psychology

#21: Holistic Psychotherapy with Phyllis Alongi

June 16, 2019 Health, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality 01:05:40

The journey of healing through psychotherapy entails an unearthing of our authentic feelings that we have learned to shut down due to various reasons, including trauma and societal constructs. More and more, we recognize the importance of connection and relationships for our mental health. The space between two people, whether they are client and therapist, two friends, or lovers, may be an essential factor in healing.

On this episode, we have a conversation with professional counselor and educator Phyllis Alongi. Based in New Jersey, Phyllis brings a holistic approach to psychotherapy and healing. We explore toxic relationships, the therapeutic container, clinical inuition, Sandplay Therapy with children, and we also tackle some sensitive mental health topics like trauma, borderline personality disorder and suicidality. Phyllis is a Reiki and Healing Arts practitioner and she is currently completing her doctoral degree in Integral and Transpersonal Psychology. 

Highlights:

  • Therapeutic Alliance
  • Navigating Toxic Relationships
  • Clinical Intuition
  • Using Sandplay Therapy with Children
  • Trauma, Borderline Personality and Suicidality

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:                             

Welcome Phyl to the show.

Phyllis Alongi:             

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Thal:                             

Thank you for coming on.

Adrian:                        

 Phyl. I’d love to hear, just about the early years before psychotherapy, before you found your profession. Maybe if you can share with our listeners a bit about your history. You can go as far back as you feel is necessary to kind of bring us to date as to how you discovered the profession and why you’re doing it currently.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Sure. I think that my religious background really had a lot in molding me toward the field of psychotherapy and psychology. Initially, I wanted to maybe be a psychiatrist. I was looking more in something a little more toward a medical model. I was raised a Catholic. I engaged in in 12 years of Catholic school education and it was very prominent in my upbringing and in my family, very family oriented, Italian, New York, you know, upbringing. We were Catholic, we went to Catholic school, we all went to church. It was, there was no question that that’s not how you practiced. I knew that, you know, growing up that I needed to be connected and fulfilled because church was very peaceful for me. But it was what was happening in church that didn’t settle well with me, and then throughout adolescence I really questioned and started to doubt my faith, based on some of the events that happened to me when I was 15, I was on vacation with my family, on Easter Sunday and at a restaurant in vacation in Miami, Florida. My father died and had a heart attack. My mother was 39 and widowed on spring break with her three kids and now her husband’s not here anymore.

To come back (inaudible) from that, it took many, many years. I will share with you that one of my very close family members, developed a substance abuse issue. It really put a strain on our relationship and on our family and I started to question my faith and I started to question, what is my religion and from these questions and these doubts, the yearning to be connected to something, to my belief in a higher power. I customized Christianity and Catholicism to my own spirituality, to meet my needs to connect. Psychotherapy seemed very organic in a way because it was about the human experience and it was about the things that I was gravitated towards, about people, about how interesting I think the mind is [inaudible] tried to scratch the surface and figure out why people do what it is that they do.

I think that plus my spiritual background really propelled me into the direction it was, felt very organic. Studying psychology, learning about counseling theory and technique. It never even felt like I was in school. None of that felt like a requirement to me. I’ve always been a duck to water and gravitated towards that piece of it, and as I became more and more entrenched in psychotherapy, in practice and in my life I’ve learned to take bits and pieces of what feels right to me and implement that into my practice with people.

Thal:                             

Amazing! So it’s the spiritual aspects, I guess, of psychotherapy that attracted you to psychotherapy as opposed to psychiatry, you think? How would you describe psychotherapy?

Phyllis Alongi:               

If we look at psychotherapy through a transpersonal lens or a spiritual lens, we understand that it is what’s between the two people. That is something that we can’t taste. We can’t feel, we can’t color, we can’t touch, but we know that it exists. What is it about two human beings that we can create this space between the two of us, and be able to facilitate healing in that. Yet it’s not something tangible. If you look at Catholicism, many of the mysteries and the main focuses of what we are to believe in are not tangible. It felt very much like that, it is my faith in humanity, it is my faith in my spirituality in the essence of another person where I meet them in that area (inaudible). I know that it exists, and that is the space for healing.

Thal:                             

Phyl, we just want to go back a little bit and describe that space between two people, the therapeutic alliance. In your opinion, how does that process unfold? What are the elements that have to be present for healing to take place?

Phyllis Alongi:               

That’s a wonderful question. When people come to therapy, oftentimes they look for the psychotherapist to not only guide them but be the first, the initial space creator. Part of what’s healing and what facilitates healing is what a client brings, what the other person brings to that space. There has to be some equality in that. What creates that therapeutic container? The elements, I feel, that are very very important to the facilitation of not only cocreating it, but also in where the healing starts is when there’s presence and a person comes to therapy willing to be in the moment, willing to delve deeper, to expand themselves so that they’re ready to shed all of what they’re afraid of to all the preconceived notions that they’ve heard, what therapy is like, or what they went on my website and they saw me first and thought, oh, she’s this or she’s that, and to shed all of that and just be in the moment of each other’s energy.

To me that essence of healing begins that therapeutic alliance. Of course, receptivity, how open we both are to being with each other. How open we are to each other’s suggestions and to the energetic flow or the direction that the therapy is going in, which is client led, but it comes from this participatory cocreated spiritual place where we’re ready and we’re receptive. We’re present and we’re in the moment of that. The alliance is built on that equal cocreated trust that what I need is inside of me and you’re going to help me move through that. You are going to help me ignite that in me so that we can discover ways only I know my limitations and only I know what’s going to work for me and you’re going to help me discover that. We can work through that together. I trust that I’m in the right space at the right time. It truly is exceptional, and when two people, that moment where there’s true healing and there’s true trust and the alliance, the rapport really starts to form, the cocreated therapeutic container gets stronger and stronger and it gets more open to what needs, what will fill it, and what needs to be addressed.

