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The Threshold Lover: The Eight Companions Hiding in Your TBR · Romancing the Threshold

• 0:00
  [music]
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to season two of Romancing the Threshold.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Vanessa Couto and I'm opening this season on my own because first I wanted
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: to tell you what I learned in doing 18 episodes from season one
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: and what I've created during the pause between these two seasons.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: In short,
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: 18 episodes taught me one thing above everything else and it is this,
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: trust the thread.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the image even when the rational mind has objections, especially then.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because the muse, following the muse is a higher wire act.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what it teaches you fast is that you don't own the thing you're making.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: You are in relationship with it,
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: which means your job is to pay attention,
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: to notice, to recognize what's being offered and answer it.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Which it is.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: If you look at it closely, it's how romance works.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is not theory for me.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is what happened to me 20 years ago when I had a dream.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: So 20 years ago,
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: before I moved to Portland,
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: I used to live in New York City and I was going to Pacifica in Southern California.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I was flying for a full year,
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: every once a month,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: flying once a month back and forth from New York City to Santa Barbara.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I got to tell you, those red eyes are going to kill you.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I decided I needed to move to the West Coast and I was torn between Seattle,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Santa Barbara and Portland.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I had no job here.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have a place to live.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: I really had no prospects in any of the cities.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I was sitting with this tension, holding the tension of do I stay?
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: Do I go?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I was an absolute ball of stress, but ready to burst with all that indecision.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that's when a dream came for me.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: In this dream,
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: invisible angels carried me to Portland's fire department,
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: where I was greeted by every fireman on duty and by the television crew
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: that had turned up to film the celebration of my arrival.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Never before or since have I dreamt of angels.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Same goes for firemen.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: But that dream sealed the deal.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: I said yes to Portland.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like I said yes to the dress.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that yes set off a domino run.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: The right people,
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: the right connections,
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: a place to live, eventually a job, and some of the best friends I have ever had.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: At the time, I didn't understand the dream.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't have really explained it to anyone, but I followed it anyway.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: And the understanding turned up years later in the rear view.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the stake.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: A whole life was rearranged on the strength of an image that I couldn't justify,
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: but I followed it.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how me right now,
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: 20 years later of reading nonfiction on my shelves,
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: has ended up reading romance novels to see where it might go.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not at the end of this thread.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm really in the thick of it in the middle and I'm courting their genre
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: and being courted right back,
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: following the thread the way the heroines do in this books.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm showing up with curiosity and finding out and you're finding out along with me.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think I've ever done this properly in season one.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: So here's the introduction.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: So if you've been with me, thank you for following along.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you're new to the podcast, well, here it goes.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually an archetypal astrologer and coach.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And in my practice, it means that I read birth charts the way you would read a story.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I don't read it as a forecast of what's going to happen to someone,
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: but as the shape of the story that they're living in.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for a while,
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: I also worked as a mental health coach for a big company,
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: offering mental health coach around the country.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I do in my work is,
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: across it all, is that I'm reading for the pattern that's underneath.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: That might show up in the birth charts.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: That might show up in the dreams that clients bring.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: And now it's showing up with the novels that I'm reading.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the show where I get to talk about that out loud.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Mostly about romance novels,
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: but sometimes with the people who write them or the people who are working in
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: the field.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes with also folks who help others cross the thresholds in their lives.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So season two starts here with the idea that romance novels are medicine for
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: the crossing, for the threshold.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: They're not a distraction from your life.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: They're the medicine for it.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if you follow my readings and perhaps other episodes in the podcast,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: I've talked a little bit about how I got to do all of this.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: And in short, this is the story.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the outline.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: A few years ago,
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: a couple of years ago,
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: I pretty much was burned out,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: from the mental health coaching,
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: from doing work inside a large corporation that had really no interest
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: in anyone's healing.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not to mention the healing of the coaches providing the service,
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: but that's an episode for another day.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: And in the middle of all that, my mother's health declined pretty fast and she passed away.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so at the end of it all,
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was absolutely flattened out on the floor like a pancake burnt out.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And at that time, with all that comes another one, which is our good old friend, perimenopause.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: And there's something about perimenopause and talking to my friends,
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: our good friends,
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Perry and Menno, Is that now, thankfully, more and more people are talking about it.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say perhaps this is a gift of the Generation X,
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: refusing to keep quiet about it, which is a good thing.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: But more than a list of symptoms, perimenopause is a massive threshold in and of itself.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a threshold that is a lot about death.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: It is the death of holding cycles,
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: death of the way we relate to the body in a certain rhythm that we had
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: and we counted on for years, and now it's shifting.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is also the death of ways of being in the world that had worked before, but now they don't.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, I would say, perimenopause is the death of an identity.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Built on a foundation of shoulds and oughts and other people's expectations,
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: most of which were never really in alignment with what you actually wanted.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that is a massive threshold.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this one takes a long time.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So this combination of grief, burnout, and my whole body in transition all at once.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, there's a lot of sadness in it, quite plenty.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of grief.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the grief doesn't really always show up looking like you would expect it to.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that did show up was depletion.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: And depletion from the burnout is a lot more visceral than just sadness.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It stalls the entire way of being.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is like a car that has got an empty tank.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's no driving that car anywhere.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: It just stops on the side of the road and stays there until something refills it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have always been a pretty serious reader my whole life.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And in the last 20 years or more, actually, that meant really reading nonfiction.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: All my shelves are filled with books on psychology, mythology, fairy tales and astrology.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: That was my go to at a bookstore.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And in that stretch.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Doing really the thick of the burnout.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of those books could nourish me.
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  SPEAKER_00: None of it.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was like tasting ashes.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the one thing I could consume,
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
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  SPEAKER_00: that I could take in was actually reading romance novels,
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  SPEAKER_00: something that I for a long time used to sort of poo poo,
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  SPEAKER_00: not really take it seriously at all.
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  SPEAKER_00: And I found myself,
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  SPEAKER_00: the image I have is being like a famished shipwrecked sailor who had washed up on
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: a fruit laden island.
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  SPEAKER_00: And romance was the fruit.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I was malnourished in a way that I had no words for at the time.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: And all I could eat was the fruit of romance.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was the only thing I could metabolize.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And it wasn't just keeping me company either.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was doing something to me.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: When my mother died and I had to quit the job
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: because it was absolutely depleting me even further,
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  SPEAKER_00: I really braced myself for flatness.
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  SPEAKER_00: I saw the,
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  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
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  SPEAKER_00: the maw of the beast and thought I'm going to be swallowed up in absolute flatness
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: in this gray landscape of grief and burnout.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: But what ended up happening was instead of that gray flatness, it was a texture.
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  SPEAKER_00: In reading romance novels, curiosity came back.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then my creative pulse,
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: which I really assumed was going to be buried under the burnout, returned.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the way it happened was this.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really gave myself the permission to read whatever I wanted.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of readers talk about mood or vibe and reading from mood and vibe.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I did.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: I followed that pole.
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  SPEAKER_00: I read what fed me, what I wanted.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And when the book stopped feeding me, I would put it down.
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  SPEAKER_00: I did not finish them.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: I would DNF them.
