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Jack and the Beanstalk: When Magic Calls Us Into Life · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  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.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Today,
• 0:44
  Speaker 4: Joseph and Lisa and I are going to take a
• 0:47
  Speaker 4: look at a very, very old fairy tale. Some sources
• 0:52
  Speaker 4: say it's as old as 5,000 years. And it's a
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: tale that's familiar to everybody. And it's part of our
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: psychic inheritance, part of our psychological DNA. And here it is,
• 1:07
  Speaker 4: Jack and the Beanstalk. And here's the tale. There was
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: once upon a time a poor widow who had an
• 1:16
  Speaker 4: only son named Jack and a cow named Milky White.
• 1:21
  Speaker 4: and all they had to live on was the milk
• 1:23
  Speaker 4: the cow gave every morning, which they carried to the
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: market and sold. But one morning Milky White gave no milk,
• 1:30
  Speaker 4: and they didn't know what to do. What shall we do,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: what shall we do, said the widow, wringing her hands.
• 1:37
  Speaker 4: Cheer up, mother, I'll go and get work somewhere, said Jack.
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: We've tried that before, and nobody would take you, said
• 1:43
  Speaker 4: his mother. We must sell Milky White, and with the money,
• 1:48
  Speaker 4: start a shop or something. All right, Mother, says Jack.
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: It's market day today, and I'll soon sell Milky White,
• 1:55
  Speaker 4: and then we'll see what we can do. So he
• 1:58
  Speaker 4: took the cow's halter in his hand, and off he started.
• 2:02
  Speaker 4: He hadn't gone far when he met a funny-looking old
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: man who said to him, Good morning, Jack. Good morning
• 2:09
  Speaker 4: to you, said Jack, and wondered how he knew his name. Well, Jack,
• 2:13
  Speaker 4: and where are you off to? said the man. I'm
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: going to the market to sell our cow there. Oh,
• 2:20
  Speaker 4: you look the proper sort of chap to sell cows,
• 2:22
  Speaker 4: said the man. I wonder if you know how many
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: beans make five? Two in each hand and one in
• 2:28
  Speaker 4: your mouth, says Jack, sharp as a needle. Right you are,
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: says the man, and here they are, the very beans themselves,
• 2:35
  Speaker 4: he went on, pulling out of his pocket a number
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: of strange-looking beans. As you are so sharp, says he,
• 2:42
  Speaker 4: I don't mind doing a swap with you, your cow
• 2:45
  Speaker 4: for these beans. Go along, says Jack, wouldn't you like it? Ah,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: you don't know what these beans are, said the man.
• 2:53
  Speaker 4: If you plant them overnight, by morning they grow right
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: up to the sky. Really, said Jack, you don't say so. Yes,
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: that is so. And if it doesn't turn out to
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: be true, you can have your cow back. Right, says Jack,
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: and hands him over Milky White's halter and pockets the beans.
• 3:13
  Speaker 4: Back goes Jack home, and as he hadn't gone very far,
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: it wasn't dusk by the time he got to his door.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: Back already, Jack? said his mother. I see you haven't
• 3:23
  Speaker 4: got Milky Way, so you've sold her. How much did
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: you get for her? You'll never guess, mother, says Jack. No,
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: you don't say so. Good boy. Five pounds?
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: Ten pounds?
• 3:35
  Speaker 4: Fifteen? No, it can't be twenty. I told you you
• 3:39
  Speaker 4: couldn't guess. What do you say to these beans? They're magical.
• 3:43
  Speaker 4: Plant them overnight and... What? says Jack's mother. Have you
• 3:48
  Speaker 4: been such a fool, such a dolt, such an idiot,
• 3:52
  Speaker 4: as to give away my milky white, the best milker
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: in the parish, and prime beef to boot for a
• 3:57
  Speaker 4: set of paltry beans? Take that, take that, take that.
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: And as for your precious beans, here they go out
• 4:05
  Speaker 4: the window, and now off with you to bed. Not
• 4:08
  Speaker 4: a sup shall you drink, and not a bit shall
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: you swallow this very night. So Jack went upstairs to
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: his little room in the attic, and sorry and sad
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: he was, to be sure, as much for his mother's
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: sake as for the loss of his supper. At last
• 4:24
  Speaker 4: he dropped off to sleep. When he woke up, the
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: room looked so funny. The sun was shining into part
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: of it, and yet all the rest was quite dark
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: and shady. So Jack jumped up and dressed himself and
• 4:37
  Speaker 4: went to the window. And what do you think he saw? Why,
• 4:41
  Speaker 4: the beans his mother had thrown out the window, into
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: the garden, had sprung up into a big beanstalk, which
• 4:49
  Speaker 4: went up and up and up till it reached the sky.
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: So the man spoke the truth after all. The beanstalk
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: grew up quite close past Jack's window, so all he
• 5:01
  Speaker 4: had to do was open it and give a jump
• 5:03
  Speaker 4: onto the beanstalk, which ran up just like a big ladder.
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: So Jack climbed and he climbed and he climbed and
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: he climbed and he climbed and climbed and climbed until
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: at last he reached the sty. And when he got there,
• 5:15
  Speaker 4: he found a long, broad road going straight as a dart.
• 5:20
  Speaker 4: So he walked along and he walked along, walked along,
• 5:23
  Speaker 4: till he came to a great big tall house. And
• 5:26
  Speaker 4: on the doorstep, there was a great big tall woman.'
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: Good morning, Mom,' says Jack, quite politely.' Could you be
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: so kind as to give me some breakfast?' for he
• 5:37
  Speaker 4: hadn't had anything to eat, you know, the night before
• 5:40
  Speaker 4: and was hungry as a hunter. It's breakfast you want,
• 5:44
  Speaker 4: is it? says the great big tall woman. It's breakfast
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: you'll be if you don't move off from here. My
• 5:50
  Speaker 4: man is an ogre, and there's nothing he likes better
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: than boys broiled on toast. You'd better be moving or
• 5:57
  Speaker 4: he'll be coming. Oh, please, Mom, do give me something
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: to eat. Mom, I've had nothing to eat since yesterday morning,
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: really and truly, Mom, says Jack. I may as well
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: be broiled as die of hunger. Well, the ogre's wife
• 6:10
  Speaker 4: was not so half bad after all. So she took
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: Jack into the kitchen and gave him a hunk of
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: bread and cheese and a jug of milk. But Jack
• 6:19
  Speaker 4: hadn't half finished these when thump, thump, thump, the whole
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: house began to tremble with the noise of someone coming.
• 6:27
  Speaker 4: Goodness gracious me, it's my old man, said the ogre's wife.
• 6:30
  Speaker 4: What on earth shall I do? Come along quick and
• 6:33
  Speaker 4: jump in here. and she bundled Jack into the oven
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: just as the ogre came in. He was a big one,
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: to be sure. At his belt he had three calves
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: strung up by the heels, and he unhooked them and
• 6:45
  Speaker 4: threw them down on the table and said, Here, wife,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: broil me a couple of these for breakfast. Ah, what's
• 6:52
  Speaker 4: this I smell? Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman.
• 6:58
  Speaker 4: Be he alive or be he dead, I'll have his
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: bones to grind my bread. Nonsense, dear, said his wife.
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: You're dreaming. Or perhaps you smell the scraps of that
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: little boy you liked so much for yesterday's dinner. Here
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: you go and have a wash and tidy up, and
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: by the time you come back your breakfast will be
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: ready for you. So off the ogre went, and Jack
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: was just going to jump out of the oven and
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: run away when the woman told him, Wait till he's asleep,
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: said she. He always has a doze after breakfast. Well,
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: the ogre had his breakfast, and after that he goes
• 7:33
  Speaker 4: to a big chest and takes out a couple of
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: bags of gold, and down he sits and counts till
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: at last his head began to nod and he began
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: to snore till the whole house shook again. Then Jack
• 7:45
  Speaker 4: crept out on tiptoe from his oven, and as he
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: was passing the ogre he took one of the bags
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: of gold under his arm and off he pelters till
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: he come to the beanstalk. And then he threw down
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: the bag of gold, which of course fell into his
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: mother's garden. And then he climbed down and climbed down
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: till at last he got home and told his mother
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: and showed her the gold and said, Well, mother, wasn't
• 8:09
  Speaker 4: I right about the beans? They really are magical, you see.
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: So they lived on the bag of gold for some time,
• 8:16
  Speaker 4: but at last they came to the end of it.
• 8:19
  Speaker 4: And Jack made up his mind to try his luck
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: once more at the top of the beanstalk. So one
• 8:25
  Speaker 4: fine morning he rose up early and got onto the beanstalk,
• 8:29
  Speaker 4: and he climbed and he climbed and he climbed and
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: climbed and climbed until at last he came out onto
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: the road again and up to the great tall house
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: he had been to before. And there, sure enough, was
• 8:41
  Speaker 4: the great tall woman standing on the doorstep.' Good morning, Mum,'
• 8:46
  Speaker 4: says Jack, bold as brass. Could you be so good
• 8:49
  Speaker 4: as to give me something to eat? Go away, my boy,
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: said the big tall woman, or else my man will
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: eat you up for breakfast. But aren't you the youngster
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: who came here once before? Do you know that very
• 9:02
  Speaker 4: day my man missed one of his bags of gold?