Thal:                             

It’s almost like this therapeutic container is a third element that’s available between the therapist and the client.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes and it’s not only initiated by the therapist at the onset of therapy, the client needs to come to therapy already ready to do those things, ready to be present, to be receptive and to begin the alliance. When I look back at years of doing psychotherapy, what were the characteristics of clients who really made nominal therapeutic progress, like whose lives changed, who brought themselves to a space where they were feeling better, where they were higher functioning, where they were more content. I look back at those characteristics because they came to therapy ready. I’m not saying like locked and loaded where I have all the answers and I know what I have to do, but that I’ve thought about it. I’m not going to let psychotherapy happen to me. I’m going to be an active participant in it. I think coming with that mindset, seeing your work through that lens helps to shape that container.

Thal:                             

In many ways, this is much more empowering. A lot of people feel like psychotherapy is …is this some kind of mind control? Some of them think that or some of them might think, oh, does this really help? What’s the point of therapy? Really a large part of it is what the client brings in and their willingness to realize that the elements of their own healing is within them.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes, what I need to heal myself, the things that I need to heal, to facilitate healing, to cultivate healing are inside of me, and in this space, we’re going to tap them out. We’re going to tease them out and we’re going to move towards healing. There’s so much in that…there’s intuition, there’s desire, there’s things like my commitment to therapy and there’s a lot of factors and sub-factors involved in that. I think willingness, receptivity, presence and the cocreation of that alliance being, you know, ready to do that are probably that my top three.

Thal:                             

That’s a very empowering narrative.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, how do you describe to your clients your style, sort of your approach to therapy? Cause I, you know, there are many types and techniques out there, do you specialize in any particular methodology? How do you typically describe the process?

Phyllis Alongi:               

It’s so interesting because when you join websites like directories and websites like psychology today, they’ll ask, what are your specialties, what techniques do you use? I always find that very interesting o r a client will call and say, you know, someone will inquire, do you do DBT? Do you do CBT? Are you this kind of therapist? Are you that kind of therapist? And I always say this, tell me what you’re looking for? My approach to therapy is that it should be client led and that based on what the information you provide to me of what your needs are, what you’re struggling with and where you want to go, then I will tailor or customize that to suit their needs. Because you know, if CBT techniques, cognitive behavioral therapy techniques, might work with one person that they might not work with someone else, someone else may not be open to just the idea of that and wants something more interactive or less inside my head and more in my behavior.

It depends. I like it to be very client led and it’s a very eclectic blend of what I’ve learned. I consider myself very intuitive so I sometimes go with my own clinical intuition of what techniques I think would work good. You know, would work well with someone, what they would be open to, how they would respond. Oftentimes I might think it’s one way, and then as I get to know someone better, it’s revealed to me that’s something else we’ll work. Usually, it’s just led by the client based on their conversation, what they’re looking for, where their level of functioning is. I think that that’s probably what I am, I’m more holistic and I come from a very spiritual place and I allow the client to tell me about spirituality before I bring it in. I let them bring it in, first, so that I know that it would be welcomed and that they’re receptive to it. I use a myriad of years of bits and pieces of what I’ve learned and what I’ve incorporated that I know is what the client is looking for in the moment.

Thal:                             

Before we move on to the next question, using words such as empathy and intuition nowadays, you know, it could mean so many different things. What is intuition to you? What does it mean?

Phyllis Alongi:  

To me, intuition is a way of knowing without knowing how I know. When I see someone, it’s not a message or channeling, I wish I could say it was that, but it’s energy. My energy is reading your energy and I’m getting information based on your presence and your essence. This is the best way that I can describe it. I hope that it makes sense to your listeners that it’s a feeling that I get and then I take a moment to think what is this feeling? Then I get some information and I don’t know how I know to do that. For instance, I’ll give you an example. If I’m working, if I don’t know a client very well, maybe it is the first or second time that they’ve come to me for a session and we’re talking and I get this feeling like I need to ask about a specific sibling or a maternal grandparent and it is inevitably impactful, has had an impact, negative or positive on this client.

Why would that feeling come to me if we were talking about some work situation or they were explaining something else to me? It’s a way of knowing something without knowing how I know it’s not in anything the client said. It’s not in anything that any paperwork that they would do beforehand or in the intake, it’s not a conclusion that I’ve drawn. It’s a knowing that I get when I’m very connected to someone’s energy and 100% in the moment when there’s that cocreated healing environment and it’s two people present in that spiritual, exceptional transpersonal space between the two of us and we are connected is when I get the most intuitive information and it really does help guide where the sessions are going.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, in your opinion, is this intuitive abilities something that can be trained? I mean we live in a society that it seems that the left brain function sort of analytical mode is highly celebrated and perhaps these sort of intuitive skills are a little bit less familiar with and perhaps often just not even an area focus in education. Is it something that can be trained?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I definitely think that psychospiritual practices, Yoga, meditation, Reiki, even massage therapists, mindfulness, those are ways to increase it. We all have intuition and I think how we can train someone is how we can harness it and it would be in cultivating practices and giving some guidelines and really learning how to trust early on those intuitive moments that you have. You can ask any therapist who would tell you that they have had clinical intuitions and that they’ve gotten feelings about what to ask clients and directions to go in and have been very successful. Sometimes maybe you’re not right, but that you have to learn to trust it enough to ask.

You have to do it in a way that’s through the lens of appropriateness and respect for the profession, and for the person. To weigh whether or not it is a good question to ask and is it appropriate for me to ask at this moment? That comes with practice. I think training would come in the form of clinical supervision. Certainly a piece of that could be, let’s go through your cases. We talk about the code of ethics, we talk about dual relationships and HIPAA violations, confidentiality, you know, documentation but let’s talk about your clinical intuition. When you get those insights, how do you feel about them and is it something that you know, like any other kinds of technique that you would use?

Is it something that you feel comfortable with? Is it something that you want to cultivate, that you want to fine tune? Is it a skill you want to hone? If a supervisee says yes or a therapist or even a seasoned therapist who’s like,, I always do that, but I didn’t really know anybody else did that because it’s not very mainstream. I think it certainly can be discussed and channelled and fine-tuned and brought to a space where we could definitely come up with some techniques and more guidance on how to cultivate it and when not to use it.