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  SPEAKER_00: And what a liberation that was.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here it is.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: The crossing was quite real.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was in this landscape that I was not prepared for.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I'm someone who works with people crossing thresholds.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: I have a good working knowledge of thresholds,
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: but one thing I do know about them, they are always different.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: They always pertain to the season of life that you're in.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: What you cross in your 20s, it is not the same in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and on and on.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: So I do respect the landscape and I stay with that curiosity because it is always different.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: We are never the same when we meet the threshold, whatever that may be.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing that I've learned this time around,
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: it became really clear to me,
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: is that when you're crossing a threshold in your life,
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: a big transition, what is missing from the cross?
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: It never is about information.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Most of us know exactly what we quote unquote should do.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: We often have some kind of a map,
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: some kind of advice,
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  SPEAKER_00: a framework,
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  SPEAKER_00: and probably three or four good reasons why we're going to do X, Y, and Z.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And we sit on that chair for another year anyway, fully informed and completely immobile.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: We don't do anything.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what's missing isn't information.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's appetite.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Something has to make the crossing worth wanting, not just worth doing.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: The body will not move for an obligation the way it moves for a hunger.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, as I said, working with thresholds, helping clients navigate their own thresholds.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm fully aware that there are many companions doing these crossings,
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: and I have loved all of them.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_00: In astrology and mythology,
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: we have Hermes,
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  SPEAKER_00: aka Mercury,
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  SPEAKER_00: the trickster guide who often turns up precisely when you're lost
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: and perhaps enjoys it a little bit too much when you are lost.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have the mentors.
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  SPEAKER_00: We have helpers who appear on the road carrying exactly the thing you needed.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: We also have the old gatekeeper who will test your mettle before it will let you pass.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: And whom I have grown fond of in the way you grow fond of a very hard teacher.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: All these companions, as you're crossing transitions in your life, they orient you.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: They will point to where you need to go.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: They will instruct.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: They will describe the road ahead and the bends you're going to find.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the threshold lover does one thing that none of them do.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: The threshold lover makes you want to go, makes you want to cross.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now in mythology, we're pretty aware of the guardian at the threshold.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we know the Sphinx in her riddle.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We have met the ferryman with his price so he can cross the River Styx.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: We have the tester at the gate who decides if you really are good enough to pass.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we have the guardian who says, are you ready?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, myths and fairy tales, they will remember the companions too.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, all these stories are chock full of them.
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  SPEAKER_00: The helper, the animal guide, the stranger with the one thing you needed.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: All the stories have them.
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  SPEAKER_00: But there's a kind of companion that goes kind of unnoticed
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  SPEAKER_00: and sometimes gets waved off as a lesser figure.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the one that comes carrying an erotic charge.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: We don't meet them by being told about them.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: We meet them the way you would notice a stranger across the room at a party.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody introduced you.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing has been said.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: But that look tells you more than an hour of small talk would.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the reason I call it a lover, the threshold lover, there's a reason to it.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: In our culture,
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: we have been taught to approach change,
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: thresholds, liminal phases in life, braced for impact.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: We come in with our shoulders up, our jaw set, we're ready to go through it.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: But a threshold can be approached the way lovers approach each other.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: With curiosity, presence, care.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Wooed rather than endured.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And a side note here, I see this a lot, especially in astrology.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: how many clients have I had who are coming for their Saturn return and or
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_00: a Pluto transit?
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I can see in their face and in their body language the bracing for the impact.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: I myself have done the same.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't go away.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm also working here is in teaching myself how to approach transition,
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: this big transition in my own life with more curiosity and less bracing.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So when somebody comes to work with me,
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: and I've seen this in friends, I've seen this with clients.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: When they come to work with me and I ask them, what are they going through?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: They never...
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to name the change.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to say, I'm moving.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm leaving the job.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: The kids have left the house.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: They've gone to college.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: My marriage is ending or I'm starting a marriage or the diagnosis has come.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: And everything is very real.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But the thing is,
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: what I've noticed is that nobody really comes apart from Over the logistics of
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_00: the change.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: The change is the name that's on the door.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: that might be the new job,
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: the new move, the new relationship or the end of the relationship.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: What's really on the other side of that door is the landscape.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's the I think of thresholds as a landscape.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: And personally.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an absolute sucker for a portal story.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I love stories where somebody opens the door expecting the hallway and bam,
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: they step into another realm.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: Granted, in our daily life, that's a little less, it's a lot less fantastical than that.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: But in many ways, it's what happens.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: When you cross that door of the change that you're naming,
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: you are crossing into, it is a portal.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: You're crossing the portal and you're ending up in a different landscape.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it might be a door that you open a thousand other times.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: You've changed your jobs.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: You've had different relationships.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Things have come and gone and you think it's okay.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: You've done it before.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: However, this is a different portal.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: The light looks different.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: The landscape looks different.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: So your old ways of moving through are not going to work.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a whole other language.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the change, I think, with thresholds in life.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: They never look the same.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think about, for example, grief.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Years ago when my father died, there was a whole other landscape.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: My mother died, a very different landscape, completely unexpected.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought I had a handle on that,
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: but I had to stay open and curious because it was a very different landscape.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: When you're crossing an aspect of your life that's a transition,
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: the name on the door, it's never, it's just a signal.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: The move, that's where it's at, right?
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: The old story of how you allow things, that changes.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: The way you learn that this is how you take care of things, that's going to change.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Your own self-image,
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: your identity that you worked for,
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: that you held for years is going to stop fitting in.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_00: And even how you love and how you learn to give love, that's also going to change.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes an ordinary change could be like a new job can flatten someone
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: and it can be so hard.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: And we can make it so hard for ourselves because we can self-flagellate and say, no, no, no, no.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I suffering?