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: That's strange, Mom, said Jack. I dare say I could
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: tell you something about that, but I'm so hungry I
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: can't speak till I've had something to eat. Well, the
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: big tall woman was so curious that she took him
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: in and gave him something to eat. But he had
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: scarcely begun munching it as slowly as he could when thump, thump,
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: they heard the giant's footstep, and his wife hid Jack
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: away in the oven. All happened as it did before.
• 9:34
  Speaker 4: In came the ogre as he did before, said fee-fi-fo-hum,
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: and had his breakfast off three broiled oxen. Then he said, Wife.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: Bring me the hen that lays the golden eggs. So
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: she brought it, and the ogre said, Lay, and it
• 9:50
  Speaker 4: laid an egg all of gold. And then the ogre
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: began to nod his head and snore till the house shook.
• 9:59
  Speaker 4: Then Jairus, crept out of the oven on tiptoe and
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: caught hold of the golden hen and was off before
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: you could say Jack Robinson. But this time the hen
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: gave a cackle which woke the ogre. And just as
• 10:12
  Speaker 4: Jack got out of the house, he heard him calling, Wife, wife,
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: what have you done with my golden hen? And the
• 10:19
  Speaker 4: wife said, Why, my dear? But that was all Jack heard,
• 10:22
  Speaker 4: for he rushed off to the beanstalk and climbed down
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: like a house on fire. And when he got home,
• 10:28
  Speaker 4: he showed his mother the wonderful hen and said, Lay
• 10:32
  Speaker 4: to it. And it laid a golden egg every time
• 10:36
  Speaker 4: he said lay. Well, Jack was not content, and it
• 10:39
  Speaker 4: wasn't long before he determined to have another try at
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: his luck up there at the top of the beanstalk.
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: So one fine morning he rose up early and got
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: to the beanstalk, and he climbed and climbed and climbed
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: and climbed and climbed till he got to the top.
• 10:54
  Speaker 4: But this time he knew better than to go straight
• 10:57
  Speaker 4: to the ogre's house. And when he got near it,
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: he waited behind a bush till he saw the ogre's
• 11:02
  Speaker 4: wife come out with a pail to get some water,
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: and then he crept into the house and got into
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: the copper. He hadn't been there long when he heard thump, thump, thump,
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: as before, and in came the ogre and his wife. Fee-fi-fo-fum,
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: I smell the blood of an Englishman, cried out the ogre.
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: I smell him, wife, I smell him. Do you, my dearie,
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: says the ogre's wife. Then if it's that little rogue
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: that stole your gold and the hen that laid the
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: golden eggs, he's sure to have got into the oven.
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: And they both rushed to the oven. But Jack wasn't there, luckily,
• 11:41
  Speaker 4: and the ogre's wife said, There you are again with
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: your fee-fi-fo-fum. Why, of course it's the boy you caught
• 11:48
  Speaker 4: last night that I've just broiled for your breakfast. How
• 11:51
  Speaker 4: forgetful I am, and how careless you are not to
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: know the difference between live and dead after all these years.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: So the ogre sat down to the breakfast and ate it.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: But every now and then he would mutter, I could
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: have sworn, and he'd get up and search the larder
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: and the cupboards and everything, only luckily, He didn't think
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: of the copper. After breakfast was over, the ogre called out, Wife, wife,
• 12:19
  Speaker 4: bring me my golden harp. So she brought it and
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: put it on the table before him. Then he said, Sing,
• 12:27
  Speaker 4: and the golden harp sang most beautifully. And it went
• 12:31
  Speaker 4: on singing till the ogre fell asleep and commenced to
• 12:35
  Speaker 4: snore like thunder. Then Jack lifted up the copper lid
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: very quietly and got down like a mouse and crept
• 12:43
  Speaker 4: on hands and knees till he came to the table.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: When he crawled, he caught hold of the golden harp
• 12:48
  Speaker 4: and dashed with it toward the door. But the harp
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: called out quite loud, Master!
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: Master!
• 12:55
  Speaker 4: And the ogre woke up just in time to see
• 12:58
  Speaker 4: Jack running off with his harp. Jack ran as fast
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: as he could and the ogre came rushing after him
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: and would soon have caught him, only Jack had a
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: start and dodged him a bit and knew where he
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: was going. When he got to the beanstalk, the ogre
• 13:13
  Speaker 4: was not more than 20 yards away when suddenly he
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: saw Jack disappear. And then he saw Jack underneath climbing
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: down the beanstalk for dear life. Well, the ogre didn't
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: like trusting himself to such a ladder, and he stood
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: and waited, so Jack got another start. But just then
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: the harp cried out, Master!
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: Master!
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: And the ogre swung himself down onto the beanstalk, which
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: shook with his weight. Down climbs Jack, and after him
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: climbed the ogre. By this time, Jack had climbed down
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: and climbed down and climbed down till he was very
• 13:48
  Speaker 4: nearly home. He called out, Mother!
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: Mother!
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: Bring me an axe! Bring me an axe! and his
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: mother came rushing out with the axe in her hand.
• 13:59
  Speaker 4: But when she came to the beanstalk, she stood stock
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: still with fright, for there she saw the ogre with
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: his legs just through the clouds. But Jack jumped down,
• 14:10
  Speaker 4: got hold of the axe, and gave a chop at
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: the beanstalk, which cut it half in two. The ogre
• 14:16
  Speaker 4: felt the beanstalk shake and quiver, so he stopped to
• 14:19
  Speaker 4: see what was the matter. Then Jack gave another chop
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: with the axe, and the beanstalk was cut in two
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: and began to topple over. Then the ogre fell down,
• 14:30
  Speaker 4: broke his crown, and the beanstalk came tumbling after. Then
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: Jack showed his golden harp, and what was showing that
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: and selling the golden eggs, Jack and his mother became
• 14:41
  Speaker 4: very rich, and he married a great princess, and they
• 14:45
  Speaker 4: lived happily ever after.
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: Oh, one of my favorite stories. Um, Before we dive
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: in to begin discussing this one, which I can't wait
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: to do, I just want to mention to our listeners
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: that if you want more Jung in your life, you
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: could consider joining the Philadelphia Jung Seminar, which is now enrolling,
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: and it meets eight times a year on weekends. starting
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: in September here in Philadelphia. So it's a wonderful opportunity.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: It's where the three of us got our start. It's
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: where we met. It's where we trained. You do not
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: have to be a clinician to do it. You could
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: just be a person with a serious interest in Jung.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: I will be teaching one of the sessions in October.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: I'd love to see you there. So you can head
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: on over to their website, which is cgyungphiladelphia.org. and take
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: a look at the seminar.
• 15:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, the syllabus is available. It's up online, so you
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: can look at that too and let yourself be tantalized.
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: So why is this tale purportedly over 5,000 years old
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: such a perennial favorite? It always tickles me, and I
• 16:11
  Speaker 4: think it is... because it feels like Jack's original transgression
• 16:17
  Speaker 4: and his daring and his pluck is rewarded. He does
• 16:22
  Speaker 4: the wrong thing, the non-common sense thing. Oh my God,
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: what an idiot would sell a cow for a bunch
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: of beans. And then it all works out.
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: You know, I think that this tale is, it picks
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: up many themes. I mean, one of the themes I
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: think it really elucidates is is that kind of youthful
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: transition to adulthood. But along with that, as you were
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: picking up, Deb, there is this theme in this story
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: about making room for the intuition, the flight of fancy,
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: the impulse that doesn't seem entirely rational, and how important
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that is. And I think that, you know, in some sense,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: if we want to think about it fairly concretely, sometimes
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: there is a mismatch between a parent and a child,
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: you know, but where the parent may be very rational
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: and the child may be a little bit more, let's say,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: a little bit more intuitive. And the parent's like, no,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: you got to follow this straight and narrow. And the
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: kid's like, you know, watch me. And then goes out
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: and like founds Apple or something, you know. But also
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: the same dynamic obviously exists within each of us. And
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: it's like, where do we make room? for those intuitions.
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: And I am leaning into intuition because I think that
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: Jack is a good image for what intuition looks like.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: Intuition makes these incredible leaps, sees possibilities in places where
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: other people don't see possibilities. And if you are a
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: very intuitive person, and that kind of happens for you
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: a lot, you know, it can be a little bit
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: painful because people do sort of say, oh, what do
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: they say? It's like, you got your head in the clouds,
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: you know? It's like, you know, you gotta be more practical.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think I'm just gonna show my hand
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: right here at the top. This story speaks to me
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: because I was that kid and my parents were like, no, no, no,
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: you have to be more practical. And even now in
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: my adult life, I'm like, let's start a podcast.