Thal:                             

Training clinical intuition, that sounds amazing! So that means the therapist has to be working on themselves outside of that therapeutic alliance because what they bring into that therapeutic space can influence the healing process.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Yes, Thal, absolutely, it’s important to note that if I’m having energy reading, or if I’m having a reaction and response, somatically, to you, maybe you are to me and I have to respect that too. So, yes, we need to have, clinical supervision outside and therapy outside of our own practice so that we can, one, unload, everybody’s energy in and all the things that we’re working on with all our clients, two, bounce cases off of someone else, but also to work on ourselves ongoing all the time. I don’t think it’s something that you do for x amount of years after licensure. I think it’s something you need to do for the rest of your life.

Thal:                             

You work with different modalities. One of them, you’re trained as a Sand play therapist, and maybe can you talk to us about that. Can you tell us what Sand play therapist is?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Sand play therapy is an amazing modality in which there’s sand, which, you know, is the earth that we’re all very familiar with. When you feel it on the bottom of your feet, just how therapeutic something that organic can be. It was developed many years ago by a woman who trained under Carl Jung. It is a fascinating, wonderful modality to process trauma and other issues. Someone may be having anxiety or depressive symptoms, but especially for trauma without words. So there’s a specific tray that we use that’s a standard size, a regulation tray. Then we have all of these miniature symbols, these miniature objects that are really archetypal symbols. If we look at Jung and we look at what he taught us, it’s that the collective unconscious and that there are symbols and there are archetypes that we have that are based on and shaped by our own personal experience.

Then he believes that there are ones that are innately, inherently, inside of us simply because we’re human. And you know, those are amazing little miniatures and symbols that we use, and they’re so powerful. A client would come to my office either, you know, adult or child. Needless to say, children gravitate toward the sand like it’s amazing. We have to really tease out two things here. When I’m holding onto something and I’m aware of it, it’s very powerful and it’s bigger than me. The more I talk about it and the more I process it with someone and I externalize it, it’s power gets minimized. It decreases. Sand play therapy for a child, let’s just use a child as an example of you know, this situation, so we’re going to say it’s a child who comes to me who may be years and years and years before, as an infant there was some sort of abuse or something happened to them, and that was at a time before they had language or had acquired language to articulate that trauma.

So how are they going to talk about it? How is this going to happen for them? If our body remembers on a cellular level, we have memory of our trauma, of our childhoods, of our life, maybe even in the womb, so how are we going to articulate that at this time before there was words and because the sand and the miniatures are representative of our unconscious and what’s inside of us, it comes out in this narrative, in this story through these archetypal objects and these symbolic objects.

Someone, unguided, will begin to build a tray, which means this is the therapeutic container, which is myself, the office, the space between the two of us, the sand, the hands, the miniatures, the lighting. Sometimes people want to build trays to music, so they pick the music that they like and they just build and they create this extraordinary world in a sandbox on wheels that can turn around, that can spin. When they’re done, they tell you the story of what’s happening of what this world is that they created, and as each of those segments of the story unfolds, the trauma gets smaller and smaller because it’s coming from that cellular memory place. It’s coming from that primordial moment, from my ancestors, from archetypes, from the collective unconscious, and it’s coming from what’s processed and happened to me, before I could even have language to tell you.

When I do it with adults, they’ll oftentimes ask me about it and then ask me if they can do it, and then they get very emotional and tell me or go for like childhood objects and maybe things that are representative of what’s happening in their life now or in relationships. It is a beautiful experience and honestly an honor and a privilege to witness because the mind struggles with intense emotional pain and we have to process it. At some point that’s just the way our psyches work. It will force us to. It’ll keep knocking until we actually process it. This is a wonderful, imaginative, creative, therapeutic way to process what we’re dealing with, what we’re struggling with, without using any words.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, I love to ask you, just considering people that might not even have experience working with a therapist. How do you understand trauma? What is trauma and how might you describe that to somebody who is approaching this for the first time?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Adrian, there’s so many facets to trauma. I mean, if I saw a car accident on the corner of my block that could traumatize me and someone was injured or just the loud noise of it or holding my breath for that second when I saw two cars collide would be vicarious trauma. If someone that I love goes through something, an illness or when I care about this person, and we’re very close and I see that something is happening for them, I am affected by it, that’s traumatizing. That could impede and interfere with my everyday functioning because it’s something that’s wounded me somehow. It’s pain that I’ve held on from something that’s either happened specifically to me or I witnessed that’s impacted me negatively, and it hurts when I think about it.

When I think about this event or this relationship or this childhood that I’ve had this relationship with someone in my life when I was a child who affected me in a way that was negative. Trauma could be really ongoing. That’s why it’s important even in education, especially in education and especially with children that we…for our educators, for our psychotherapists that work with kids, social workers, school psychologists, whoever, any collateral contact that works, works with the child or an adolescent. I think especially for education though, for educators to ask instead of saying what’s wrong with you, to come from a space of what’s happened to you. We have to understand that someone’s experience brings them to where they are and we want to be able to meet people where they are, and as a psychotherapist, you have to understand when someone sits down in that space, either next to you or you know, because kids like to sit next to us, or sitting across from us.

When someone sits with us, they’re sitting down physically, it’s one person, but it’s all the people in their lives that have affected them in some way. So one person sits down, but there could be 15 people in the room and we have to be able to say instead of what’s the matter with this, what’s wrong with this client? We have to think through the lens of trauma informed psychotherapy. Where have you been? What’s happened to you? It just changes and shifts the dynamic, and it shifts the perspective of the way that you see someone. It comes from the heart. I think that’s something people have to remember. Psychotherapy is a science, psychology is a science, but it’s the science of people and people come from the heart and we have to remember that that’s where they speak from. That’s where they process from. That’s where their pain lies? We have to be able to, to remember that.

Thal:                             

All the elements seem to include play, spontaneity, and people, and so that has to do with relationships, which takes us to our next question. A lot of people have struggled and continue to struggle with toxic relationships. How would you define toxic relationships?