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: I shouldn't be doing this.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know this.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: But that's why often some changes, they look so disproportionate.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: It seems like a small move, but it isn't.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you're not falling apart because you sold your house and you had to move
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: into a new one.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: You are actually standing in a completely different inner country that
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: that door opened itself to.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why stories and novels, they matter.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because you think you're reading the door,
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: you're reading the plot,
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: but the book itself, the story is really working on the landscape.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Now, a little side note.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: Of course,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: books and stories,
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_00: they don't replace the need if you really do need therapy or a coach or a doctor
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe a friend that really sits with you while you're going through this phase.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't bypass that.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: That's not the whole claim of this episode.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: The claim here is that when you're going through a crossing,
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: you're There's the element of the appetite.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: The appetite that sounds soft,
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: sounds like it's like, oh, you don't need to pay attention to that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_00: But really, it's what's going to get you across it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because the crossing,
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: whatever that crossing is,
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: whatever that door got you here,
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's about a reconnection to the body,
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: to the compass of the body,
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_00: of what it wants,
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: what it flinches from,
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_00: what it reaches for before your mind has voted yes, let's go in that direction.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: It is about taking your own dreams seriously,
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: your fantasies, your flight to fancy, your daydreams.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: These are all really important when you are in a threshold, you're really crossing something.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's why I often say, you know, the fluff isn't really fluff.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's just the doorway.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: The fluff is pointing to something.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the other thing.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: In our culture,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: I would say,
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: in the way we're kind of brought up to think,
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: is that a lot of our,
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: most of us, I would say, have done life like it's an accounting
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: Excel spreadsheet.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: We do a lot of things for the shoulds and the oughts column.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: That column is full.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is immaculate.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: But the other column,
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: the one that holds everything that makes life really worth living,
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: might be running on deficit for years.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I call that the Venusian column,
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: as in Venus,
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: the planet Venus,
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: because Venus as a goddess,
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: as an archetype, She stands for beauty and pleasure and desire, for joy.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And she stands for the things that we love,
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: not because they are healthy or good or defensible, but because we do.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: It is Venus that makes life worth living.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: That column for a lot of us is the one that's running on red.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: When you're at a real massive threshold in your life,
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: You think you're going to cross this threshold through the should column.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: The should column is not going to get you anywhere.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is the Venusium column that's going to get you there.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's the appetite.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: And speaking of appetite, we've got to speak of Eros.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's something that's missing.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what appetite is made of.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's Eros.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: In mythology, Eros is always hanging around with Aphrodite, a.k.a.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Venus.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes in some stories he is the son of Venus,
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes a companion,
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: sometimes something much more ancient and older than the gods themselves.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And we have done the word Eros really wrong.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: When we think eros, we think erotic and we think sex.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that is a whole bookshelf filled with that.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: But what they really meant, the Greeks really meant by eros, was the force of attraction itself.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is the pull towards something.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_00: It is the thing that makes anything reaching for desirable.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Eros is the principle of relatedness.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is not necessarily romance.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's relatedness.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's the capacity to be living in contact with something outside of yourself and
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: to be moved by it.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: So another working definition is,
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: if you want to keep it, is eros is aliveness pointed as something.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is that current that runs between you and whatever you're reaching for.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes that's a person.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's a piece of work.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's a place, a question, an image or a life that hasn't been lived yet.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know that feeling when you go to a party and you meet somebody
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: and you're just doing the small talk.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: They may say something and all of a sudden you feel it in your body,
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: that kind of like electric pulse that kind of makes you feel more alive in
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: the conversation that like, oh, my God, they read the same book I read.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: They like the same movie.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: And something comes online, if you will.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: I find that's Eros.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's Eros speaking.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's a pull, right?
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_00: You feel that attraction.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: Or perhaps without any rational reason, you just like a place.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: You really like a certain city in the world,
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: a certain place that you just feel compelled to go there.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's that attraction.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: Something is pulling you.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a key element in our culture right now because there's
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: so much flatness in our culture.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: The sense of everything is becoming,
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: as Esther Perel has talked about,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: we're reducing conflict, but yet flattening everything.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: And what happens when you're depleted,
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: when you burn out,
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: when you just maybe are having the apathy for things,
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: is that feeling doesn't remove the wanton.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: The one thing is the thing that goes out the door first and it goes out slowly,
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps after years of not being noticed before anything collapses.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: We've been burying arrows in our lives for a long time.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: We bury it when we go back.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be very practical.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: We embrace the pragmatic elements of our culture or lives.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be sensible.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: We have to be materialistic in the sense that we have to bring our awareness
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: and our energy towards the material elements of life.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so under a thousand small decisions that pull us to do things in a certain way,
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: we get to bury that eros in our lives.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: And because we bury it under, no, no, no, this doesn't make sense.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_00: This is just fluff.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is nothing.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say to the detriment of our own souls, we get really praised for doing that.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: We get praised for choosing well, for being sensible, for being pragmatic.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how depletion ends up showing up later on.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Depletion is like the stage four.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's the last result of a very long and quiet crumbling of the thing
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: that gave you hope,
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: that gave you energy,
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: that gave you focus, that gave you capacity, that gave you hunger.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_00: And we bury it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: So this brings me back, let's say, to reading books, to reading stories.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because one thing that DNFing,
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: meaning not finishing books,
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: has kind of taught me,
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: I started noticing the pull and I started noticing what was missing.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: And what could I act on that?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: What would it mean to say no?
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: So DNFing a book to me,
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: although it seemed really small,
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: it was actually a bigger move because I was starting to notice, no, no, no, no.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: This is not nourishing me anymore.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is not going to lead me where I want to go.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I started to learn to say no first to the book.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then, and it's still a learning in progress.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not finished.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the journey here with me.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm learning as I'm going.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: There are some, some days are better than others.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm starting to learn to say no,
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: starting to end the conversation earlier,
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: to leave the commitment or to stop a certain way of doing things.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that is the first instance in which I'm reclaiming back the hunger,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: the desire,
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: the errors in my life,
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: as opposed to doing life just from the column of shoulds and oughts.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm not saying that you go full on Venusian here.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's how we do it.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's the balancing act.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's the holding of the tension of these opposites.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: But if we look at our culture,
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you don't necessarily want to see this in your life right now,
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps it's a little harder to see.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: But if we look at it in our culture, we have really emphasized the shoulds.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And now in our individual lives, we get to balance it out.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: We have to hold both.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Some things you should do and it's probably smart that you do.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: But we have to leave more space for the Venusian element, for the Eros in our lives.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a comfortable process to do it.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not selling this as one of them.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: But if I'm back to the reading,
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: if I start reading a book and let's say by page 40, it's just not doing it for me.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, this is a very low stakes practice of letting it go.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's not, there's no arrows there.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let it go.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: See how it, see what happens.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: See how these small abilities of putting it down,
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: stop doing things in a certain way that you thought you should.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Where might it lead you?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is where I think the threshold lover as an archetype can help us navigate.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Because I think the threshold lover,
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: and this is the thing,
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: if you will, that I created in this pause between season one and two of the podcast.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd say these figures, they have absolutely an erotic charge.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I don't mean you want to sleep with them,
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: although,
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: you know, as romance comes, romance novels are very happy to oblige for that.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: If you have a book boyfriend, go for it in your imagination.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: But in essence, they do have an erotic charge.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't necessarily mean it's romantic,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: but they have a charge that activates something in us.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because these threshold love are archetypes in the stories.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I met them.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: From all this reading, I started kind of encountering all these.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't so much the character per se,
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: but it was kind of the archetype,
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: what they were manifesting in the story as a guide.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And what I've noticed is that this archetype or these characters,
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: if you find them in the book, They put you back in contact with wanting.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: They make that pull towards something noticeable.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it's worth respecting that and not postponing it.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And back to what I was saying about the other threshold guides and helpers
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: that we meet along the way.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: The threshold lover is doing something different.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_00: If a mentor that we meet along the way helps us see the larger vision for our lives
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: and what we're doing,
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: or the helpers come in and give us the resources we need at that moment,
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: the threshold lover works on that erotic charge.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: It allows,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_00: it shows you that something is stirring and it wants you to connect you back to
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: that wanting.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: To that Venusian column in your life's Excel spreadsheet.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the wanting and the appetite are very key.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the wanting and the appetite are key.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Not just personally in our journeys,
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: but for the collective,
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: because the collective now is, again, there's a lot of flattening.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of selling of one type of story.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: There's a story that's being told to us.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the story.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: Take it or leave it.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's just happening.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the stories that invite a sense of wanting and desire are counter to this.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_00: Counter to this element that we should just take it as the powerful think we should take it.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: So in essence,
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I guess I'm saying that romance is a sort of a revolutionary genre,
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_00: even though it doesn't look like it, but it's surely wearing sexier clothes.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: So like I was saying, I've met this eight figures, these eight threshold lovers.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's what the quiz is about.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll talk more about that soon.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is in reading romance...