• 18:33
  Speaker 5: And, you know, my husband was like, That's a wild idea.
• 18:35
  Speaker 5: Why are you doing that? You don't have time to
• 18:39
  Speaker 5: do that. I'm like, no, I want to do it,
• 18:40
  Speaker 5: you know.
• 18:41
  Speaker 2: So the little bit of kind of shame that I
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: carry around having these big ideas, and I'm just like
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: rooting for Jack, you know, that it's all going to
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: work out. So I think that's just one of the themes, though.
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: But I like your illustration of adding a certain kind of,
• 18:59
  Speaker 4: but I want to, and it's a really great idea,
• 19:01
  Speaker 4: and it really lights me up, and I want to
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: do a podcast. that there is that element to Jack
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: trading the cow for the beans. It's not a deep
• 19:12
  Speaker 4: intuition that says, you know, I'm really sensing a great
• 19:15
  Speaker 4: truth here. It's like, oh, that sounds cool.
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: Well, he gets excited about the possibility because the man
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: says they'll grow up to the sky and he gets
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: taken by this kind of expansive possibility that doesn't immediately
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: have a practical application. Right.
• 19:33
  Speaker 4: And that's what I think we all delight in, is
• 19:37
  Speaker 4: the kid with the crazy idea that works out. Or,
• 19:43
  Speaker 4: you know, a woman, let's say, who thinks of starting
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: a podcast, of There's a validation for the possibility, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 4: thing that doesn't make sense, and going for it. And
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: it's a delight. It really is a delight.
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: One of the things that strikes me about intuition as
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: a function is that it has an innate... understanding of possibilities,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: which is always so interesting. Of course, one of the
• 20:15
  Speaker 3: problems is that we often don't have a sense of timeline. Right.
• 20:20
  Speaker 3: So it's not uncommon, you know, when I talk to
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: young people and they're considering dating or maybe they're in
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: a relationship and they're frustrated, intuitive types will often date
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: somebody or fall in love with them because of their potential,
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: their possibility, but they have no sense of whether or
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: not that's going to actualize in one year or 30.
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: So they're feeling vulnerable to the whole Kronos aspect of intuition.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: So Jack, just as you were saying, senses this potential
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: in the beings, and beings are symbols of potential. I mean,
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: they have things hidden in them that are not visible
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: in the moment. And he trusts that. And the guy
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: who's selling him the beans also is an interesting image, perhaps,
• 21:07
  Speaker 3: of the self. where he's gifted this extraordinary potential, introduces
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: him to these five potentials. Now, it is interesting. I
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: don't know why there aren't five beanstalks that grow up
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: after they're thrown out. But something that is alien to
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: him knows about potential, and at least he's able to
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: recognize that.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: I remember my children's book version of this when I
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: was a kid, like the beans were like these beautiful
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: colors and they were so like tantalizing and kind of,
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: I just, I wanted to hold those beautiful, beautiful beans.
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: But yes, and you know, beans are a little bit
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: egg-shaped too. So they do really kind of carry this potential. Joseph,
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: I love your point about like the timeline, like the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: intuitive can be like, I know that's good. I have
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: no idea like how it's going to actually actualize, but
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: I can see the potential. And like, I'm not kidding,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: but like I didn't even tell my husband that I
• 22:13
  Speaker 2: was going to do the podcast until like it was
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: a done thing because.
• 22:16
  Speaker 5: I knew he was going to be like, why?
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Why are you doing this? And he was.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: And then he said, you're going to run out of
• 22:24
  Speaker 2: topics in like 30 weeks. So my husband and I
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: have a little bit of the dynamic in this fairy tale,
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: which is actually good because one does need to be
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: grounded and he helps keep me grounded.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: You planted the beans before he could throw them out
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: the window.
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: Yes, that's right.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: But actually, so to just start back a little bit
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: in this story, because we begin with this kind of
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: cast of characters. There's this mother, there's her son Jack,
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: and there's the cow. So the cow is this huge
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: archetypal image, right? That's often associated with the mother. Cows
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: give milk. So there's this kind of, you know, maternal stuff.
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: And the cow, we learn, stops giving milk. So it's
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: a real image of kind of like psychological poverty. A
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: cow that gives milk is a kind of a continual
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: source of sustenance. But once a cow stops giving milk,
• 23:23
  Speaker 2: All you can do is, unless you get it pregnant
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: again and it starts giving milk again, all you can
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: do is butcher it and that's it. Like once you
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: butcher a cow, it doesn't keep on giving. So there
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: is something here about the quality of the mother complex,
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: which is, you know, castigating and critical. And also, there
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: isn't a lot of generosity there.
• 23:49
  Speaker 5: The maternal.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: The warm maternal milk has stopped. And, you know, and
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: as a tale about the passage to adulthood, that might
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: actually be important. Because as long as the cow is
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: giving milk, Jack can just stay there with his feet
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: up under the stove being comfortable. It's when the cow
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: stops giving milk. that Jack has to go out and
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: meet his destiny, and he does.
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: And he does.
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: And he doesn't meet it in a sensible, well-thought-out, pragmatic way.
• 24:25
  Speaker 5: One's destiny is never like that, though.
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: But I think it illustrates some of that, that the
• 24:31
  Speaker 4: world of childhood, of the sustaining mother milk-giving cow... It's
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: another variation on you have to leave the garden. You
• 24:44
  Speaker 4: have to leave the protected realm of childhood. You can't
• 24:49
  Speaker 4: just be passive and be fed.
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: And he enters the world of transaction, of now the
• 24:57
  Speaker 4: cow is an item that has a certain market value
• 25:01
  Speaker 4: and or will be butchered. But there's not really a
• 25:07
  Speaker 4: relationship in a certain sense. It was a function. It
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: was a provider. And then Jack meets the old man,
• 25:16
  Speaker 4: the trickster, who sells, here's some magic beans.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: But he's not a trickster, actually. He's giving him this
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: incredible thing. But There is this idea of sacrifice, that
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: the cow must be sacrificed, and that it's appropriate because
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: it's no longer generative. That it might still require care
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: and feeding, but it can no longer support the family
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: in a generative way. And so the sensibility of the
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: mother is, we have to sacrifice the cow, we'll take
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: the gold, and then we'll open a shop. that we're
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: going to enter into the marketplace and the world of commerce,
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: which is also kind of a developmental arc. It's like
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: we can't just sit here and watch the cow eat
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: grass and milk it, but now we've got to do
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: something else. And in a sense, the mother is carrying
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: or transitioning from the mother world into the father world.
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: We're trying to help Jack transition and introduce him to
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: the world. which is a world of commerce and jobs
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: and earning a living. So she's trying to carry that
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: energy because she's a widow. There's no father for him
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: to apprentice with. But a father figure, in a sense,
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: is encountered on the road and gives him a potential.
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: And if we want to think about it, the beans are,
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: in fact, you know, sort of a spiritual potential, right?
• 26:53
  Speaker 2: So this is this is the role of the father
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: to sort of introduce the son to the world of spirit.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: You know, the mother is so kind of earthbound in
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: this case. And archetypally, that is true of the mother archetype.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: But here is the kind of a father figure saying,
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: look at the world of possibility. Look at the world
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: of spirit. Look at the world, not just of, you know,
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: how much can we I want to say one more thing.
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: I like what you said about sacrificing the cow. We
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: could think about it in a slightly different way as well,
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: which is the cow gets traded for the beans. If
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: we think about the cow as a sort of image
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: of the good enough mother, a good enough mother in
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: childhood can lead one to the point where you can
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: parlay that into an expansive life that includes a life
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: of spirit. There's some kind of translation there.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: The other thing that I'm just thinking about is in
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: old Jewish tradition, there's something called midrash or drash, which
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: is that you look at a piece of text and
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: then you wonder about the missing pieces. So I find
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: myself wondering about the ongoing life of the cow.
• 28:15
  Speaker 5: I was thinking about that too.
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: What happened to the cow? What about the cow?
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: What about poor old Milky White?
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: Went off with the guy with magic beans. What's the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: next stage of the life of the cow?
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: I have been stuck on the place with Milky White
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: of the relational piece. After all these years, it says
• 28:37
  Speaker 4: Milky White to herself, this is what I get. You know,
• 28:42
  Speaker 4: I start to sort of age in place and one
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: day I can't give milk and they decide to dump me.
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: And then she gets traded. This man wants her. Yeah.
• 28:54
  Speaker 4: In order to do exactly what we hope give her
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: a nice retirement.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: We hope.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Because she is kind of a pet. I mean, they've
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: named the cow. It's not just the cow. It's Milky White.
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: So Milky White has a personality, apparently.
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: So what do we do with that part of the
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: mother principle that is just part of a transaction?
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: I like a midrash on Chuck and the Beanstalk, what
• 29:24
  Speaker 2: happens to the cow. Someone could write like a whole
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: story about the life of the cow, what happens.
• 29:30
  Speaker 3: Exactly. It's like that book Circe, where an author imagined
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: the midrash, droshed the life of Circe, the ongoing life.
