some man.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: She realized that a woman hero needed her dragon to
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: stay a dragon. Christiana was doing difficult work because she
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: dealt with images of the feminine that had not been
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: put into words before and contradicted everything she had been
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: taught about women.
• 39:45
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: That really important insight of One has to differentiate from
• 39:52
  Speaker 5: the dragon, from the primordial instincts so that we don't
• 39:56
  Speaker 5: become dangerous to everyone around us, but then stay in
• 40:00
  Speaker 5: that creative relationship. Now, this idea, which I'd love for
• 40:06
  Speaker 5: you guys to chime in on, that the author of
• 40:10
  Speaker 5: that book says that the individuating stance she was able
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: to achieve is that she doesn't need to submit or
• 40:19
  Speaker 5: be dependent on any man, but that she is something
• 40:25
  Speaker 5: wildly and powerfully and creatively independent. So I think this
• 40:33
  Speaker 5: is also a message for men in this generation, for
• 40:38
  Speaker 5: men to also wake up to their own dragon and
• 40:41
  Speaker 5: to be able to take a stance that your life
• 40:45
  Speaker 5: isn't predicated upon serving the women around you. Constantly looking
• 40:52
  Speaker 5: to see what they might need or be protected or
• 40:55
  Speaker 5: whatever our fantasies are about that. But to be able
• 40:59
  Speaker 5: to step back, not so much into the dragon, but
• 41:03
  Speaker 5: perhaps into the wild man, which Robert Bly talks about,
• 41:08
  Speaker 5: or the green man, or the hero. And for men
• 41:11
  Speaker 5: to be able to ask, who am I when I
• 41:14
  Speaker 5: am not pandering to women. And I think that this
• 41:20
  Speaker 5: idea for men and women in this age is enormously essential.
• 41:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah. So it really, what I'm thinking you've touched on
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: and brought up, Joseph, is what is right relationship? How
• 41:38
  Speaker 4: do we, whatever our dragons are, challenges in life, our
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: own inner world that is still hasn't been sorted out,
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: is still, you know, got some feet in the primeval.
• 41:53
  Speaker 4: How do we do this? How do we maintain the
• 41:56
  Speaker 4: relationship with all of that material and differentiate ourselves from it?
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: And I think, Lisa, the clue was in what you
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: read from Claire Douglas, which is about Christiana Morgan, that
• 42:10
  Speaker 4: she had this relationship with the dragon and it could
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: still remain a dragon.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: She wasn't fused with it. Right. She wasn't fused. She
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: wasn't enmeshed. And neither did she just reject it and
• 42:26
  Speaker 4: try to slam the door on it and tell it
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: to go away. But we are going to have to
• 42:31
  Speaker 4: keep on dealing with each other. And, of course, we
• 42:36
  Speaker 4: tend to have relationships that are enmeshed. with others that
• 42:42
  Speaker 4: represent and touch on our own internal world. Sure.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: So what I think of what, from what you're both
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: saying is that it's sort of translating into what it
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: might look like in a person's life is, and Joseph,
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate what you're saying about men. I definitely
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: see that, you know, the, the, the women's version of
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: it though, might look something like if a woman's fused
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: with her dragon, she might be, nasty and bitter and
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: resentful and constantly kind of carping and criticizing and, uh,
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: you know, putting, putting her, her partner down, let's say, um,
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: that's not, that's destructive. That's a destructive dragon.
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: Then you're a victim of the dragon.
• 43:26
  Speaker 2: But if you can, if you can not fuse with it, but,
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: but don't shut it away and turn it into something
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: nice and pretty where you're, you're just shoving your feelings aside.
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: if you let the dragon be a dragon and you
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: have a relationship with the dragon, then you can sort
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: of stand and say, this is, this is, you know,
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: this is what I want. Let's have a conversation about it.
• 43:48
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think what we're all, what we're all saying
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: is men and women should both be doing that.