Phyllis Alongi:               

A toxic relationship is a relationship and it can be a limited relationship. It doesn’t have to be an intimate relationship that has a negative impact on a person. Oftentimes toxic relationships are, we really have to change the way we look at that too, because we want to blame someone and we have to remove that from the equation because it’s not a matter of blame. It’s not a matter of whose fault it is. We have to look at, in the relationship between two people where maybe the power isn’t equal or there’s some strain on the relationship or one person is suffering from mental illness and is acting out towards this other person and doesn’t even know it. or maybe someone loved someone and wants to be with them and the other person doesn’t yet they’re together. So in toxic relationships, and I’m using air quotes, although you can’t see me.

Toxic relationships, I think what we’re looking at is unhealthy. It’s unhealthy because it doesn’t speak to my best self because when I’m in this relationship, I’m less than who I really am and what my best potential is as a person. It stifles me, it minimizes me and it makes me smaller than who I really am. People have such light and such energy to them and negative relationships really try to snuff out someone’s spiritual flame. When I think of of negative relationships, toxic relationships, unhealthy relationships, somehow or another, we managed to stay in them longer, well beyond than we should, and we have to look at why. This is why I say we one of the reasons why we need to take blame out of the equation because me being in this toxic relationship and even aware that it’s not healthy and I’m staying in it longer than I should. I’m benefiting from it in some way.

Thal:                             

Absolutely.

Phyllis Alongi:               

By being in this relationship, there’s some benefit to me, and I may not even be aware of it.

Adrian:                         

Yeah, the word that’s coming to my mind is also codependent relationships. Could you share with listeners what that might mean and how that would work out as an example.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Adrian, that’s a term that’s used a lot in addiction because a codependent would be like an enabler. Technically, I think, traditionally when we look at codependence, we look at that like the need to save, the need to really help someone, and because we want to love and nurture and care about this person, we allow them the space and the time to do what it is that they do that has a negative impact on us. Codependency could have many masks, many phases and we can do a whole podcast just on codependency, but I believe that that is so true. It’s so interesting because I see it in families and it’s very oftentimes not really looked at through that lens of family relationships that there is certain codependent behaviors that are evidenced in a family dynamic.

Where the one person maybe isn’t well, and then the child becomes parentified. The parentified child really cares for that parent. The role is confused, but how does that adult child benefit from parenting their parent? We have to look at that too. This relationship fulfills my need to nurture, my need to heal, and I don’t know how to move from that. I don’t know how to detach from that emotionally. I think that’s in a lot of relationships that are not healthy detachment, fear of abandonment, fear of being alone. Your own independent mental health and wellness is not really where it should be because you’ve been snuffed out or stifled, your psyche has been shaped in this negative atmosphere and so it hasn’t been able to grow properly.

Like a plant that’s not nearly in the light enough, it will twist and vine around. It’s misshapen. I think sometimes, kids that come to me with anxieties or the parentified child, they’re like that twisted vine, they’re misshapen and it takes a lot to get them to the space where they need to get, where a parent needs to back down and see, I can accept my role and try to work with kids to kind of not be afraid. That’s what I think about toxic relationships and codependency, it’s another example of a cocreated relationship because initially maybe it was facilitated by one person, but the dynamic now is cocreated. Working on moving that and shifting that kind of energy is a process and it takes time. I tell people there’s no magic wand, but if you are committed and willing, you can certainly get to where you need to get but this is going to take time.

Thal:                             

I just love the metaphors that you’re using to describe all these dynamics and without really being stuck with all these terminologies. I want us to also maybe touch upon the borderline personality structure. I don’t want to call it a disorder. All these personality structures are an ego defense mechanism, just like the codependency. So what can you say about the borderline, basically?

Phyllis Alongi:              

Well, it depends on, like everything, the degree to which someone is in one direction. I think that personality disorders, I look at them as like autism spectrum disorder, like on a spectrum. I agree that you have it or you don’t, but somewhere in there it’s either very intense or not. I think that if we look at, let’s just say borderline personality disorder per se, there are certain characteristics to that. We can talk in extremes, that are very difficult for family members and people who are close to employers and coworkers living with someone who has a borderline personality disorder symptoms is very difficult. It is easy to get sucked into the web of histrionics and drama. The universe, in my opinion, the universe, I’m sure there’s no study on this but I do believe that the universe hears that gravitation towards emotion, high emotion to high drama, to Histrionics, to problems, to obstacles, the universe takes a little snapshot of what it is that you’re thinking and that’s why we have to really monitor our own thoughts.

 If I’m always thinking the worst, the hardest, the longest, the craziest, the most dramatic, the most tumultuous relationship, the most passionate lovemaking, the most I was waiting the longest on line, those kinds of things that the universe takes a snapshot of that and so that’s what it gives you, I think, that constant state of thinking so chaotically is what the universe then provides and it perpetuates the lifestyle of someone who has a borderline personality disorder. You can really detect it, early on, although we don’t like to, but you can see features or like a borderline personality disorder flavors in adolescence. There are certain behaviors and thought processes, just the way their mind strategizes and it’s always me and this is happening to me and all of it.

It’s always a snow storm, but a blizzard, their periscope, will go up and look around the room and see where’s the heat, where’s the electricity and that’s where I’m going to gravitate towards, and it is on a very nonconscious level. It is just on an energetic level. Life is very chaotic, very sad, and relationships are navigated by control and how can I manipulate this and make this relationship everything that I need, and it’s really, in my opinion, very underlying fear of being alone, of abandonment. So I will keep my people with me for as long as I possibly can forever. You’re never going to leave me and I’ll do anything I can to see to it that you stay with me, and those relationships are very difficult. Children of parents who have had or were diagnosed or gone undiagnosed with borderline personality disorder, similar to adults who were children of alcoholics, have a whole other host of issues that they deal with going into adolescence and adulthood, emerging adulthood.