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, OK, this genre is showing us something that I'm not seeing somewhere else.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_00: Not that it doesn't exist somewhere else in other genres, in other ways of telling story.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what romance as a genre is giving us is very legible.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's making this very legible.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: And also perhaps a bit easier to metabolize.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Every romance novel has the same sort of underlying shape.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's where two things, they're separate, they come together together.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: And as they come together,
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: there's a certain kind of like pressure cooker,
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: alchemical element happening where they can't stay as they are.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Transformation happens.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a joining.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: This is a key element.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is the happily ever after element of romance.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is a key element.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Romance needs to have the happy ever after.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I see this as an alchemical union.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: That union that shows in romance stories is part of a much longer process.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: While people sort of minimize romance as like, oh, it has a happy end.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's so predictable.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: But actually,
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: that predictability is a key element here because it doesn't come in the beginning.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: The whole story is about how this union is going to be transformed until they get to that union.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: In alchemy, that's the joining.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: And nothing is joining in the beginning.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: They have to start separate.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then the transformation goes on.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: In philosophy,
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: I forgot which philosopher it was that taught this,
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: but this is something I always think about.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: The idea of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So we start with a thesis.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: We meet the antithesis, the other, the opposite.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: And then through a process of transformation, we come into a synthesis.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then once we get that synthesis,
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_00: the weaving it all together, that synthesis becomes the new thesis.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And on and on we go.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's what happens in romance.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: You start with the thesis.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: You meet the antithesis.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's the conflict.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: How are they going to get together?
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then they join forces.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: There's a synthesis.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the spire of life.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: I think this is a key element because the idea here is that the coming together is the element.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: So.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Everything hinges on that.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need stories during these times in the world where there's
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: so much division and sort of cracking apart and crumbling
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: of how do we come together?
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: How do we join together?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: Again, how do we synthesize things that on the surface look like oppositions, right?
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the key element here.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why the happily ever after isn't just a tidy, tiny, tiny bow on top of it.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: It is the very telos of the whole thing.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the word telos in Greek is, in short, the end of a thing it's aiming at.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is where we're going.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_00: If you're traveling, the telos is like your destination.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to get there.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's not where you stop halfway there.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the whole purpose built from the start.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of a seed,
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: for an example, like an acorn, the telos of an acorn is to become an oak tree.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in romance as a genre, as a way.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I think of romance not just as a genre.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking of romance as like an approach to life.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't just stop at the union.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: It culminates.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then,
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: granted,
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: it stops there,
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: usually at the end when the main couple or the main people come together.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it leaves you the rest to imagine.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the rest of the happily ever after, that's on you.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: You get to imagine that.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that culmination still does something for us.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think this is the gift of romance.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_00: It shows us that a coming together is a necessary part of the process.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: It is not a prize at the end.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's necessary.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_00: And this helps our own nervous system settle into the story.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: We know the union is going to happen.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's guaranteed.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that allows us to bring down our defenses and really be in the story
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_00: and navigate all the drama and the ups and downs that the plot is going to give us.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: So that's really key.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we consider this naive.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: We criticize it as childish,
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: as escapism,
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: because we can say, oh, well, this union doesn't really happen in real life.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: We know that.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: We're not reading for the real life.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_00: But the sense of union, it is not childish.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually load-bearing.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: It is the part of how we as individuals get to do change.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_00: Because one, it allows us to move towards something that we're able to imagine.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: The picture, that image carries us there.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: We know there's going to be the happy ending.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then our nervous system can calm down and do the process.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: One thing I did learn from reading so many romance novels because
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_00: the guaranteed happy ending has actually taught me to be a lot more,
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_00: democratic in my reading because and much more adventurous because,
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: hey, I know the happy ending is coming.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I can face different types of stories.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have that anxiety of how it's going to end.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: I know it's going to end in some capacity with that union.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: So it allows me to expose myself to different types of stories.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: The other part that is important about this union that we see a lot
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: in romance novels is it affects us in another way.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's also a sense of justice, actually.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a restoration of balance.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: The thing that was split apart comes together and it comes back whole.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's not just sentimentality.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_00: That is a very human ache that is being answered in these stories.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it happens again and again.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's this idea the good will prevail, if you will.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of justice.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: Things will come back again.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we need stories like this.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: Stories that carry a sense of hope that is not all doom and gloom.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the telos, the psyche, our own psyche wants to move towards that union.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't happen just in the genre.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: The genre is an expression of what our psyche wants.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_00: the parts that have been at war,
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: that have been separated, estranged, they want to come together.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so when you're reading romance novels,
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: there's an aspect of yourself that is striving to come together inside of yourself.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And that's really key.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: When you're going through a threshold in your life,
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_00: a massive transition,
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_00: or maybe on the surface,
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: it doesn't look like a massive transition, but on the inside...
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_00: It does feel like it.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: In many ways,
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: your own psyche is trying to come together in union with an aspect of yourself
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: that has been pushed aside, buried, forgotten.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's the shadow work that a lot of people like to talk about.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to reclaim that gold.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_00: You're trying to integrate something.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I think when you're reading,
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_00: if you find yourself reading romance,
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: I invite you to take a deeper look at not just how you're enjoying the plot,
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_00: but what is it doing to you?
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_00: And you can probably,
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to bet here,
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: find that something within yourself is trying to come together.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: Now.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_00: I want to touch briefly,
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_00: even though this probably deserves a whole other episode,
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_00: and it's the topic of spice in romance novels.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is not the Dune spice.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is a whole different kind of spice.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is the sexual intimacy that shows up on the pages of a romance novel.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: Spice, it is not the same thing as erotic charge that I was talking about before.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_00: There are plenty of closed door fade to black romance that carries actually quite
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: an enormous erotic charge.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: And there are also plenty of very explicit open door romance novels that carry none.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: They just don't hit that charge.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: The heat level of the spice is one expression of this arrows.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_00: It is not the whole mechanism.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when the spice is working,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: if you will,
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: doing its job properly,
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: it does bring a sense of touching on what do these characters want when they come
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_00: into contact with.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_00: It activates something in the body of the character, but also in the body of the reader.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_00: And for a period of time,
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: as you're immersed in the story,
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps the shoulds of your life kind of go temporarily off duty.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you get to, in your imagination, practice something different for yourself.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's important to acknowledge here,
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: too, that for some readers, the whole frisson of spice, that's what is there.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they want.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's all good.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's fine.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's no shame in that.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I invite you to also when you're reading books that do have the spice
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: of whatever you're comfortable with,
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: just to notice how does that wanting, how does that coming together affect you?
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: What does it activate for you?