• 43:54
  Speaker 5: And you're right to say it looks different for men
• 43:56
  Speaker 5: that are captured by the dragon. They keep turning without
• 44:02
  Speaker 5: realizing it, turning all women into mother figures and, and,
• 44:06
  Speaker 5: Pressing them to take care of their needs, pressing them
• 44:11
  Speaker 5: to be maternal vessels.
• 44:14
  Speaker 4: Yep.
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: And one of the prime, I mean, going back to
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: what we started with earlier, like Tiamat, I mean, I
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: think that that goes, you have to kill the mother dragon.
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: That's the first stage of developing an ego. You have
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: to kill the mother. Exactly.
• 44:31
  Speaker 5: Which is what Freud noticed in terms of repression.
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 44:34
  Speaker 5: That you've got to take this stuff. out of the
• 44:37
  Speaker 5: long-term goals, if I could only find a woman to
• 44:40
  Speaker 5: do all of these things for me, then I'll be
• 44:43
  Speaker 5: really happy. And so one of the ways in the
• 44:46
  Speaker 5: more ancient world that people did better about this is
• 44:49
  Speaker 5: they had powerful same-sex communities so that men could rely
• 44:55
  Speaker 5: on men for much of their needs and women can
• 44:58
  Speaker 5: rely on women for much of their needs and come
• 45:02
  Speaker 5: together in ways that are creative and life-affirming.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: But women have that still and men really don't.
• 45:08
  Speaker 5: Since the Industrial Revolution.
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: I should say women can create that easily for themselves.
• 45:15
  Speaker 2: They have book clubs or something, but men don't tend to.
• 45:19
  Speaker 5: Which I think is, again, the vestige of the dragon.
• 45:23
  Speaker 5: Because they get married, they go to work, they come home,
• 45:27
  Speaker 5: and the wife is the best friend and the mother
• 45:31
  Speaker 5: of the children forever. And the lover and the confidant.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: And it becomes everything in the same way that the
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: mother was to the boy. Because the mother is the
• 45:42
  Speaker 5: companion to the three-year-old boy. She is the one where
• 45:47
  Speaker 5: everything goes to.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'm certainly that for my son. And
• 45:52
  Speaker 2: always will be.
• 45:52
  Speaker 5: And I see that smile on your face.
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: He's never going to leave me. Yeah.
• 46:00
  Speaker 5: Fathers are also out of the house. So your mother
• 46:03
  Speaker 5: does become your primary companion, your friend, the person you're around.
• 46:07
  Speaker 5: There's a lot of ideas about how this might change.
• 46:12
  Speaker 5: But honestly, I think that if both mom and dad
• 46:18
  Speaker 5: split the time, each one is working 25 hours a
• 46:21
  Speaker 5: week away from the house. Dad's there half the time
• 46:26
  Speaker 5: taking care of those kids. Mom's there half the time
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: taking care of those kids. Then your kids will know
• 46:33
  Speaker 5: you as a father. And the sense of being companioned
• 46:37
  Speaker 5: by the masculine and the feminine would be in the psyche.
• 46:42
  Speaker 4: And there is also the powerful... archetypal reality that undergirds
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: all of this. That the archetype of the mother and
• 46:53
  Speaker 4: the father are incredibly powerful. And kids that were raised
• 47:00
  Speaker 4: in good... There used to be some stories about like
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: Boys Town. There were no mothers.
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's still there. And is devouring in nature because
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: it is... It is the creative unconscious which can give
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: birth and destroy.
• 47:18
  Speaker 4: Yes. And that the maternal principle is simply there, regardless
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: of whether caretakers are male or female. And the task
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: of separating remains.
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: I love the fact that we started with dragons and
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: somehow we're into like the roles of the sexes and
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: child rearing. It's just, but it's all there, right?
• 47:43
  Speaker 5: That's Jung's idea that the dragon is the primal experience
• 47:48
  Speaker 5: that human beings have. So we have to talk about
• 47:52
  Speaker 5: developmental psychology to ground it. And what does that mean
• 47:57
  Speaker 5: inside of us? And when we think about humans that
• 48:01
  Speaker 5: really turn us off or shock us, if we squint
• 48:05
  Speaker 5: our eyes, they're basically behaving like toddlers. They're yelling. They're
• 48:11
  Speaker 5: making commands. One of my friends, It's a great story.