When we ask someone’s history, it’s not only biological but to see what runs in your family, only because essentially, because I want to know, where are you coming from, what’s happened to you? If you tell me that you grew up in a household with a parent that was diagnosed or is diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, then it sheds a whole new light on the situation. It’s difficult. It’s very difficult. My advice is that everybody be in therapy, that there’s family therapy that there’s in-home therapy, which would be extremely helpful because the family would get engaged and you’re seeing the dynamic in its natural habitat. Very interesting, very revealing. Every member of the family should have individual and family counseling. It would be the real way to do that and the most effective.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis in the psychological circles I’ve noticed that borderline personality specifically is a bit, it seems a bit stigmatized and I wanted to ask you, are there hidden gifts to people that might actually have a strong borderline tendency, that might be helpful to work with?

Phyllis Alongi:               

Oh, absolutely and you know, Adrian, isn’t it true that every mental illness is just an extension of something we all are experiencing and it’s just the difference is that it’s chronic, it’s bigger than me, it’s interfering with my every day functioning. It’s interfering with relationships. That’s where the difference lies in the end of the spectrum. It’s further down the spectrum of some of our own behaviors. What are the gifts if manipulation could be a gift, if just the sense of how to navigate a situation with fine tune, heightened sensory abilities, amazing. You know, there are many gifts to that, and just like observing and assessing a situation or a person finding, being able to hone in on someone’s strengths and weaknesses, also a gift. In relationships, where even in marital relationships and intimate relationships, being able to detect what it is and anticipate what the other partner needs is very high on the gift skill I think of of someone who may be suffering with that type of disorder.

Thal:                             

That’s very important that you mention those things because you know, that brings in the role of empathy in difficult relationships. It seems like borderline personality disorder now is the thing that everybody’s talking about and everybody’s realizing and there is a very negative side to it. A lot of people that suffer with borderline also suffer from suicidal thoughts or people that are living with a borderline suffer from suicidal thoughts, which takes us to our next topic, which, I know that you liked her nationwide in the United States, around the topic of suicidology and its connection with youth issues. What can you say about that please?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I will tell you about that in a moment but I just want to say that as far as the stigma of mental health is concerned, it’s with every diagnosis and it’s with every disorder, and people have gifts, period. We were talking about, I think we went from negative relationships to negative relationships and borderline personality disorder, but any mental health issue deserves respect and that person deserves treatment and they deserve to feel proud about that. I work really hard to diffuse and break the stigma of mental health, people are people and they are not their diagnoses, just like they’re not their mistakes. That’s something that I want to make perfectly clear and there are people, specialized psychotherapists, who have really specialized in working with that population. If you are suffering or someone you know is suffering with a borderline personality disorder, finding someone who is specializing in that area would be amazing. That would be my recommendation because it’s some, it’s a very dynamic topic and so, we’re getting more and more information about it and so it’d be someone who would be very passionate about working with that population.

When we talk about suicide we have to look at, whether it’s adults or adolescent or child, we have to look at risk factors. One of the risk factors is clinical. If you have a mental health diagnosis, any kind, you are at higher risk for suicide. If you are in a relationship with someone who is struggling and that has a health issue, not only a mental health issue but an illness or you know, you’re in a relationship that isn’t working, there’s some situation that’s causing high anxiety or depressive symptoms or you know, some turmoil in your life. It puts you at risk for suicide.

 Certainly, exposure to suicide, exposure to loss will hike you right up the list of risk factors and being in a relationship with someone who has attempted and that level of exposure to suicide or loss can really be one of the biggest risk factors. Also, recently there’s been some good research coming out of I think it’s Yale actually about nonsuicidal self-injurious behavior originally was not connected to suicide at all for many years. It was like there’s suicide, self-injurious behaviors aren’t really related to suicide and Thomas Joiner and some of the other suicidologist are really looking at the connection between misbehaviors and threshold for pain and injury, self-injury and its intersection with suicidal ideation and behavior.

Adrian:                         

I was just going to ask you, if you can give an example, I’m just thinking of is that the same as just bad choices, like not unhealthy behaviors that’s leading to a slow death? Is it that what is considered or is that different?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I think that that’s different because there are certain components. Suicide is a very complicated issue. Even when we look at suicidology in the field of psychology, it’s over like out there and in a field by itself. There are many, many, many reasons why someone would contemplate suicide or attempt suicide, and it is very multi-determinational. It’s multilayered. It’s never one reason why it’s mostly always more than one reason why. And those risk factors clinical, exposure, history, family history, access to means situations. Those come together like the perfect storm and somewhere in the middle of that, it starts to lay the groundwork. When we look at the working definition of suicide, it’s an attempt to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem with intense emotional pain and impaired problem solving skills. What it really means is that when someone wants to die by suicide, wants to hurt themselves to kill themselves, they don’t want to die, they want to end that intense emotional pain because in the moment of crisis thinking, which the characteristic of suicidal thinking, all they are doing is crisis thinking.

When someone is stuck in crisis thinking, they can’t get back up to healthful problem-solving skills. So they get stuck in unhelpful problem solving skills and then there’s some triggering event and suicide becomes an option. There’s an irrational component to it. There’s an impulse component to it. Suicidal thinking can be ambivalent or even sending a message sometimes. So when we look at all of that, we have to understand that within this complicated issue, you know what it really is and when someone is suffering from that intense emotional pain, they don’t realize at the moment in crisis thinking that it’s only temporary, that this pain isn’t going to last forever. That there are ways that I could, you know, help myself that I could, I could maybe alleviate this.

I need to ask for help. I need to reach out, externalize and reach out of that pain and ask someone for help. To know where to find the resources like the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Number, the 74174 crisis text line. You can just text and say, I need help. I feel like I’m going to hurt myself. Talking about it is very relieving and we know that from survivors of suicide attempt that once they talk about it, they feel better about it and it actually buys you some time because there isn’t that impulsivity component to suicidal behavior. There’s a sense of not belonging. There’s a sense of burdensomeness to family and friends, not feeling connected to anyone or anything. That adds up and that’s all part of the suicidology theories, that feeling of that sense of not belonging.