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: We could write this, the three of us. We'll title
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: it Milky White, turn it into a musical.
• 29:50
  Speaker 5: Oh, that's great. I love it. Okay.
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: Cats worked. Cows worked.
• 29:56
  Speaker 5: Wait, who gets to be Milky White?
• 29:58
  Speaker 3: A bunch of aspiring chorus boys dressed like cows, you know, dancing.
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: I think it's a fine idea, Joseph. And moving on,
• 30:10
  Speaker 4: but the book you're referring to is entitled Circe, and
• 30:14
  Speaker 4: it's a retelling of a part of the tale from
• 30:18
  Speaker 4: the Odyssey and Circe by a woman named Madeline Miller.
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: And it is a great read if you're interested. Another
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: sort of fairytale equivalent part of a myth, but go
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: for it if you want.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think that our Milky White, the musical,
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: is going to be quite as highbrow as Sorcey, but
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: nor will it, you know, win awards and become a bestseller.
• 30:43
  Speaker 2: But in any case, so the next thing that happens
• 30:47
  Speaker 2: is Jack comes home and.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: No, all I'm.
• 30:49
  Speaker 4: Thinking about is everybody loves a musical. There's a musical
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: with a magic cow.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about like moo, like a different note. Like
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: how is this all going to play out? It's the beans,
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: the magic beans have landed. And now we've sold the
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: podcast to the guy on the road and we're writing
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: a musical about cows.
• 31:16
  Speaker 4: We have to do it.
• 31:18
  Speaker 5: How did we get here?
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: We're in it. We're in the fairy tale.
• 31:22
  Speaker 5: This is totally the spirit of the fairy tale.
• 31:25
  Speaker 4: It's Telos.
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: We're there.
• 31:26
  Speaker 4: It's our individuation path.
• 31:28
  Speaker 5: It's the constellated field.
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker 5: Meanwhile.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: So, Jack comes back, and there are five. Let's talk
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: about five for a minute, though. There are five senses,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: five fingers, five points on the pentagram. Five is one
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: of those mystical numbers that people think about. And I
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: just wonder about the fiveness of it. Two in each hand,
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: one in the mouth.
• 32:04
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: So is it the fact that it's kind of a
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: mystical number, is that part of what kind of underscores
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: the fact that this is not about practicality?
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: Right, it's not a bag of beans or a pouch
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: of beans. There's something so specific about the fiveness of it.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: And again, my first association is with the senses. And
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: he's talking about touch and taste. I'm just thinking about it.
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: Two in each hand, one in the mouth. The other
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: thing that I would say about that is the hands
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: and the mouth all, in a sense, are similar to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: putting them in the soil. They're dark and moist. Like
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: if you were holding a hand like this, there's a
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: moisture in that. So he's already planting them, you know,
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: imaginatively in his mouth and in his hands.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: The other thing that is five-pointed is kind of the
• 33:06
  Speaker 2: human form, right? Two feet, two hands, and a head.
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: So there is something really elemental about this, the fiveness.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: Also, many plants have five petals, five leaves. It's a
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: very organic number.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Because it's a Fibonacci number.
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: What is a Fibonacci number?
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Fibonacci. This came up with our recent episode on the
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: Buddha brat. I was trying to remember it. I think it's,
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: you take one plus one equals two, and then the
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: sequence is.
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: You add the last number to the previous number, and
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: you get the next, and you add that to the
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: previous number. And it creates a spiral.
• 33:47
  Speaker 4: Right, yes.
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: And then five plus three is eight, like that. And so, yeah,
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: so you see like Fibonacci numbers turn up in nature
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: all the time. And like you're saying, there's often five
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: petals or, yeah. So it's part of the implicate order
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: of the cosmos, the number five.
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: And there's something also about the implication that it's, precious
• 34:14
  Speaker 3: because it's measured out. It's not a hundred pound bag
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: of beans, in which case we don't have a, like,
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: I guess we're going to cook beans or plant them.
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: But when somebody is giving you something special and valuable,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: they don't give you a sack of it, generally speaking.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: They give you, you know, a singular amount because of
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: its preciousness. So I think there's something about that that
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: I think is signaled in the unconscious of the listener.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking actually of a dream that one of
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: our dream school students had, and he very kindly let
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: us use it in our book, Dreamwise. And I think
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: it actually is a great amplification of Jack and the Beanstalker,
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: maybe the other way around. I'd never thought of this before,
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: but So, um, this, this young man, uh, was engaged in, um,
• 35:11
  Speaker 2: in a, in the performing arts. And, and then when
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: COVID happened, that dried up and he's, he kind of
• 35:18
  Speaker 2: told himself, and I hope I'm not botching the story
• 35:21
  Speaker 2: too badly.
• 35:21
  Speaker 5: You know, I've got to get a real job. I've
• 35:24
  Speaker 5: got to, I've got to get a practical job.
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: And then he had a dream that, um, he was,
• 35:29
  Speaker 2: he was told to go down to the pond and, um,
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: kill one of the koi that lived in the pond
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: and bring it in for dinner. And when he was
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: killing this koi, it felt so wrong. And then it
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: turned into this puppy and it just was agonizing. When
• 35:47
  Speaker 2: he works with the dream and analysis, what he realized
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: is that koi fish are not food. They're not food.
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: They're beautiful and they're jewel-like and they're mystical and they're intelligent.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: They're not for eating. They're things of beauty. And so
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: that internal voice that he had saying, get a real job,
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: you know, actually was leading him astray to kind of
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: like kill the beautiful coy. Like, no, it's not practical
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: to be in the performing arts, right? I mean, that
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: doesn't work out for lots of people. But Um, but
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: it wasn't right for him to sacrifice that. And by
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: the way, he's doing fabulously in that field now.
• 36:32
  Speaker 5: So that's, it was, you know, it was, the psyche
• 36:35
  Speaker 5: was right.
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: So.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: But there's something here that you're touching on of, of
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: the dream, uh, the possibility.
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 36:44
  Speaker 4: Of, uh, just kill the dream. Uh, we need to eat, uh,
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: bring the koi in. Uh, magical beans. That doesn't make sense. Uh, take,
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: get to the market and, and start, uh, bargaining and negotiating.
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: You know, there's something soul-crushing about that, that there can
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: be magic. And, you know, just stay with yourself and
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: with what you hope for and where your calling is.
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: And for kids, for our hero, Jack, you know, we
• 37:17
  Speaker 4: do all these things because we understand there has to
• 37:20
  Speaker 4: be some magic in childhood, of all the magic around
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: the tooth fairy and all kinds of holiday magic, Santa
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: Claus and so on, that we understand that that kind
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: of magic goes into a child's heart and psyche and
• 37:42
  Speaker 4: lets them believe, like the young man you were referencing, of,
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: I can do something big. I could, I could, at
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: least I can try.
• 37:57
  Speaker 5: So by the way, the.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Dream was so helpful to this young man. And it
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: was great that he was a member of dream school
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: because he was able, he was helped to work with
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: the dream and understand it. And it became a real
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: kind of guiding line for him. So if you would
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: like to learn to work with your dreams, And I
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: didn't do this on purpose, honestly.
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: But it's a good segue. It's a good segue.
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: It's sprouted. Yes.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: So, you know, consider joining Dream School. It's our 12-month
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: online program that helps you learn to work with your dreams.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: Trade in your unproductive cow and join Dream School.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 38:44
  Speaker 5: It's just right.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: Right. Just bring us your cows. And we will give
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: you five magic beans. And you can check out Dream
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: School at our website, thisjungianlife.com.
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: Actually, we'll give you 12 modules and dream groups and
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: all kinds of things.
• 39:01
  Speaker 5: And live meetings with us.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: And yeah, so I just want to go to this
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: point where Jack comes home and he's so excited, right?
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: Because again, I've been there.
• 39:12
  Speaker 5: I'm like, guess what? I'm going to do this. And
• 39:16
  Speaker 5: then my parents are like, What?
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: You're going to do what? You know, he just feels
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: like he has made a big deal. He's done something great.
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: He can't wait to share it. And his mother is
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: really kind of crushing. She says, you're an adult. You're
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: an idiot. And again, you know, this can be an
• 39:39
  Speaker 2: inner dynamic. So you might have a really great idea.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: And then there's a part of you that says.
• 39:46
  Speaker 5: Oh, you're an idiot. That will never work. What are
• 39:48
  Speaker 5: you talking about?
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: And just beware of that voice, because sometimes those big ideas,
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: they may sound a little crazy, but maybe they just
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: need to sit for a bit, just kind of have
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: a little space. And maybe you will wake up in
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: the morning and think, yeah, that was crazy. And, you know,
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: I can't really do that. But who knows? You know,
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: so that interchange strikes me as really important that they have.
• 40:17
  Speaker 4: We just did an episode on the inner critic, and
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: that there, Jack's mother, it could also be the birth
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: of the inner critic.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: You know, what a dumbo.