• 48:15
  Speaker 5: He's just got married and his wife had a three-year-old child.
• 48:22
  Speaker 5: And so the three-year-old girl comes into the house one
• 48:25
  Speaker 5: day and slams the door and she goes, I own everything.
• 48:30
  Speaker 5: He'd never had a child. He was like, I have
• 48:35
  Speaker 5: no idea what to do.
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: She was a little dragon.
• 48:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 48:41
  Speaker 5: But when we see that, happening in an adult who's
• 48:44
  Speaker 5: 40 or 50 or 60, walking around belching, male or female,
• 48:50
  Speaker 5: I own everything. It's not so cute. It doesn't make
• 48:54
  Speaker 5: us laugh so much, but we can see that it
• 48:58
  Speaker 5: comes from that unresolved relationship to the dragon. And the
• 49:02
  Speaker 5: seduction of the dragon has never been broken.
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes.
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: So we do have dragons inside, like this little girl.
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: you know, it's all mine. I have the horde. We
• 49:18
  Speaker 4: all can breathe fire in angry enactments that we might
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: later regret. And so it goes. The inner battle of
• 49:32
  Speaker 4: ego and choice and consciousness over the ever-present primordial instincts
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: that continue to exist in us. And we see dragons
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: out there all the time of people and the awful
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: tragic consequences of inner dragons that were not tamed, defeated,
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: mastered in some way.
• 50:05
  Speaker 5: You see, recently there's school shootings. And it happened yet again.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 50:11
  Speaker 5: And we have your boy, your teenage boy who you
• 50:15
  Speaker 5: love and seems like an average teenage boy. And this
• 50:20
  Speaker 5: primordial force comes up and overtakes the ego, overtakes the
• 50:27
  Speaker 5: moral stance and compels kids who don't have the muscularity
• 50:34
  Speaker 5: of ego to be able to say no. to the
• 50:38
  Speaker 5: primal impulse to kill. Yeah.
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: So it's a whole stage of development to get to
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: the point where you can have a conscious generative relationship
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: with your dragon.
• 50:52
  Speaker 4: And it sparks in me the idea that we sort
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: of touched on slightly, which is It takes companions sometimes.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: That the hero, like Beowulf, for example, goes to kill
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: Grendel the dragon, and he has companions who help him.
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: So sometimes those companions are steadfast, and sometimes at the
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: last minute they hightail it out of the cave, the
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: dragon's lair. But it does... evoke this image of a
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: boy like some of these school shooters, and they're teenagers.
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: You know, they're not men. They're young men, adolescents, boys,
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: and they need companions. They need support. It's too soon
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: for them to be trying to do the developmental work
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: all alone. And by all alone, I don't mean living
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: in the forest in a hut, but alone, unseen, unrecognized,
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: not communicated well enough with, unseen in some basic relational way.
• 52:14
  Speaker 5: Our boys have to be claimed. They have to be
• 52:18
  Speaker 5: gathered up. And even though your boy says, no, no,
• 52:22
  Speaker 5: leave me alone, there needs to be something strong enough
• 52:25
  Speaker 5: in the culture to parents but also the community to
• 52:29
  Speaker 5: pull them into relationship and not allow them to stay
• 52:34
  Speaker 5: in the grip of the dragon and.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: To teach them how to hunt you know from time
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: immemorial men taught other men young men coming up how
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: to do this.
• 52:50
  Speaker 5: Which is about life skills this ability to provide for oneself.
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah And with that, is it a good time to
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: switch to a dream?
• 53:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's a great time to switch to a dream.
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. Have you ever wondered what your dreams mean?
• 53:08
  Speaker 2: Join us in Dream School at thisjungielife.com and find out.
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: Jung wrote, dreams are a little hidden door in the
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: innermost and most secret recesses of the soul.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Dream School is a unique, self-paced online program you can
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: start at any time. that unlocks access to your inner world.