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's an important element as well because it speaks very openly
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: to desire and for wanting.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: And to having a space to have your fantasies play out,
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_00: even though in real life, if you will, you don't necessarily want to do that.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_00: But in your imagination,
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: living out that fantasy can open doors to different aspects of yourself that need
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: to be integrated, that want to come into your life.
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_00: In a world right now where everything seems to be pulling apart,
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_00: the institutions,
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: the communities,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: families,
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: the basic assumption that we have some kind of truth together
• 44:38
  SPEAKER_00: and that's all being questioned and sort of fragmented,
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: it's Like we're living in fracture and we're swimming in this pool of fracture.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's very difficult for our psyches.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: But in the middle of that,
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: there are a lot of people,
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_00: and I would say perhaps mostly women, who are reading the romance genre.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: In each of these books,
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: in varying degrees of how good and well-written they are,
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_00: they're teaching us to rehearse romance.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: And not union as, oh, this is just luck and a coincidence.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Union is something as we travel towards something that it does break open
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: when we let somebody else come in as well.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't think reading romance is escapism at all.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's actually an aspect of our culture practicing something
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: that is badly out of practice.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And this is one of the few places that we get to do it.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing I'll touch on,
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_00: because this is when I started reading this,
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: reading romance, I really came up against it quickly.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the idea of guilty pleasure.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: And what it brings to me when I hear this phrase, the guilty pleasure.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: I've noticed in myself and in talking to other readers that a lot
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: of people will mention, oh, this is a romance, guilty pleasure.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's what usually these books are relegated to.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I think we all kind of do it in our own ways.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's not with romance novels.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's with a TV show you watch or a kind of hobby you have.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: But one thing I've been noticing is that when you mention what you're reading,
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: you tend to feel the room quickly.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're amongst polite company,
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: that's usually when that guilty pleasure is going to come in, right?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: You're going to mention it in some capacity.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I've noticed that the guilty pleasure is not about the books, right?
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: The books are just the surface.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: The guilty pleasure is kind of like a chain.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the chain says, fine,
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: run with this for a while,
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: enjoy yourself, but go only as far as this chain will permit.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the moment you go a little further than that, the chain yanks back.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: The yank arrives as shame or the thing we've agreed to call it kind of guilt.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what the chain is attached to.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I think guilty pleasure is a very old programming that comes really screaming
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: at us and is really alive and well.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's monitoring us all the time, making sure you don't relax, really.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And guilt,
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: the relatives that guilt has,
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: this guilty pleasure,
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_00: are shame and embarrassment, which tells us really where it's coming from.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: To me...
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: It's so Christian.
• 47:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even funny.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I grew up Catholic.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think we know guilt.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: And pleasure has always been considered something guilty,
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: if not outright sinful, because we're a lot less pious than our ancestors were.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have softened.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: Instead of saying sinful, we say guilty.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the same chain.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same yank.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to pull.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: I still deal with this myself.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's not done.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: But here's another element of how the chain yanks us back.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the idea back to what I was saying about finishing the book, the DNFing.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_00: I was always like, no, no, no, I should be a finisher.
• 48:20
  SPEAKER_00: I should read the whole book, but cover to cover.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I have a lot of books in my library.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, I have not read most of them cover to cover.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to be a nibbler of books.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_00: I go in, take in what I need, put it down.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I kind of use them as research or brainstorming.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't normally read a book cover to cover.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel guilty about that a lot of times.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I know that guilt.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that chain.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_00: And it's over a paperback.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: But this is old programming and it's not random.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: So when we have these stories that are centered on love,
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: that the whole plot is about how they're going to come together.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_00: Stories that are very relational that say about how people actually change.
• 49:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm amazed how these books show so much change.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_00: And side note,
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_00: actually,
• 49:14
  SPEAKER_00: romance novels have taught me more about grief than a lot
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_00: of psychology books have taught me about grief.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: I have been able to metabolize a lot of grief through these books,
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_00: and I am very grateful for the authors for bringing this element.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be surprised how much grief is in romance novels.
• 49:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's never said in a synopsis and bam, there it is.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I think these stories are very important.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so why are we guilty about them?
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: And the other thing,
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: and I think this is the big one, these stories talk about women's desire, right?
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: They talk about desire in general,
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: what is wanted, what is said out loud at length for pleasure.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: And as we know, desire, gosh, it is a sin.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where I think we have treated appetite to be managed rather than a form of knowing.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: We manage the desire.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: You shouldn't want it.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the more that we manage, the more we lose our own inner compass.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: And also, this is linked to mythology.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_00: Love and desire, they are catalysts.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: They rearrange things in our lives.
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that is why for the ancients,
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_00: Aphrodite, Venus,
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_00: and also to a certain extent Hermes,
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_00: aka Mercury, Were dangerous gods because there are gods at the threshold.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_00: They are very liminal gods and their curiosity,
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_00: their mercurial curiosity and the Venusian desire are very dangerous
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_00: because it leads you to break rules towards a relationship and it changes things.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: It changes the order of things.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: So romance, again, is actually quite revolutionary.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_00: So that's an important element.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: And so the systems that run the world,
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_00: call it patriarchy,
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: capitalism,
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_00: any ism that you want,
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_00: they really,
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_00: really want and they really require people to stop wanting anything
• 51:18
  SPEAKER_00: that they were not issued to.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Back again,
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Aphrodite and Eros are dangerous for this reason
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_00: because they're transformation agents.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_00: They rearrange the order of things and they do not ask permission.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_00: So when you think about the books right there,
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: especially in Romanticy, which weaves romance and fantasy.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: It creates a world that is filled with castles and fortresses and magical systems.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_00: But these stories are telling us over and over about power,
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: who holds it,
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: and what happens when two people meet in a way that affects the system that has been
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_00: in authority.
• 52:01
  SPEAKER_00: It breaks the rules.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_00: And this is a genre that keeps insisting that relationship changes the rules.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's important.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_00: For not just ourselves, but for the collective right now.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: When it comes to your life's thresholds, it's going to happen anyway.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to happen if you step on it and you say yes and you go.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's still going to happen if you're kind of like the reluctant hero
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_00: and you refuse to hear the call for years and years.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: Eventually it's going to come and it's going to drag you over,
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: kicking and screaming through that threshold.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's the I would say the damage that guilt does is that it stalls us at the threshold.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then when instead of crossing it with more agency,
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: perhaps even more pleasure,
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: desire and joy, it stalls us there and then we're dragged over it.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's much more painful experience, I would say.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's no right or wrong.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: We all have done perhaps both ways.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: But there's something about going across the threshold,
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_00: kicking and screaming that is so not pleasant.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I would say, in short, that pleasure and desire and joy are compasses.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's their function.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: So notice what's pulling you.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_00: Which direction of life it feels that is pointing you towards?
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: And take notice of how the programming of our culture and your upbringing is kind
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_00: of clouding that process for you.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then you may look at your own indulgences,
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_00: your own flights of fancy,
• 53:36
  SPEAKER_00: not as something that you just push it aside,
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: but actually as information that you should be noticing
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_00: and you should read more closely.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: Stop yourself.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_00: Have a check in with yourself.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: And also notice that whatever you're reading,
• 53:50
  SPEAKER_00: if we focus on books,
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_00: whatever you're watching, what kind of stories are you gravitating towards?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: That is a compass.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it's something that you haven't crossed yet,
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_00: but it's pointing you in a certain direction.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_00: So take notice.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's an important element.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go back to the threshold lovers.