• 40:29
  Speaker 5: You did what? Oh, my God.
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: Go to bed, no dinner. And it's interesting that that's
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: such a motif in stories of you have to go
• 40:39
  Speaker 4: to bed without any supper, that that's the punishment.
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: Withhold the milk.
• 40:43
  Speaker 4: Exactly.
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: Exactly. But interestingly, she is also the agent that's necessary
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: because Jack, she could have said, go to your room,
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: Jack puts the five beans in his junk drawer and
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: it sits there for 25 years. That it's the fateful mistake,
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: so to speak, and it's the frustration that casts the
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: beans onto the fertile soil that nobody kind of expects.
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: But had... had the mother principle not cast them to
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: the ground, we would have no story and maybe they
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: would have all starved before anybody thought of putting the
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: beans in the soil.
• 41:27
  Speaker 4: All right, the Felix Culpa, the happy accident.
• 41:32
  Speaker 2: And in every version of the story, it's the mother
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: who throws the beans out the window. That is so
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: critically important. And if you want to wrap it around
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: in a slightly different way, you know, I was talking
• 41:42
  Speaker 2: before about My husband getting kind of frustrated at me
• 41:45
  Speaker 2: with my my crazy ideas. And, you know, and I
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: can understand why he sometimes gets frustrated. But but, you know,
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: I mean, and I I think I've encouraged him to
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: sometimes have a little more imagination. But he likewise sometimes says, well,
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: slow down. No, we are not putting a hot tub
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: on the roof. You know, that is just not going
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: to happen, you know? And like, that is helpful to
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: me to have that more kind of grounding voice being,
• 42:13
  Speaker 2: sometimes it's dampening, but sometimes it's really important. And arguably,
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: the impulse, say, to start a podcast, nothing would happen
• 42:25
  Speaker 2: with it unless you put it in the soil. So
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: you've got this great idea, then you do need a
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: little bit of that practical mother energy to say, okay,
• 42:34
  Speaker 2: what do we need? We have to buy equipment. We
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: have to figure out this. We have to, you know,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: set up social media accounts or whatever it is, you know?
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: So it's the both and. It's the way those two
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: things can work together, that expansive, visionary, intuitive capacity, along
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: with the practicality of knowing that you need to just
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: get out there with your shovel and dig in the dirt, although...
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: These just land and grow. But there's something really important
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: about that mother energy, too.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: And there's something important about frustration that is so central
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: to the analytic venture that one of the change processes
• 43:22
  Speaker 3: that has to do with the calcinatio is that by
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: frustrating an impulse, and holding onto it in some fashion
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: or taking it to ground, it allows the initial impulse
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: to go through transformations and reveal something that was hidden
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: inside of it. So frustration in general is an agent
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: of transformation if it's held in the right way. Yeah.
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: So the beans go sailing. Jack goes to bed.
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: And next day? Guess what?
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: The axis mundi has sprouted in the backyard. The axis
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: mundi is part of a mythic image that there is
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: something that connects heaven and earth. And we internalize that
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: in terms of Jungian psychology as the ego-self axis. But
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: it's part of actually an ancient Kabbalistic idea. that there
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: is a structure between the vertical and the earthly that
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: one must learn about and learn to rise through on
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: the Merkaba, which is the sacred chariot. So this shows
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: up in many, this impulse, this mythic theme, that there
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: is a secret and living path between our earthly life
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: and the transcendental. And this can be shown by either
• 44:58
  Speaker 3: going down or up, but it has to do with
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: moving away from the surface of the earth to this
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: other way of being.
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about the ladder, that he climbs up it
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: like a ladder. Just all of the tales and physical
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: structures that give outward evidence of of man's inherent desire
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: to have a connection with the transcendent. You know, things
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: like ziggurats and, you know, and towers.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: And, you know, we go up.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: It's up there, the world of spirit that we mentioned before.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: And now he has a ladder. And they connect the
• 45:49
  Speaker 4: realms together. that's the image of here's how you connect
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: the realms. And he climbs the ladder that is the beanstalk,
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: that is the axis mundi, that is the bridge.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: Right. And I think it's significant that it's not just
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: any ladder, right? It's a beanstalk, which is magical. Like
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: beans are ordinary. I mean, you know, they're ordinary things.
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: I've got pounds of dried beans in my cupboard right now,
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: and they're so humble. The bean is so humble in
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: a way. But as we spoke about before, it also
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: contains these hidden things, and these are magical beans.
• 46:29
  Speaker 5: So it gives you.
• 46:31
  Speaker 2: A sense of what it takes to be connected with
• 46:34
  Speaker 2: that other realm. Yes, you need a sort of certain
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: humility and earthiness, but you also need to have that
• 46:43
  Speaker 2: ability to sort of believe in magic, if you will.
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: But we could even say that the whole beanstalk is
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: a dream because he goes to sleep and the fairy
• 46:54
  Speaker 3: tale begins. So if this were turned into a movie,
• 46:58
  Speaker 3: the last scene in the movie might be Jack rubbing
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: his eyes and realizing that everything that just happened happened
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: in the dream world. So there is this dimming of
• 47:09
  Speaker 3: consciousness that happens as the axis mundi is activating and
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: then he's going to find this remarkable capacity for risk
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: and adventure. And that's something that everyone needs, but boys
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: really need. And a boy without a father could wind
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: up clinging to his mother's apron strings. So she kind
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: of kicks him out onto the road, which is great. Like,
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: you go. I'm not going to go sell that cow.
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: You need to go and learn how to sell a cow.
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: But he also needs to kind of leave the kitchen.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: And it's his hunger that drives him because that's the
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: first thing that he asks for. He's like, I am hungry.
• 47:53
  Speaker 3: So again, mom's like, I'm not feeding you. The milk
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: is gone. And his hunger is part of the drive
• 48:04
  Speaker 3: to engage the beanstalk.
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: That's exactly right. The theme of hunger that runs through it,
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: the cow that doesn't have any more milk and then
• 48:16
  Speaker 4: all the other things that transpire. And when Jack gets
• 48:20
  Speaker 4: up there to the realm of the ogre and his wife,
• 48:25
  Speaker 4: the first thing he says is, I'm hungry, give me
• 48:27
  Speaker 4: something to eat. He's not afraid to ask for something. Exactly.
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: It's a very healthy response, or even a healthy regression,
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: for that matter.
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's persistent. No, come on, I'm hungry, give
• 48:43
  Speaker 2: me something.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: So he's in that kind of crying baby place, but
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: that's very much connected to his body and to instincts,
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: which is an interesting paradigm because he's in this mythic world,
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: but he's also connected to his body, which is, you know,
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: bemoaning his hunger.
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: And he finds this other kind of mother figure, right,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: in the giant's wife or the ogre's wife. And And
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: she's not a good mother, but she's not a terrible
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: mother either. She does give him something to eat and
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: hide him in the oven.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Now, that's a complicated symbol. You know, you got a
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: bun in the oven, eh? Like, is that a regression
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: back to the uterus of the great and mythic mother?
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: That he's, that's something, he's being cooked in some way.
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: That's right. And like an infant is hidden, like a
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: bean is hidden in the soil.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: I want to circle around this a little bit more
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: because the giant eats little boys all the time, along
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: with oxen and anything else. But there's something about Jack
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: and the fact that he has arrived up there in
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: the ogre's realm. versus presumably the ogre going down to
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: earth and just snatching up oxen and kids and anything
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: else randomly, that also spurs the ogre's wife to say, okay,
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: I will feed you and I will protect you. And
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: Jack made it up there rather than what is down
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: on earth. So There is something special about him, his
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: ability to have a spunk, to figure it out, to
• 50:37
  Speaker 4: ask for what he wants, and to get up to
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: the realm of what?
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: An ogre.
• 50:47
  Speaker 4: The ogre rules this territory. So he's, you know, I
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: go back to Karen Horney, who talks about, do you
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: approach something? Do you go toward it? Do you push
• 51:01
  Speaker 4: against it? Do you run away from it or hide?
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: And Jack has demonstrated the going toward, the embracing of life,
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: of his life, and the risk, ability to take risk,
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: and that that sets something else in motion symbolized by
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: the ogre's wife saying, here, pop into the oven, and
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: he won't see you.
• 51:30
  Speaker 3: So he's going to heaven. His father has died. His
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: mother's a widow. And then he finds this mythic father who,
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: much like Saturn, eats children, might eat his own child.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: But he's got to find a way in the spirit
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: world to take his inheritance from the father that lives
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: in the sky. Because all of Those objects are potentials
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: that were lost or went into the sky with the
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: death of his father. And that explains a little bit
• 52:11
  Speaker 3: of his entitlement. Because he seems like a scoundrel in
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: a certain way. He's stealing things. But there is a
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: way in which a son does need to take something
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: from the father for himself. which could be attitudes, capacities, traits, talents,
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: and particularly when the father is not there, and here
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: it's because of death, that the boy needs to then
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: turn to the archetypal realm to discover what the father
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: archetype can give him, because the living father is gone,
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: and the archetypal father is mythically dead. enormous and powerful
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: and unpredictable and dangerous because he hasn't been mediated by
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: a lived father experience. And yet, this is where Calshed
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: talks to us, is when there is a poverty of
• 53:12
  Speaker 3: something in the physical world, the archetypal world activates to
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: give the missing thing.