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: Our 12-month program provides the support, knowledge and guidance you
• 53:33
  Speaker 4: need to reach within, decipher your personal dream code and
• 53:37
  Speaker 4: harness it to optimize your life. By enrolling, you'll join
• 53:42
  Speaker 4: an affirming community of fellow travelers, each pursuing a unique quest.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: And it's fun. Join us on an adventure to wholeness
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: and healing through understanding your dreams. Go to thisjungielife.com and
• 53:56
  Speaker 3: click on Dream School. You'll be taken to our secure checkout.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Once you join, you'll get immediate access to our first
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: three modules. You can get started right away. We look
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: forward to seeing you there.
• 54:12
  Speaker 5: Today's dreamer is a 25-year-old male who works in food service,
• 54:18
  Speaker 5: and the title is The Four Dragons. I am in
• 54:23
  Speaker 5: my parents' house with all my immediate family. In the dream,
• 54:29
  Speaker 5: my parents, both my siblings, and I are all about
• 54:32
  Speaker 5: 15 years younger than we are in real life, making
• 54:36
  Speaker 5: my parents about 40, my brother and sister around 13
• 54:41
  Speaker 5: and 12 respectively, and myself 10 years old. All five
• 54:46
  Speaker 5: of us are frantically trying to batten down the house,
• 54:51
  Speaker 5: locking every window, barricading every door because we know that
• 54:56
  Speaker 5: a dragon is coming. We do not know what the
• 55:01
  Speaker 5: dragon plans to do, but we know that we must
• 55:04
  Speaker 5: protect ourselves. As I am pushing an armoire in front
• 55:09
  Speaker 5: of the French doors at the back of the house,
• 55:12
  Speaker 5: I hear the great beating wings and see through the
• 55:16
  Speaker 5: door that the sunny backyard is now in shadow. I
• 55:21
  Speaker 5: know that the dragon has arrived. I pray out loud
• 55:25
  Speaker 5: to God that he protects our house from the dragon,
• 55:28
  Speaker 5: that no flame will catch, and that the walls and
• 55:32
  Speaker 5: roof will not collapse. As I complete my prayer, I
• 55:36
  Speaker 5: feel certain that it has been heard and our house
• 55:40
  Speaker 5: will be protected. My family and I gather by the
• 55:44
  Speaker 5: back doors to listen as the dragon begins to speak.
• 55:50
  Speaker 5: It mocks us in a deep, booming voice, saying we
• 55:56
  Speaker 5: are weak and wicked. And my mother begins to dissemble
• 56:01
  Speaker 5: my barricade, and I can't stop her. She's gathered small
• 56:06
  Speaker 5: plastic berries that might be used as Christmas decorations, and
• 56:11
  Speaker 5: now outside is throwing the berries into the air as
• 56:16
  Speaker 5: if to hit the dragon. She's angry and determined to
• 56:20
  Speaker 5: harm it, and I beg her to come back inside,
• 56:23
  Speaker 5: telling her this will not help and that she's putting
• 56:26
  Speaker 5: herself in danger. She returns inside. I begin to move
• 56:32
  Speaker 5: the armoire back in place when, next to me, my
• 56:36
  Speaker 5: mother opens a window and jumps through. She leaps into
• 56:41
  Speaker 5: the air and transforms herself into a dragon. I crossed
• 56:46
  Speaker 5: to the front of the house to watch in awe.