It’s so important for us when we look at youth suicide. It’s so important for us to really, encourage our kids to join something in the community and schools sports to be connected to something and to find that trusted adult, that caring, trusted adult to have that connection with. Those are the two biggest protective factors for not only suicide, but other risk behaviors like substance abuse we have in our country right now and in specifically in the county that I live in the neighboring counties, we have a very big opiate epidemic going on and the same risk factors, warning signs, and protective factors for suicide are the same ones that we could apply to substance abuses and other risk behaviors.

Adrian:                        

I imagine people that want to direct, whether it’s friends or family members towards help, there can be resistance, often there is resistance to help. What can you offer for those who are trying to help someone who is suffering and they want to bring them to a therapist or a counselor. How do we help them get over that obstacle or that resistance?

Phyllis Alongi:               

That’s a great question. Resistance is difficult and I’m going to say don’t give up, you know, don’t give up. You have to keep asking. I think we need to explain to people because they think if you tell someone that you have suicidal thoughts, you know, suicidal ideation is very common and it’s more common than we think. The Center for Disease Control did a youth risk survey, I think it’s 12.5% of a hundred thousand youth were thinking about suicide. It’s pretty common. When we tell someone, listen, I know you’re struggling, whatever you’re struggling with, you’re not the only one. We can find something that might be suited for you. Therapy doesn’t always mean, doesn’t always look like me and you, you and some old guy, sitting across from each other, or like, but they think Freud, maybe my back to you and you’re lying on a couch.

But that there’s art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy, there’s sand play therapy and all these different psychodrama, all these different modalities that work really well and that we can find one that will work for you and you’re not alone. Individual therapies. Amazing. Group therapy is amazing. There are wonderful support groups for survivors of suicide attempt and also for survivors of suicide loss. I’m sure that you can find in your Canadian resources that are amazing and not to give up, and to keep asking the person, we here in the United States we have organizations that provide in-home therapy services and that people feel more comfortable in the privacy of their own home. It could be over Skype. There are so many ways and so many different modalities and avenues that you can go to that you could explain to someone. Just because you’re thinking about suicide, doesn’t mean you’re going to end up hospitalized because that’s another myth. The number one myth surrounding suicide is if we talk to someone about suicide, we’re planting the idea of suicide in their head and that is the number one myth surrounding suicide.

Thal:                             

Thank you. These are very important and heavy topics really, that we touched upon today. Before closing, since we are talking about relationships, I’m thinking about couples therapy and communication. What is the role of proper communication in a healthy marriage and a healthy relationship?     

Phyllis Alongi:               

I’m immediately in defense mode because every conversation I have with you ends in an argument or slamming the door and sleeping alone or being in the dog house, and I don’t want that to happen so I won’t communicate or I’m not ready to talk about it right now and I don’t know how to tell you that so I’m shutting down and you’re following me around the house wanting to get out of everything you need to say. I think people need to put, you know, when we talk about communication and couples, I tried to help teach couples to argue differently and to communicate on a different level and shed those old patterns, those old habits so that they can have positive conversations that are meaningful and that respect each other, because that’s so important that a person feel heard and respected and not judged.

Whether it’s about something that happened at work or with the kids or with us isn’t minimized by your judgment. It’s so important that a person feels like what they have to say weighs more than what I’m not saying. That you are hearing what I’m saying as an insight to what I need from you emotionally. Can you meet my emotional needs or maybe maybe you don’t want to anymore? Sometimes when relationships aren’t working and it’s not what one person wants, one person really wants the relationship to sustain that communication that’s negative, it isn’t going to work so we have to look at when, when I meet with couples for the first time, the first question I ask is, does everybody want to stay together?

 Do you both want to be in this relationship? If the answer is yes, then we’re going to roll our sleeves up, we’re going to get in it and we’re going to really do some homework and we’re going to make the commitment. It’s just like joining a gym first time you have to learn all the machines. You have to figure out what works for you what doesn’t work for you, what exercise is beneficial for you. Does this hurt too much? Do I feel comfortable doing this? What do I like? What do I not like? We have to rediscover each other as people, not just my wife or my husband or my partner. We have to look at who you are and how am I connected to you. If I don’t feel connected to you, how can I get reconnected to you if that’s what we both want? That’s the essence of successful couples counseling because it’s what we both want and we’re both willing and receptive to making some changes that are hard to do so that we can, our relationship can sustain all the waves of greatness and the things in our lives that happen that aren’t so great.

Thal:                             

Hmm. Amazing.

Adrian:                         

Phyllis, I’d love to leave our listeners with some resources. What’s on your list of heavily recommended books for the people that you work with.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Well, Codependent No More always, that book is very old. My partner in practice and I always giggle about it because we’re like, did you write down the Bible? That is such a great book for someone who is in a relationship and wants to make changes. I think everyone should read Irvin Yalom, The Gift of Therapy. I think that that’s amazing. That’s a book that I would recommend to anyone who wanted to learn about being in the here and now and having to be in the present and maybe looking at psychotherapy from a therapist’s lens would be great and would offer some great insight. There’s Eyes Wide Open by Mariana Kaplan, which is also another wonderful book about bringing spirituality into session, which is also very beautiful.

 Any clinician who wants to learn about intuition, Terry Marks Harlow. She has some really great workbooks, and some good insights into how to incorporate intuition and how to not be afraid of your own intuition. She’s done tremendous work and continues to do tremendous work in that area.

Thal:                             

Thank you. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Phyllis Alongi:               

I just want to say that if you or anyone you know is struggling either in a relationship or with something within themselves or you know, that therapy can be an amazing experience. It can be even just like a polishing of the skills that you already have. You don’t have to have any kind of problem. You can just want to take your life a step further. You just want to maybe gain some insight or hone your psychospiritual skills and interests that it’s a beautiful space.

There are some wonderful Reiki practitioners and that’s another great modality that I use as an adjunct to talk therapy like Sand play therapy because it’s, it gives people a great way to learn, to be in the moment of themselves, to feel their own bodies, their own energy, to learn, to breathe, to do some, wonderful mindful breathwork and understand that, and I’ll leave you with this, that everything we need to heal ourselves is inside of us, and sometimes we just have to reach out outside of us externally to figure out how to tap into that.