• 54:10
  SPEAKER_00: I do want to touch on them.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_00: So in my reading,
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_00: I started noticing how the characters would show up and I started noticing a pattern
• 54:18
  SPEAKER_00: and I have divided them into eight archetypes.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: I feel that there are more of them and I'm sure they'll be coming as I continue to read.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: But for now, I decided to launch it into the world with the eight that I have.
• 54:36
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed how these figures kept turning up book after book.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_00: They were wearing different names,
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: different faces, different sentries, but I couldn't unsee them.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: And once I saw them, I had to do something about it.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_00: Last year, last fall, I did write an article with all eight of them.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I did the article and Mainly focus on what you could read,
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: what kind of books you could read.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I shared some of the books I had read in which I found the characters to sort
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: of symbolize this archetype.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then this spring,
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: I taught my first round of Forbidden Doors,
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: which is my program on Romance as Medicine.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_00: And part of one of the exercises I did was to explore the threshold lover that each
• 55:22
  SPEAKER_00: of the participants would have as we went through the program.
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: After pausing season one of the podcast, I wanted to take a break.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to develop the Threshold Lover, which became the Threshold Lover Quiz.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to expand the article and I wanted to expand a little bit what I kind
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: of felt doing the program Forbidden Doors,
• 55:43
  SPEAKER_00: which, by the way, is coming back in January.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the short story of how the quiz came about and where the eight came about.
• 55:52
  SPEAKER_00: And in true form that I tend to do in my own life, I tend to write the thing.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: I tend to put it on paper and then I get to live it.
• 56:00
  SPEAKER_00: I did that with my thesis.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing it with the Threshold Lovers now.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: So my own process.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: This is to go deeper into each of the archetypes.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making collages.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: I like to do collages.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm making collages for each one of them.
• 56:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sharing that on social media and my Substack articles.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm trying to see how they show up.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_00: How do I get deeper with each one of them?
• 56:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm following it.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm following the image.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_00: If people ask me, when they do ask me, so which one is your archetype?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: I actually say...
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_00: The whole genre is my archetype, is my threshold lover.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: I get to live with all eight of them.
• 56:42
  SPEAKER_00: The quiz is a pretty simple one.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's only 13 questions.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: Answer with your gut.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Answer with what comes to mind first.
• 56:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the threshold lover, it is not the same for each season of your life.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_00: Each crossing has its own weather, its own landscape.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_00: So whatever you met in your 20s is definitely not the same as you would meet now.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_00: Because as I said, each crossing is very different.
• 57:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're not the same person.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is not a personality test.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I love those, love those personality quizzes, but this is not one of them.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is more about reading a season of your life and seasons change.
• 57:24
  SPEAKER_00: So even if you're going through a threshold, that isn't very tough.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is a very, you know, that's fine.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: There's no judgment of how difficult or not difficult a threshold is.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, a threshold that you're going through, there's a sense of a stretch.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: Where your old ways start working and new ones haven't fully yet arrived.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_00: So this can happen with changes that you didn't want, with changes that you actually wanted.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so that just happens.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I invite you to take the quiz.
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're taking them,
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_00: just like I said, go with your gut, answer them to what you're feeling now.
• 58:03
  SPEAKER_00: Side note,
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_00: I've had people take the quiz and they said,
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_00: oh, I don't feel like I'm going through a threshold right now.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, maybe you're not.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_00: You've arrived on the other side.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: But maybe if you want to take the quiz either way,
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_00: take it from perhaps the last threshold you've crossed.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_00: And you will find,
• 58:22
  SPEAKER_00: and I've seen people tell me this too,
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: that it resonated with them,
• 58:25
  SPEAKER_00: that they felt like, oh, during that time, this actually did resonate with me.
• 58:29
  SPEAKER_00: So you're still going to get information that I would say is useful to you and do
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_00: with it what you will.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I want to introduce to you the eight Threshold Lovers.
• 58:39
  SPEAKER_00: There are eight of them and they come in four pairs.
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: The pairs have to do with the directions and what they're helping us with.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: So as I go through them, if you haven't taken the quiz yet...
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_00: So let's go with the first axis.
• 59:19
  SPEAKER_00: These are the steady ones.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have the lantern holder and the anchor in the storm.
• 59:25
  SPEAKER_00: This pair offers steadiness.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: The lantern holder is the steady glow in the dark made of patience.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: Something has gone dark in your life.
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: A chapter has ended and what comes next refuses to show itself.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: You want clarity.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: And what there is is blankness where the plan should be.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're awake in the hour of the wolf when the world is asleep and
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_00: the not knowing gets really loud.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_00: This is the threshold that calls for the lantern holder.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: A lantern has a radius, enough for the next step and no more.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is not stinginess.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_00: A floodlight would show you everything at once,
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_00: including, and this is important, what you're not ready to meet yet.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: Now the anchor in the storm is a different ballgame.
• 1:00:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is a steady point when everything else is in motion.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_00: It is for safety.
• 1:00:23
  SPEAKER_00: You can see, well, that's not the problem.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is that everything is moving at once and you're the one holding it up.
• 1:00:30
  SPEAKER_00: You're the one in the center holding all the threads.
• 1:00:33
  SPEAKER_00: The logistics, the decisions, other people's feelings, the whole shebang.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_00: And you're holding it because you always have.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because nobody ever held you.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: So people assume you're fine and you're not exactly correcting them.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_00: This is a threshold that calls for the anchor.
• 1:00:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the anchor offers what they offer is not rescue.
• 1:00:55
  SPEAKER_00: They offer respite.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_00: Somewhere to set the weight down.
• 1:01:01
  SPEAKER_00: To know that it's going to be handled.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: So one of them...
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: One of these thresholds you can't see.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: The other one you can, but you can't put it down.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Axis number two.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: These are the movers.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's the doorway dancer and the shapeshifter.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: This pair offers movement.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the doorway dancer, this is the spark that turns the crossing into a dance.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: It is made of humor.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_00: You've done the crossing.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've turned that crossing, this threshold into a project.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: You have lists.
• 1:01:36
  SPEAKER_00: You've done the research.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing the things in the right order.
• 1:01:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everything in this perfect way.
• 1:01:41
  SPEAKER_00: And underneath all that diligence is a fear that it's not being done correctly.
• 1:01:47
  SPEAKER_00: Something will be lost and it's going to be your fault.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_00: So the days are full of managing and the emptying of anything you'd call enjoyment.
• 1:01:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the quiet symptom...
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_00: That you will notice is that laughter has gone really thin.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a threshold that I call the doorway dancer.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_00: They know that you cannot grip and dance at the same time.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: The other threshold lover is the shapeshifter.
• 1:02:18
  SPEAKER_00: This is the one that makes change impossible to sleep through.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is made of pure transformation.