• 56:49
  Speaker 5: I did not know she could do this. My mother
• 56:52
  Speaker 5: is a cerulean blue dragon, serpent-like, and long as a bus,
• 56:59
  Speaker 5: resembling those from Chinese mythology. The first dragon is golden
• 57:04
  Speaker 5: and much larger than her, maybe five times her size,
• 57:08
  Speaker 5: and looks more like a creature from European myth with
• 57:12
  Speaker 5: four legs and great webbed wings. There is one other dragon,
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: identical to my mother, but crimson-red. I know that the
• 57:22
  Speaker 5: red dragon is more malicious than the golden one, but
• 57:26
  Speaker 5: not as powerful. I watch all three fly high into
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: the air, twisting and writhing as my mother leads them
• 57:35
  Speaker 5: away from our house and out over the sea. In
• 57:38
  Speaker 5: the dream, the house is on a beach. Out above
• 57:42
  Speaker 5: the water, my mother reverses her flight deface her pursuers,
• 57:47
  Speaker 5: and wraps herself around them both. All three plunge into
• 57:52
  Speaker 5: the water and disappear. I know this has done great
• 57:55
  Speaker 5: damage to all of them, but I feel that they
• 57:58
  Speaker 5: will soon return. Suddenly, my understanding of the circumstances has changed.
• 58:06
  Speaker 5: I now know that we are all protecting my brother.
• 58:10
  Speaker 5: The dragons have come for him. because he can transform
• 58:14
  Speaker 5: into a dragon too. He is very afraid and hiding
• 58:18
  Speaker 5: in his bedroom. My sister and my father are ambivalent
• 58:22
  Speaker 5: to the situation, and my mother has not returned from
• 58:25
  Speaker 5: the water, so I must protect my brother alone. I
• 58:30
  Speaker 5: turn to the back of the house to see the
• 58:31
  Speaker 5: French doors open again. I try desperately to close and
• 58:36
  Speaker 5: barricade them. As I get the armoire black in place,
• 58:41
  Speaker 5: I sense that the golden dragon has returned overhead. I
• 58:46
  Speaker 5: close my eyes and pray again for God's protection. When
• 58:49
  Speaker 5: I open my eyes, I am my older brother in
• 58:53
  Speaker 5: his bedroom. I'm desperately afraid, and I hear the dragon's
• 58:59
  Speaker 5: mocking voice calling for me to join it. I feel
• 59:03
  Speaker 5: that it wishes to harm me, but it is not
• 59:06
  Speaker 5: saying this. Despite my fear and my desire, to stay inside,
• 59:11
  Speaker 5: I cannot help but transform. I am pulled through the
• 59:15
  Speaker 5: roof as if it is insubstantial, and I am in
• 59:18
  Speaker 5: the open air above the house flying on emerald wings.
• 59:23
  Speaker 5: I look just like the golden dragon, but green and
• 59:25
  Speaker 5: much smaller, about the size of a compact car. I
• 59:29
  Speaker 5: cannot see the larger dragon, but I know it is
• 59:32
  Speaker 5: circling above me and I feel its condescension at my fear.
• 59:37
  Speaker 5: It is slow and confident and will catch me soon,
• 59:41
  Speaker 5: although I'm not sure of what harm it wishes to
• 59:43
  Speaker 5: do me. I close my eyes and pray to be
• 59:48
  Speaker 5: returned to the safety of the house, but I know
• 59:51
  Speaker 5: I cannot get back. I feel the golden dragon descend
• 59:55
  Speaker 5: upon me and I wake in terror.
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: Oh, such a dream. Goodness.
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 5: Yeah, the great dream. For context, the dreamer writes, I
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 5: am close with my mother and sister, but only recently
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 5: have reconnected with my father after a few years without contact.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 5: My brother and I have not spoken in over a
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 5: year since he revealed that his developing faith and my
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 5: homosexuality were at odds. On Christmas, my mother informed me
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 5: that my brother and his wife are expecting their first child.
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 5: He says his main feelings in the dream were fear, dread,
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 5: insignificance and frustration at my own size and strength, awe.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 5: And he offers a few associations. Though I am a
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 5: fan of fantasy, I do not have any particularly unique
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 5: relationship or understanding of dragons. At the age of 10
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 5: years old, my home was comfortable and my family was stable. Boy,
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 5: that armoire keeps coming back and back. It sounds silly,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 5: but I'm like thinking about why the armoire? That's the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 5: bulwark against the dragon over and over again.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just such a kind of, I don't know, vividly,
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: vivid dream and very well told too. I'm really appreciating that.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 2: The dreamer really captured it very well and appreciating that.