Thal:                             

Amazing. Thank you.

Phyllis Alongi:               

Thank you so much for sharing. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful experience and I was so happy for you to do it and I feel very grateful and blessed to have had the opportunity. Thank you.

#19: Revisioning Transpersonal Psychology with Jorge Ferrer

June 2, 2019 Culture, Mindfulness, Podcast, Psychedelics, Psychology, Science, Spirituality 01:01:41

The central premise of Transpersonal Psychology is that mental health encompasses more than just the physical matter of the brain or the behavioural ailments attached to personality structures. The transpersonal approach addresses issues that arise from beyond the limitations of psychopathology. Before the birth of the field, it was only mystics and sages who grappled with transcendent or spiritual experiences. Transpersonal psychology may be one of the doorways for mainstream psychology to negotiate a more holistic approach towards mental health.

Jorge Ferrer is considered one of the main architects of second-wave transpersonal psychology and is best known for his participatory approach to spiritual knowing and religious pluralism. He is an international lecturer and professor at California Institute of Integral Studies. He teaches courses on transpersonal and integral studies, comparative mysticism, participatory theory, embodied spiritual inquiry, and spiritual perspectives on sexuality and intimate relationships.  We explore non-ordinary states of consciousness, embodied spirituality or “body fulness”, plant medicines, and the need for more cross-pollination between spiritual traditions. 

Jorge is the author of Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality and Participation and the Mystery: Transpersonal Essays in Psychology, Education, and Religion, as well as the co-editor of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies.

Highlights:

  • Spiritual Bypass vs Embodied Spirituality
  • Participatory Approach to Transpersonal Psychology
  • Collaboration Between Indigenous and Modern Communities

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:                

 Welcome to the show, Jorge. Thank you for coming on.

Jorge Ferrer:               

Thank you very much it is a pleasure to be here and to be here with you.

Adrian:             

Yeah, so Jorge, I think a great place for us to start this is to just hear a bit about your, the spiritual orientation of your childhood. We want to hear some of your early experiences that put you on this path of Transpersonal Psychology.

Jorge Ferrer:               

Thank you. I think I can say a few things about that, I was born in Barcelona in 1968. It still is, but it was even more of a Christian Catholic country. I did go to a Catholic school. I think I was lucky enough that the school was run by a brotherhood of educators, Armanos Maristas and the object of devotion was not God the father it was the Virgin Mary. In a way they were much less dogmatic and strict like the Jesuits for example. The education was very good but also there was something about that kind of devotion to Virgin Mary that I think kind of influenced my approach to spirituality from day one, like a more feminine and more organic in many ways. We will talk later about it I am sure but in many ways this participatory spirituality it could be seen as a much more feminine approach than let’s say other more classical Transpersonal paradigms.

In addition to that what I would say I also went through a kind of non-ordinary states of consciousness and experiences when I was a child. I think probably when I was 11 or 10 years old. In the school, several times I would go into what I later learned to identify as a trance state. The Buddhists call it the Jhānas, the first absorption in the Theravada path where everything in the room and everything around me will be completely blank. I would have my eyes open, but I would lose complete contact with the environmental context and I would be in a space of peace and light and just beauty. The teacher would wake me up and then I would start crying.

After a few times they took me to the school psychologist concerned that I could be epileptic, and they run some tests and they didn’t find anything and just let it go. That was one experience and the other was when I was pre-adolescent I started having out of body experiences and at first I was very scared of them and at first I really didn’t know what was going on and was not sure if I will come back to my body so it was pretty scary and later throughout my life, you know, I had them in different places and by then it became something else. At that point I was concerned, those experiences plus my personal of some kind neurotic things that I was experiencing in adolescence and early adulthood took me to the study of psychology and I was trying like many people who go into psychology, I believe they go for personal healing and also understanding those states, of course, mainstream psychology or the university did not provide for either of those. Those states were pathologized by mainstream psychology, as depersonalization or dissociation and all sorts of stuff and of course mainstream psychology could not provide any healing for my neurotic loops. I started a personal search for different paradigms that ultimately led me to find transpersonal psychology first through the books and then also start meditation, like also practicing with some kind of psychedelic substances and many, many other things, and ultimately led me to CIIS, to study my PhD there. I’ve been teaching there for the last 20 years.

Adrian:             

I wanted to ask you about the out of body experience, when you said that my body kind of got a reaction to it, so I want to kind of press a little bit, do you mind sharing what that first out of body was like? What was happening phenomenologically?

Jorge Ferrer:               

Sure. Basically, all the of out of body experiences that I have had follow a very specific phenomenology to begin with later they can change. They normally happen, at least to me, when you’re in that space, in between a wakefulness and sleep, your mind is completely awake and lucid. You are as awake as the three of us right now and most of our audience, I’m sure. At some point you find your body completely paralyzed. Then you feel some kind of energy, you can hear it in waves. Voom. Voom. Suddenly you find yourself out of the body. At first it can be extremely disorienting because you have not learned, especially when you’re like 12 or 15 years old to navigate those states. It could be scary, you find yourself out there, you see your body in bed? You are in a kind of different body like what is called the astral body, but you don’t know how to make it work so it could be very disorienting. It took me many years and many out of body experiences to actually learn through experience to navigate those worlds much better.

Thal:                

 I think we’re just going to move to the next question. One of your major contributions to Transpersonal Psychology is the participatory approach, maybe if you can share with us how you arrived to that perspective. Personally and academically.

Jorge Ferrer:               

They are intertwined, of course. It was part of my personal process. It was part of my intellectual challenge, and my spiritual unfolding all at the same time. What I would say is that when I first arrived to California in the early nineties, Transpersonal psychology was dominated by the neo-Perennialist approach, authors like Ken Wilber and Stan Grof, people I really admired a lot, and they have contributed tremendously to the field. They were like the fathers of the field and I learned so much from them, and at the same time there were ways in which I felt they were providing this kind of neutral language, like this categories that claimed to be transcultural for all spiritual paths, all spiritual traditions.