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: And you're referencing Donald Calshed, and we can put that
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: in the show notes of a number of his books.
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, I really like what you're doing, sort of
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: lifting up that this is the archetypal father. And the
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: archetypal father, just to make it really plain, is the
• 53:37
  Speaker 2: possessor of the great riches.
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: The negative father also has riches. And that's a great,
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: I think, a great explication of exactly how this works.
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: That Jack goes there and experiences this huge negative archetypal father.
• 53:59
  Speaker 4: But on the other side, since it's archetypal, there's light
• 54:02
  Speaker 4: as well as dark. There's good as well as bad.
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: There's withholding and there are riches. How do you get
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: the riches? Well, you steal them. You take them.
• 54:16
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you have to be bold. You have to be bold.
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: Sometimes you just....
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: And bring it to earth.
• 54:25
  Speaker 5: Exactly.
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: And that the thing that is really wrong and naughty,
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: you shouldn't steal, serves growth and development. It serves the soul.
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: So Joseph, you made that great point before. I thought
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: it was a delightful image. He could have stuck them
• 54:41
  Speaker 2: in his junk drawer, the beans, right? So that's one
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: mistake we can all make. We can take our magic
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: beans and stick them in the junk drawer and then
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: nothing ever happens. The other mistake we can make, which
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: is what you just referenced, is we can go up
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: to the clouds and not bring anything back down to earth.
• 55:00
  Speaker 3: Exactly. Which is a schizoid trait of retreating from the world,
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: finding the delicious magical world. But the real fun thing
• 55:10
  Speaker 3: is to go to the magical world, not to bring
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: anything back. And this is where it's the Don Quixote complex.
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: It's also kids that compensate for difficulties in infancy by
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: being lost in gaming. Or it all lives in the
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: sky and often is a heroic tale of monsters and
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: fighting and secret weapons and then the game gets turned
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: off and nothing is brought back to enrich the day-to-day
• 55:46
  Speaker 3: life so it's a great seduction but jack has enough
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: connection to his hunger to his body like his his
• 55:56
  Speaker 3: belly aches so just visiting the sky is going to
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: leave him hurting if he doesn't bring something back.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: He also did, in spite of our being critical of
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: his mother, he also did kind of have a good
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: enough mother, because he does bring it back to her,
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: and that's okay. You know, just, Deb, you started off
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: by talking about how ancient this tale was. There's a
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: little echo here, I think, of sort of a pagan worldview,
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: because we have the earth mother, and then we have
• 56:32
  Speaker 2: the sky god father. And most mythological symptoms, earth is
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: associated with the mother goddess and the sky is associated
• 56:41
  Speaker 2: with the father god. The only one I'm aware of
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: where that's not the case is in Egyptian mythology, the
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: sky is actually a goddess.
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: And I think Beore symbolism as well. But I want
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: to lean into this idea which I'm finding so fun
• 57:02
  Speaker 3: with this fairy tale. about the idea of mediating the archetype,
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: that when Jungian work was kind of taking off and developing,
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: and this is subsequent to Jung's passing, that various schools
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: of Jungian thought began to differentiate. And one school of
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: Jungian thought, which was pioneered by a guy named Fordham,
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: had this particular idea that inside of the child, all
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: of the archetypes are present, and that as the child
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: experiences certain things in the lived world, a part of
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: the archetype breaks off or disintegrates. It comes into the
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: psychology of the child, and then it blooms again or
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: sprouts or resides because the lived experience joins with the
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: archetype And then the archetype has a costume, has a shape,
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: a feeling, a tone. And that over the course of life,
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: but certainly childhood, bits of the archetype get put in.
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: So this explains to me why the mother in the
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: sky is more human. Because he's had an experience of
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: a mother.
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 58:24
  Speaker 3: His physical mother is real. So the archetype of the
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: mother has real components to it. So when he comes
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: to the sky, he knows how to engage. He never
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: really engages the father, by the way. He just takes
• 58:38
  Speaker 3: from it. He knows how to talk to the mother.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: He knows how to make requests. She behaves in a
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: way that's much more like his own mother. She's kind
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: of rough. but she does make sure his fundamental needs
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: are met, and he knows what to do with her.
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: The father being absent, he doesn't have lived experiences of
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: the father, so the father archetype stays strange and monstrous
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: and inhuman, but full of life, and the monster is
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: also the monster the ogre father is hungry he's constantly
• 59:17
  Speaker 3: talking about hunger and that's jack i mean so that
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: there's this secret little echo going back and forth He eats.
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: Two oxen for breakfast and a broiled boy on toast.
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: I love that.
• 59:31
  Speaker 4: My favorite.
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: And that boy probably feels like he could eat two oxen,
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: you know, as a teenage boy.
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: I want to go back to the idea of the stealing.
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: And that in line with all this of daring and
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: going toward and facing the ogre father, it's very Promethean.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: You know, Prometheus dared to steal fire from the gods
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: and bring it to man. Yep. Take it from the
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: transcendent realm and bring it down to earth. Then you
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: can cook your food and have good things to eat.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 4: And in line with what you guys were talking about,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 4: if you have to bring it home to earth, and
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 4: like you were saying, Joseph, which is very different from
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: just gaming. What can you use out of that to
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 4: feed your very real hunger and that the physical hunger
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: is a metaphor for our own personal growth and development?
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: What do you really need? What is the nourishment that
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 4: your mind, your body, your soul really needs? What's the food?
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: What's the treasure? Where's the fire? If you're going to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: take it, make sure you're taking the right thing.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: What's interesting is the first thing he steals is the
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: father's gold. And we often talk about the difference between
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: dark shadow and gold shadow. That we all have these,
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: like the father in the sky has this cannibalistic energy.
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's a dangerous kind of shadow. But he
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: also has gold in shadow. So... he goes up and
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: he steals the father's golden shadow, but that's not adequate.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 3: We can ape, we can live out our father's positive potential,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: but it has an expiration date. They spend it and
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 3: it's gone because it isn't the boy's masculine potential, it's
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: his father's potential. So it becomes exhausted because he can't
• 1:01:41
  Speaker 3: generate something that he's borrowing from the father. So Then
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 3: he needs to go up and he needs to find
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: something that's living and generative. That's something that he can
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: do something with.
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 2: Right. The difference between the gold and then the hen
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: that lays the golden egg. First of all, I did
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 2: keep backyard poultry for a little while. And they are
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 2: extraordinarily prolific, right? You go out and you collect.
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: That is a tragic story that you'll need to tell someday. Yes.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: I know. I know.
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was.
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 2: It was very sad. It involved foxes and raccoons and hawks.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 2: And I think you can probably just imagine.
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 5: But they, you know, they lay almost every day. So
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 5: you go out and you collect the eggs.
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 2: So if you had a hen that laid golden eggs,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: you would have unlimited wealth, right? You Every day, you know,
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: it's a really charming image because it's a little bit
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 2: like having a cow who gives milk.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 5: It is.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Upon command.
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 5: Yes, yes. You just say lay.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: It's like AI. It's prefiguring artificial intelligence. You go to
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 3: your computer, you go to AI, and you give it
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: a command, and then it lays a golden egg. And
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: it gives it... It does whatever it is you want
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 3: it to write. But it's part of this fantasy. that
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: there's something out there that you can give a command
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 3: to and it produces upon command.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking of the Star Trek generator, you know, it's
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: like tea Earl Grey hot, you know, and it just appears.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: But then the third gift is, or the treasure is
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: the harp. So let's talk about the harp for a minute.
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: So I'm thinking the harp, it's something aesthetic, but it's
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: also something transcendent, right? Harps are associated with the music
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: of the heavens. So it's something about, it's going back
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: to our theme about selling the cow for, you know,
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: 15 pounds versus selling it for five magic beans.
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 5: Because music in and of itself.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 2: And this goes back to our dreamer that I mentioned
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: a little while ago, is not inherently valuable. You can't
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: have it for breakfast. It's not going to buff the
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: shine on your car for you. But it's something beautiful
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: that feeds the soul. Music feeds the soul. Those magic
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 2: beans feed the soul.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 5: And we need both.
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: The strikers in the mills in New England, one of
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: their strike songs was called Bread and Roses. We need bread,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: but we need roses, too. We need, yes, we need sustenance,
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 2: but then we also need beauty and spirituality and creativity
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: and art as well.
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 3: Well, if we take the three gifts, you know, the coins,
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: which in the tarot suit are also called pentacles, which
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: represent material concerns.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 5: And there's the five, by the way.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: Right. And I was thinking that is the four, and
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 3: then the fifth is the quintessence. Yes, so the coin,
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 3: I think, has to do with the body and the
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: physical and the doling out and how they use it.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: And this, of course, satisfies the mother's fantasy because she
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: wanted some money and then they would develop a shop.