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 4: So. But the armoire is that the first impulse on
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: the part of the dream ego is barricading, is hiding.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 4: It's a defense.
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 2: It's defense against this numinous potential.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: But it's not running away. I mean, there are lots
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: of ways we can defend ourselves. But I think it's
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 4: interesting to block the door, to hide, to withdraw, basically.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: Well, and kind of create a barrier.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: And create a barrier. You know, very much like in
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 4: the story of the three little pigs, you know, eventually
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 4: the third pig builds a house of brick that is impermeable.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 4: to the wolf. So here we have a dragon in
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 4: that same role of attacking, invading, penetrating, and let's just
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 4: shore up the walls. And an armoire has lots of size,
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 4: and it plays on the word arm and being armed, maybe.
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: I don't know.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 4: But that's chapter number one, and he prays out loud
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 4: to God. So seek help from without. But Mom is
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 4: pretty willing to go out there and confront the dragon.
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: She's going to get out there one way or the other.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the first effort of this dream figure of little
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 4: plastic berries, and isn't that nice? And they could be
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: Christmas decorations. So what he didn't know is that his
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 4: mother can transform into a dragon, I think all mothers
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 4: can do this.
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: But it's so interesting, right? Because here's the mythology of
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Tiamat and Marduk.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: Say more about that.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: Well, his mother's a dragon.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 4: Ah.
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: His mother's a dragon.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: And what's being asked of him in the dream is
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: to find his own dragon self.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: Yeah. But it's... Chapter number two, first you barricade, pray
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 4: to God, and then you hope for protection from, in
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 4: this case, Mom, who can transform into a cerulean blue dragon,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 4: serpent-like and as long as a bus.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: And by the way, this more sort of eastern dragon,
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: which is more associated with, you know, the positive pull
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: of the archetype.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 4: So the story goes on. There are more dragons. Mom
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 4: engages with the dragons. And like a bird is a decoy.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 4: She leads the other dragons away from her vulnerable offspring
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: in the house.
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: Is that what she's doing? I mean, that's interesting. I
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: wonder what the That does seem possible that that's the
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: purpose of it.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 4: She says, my mother leads them away from our house
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: and out over the sea. And then.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: To sort of protect the family.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 4: And then she reverses her flight to face her pursuers
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 4: and wraps herself around both of them. And they plunge
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 4: into the water and disappear. So this is great. I mean,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: this could be a movie. Of these dragons battling over
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 4: the ocean, plunging into the water.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: All these beautiful colors. They sound so beautiful. Crimson and
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: gold and cerulean and emerald.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 4: So after this is where there's a change. So this
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 4: has done great damage to them all. And then he says,
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: suddenly my understanding of the circumstances has changed. I now
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: know we're all protecting my brother. Mm-hmm. And they've come
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 4: to him because he can transform into a dragon too.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: But brother is afraid, hiding in his bedroom. Mom has
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: not come back, so our dream ego has to protect
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: his brother all by himself. And now those French doors
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 4: are open again. Got to try to reestablish the barricade
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: with the armoire. Back to the beginning, the golden dragon
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 4: has returned. He closes his eyes and prays again. And then, aha,
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: I am my older brother in his bedroom. Oh, my goodness.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 4: The brother and the dream ego are one. And he says,
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 4: I'm desperately afraid. The dragon's mocking voice is calling. I
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: feel it wishes to harm me, but is not saying this.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 4: Despite my fear and my desire to stay inside, I
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: cannot help but transform. And then he's pulled through the
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 4: roof and flying on emerald wings. I look just like
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 4: the golden dragon, but green and smaller, about the size
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 4: of a compact car. So that's really charming.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 5: And to me, just jumping forward a bit, this is
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 5: a story about puberty and sexuality and you know the
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 5: brother is 13 and the dragons are coming for him
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 5: yeah yeah and sooner or later he's 10 he's going
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 5: to be 13 and the dragons will come for him
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 5: too and he's going to be full of all kinds
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 5: of passion and turbulence and difficulty and from his perspective
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 5: he looks and he's praying to god this isn't going