• 1:02:25
  SPEAKER_00: In this, you're not overplanning.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're standing at the closet.
• 1:02:29
  SPEAKER_00: Your old self is outgrown and you know it in the way you know it that a piece
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_00: of clothing is done and your hand still won't let it go.
• 1:02:40
  SPEAKER_00: And this is true even when the change is wanted because letting go of an identity is
• 1:02:46
  SPEAKER_00: a shedding either way.
• 1:02:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a threshold that calls for the shapeshifter because it's teaching you
• 1:02:52
  SPEAKER_00: to let go and to try new things.
• 1:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if one threshold,
• 1:02:57
  SPEAKER_00: the doorway dance,
• 1:02:58
  SPEAKER_00: you can't loosen the grip,
• 1:03:00
  SPEAKER_00: the next one, the shapeshifter, is going to help you make the leap.
• 1:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: Axis number three.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: This is the authority line.
• 1:03:08
  SPEAKER_00: Here we meet the guardian of the gate and the key bearer.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: These two offer you
• 1:03:17
  SPEAKER_00: So the guardian of the gate, it's the friction that readies you.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is made of challenge.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's asking you to step it up.
• 1:03:27
  SPEAKER_00: It is a threshold or a project, you name it, that has your name on it, a role you could do it.
• 1:03:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the ability is real.
• 1:03:36
  SPEAKER_00: The readiness is real.
• 1:03:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you keep negotiating yourself down.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_00: You're doing the yes, but dance.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but I should have more of this.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I should have more credentials.
• 1:03:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, but who am I to do this?
• 1:03:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're waiting for some kind of permission that no one is going to give you.
• 1:03:53
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a threshold that calls for the guardian of the gate.
• 1:03:57
  SPEAKER_00: And the uncomfortable part here is that nobody's blocking the door.
• 1:04:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's your yes, but that is blocking the door.
• 1:04:05
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the threshold lover that's going to help you cross it.
• 1:04:08
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the next one,
• 1:04:10
  SPEAKER_00: the key bearer, he carries the key, they carry the key to your own new knowing.
• 1:04:16
  SPEAKER_00: And it's all about trust.
• 1:04:19
  SPEAKER_00: The key bearer is one that shows up for folks who are at a threshold
• 1:04:24
  SPEAKER_00: or perhaps have never really been guided.
• 1:04:26
  SPEAKER_00: They're very self-taught.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: They've gone through the hard knocks and they're very proud about it.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: They've tried the old toolkit at each door and this time it is not working.
• 1:04:37
  SPEAKER_00: It has worked before, but not this time.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: So this crossing is asking for a way of seeing that you haven't met yet.
• 1:04:45
  SPEAKER_00: And there is a room inside yourself that's got sealed and locked somewhere along
• 1:04:50
  SPEAKER_00: the way and you don't have the keys for it.
• 1:04:54
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the threshold that calls for the key bearer.
• 1:04:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that they know they're not going to give you what they know.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: What they're going to give you is your own access to what you know that you haven't met yet.
• 1:05:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's the key for something within yourself.
• 1:05:11
  SPEAKER_00: So if the first one,
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: the guardian of the gate,
• 1:05:14
  SPEAKER_00: is all about you dancing with the yes but and this guardian pushing you along,
• 1:05:20
  SPEAKER_00: the key bearer is to help you find the knowing that is within you
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: that you haven't met yet.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Axis four, the last one.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: These are companions and these are the bridge builder and the fellow wanderer.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_00: This pair offers company.
• 1:05:37
  SPEAKER_00: The bridge builder is at home in the in-between.
• 1:05:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're fluent in both worlds.
• 1:05:44
  SPEAKER_00: They're made of fluency.
• 1:05:46
  SPEAKER_00: In yourself, you feel at a threshold that has made you feel split.
• 1:05:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're caught between two worlds,
• 1:05:53
  SPEAKER_00: two languages,
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_00: two selves, and you're exhausted from doing all the translating on your own.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_00: There are moments in this threshold that you just want to amputate one side and move
• 1:06:05
  SPEAKER_00: to the other, but you can't.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_00: You find you can't do that.
• 1:06:08
  SPEAKER_00: So you spend days hovering between the two.
• 1:06:11
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing seems to be moving because you're kind of caught in between the two worlds,
• 1:06:15
  SPEAKER_00: being the way you should have,
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: the way you've always been,
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: and this new self that you haven't, it's not really tried and true yet.
• 1:06:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the bridge builder, he knows, they know this bridge pretty well.
• 1:06:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is not about just crossing it.
• 1:06:30
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to teach you how to weave it all together.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the fellow wanderer is the one who knows this ache from the inside.
• 1:06:39
  SPEAKER_00: They are made of companionship.
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_00: So in this threshold, when you meet the fellow wanderer, you're not really split.
• 1:06:46
  SPEAKER_00: What you're feeling is unrecognition.
• 1:06:49
  SPEAKER_00: You're going through a part of your crossing that is quite unknown and you feel unseen.
• 1:06:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a sense of loneliness that has nothing to do with how many people are around you.
• 1:07:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's that they don't know what it's like to be in it.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you can't speak to it.
• 1:07:05
  SPEAKER_00: It feels like no one cares.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: Even when they ask, it's because you don't feel like they are in the inside with you.
• 1:07:12
  SPEAKER_00: So when you meet the fellow wanderer,
• 1:07:14
  SPEAKER_00: wherever you are on your road, what they gift you is a sense of recognition.
• 1:07:20
  SPEAKER_00: It is not sympathy.
• 1:07:22
  SPEAKER_00: It is that recognition of knowing that they're like,
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_00: yes, I understand what it's like to be where you're at.
• 1:07:29
  SPEAKER_00: So if the bridge builder helps us navigate two worlds,
• 1:07:33
  SPEAKER_00: the fellow wanderer helps us have company and feel seen
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: when we have been feeling alone and unseen.
• 1:07:40
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the eight figures.
• 1:07:43
  SPEAKER_00: Those are the eight doors, the eight kinds of weather.
• 1:07:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm giving you them not in any order of importance.
• 1:07:51
  SPEAKER_00: What matters is how they reach you.
• 1:07:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do they stir you?
• 1:07:56
  SPEAKER_00: Which one of them makes you lean forward?
• 1:07:59
  SPEAKER_00: And I invite you, of course, to take the quiz, like I said, answer the questions.
• 1:08:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are only 13 of them from your gut and what resonates with you and see what
• 1:08:12
  SPEAKER_00: the results feel like and if it resonates with you.
• 1:08:16
  SPEAKER_00: As I'm taking a stock of the results as I see them coming, it's very interesting.
• 1:08:22
  SPEAKER_00: I'd like to see which one is sort of climbing up the charts.
• 1:08:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so far, I've kind of been surprised, but in a way, perhaps not.
• 1:08:31
  SPEAKER_00: That the number one so far is the anchor in the storm.
• 1:08:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I wrote a whole piece about this on my Substack about what I've noticed about
• 1:08:38
  SPEAKER_00: the anchor in the storm.
• 1:08:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the key element here is the anchor.
• 1:08:44
  SPEAKER_00: And the unsung hero in this image is actually the chain that holds the anchor.