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: Except that's not what she does, which is interesting. She
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: doesn't take that bag of gold and go to town
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 3: and set up a store. They just kind of spend it.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: over time. She doesn't invest it, they just use it.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: The hen, I think, represents, because hens are feminine, also
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: might represent the soul, the generativity of the soul. And
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: then the harp represents spirit, because the music of the
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: harp is not something tangible, it stimulates a subjective experience
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: inside of us. So I think we have body, soul,
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: and spirit, or we could play with it in that regard.
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: The very end of the tale, Jack does something so
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: important and necessary, which is he chops down the beanstalk.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 2: And I think, again, if we're looking at this as
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 2: a story about the transition from youth to adulthood, at
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: some point in the beginning, we have to believe in
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: the magic. But at some point, we have to be
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: ready to give up the magic. And then we're sort of,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: you know, living off the proceeds of the magic, as
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 2: it were. It's a little bit, it's a similar theme
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: as what happens in the story of the elves and
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 2: the shoemaker. As you know, the elves come for a
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 2: while with the shoemaker, the elves and the shoemaker. But
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: then the couple thanks them by giving them some clothes.
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: And then the elves don't come back, but the shoemaker prospers.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: And so it's sort of like, that's kind of what
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 2: happens more in midlife, right? It's like you, You give
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: up the magic. You have to give up the magic
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: to really become an adult. But in some sense, that
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 2: magic stays with you. You continue to benefit from it.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: It has changed you in a way that leaves you
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 2: with access to source and to liveliness. But you can't
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: just keep on living in the fantasy realm of unlimited possibility.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 2: You have to make, so it's a little bit like
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: perhaps you're 22, you're, you know, the world is your oyster.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: What are you going to go do?
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 5: You could backpack through Europe. You could do this. You
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 5: could do that.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: And then eventually you have all these adventures. And then
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 2: you're like, you know, I need to settle down and
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 2: pick a career. And so you go to graduate school
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: or get a job or something. And at that point,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: you're carrying all of that magic with you from those experiences.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 2: And those experiences have changed you. But you now see
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 2: that you can't just continue backpacking through Europe. You have
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: to get a job. That's chopping down the beanstalk. It's
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: not going to stay there forever.
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 3: And it shouldn't. The other thing that we're looking at
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 3: is that The relationship between the ego and the unconscious
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: has to function in a very specific way. And if
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 3: an archetype were to start crawling down the axis mundi
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 3: and showing up in your home, we call that psychosis.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 3: So the ogre, the archetypal father, is responding to the
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 3: cries of distress from his heart, is crying out for help.
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 3: So the ogre is doing what a father should do.
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 3: He's responding to this question. for help, but he is
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 3: not something that should be permitted to survive in our backyards,
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 3: in our day-to-day world. So Jack has to sacrifice this
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 3: connection to the unconscious in the way that it was developing.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: And it became problematic when he stole the harp, the
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: self-playing harp. Like that was the step too far. And
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: then all of a sudden, he's at risk for this
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: archetypal overwhelm.
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: It's a great progression, isn't it? That when he steals
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 4: the bag of gold, there is silence and off he goes.
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 4: When he steals the hen... The hen protests, cackles, and
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: the ogre wakes up. And when he steals the harp,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: the harp can cry out in language, master, master. So
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: each time the cost of the theft, the gift, is
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 4: a little bit more expensive.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: And Deb, to your point about Prometheus, the most Promethean
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: thing that he steals is that harp because it's something
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: that actually comes from the transcendent realm. And if we're
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: a creative person, if we write music, say, it often
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 2: is like we just drew something down from the other
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: realm that wound up kind of coming through us. There
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: is something Promethean about being an artist. because we've taken
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: something from that other realm.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 4: And so it's a whole question of how do we
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 4: deal with the unconscious and with the transcendent? What is
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: right relationship of ego and earth and body and senses
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 4: to the transcendent? Because ultimately, we do have to live
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 4: our lives here on earth doing all the things that
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 4: we have to do of getting the oil change in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 4: the car, not forgetting to pick up milk on the
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: way home, that the gifts are to be used in
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 4: the real world, in our daily lives, rather than just,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: isn't this great? You know, I don't have to do
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 4: a whole lot.
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: I have this hen.
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 4: All I have to do is say, lay, and ba-boom,
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 4: golden egg after golden egg. We have to develop agency.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 4: And accept limitations.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: Which is shown in the last sentence, which is so pragmatic.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 3: They show off the golden harp and they sell the
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 3: eggs and they create a shop. They create a business.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 3: And then as a result of that, they become quite successful.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 2: There is this kind of integration, right, of the jack
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 2: energy and the mother energy. And they're actually totally copacetic.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: She's not angry with him anymore. He doesn't seem to
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 2: be like, The old bag, I'm leaving you. You know,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: there's been some kind of... Oh, and he does marry
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 2: a princess, though, which is important, I think.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: He does, thank goodness, because it would be a problem
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: if that didn't happen. But I also am curious, like
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 3: often in dreams, and we can look at fairy tales
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 3: like dreams because we think of them as products of
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: the unconscious, that something happens and then the next thing happens.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: And we often assume... The previous thing was required for
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 3: the next thing to occur. So I'm interested again in
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: this idea that the beanstalk is cut, but the ogre,
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: the father in heaven, falls to earth, ostensibly right next
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: to the cottage. And from the corpse of the father
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: comes the next thing, which is the fertility thing. in
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: the physical plane. So there is something about that, and
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: I think we come back to the idea of mediating
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 3: the archetype. Though the father principle finally falls to earth,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 3: it looks inert in some ways, but Jack does become procreative,
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: and he's able to be generative and find a wife
• 1:13:26
  Speaker 3: and have a shop and become really wealthy. And although
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: it was violent in the way the archetype fell to
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 3: the earth. I think that is part of him having
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 3: the father principle in himself and being able to relate
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 3: to his mother correctly and then also to go and
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: have a life of his own with his princess.
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Just what an amazing story. Just so much fun
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 2: talking about it.
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 3: Our dreamer today is a 36-year-old male who works as
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 3: a marketing consultant, and he titles his dream, My Boys
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: Destroy the Crucifix. And here is his dream. I am
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 3: in a large amphitheater that is designed differently from a
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: typical amphitheater. Instead of seats descending towards the stage so
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: that everyone can see a performance, I The seats in
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: this amphitheater ascend up to a platform high above the seats.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: Because of the way the seats are arranged in steps
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: upwards to the stage instead of down, no one can
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: see what is happening on the stage. I find myself
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: the stage and know that my two sons are at
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 3: the top. I start running up the steps while I
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: hear the sound of a priest booming incomprehensibly over a loudspeaker.
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: He is performing a mass for the crowd that has gathered.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: At the top of the stairs, I reach the stage
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: and see, on a pedestal display, a broken remnant of
• 1:15:31
  Speaker 3: the true wooden crucifix on which Christ was crucified. my
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: two sons are chaotically tearing pieces of the crucifix off
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: in splintered shards. I yelled at them to stop, but
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: they don't hear me or won't listen. As I try
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: to prevent them from desecrating this spiritual artifact, I see
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: my wife at the back of the stage. I call
• 1:15:56
  Speaker 3: to her to help me stop my sons, but she
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 3: leaves silently through a door in a hole there. Through
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 3: this hole, I continue to hear the loud voice of
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: the priest over the loudspeakers, but I cannot see where
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 3: he is speaking from. For context, he writes, I have
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: been attempting to make a big career change to do
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 3: better supporting my growing family, and the time commitment has
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 3: been difficult for all of us. At this point, I
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 3: have resolved to no longer pursue this path. I was
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 3: raised Catholic and attended Catholic school until I was expelled
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: as a sophomore in high school. However, I'm not a
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: practicing Catholic and do not bring my children to church. Instead,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 3: our religious practices, when they do come up, are related
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 3: to my wife's Jewish family. He says the main feelings
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: in the dream were that he felt shocked that his
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 3: children were being so destructive to this sacred artifact and
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 3: that he had no control. To him, it felt like
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 3: they did not understand it was sacred. he felt that
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: he was alone in witnessing them do this since neither
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 3: the audience nor the priest could see what was happening.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: As for associations, he writes, At the time of this dream,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: my sons were ages four and five. They are wild,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: to put it mildly, and are frequently destroying things and
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: coming to blows with each other. Generally they are kind, creative,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: intelligent boys, and the rambunctiousness comes with their age. I
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 3: have not tried to impart any of my Catholic upbringing
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 3: into them in any way. So people may know that
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 3: at the Vatican, there's an enormous spire with a globe
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 3: on top of it, and the tradition is that the
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 3: single surviving remnant of the crucifix resides in this sacred
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 3: space elevated above the Vatican. And I imagine this, the dreamer,
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: whether he remembers it or not, may have a sense
• 1:18:11
  Speaker 3: that this also has a factual piece, you know, raised
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: upon high.