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 5: to happen to me And the idea that God wants
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 5: us to all remain virginal and sexually undeveloped because purity
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 5: is the best thing. And that it seems the mother's
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 5: role is interesting and complicated. He thinks that the mother
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 5: is trying to keep the dragons away from him. And
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: that she's going out and she's haunting the dragon, but
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 5: she can't stay away from it. And when mom and
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 5: the dragon start writhing, they look exactly like snakes that
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 5: are mating. And if you look at images of snake
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 5: pits when they're all mating, they're winding around each other
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 5: in this kind of erotic frenzy. So it's a little
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 5: unclear about what mom wants, wants the attention from mom
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 5: the dragon. But clearly, in the dream, he can't understand
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 5: why anybody would want to be a dragon or want
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 5: to be with a dragon and how the dragon is
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 5: something that's just so terrible to a 10-year-old boy. We
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 5: have a 25-year-old boy alienated from his father. He's working
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 5: in food service. I don't know whether that was what
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 5: he longed for. Does he have access to his own
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 5: sexual desires? Is he out there in the world contending
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 5: in the way that he wants to? He says that
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 5: he's gay, but is he actualized that way, or is
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 5: he retreated into the world of the mother too much,
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 5: and that something needs to come and call him out
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 5: of the house?
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: He says a bunch of times, I think the dragon
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 2: wants to hurt me, although he never says that. So
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: he's really being summoned, Joseph, which I think goes to
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: your point. He's being summoned to, I want to say,
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: something like a larger destiny, whether that's to live out
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: his sexuality, but perhaps also to actualize himself in other
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 2: ways as well.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 5: The dragon may be his father, who's just come back
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 5: into his life and is big and scary. You know,
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 5: it's not uncommon that if there's an ugly divorce, moms
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 5: are really angry at their dads. And the children, little
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 5: boys bonded with their mom, see dad as negative and
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 5: maybe even dangerous or inscrutable, but very, very negative. So
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 5: that when a boy needs to be able to look
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 5: at men and not be afraid of them, or look
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 5: at men and not feel his mother's contempt, He can't
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 5: find that in himself. He can't find a way to
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 5: look at men and think well of them or want
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 5: to be close to them. So that's a big piece
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 5: of work of reclaiming that I think the dream is
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 5: trying to bring forward.
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: What I was paying attention to is sort of the
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: hero's journey here. You know, pray to God, barricade the
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 4: walls with the armoire, et cetera, et cetera. But that
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: eventually he realizes that he and his brother are one,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 4: and he does answer the call. He goes up.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 2: He can't not.
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 5: He doesn't answer the call. He's pulled into it.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: Right. But to my mind, that is a really positive
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: image of that you, too, have access to your dragon nature.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: And he's smaller. He's still afraid. But he's out there
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: flying around with the dragons and claiming— And claiming that
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 4: he's no longer hiding in the house trying to block
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 4: what is going on. I think it's a really positive image,
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 4: you know, and especially his having to come to terms
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 4: with his homosexuality. Of that claiming... And what it means
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 4: in the family context and nevertheless, you know, being a
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 4: dragon of this is my nature.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. This is my nature.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 4: This is my nature.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 5: That last sentence says it all. I close my eyes
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 5: and pray to be returned to the safety of the house,
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: but I know I cannot get back.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 5: Like it's over. Like running back to mom.
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 5: Is done, and you're out there contending with other dragons
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: and spreading your wings, just as you were saying, Deb.
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 5: And needing, you feel small, but you need to be
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 5: out of the house.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: And I love that one of the feelings in the
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: dream toward the end is awe.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so. I was just going back to take
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 4: a look at where the brother is in the dream. Oh,
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 4: he has to protect his brother. Mm-hmm. So it's interesting
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 4: that in waking life, it's the brother who is on
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 4: the verge of some kind of rejection of our dreamer.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 4: But in the dream, the dream ego has to protect
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 4: the older brother. So there's power there.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:13:22
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• 1:13:27
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