• 1:08:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it prevents the anchor in the storm as an image itself has a lot to do
• 1:08:57
  SPEAKER_00: about preventing the drift and the wrecking.
• 1:09:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't stop the movement per se,
• 1:09:04
  SPEAKER_00: but it prevents the boat from drifting far away or wrecking on the shores,
• 1:09:10
  SPEAKER_00: on the rocky shores.
• 1:09:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a key element here.
• 1:09:12
  SPEAKER_00: But I invite you to read the article.
• 1:09:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's on my Substack.
• 1:09:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll put it on the show notes as well.
• 1:09:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you've gotten the anchor in the storm, Then see if that resonates for you as well.
• 1:09:23
  SPEAKER_00: Another element,
• 1:09:24
  SPEAKER_00: and we're getting close to the end here,
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: another element that I want to touch on, and it has to do with the astrology.
• 1:09:31
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the reason I really got into all of this and named the podcast Romancing
• 1:09:38
  SPEAKER_00: the Threshold is that In working with astrology all these years
• 1:09:43
  SPEAKER_00: and noticing what's happening out there in the world,
• 1:09:47
  SPEAKER_00: this whole idea of bracing for impact really jumped at me.
• 1:09:50
  SPEAKER_00: Everything, a lot of the astrology I see out there oftentimes feels very dramatic.
• 1:09:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not all of them, but some of it is very much like, oh my God, Pluto is coming.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my God, Saturn is coming.
• 1:10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Brace yourselves.
• 1:10:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I got really tired of that.
• 1:10:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I started thinking about, we can...
• 1:10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Navigate the relationship with astrology with our own birth charts from a romantic perspective.
• 1:10:17
  SPEAKER_00: Because all these transitions that we're navigating, we can see them in the birth charts.
• 1:10:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so I do feel that we can engage with the planetary archetypes as a lover.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: How can we court them and not just brace ourselves for Saturn is coming,
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: you know, close the windows, you know, defend yourself, put the armor on.
• 1:10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Pluto is coming.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, my God.
• 1:10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Good luck.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:10:42
  SPEAKER_00: I have a sense that the planets as archetypes,
• 1:10:46
  SPEAKER_00: their figures,
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_00: their characters,
• 1:10:48
  SPEAKER_00: they have their own temperaments,
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: their own ways of being, and they want to be approached in certain ways.
• 1:10:54
  SPEAKER_00: How would it be if we could approach them and engage with them from this position
• 1:10:59
  SPEAKER_00: of relational dialogue rather than as victims of their transits?
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a lot more empowering and it gives our story more.
• 1:11:10
  SPEAKER_00: A lot more texture rather than us just being constantly sort of running from
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_00: the gods, if you will.
• 1:11:17
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's much more important.
• 1:11:18
  SPEAKER_00: So part of this idea of romancing the threshold is also how do we romance the planets?
• 1:11:25
  SPEAKER_00: How do we engage with them?
• 1:11:26
  SPEAKER_00: How do we notice them in our lives and how can we court them and how are they courting us?
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: You know,
• 1:11:32
  SPEAKER_00: I do feel that they are alive and I think we can engage with them in
• 1:11:37
  SPEAKER_00: a much better way.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of how I approach astrology and sitting with clients is also
• 1:11:45
  SPEAKER_00: to help them navigate this relationship with the planets within their own chart
• 1:11:51
  SPEAKER_00: and how that really,
• 1:11:54
  SPEAKER_00: while it may not delete completely any anxieties we have about a Pluto transit or
• 1:12:00
  SPEAKER_00: a Saturn or Uranus or whatever it may be,
• 1:12:03
  SPEAKER_00: but it will give us more agency to engage with them.
• 1:12:07
  SPEAKER_00: So that's the idea.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Coming to the end.
• 1:12:10
  SPEAKER_00: So three things and then I want to let you go to go do your thing.
• 1:12:15
  SPEAKER_00: One, I invite you to take the quiz.
• 1:12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Like I said, easy, 13 questions, few minutes, meet your threshold lover.
• 1:12:22
  SPEAKER_00: The link is in the show notes, but it's on my website, vanessacouto.com.
• 1:12:27
  SPEAKER_00: And Couto is C-O-U-T-O slash threshold dash quiz.
• 1:12:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sorry, hyphen, threshold hyphen quiz.
• 1:12:37
  SPEAKER_00: But it's in the show notes.
• 1:12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And as you're taking it, Don't overthink it.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Go with your gut.
• 1:12:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's important.
• 1:12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Makes it easier for yourself.
• 1:12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And notice your first reaction.
• 1:12:47
  SPEAKER_00: When you're reading the results, you do not get an email.
• 1:12:50
  SPEAKER_00: The minute you take the quiz, it takes you to the webpage of your result.
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_00: So if you want to keep that, bookmark it so you don't lose it.
• 1:13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Read it and see how it sits with you.
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_00: If you're willing to let me know, I would love to hear from you.
• 1:13:05
  SPEAKER_00: How does it resonate?
• 1:13:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do you see?
• 1:13:09
  SPEAKER_00: That helps.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_00: The other part is...
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_00: Even easier.
• 1:13:14
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to go to your books.
• 1:13:16
  SPEAKER_00: The ones you have around your house, in your Kindle.
• 1:13:19
  SPEAKER_00: The ones, especially the ones that you don't talk about in public or in a polite company.
• 1:13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Especially those.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'd love for you to think about those.
• 1:13:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to know if they're good or bad.
• 1:13:33
  SPEAKER_00: What I want you to think is, what character is living rent-free in your mind?
• 1:13:40
  SPEAKER_00: What has this character given you?
• 1:13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Pay attention.
• 1:13:45
  SPEAKER_00: Is it nerve?
• 1:13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Is it permission?
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_00: Is it a sense of self-worth?
• 1:13:50
  SPEAKER_00: Have a think about these characters.
• 1:13:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm going to guess that is a kind of medicine that is telling you something
• 1:13:58
  SPEAKER_00: about your own crossing in your life right now.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_00: So have a look at your library.
• 1:14:03
  SPEAKER_00: And that's going to help you have a sense of your own threshold lover.
• 1:14:08
  SPEAKER_00: Last two things, and they're very small.
• 1:14:11
  SPEAKER_00: If you are listening to this and you were thinking of somebody
• 1:14:14
  SPEAKER_00: while you were listening, please share this with them.
• 1:14:18
  SPEAKER_00: Share with them the quiz.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_00: Share with them the podcast episode because that's how the show travels.
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_00: It is not through the algorithm, but it's through each person handing it to another.
• 1:14:31
  SPEAKER_00: And also follow the show wherever you do like to listen to your podcast.
• 1:14:35
  SPEAKER_00: That could be your Apple podcast, your Spotify, YouTube, wherever it may be.
• 1:14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because really, we don't have to white knuckle our way through any of this.
• 1:14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our own crossings or our collective ones,
• 1:14:49
  SPEAKER_00: because we can meet change with the curiosity of lovers.
• 1:14:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm Vanessa Couto.
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: This has been Romancing the Threshold, and I'll see you in the next episode.