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure about this, but I think that, you know,
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: those reliquaries all throughout Europe, I think others of them
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 2: have like little splinters, like this is a splinter from
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: the true cross. And, you know, I remember sort of
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: like joking at one point, if you combined all of
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: the splinters, would it make like, multiple crosses because obviously
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: it's very difficult to authenticate any of these things. But yes,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: that this would be an extraordinarily valuable relic to have
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: a piece of the true cross, right? In Catholicism, this
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: would be pretty much the holy of holies. Like you said,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 2: kind of elevated and exalted.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 4: What I often pay attention to first in looking or
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 4: hearing any dream is, you know, what resonates in me?
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 4: What do I quickly and automatically respond to? What's the
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 4: first thing that stands out? It might be an idea,
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 4: it might be an image, it might be a bodily
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 4: sensation that I feel moved or something. And in this dream,
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 4: what I am paying the most attention to is the
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 4: difference between our dream ego and the two boys. I
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 4: know our dream ego, first of all, you know, there's
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 4: this very odd setup in the amphitheater where you actually
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 4: can't see the stage. It's sort of like, what?
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 3: Huh? What?
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 4: Wait a minute. You know, so I sort of play
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 4: with that a little bit and literalize it. I'm in
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 4: an amphitheater, so there was intention here. There was intention
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 4: in the way the thing was constructed. You have to
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 4: buy tickets. You have to know ahead of time what
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 4: it is you're going to go see. It's not going
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 4: to be Bruce Springsteen. And then you get there and
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 4: it's like, huh. But of course, as happens many a
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 4: time in dreams, but it made sense in the dream.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 4: You know, all people say that and we've all experienced it.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 4: I'm like, yeah, but in the dream, it seemed like
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 4: the sensible, ordinary way of things. And that he knows
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 4: his two sons are at the top of these stairs.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 4: And then there's the priest, can't hear it, performing a mass.
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 4: And then finally he goes up, and it's interesting, he
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 4: has to go up to the stage, which, you know,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 4: often symbolizes something, at least an effort at some kind
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 4: of transcendence, growth, development, whatever. And then his two sons,
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 4: age four and five, where he says they're, They're wild,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 4: to put it mildly.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 5: I'm thinking, yeah, they're boys.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 4: That's what you've got here, a couple of bear cubs
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 4: doing what little bear cubs do. And they're yelling, tearing
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: these pieces off this crucifix. And here we have the
• 1:21:24
  Speaker 4: tension between the dream ego and these other aspects of
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 4: the dreamer represented as the two boys. That our dream
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 4: ego is now sort of like, you know, functioning as
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: it would in the waking world of, oh my God,
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 4: you can't do that, that's wrong. Oh, no, no, no,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 4: come back. Say please, say thank you. And the wild
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: energy of these two boys destroying what is supposed to
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 4: be an artifact that's on a stage that's almost inaccessible,
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: can't see the priest. So what is going on here?
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: And then the other element, the only element of the
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 4: feminine is that his wife is at the back of
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 4: the stage, and she leaves silently through a hole in,
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: or through a door in the wall. That's what I'm
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 4: kind of wrestling with, given the context of our dreamer's history,
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 4: being raised in the Catholic faith. What about the boys?
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 4: What about this crucifix? And what about our dream ego?
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 4: What is Psyche trying to tell our dream ego?
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: So one of the places that I think we could
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: go is to assume that the cross is not actually
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: an image of anything having to do with Catholicism on
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: a symbolic level. You know, and the dreamer seems a
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 2: little perplexed by that. Like, I haven't, I'm not practicing
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: and we haven't taught the boys anything. But what if
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: the image of the crucifix is, to use a different metaphor,
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 2: the sacred cow? The belief, the attitude, the thing that
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 2: you do not let yourself question, that you put it
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: up on a pedestal and then you just do not
• 1:23:12
  Speaker 2: allow yourself to wonder, is that thing really right for me?
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 2: And there are these boys who are doing this innocently.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 2: They don't realize what they're doing, just the way little
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 2: four and five-year-olds will do. They don't know what they're destroying.
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 2: They're So it's a fresh perspective, these little boys. It's
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 2: untainted by these, maybe these attitudes, these rigid attitudes that
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 2: the ego has set up on high. But they're like,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: this isn't, this isn't, this is just a piece of
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 2: old wood. Like, why do we need this here for?
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 4: That leads me to think about what is it for,
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 4: you know, many of us, that we import from childhood
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 4: where we, quote, know better as adults, but that something
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: has been instilled, and I know people in my personal
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 4: life who import the continuation of the old Catholic practice
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 4: of not eating meat on Friday. Haven't been in a
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: church in 50 years or more, but It's a sort
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: of a superstition or, you know, some remnant of bowing
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 4: to an old part. And that's what this seems to
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 4: be like. I mean, if it's Cross lying on the
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 4: ground and two little kids could just rip pieces off
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 4: of it, it can't be any kind of a true
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 4: relic or anything of that sort. But for the dream ego.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 4: It still holds that kind of meaning of transgression, that
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 4: you can't do this. You can't eat meat on Friday.
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 4: You can't treat the cross like this.
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 2: I wonder what that might be in the psyche of
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: this dreamer. And of course, I don't really know, but
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 2: given the context, I wonder if it's particular attitudes about
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: being a provider, about the kind of work he should do,
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 2: you know, that that's the sacred relic that can't be
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: questioned until these little boys come along and say, you know,
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 2: wait a minute, the emperor got no clothes, you know.
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 5: What are we doing?
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 3: What I'm thinking about is that he's in a time
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 3: of change, and particularly that his career has taken him
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 3: away from the family and that he wants to reapportion
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 3: his time. So I have to say that I think
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 3: an overwhelming majority of men still carry or crucify themselves
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 3: with the task of being the protector, provider, and that
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: all other things are sacrificed. I'm not home. Maybe I
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 3: only see my kids on the weekends. My sole task
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 3: is to be out in the world, again, hunting, gathering, providing, protecting.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: I think what he's coming up to is that that
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 3: is a kind of self-crucifixion. And it's also a residue,
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 3: it's a remnant. So I think the vitality of his
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: own sons, but also his own dynamic young energy, really
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 3: wants to deconstruct this idea of self-crucifixion or martyrdom. that
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: martyring yourself for an old paradigm, whether it was instilled
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 3: through his religion or through some other form of tradition,
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 3: isn't working for him. And I think the dream is
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: giving him a sense of the conundrum, which is the
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 3: thing that's crucifying you is also the thing you venerate.
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: And boy, I see that in the community of men,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: that men are the sacrificer, gender. We have a war.
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: It's okay if all the men die. Men go out
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 3: and work. They die earlier than their wives of all
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 3: kinds of stress-related illnesses. And their children often don't know them.
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 3: So if there's a divorce, the children often don't even
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 3: visit their fathers because they were away. I mean, the
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: mom is... They have millions of memories of mom. So
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 3: that's the one who they have the relationship with. So...
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: It's an enormous pressure. And if a man was to
• 1:27:58
  Speaker 3: challenge that old paradigm, other men will go after him.
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: That it is unseemly to not martyr yourself to the
• 1:28:09
  Speaker 3: protector-provider role. That that's unmanly. So there is a tension
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: to venerate it, but there is a healthier instinct that
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 3: really wants to just tear that down We don't know
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 3: what's going to happen next, what's going to be built.
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: But to me, this is a deconstructing process. And where
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 3: I think the sticking point is, if I had this
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 3: guy in my office, it would be around this veneration.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 3: of something that doesn't serve you. And he's in that
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: process as he's changing careers.
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 4: And I think the bigger issue that you're pointing to
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: is what really is sacred. What is really sacred? He
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 4: says in his associations he was shocked that his children
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: were being destructive to the sacred artifact. They did not
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 4: understand that it was sacred. And they are doing what
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 4: you call the deconstructing, literally, by tearing pieces off of it.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 4: And then I go back to the career change, and
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 4: I think there's ambivalence there, too, or ambiguity, I should say.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 4: He's making the career change to better support my growing family.
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 4: The commitment has been difficult. So there's that sacrificial, you know,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 4: I'll work 23 hours a day kind of paradigm. And
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 4: then he says, at this point, I've resolved to no
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: longer pursue this path. But which path is he talking about?
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 5: We don't know.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: Is it the path of the career change and I'm
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 4: hunkering down and I'm going to do it? Or is
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 4: it the path of, This kind of sacrifice and time
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 4: commitment and absence from my kids is not worth it.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 4: We don't know. So I do see it as this
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 4: tension between, you know, what do I truly, deeply value?
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: What is really the right thing? Is it the old
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 4: paradigm and the sacred cross? Is it, you know, the
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 4: kids destroying it? Or is it something else?
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 2: Well, we certainly wish the streamer all the best.
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 5: Oh, we do. Absolutely.
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:30:41
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• 1:30:46
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