But by doing so, inadvertently, in most cases, especially in the case of Stan Grof, in the case of Wilbur it’s a different story. I think they were kind of like situating the spiritual goals of some traditions above all others, either absolute consciousness or non-duality and by doing that they were relegating spiritual goals and spiritual traditions that did not share those goals. For example, most of Christian mysticism does not share non-duality, it is about cultivating the presence of God, a loving God in your life, you know, not to speak about Daoism or indigenous traditions. Theistic traditions, for example, were kind of relegated to a kind of a lower level of a spiritual insight and understanding. That was part of my initial reaction to that and at the same time there was a lot of emphasis in the Transpersonal psychology movement about reaching states of consciousness, right?

The subconscious was the panacea, you know. We need to understand that for many decades spirituality in the States, the Transpersonal movement had been dominated by very problematic forms of Christianity. In the late 50s and mid-60s, the psychedelics came in and Eastern traditions and Eastern gurus came in to the West, you know, and at the same time it was humanistic psychology speaking about peak experiences and farther reaches of human nature. I think the conference of different factors gave birth to the Transpersonal movement with its emphasis on higher states of consciousness.

Most of Transpersonal psychology at that time were busy mapping those states and they still are many of them and it is still a very valuable task. But for me, the participatory movement, is not a substitution of that first wave. It’s kind of an expansion. It’s bringing it all down to earth. It’s about relationship with other human beings, with societies, cultures, diversity, the ecological crisis or political situation and so forth. It’s really about the democratization of spirituality, like really framing a plurality of spiritualities. There is no single sequence or paradigm model that is going to encompass all traditions in a way that is not ideological, especially when you situate them in a evolutionary continuum or developmental continuum as all those Transpersonal psychologists were doing. The participatory movement is like an embodiment, and also it is about relatedness, and creative inquiry in dimensions of spirituality. It’s not so much about rediscovering the tools that were already found by the old sages and teachers, but also it is about co-creating your own spiritual path.

Thal:                 

I think what you mentioned is very important because I mean, personally, I found when I was going through my own crisis and asking all those questions, and just the complexities of the world felt overwhelming, I found solace in reading Ken Wilber and just, you know, everything hierarchal and organized, and that has its place. But also, like you said, the participatory approach is not to eclipse that, but to enrich that approach. Can you speak more about how it can serve in our current global climate?

Jorge Ferrer:              

 I feel you are totally right because with those early years (in Transpersonal psychology), there was an influx of all these different spiritual traditions and people were having these psychedelic states. There was this chaos and so maps such as Ken Wilber’s and Stan Grof really put order to some extent. People say, “oh, wow, now at least I have a map that I can make sense of my experience.” But of course, like any human experience, especially when you go beyond your own experience and you start relating to many many other people who have different experiences. It’s much more complex and messy and interesting than any kind of conceptual can encompass.

Anyway, coming back to your question. I think it is important that with our ecological crisis, you can try to persuade people about being pro environmentalist in many different ways, and many people are doing that because they have an intellectual understanding of the problem. There are people who are doing that because of survival reasons, and that’s very important, not only for themselves but for their progeny. They really want to make sure that their grandsons and granddaughters have a world where there are trees and there is air that can be breathed.

There are a variety of reasons. I think with the participatory approach, or the eco-psychological and transpersonal movements what they can bring forth is more important because take for example the emphasis on embodiment. The more embodied you are…which the body is really part of nature in a way that the isolated mind can be more disassociated. The more embodied you are, the more naturally empathic you are to the pain and the joy of nature. Therefore, it becomes something more of an existential imperative is not so much about the survival of your granddaughters or because you know it’s right. It’s because you care in the flesh of your body that that is the right thing to do.

Adrian:             

Jorge, I love to ask you personal practices that have helped you become more embodied. I love that we’re bringing this up because I feel that seems to be a very relevant thing within today’s spiritual climate. That word embodiment comes up a lot, but the practices I feel are helpful. If we could go into that a little bit to share with our listeners.

Jorge Ferrer:               

Yes, this is a great question and thank you. Well, I spent almost 15 years of my life in the Buddhist tradition meditating and at some point I quit. I value meditation and I incorporate it in many aspects of my life and I still meditate sometimes, but at some point, even some Buddhist teachers today, like Reggie Ray and many others have brought this critiques of meditation as a potentially disembodied practice. It all depends how you meditate, right? There is a way in which people can really spend a lot of time in their minds and consciousness. Of course in many of the traditions like Buddhism, you know, the body was something to leave behind, not to speak about sexuality, and of course cultivating the more subtle dimensions of the heart and essence of consciousness. In India and the Indian Matrix, liberation was understood as something to escape Samsara, to escape the body, to escape this phenomenal natural reality.

But it doesn’t leave you many resources for environmentalism, but that’s a different issue. For me, after many years at that practice I was already experimenting with some sacred plants like Ayahuasca, Mushrooms, and San Pedro that is my main plant teacher and San Pedro in particular brought this very strong dimension of embodiment. San Pedro, in particular, is not a plant that takes you on this kind of inner journey or some different world spaces and subtle worlds that could be very fascinating and important, but it is a plant that teaches you how to be embodied here and now. When you are then embodied here and now you can open the windows and doors of your home, and a such your body without leaving your body sort to speak.

Another important practice for me is interactive embodied meditation it comes from a word called holistic transformation that I used to co-facilitate in Esalen institute, and in another places. It is a basically people coming together and practicing meditation in relationship with each other, and in physical contact with each other where you bring the mindfulness practice into physical contact with the body? I think that’s very powerful. My sense is that there is a lot of work that is very cutting edge. The most work that is cutting edge is the work that integrates somatics (body) with spiritual consciousness mindfulness. In the last couple of years, a few books came out about a bodyfullnes. This is a term that I coined myself in 2006 to speak about not so much the mindfulness of the body but a kind of awareness that emerges from the body itself. It might be like the big cats of the jungle. They are not intentionally trying to be alert but they are extremely alert much more than human beings. I can say a bit more or I can leave it here and go where you guys want me to go.

Thal:                 

Actually, just comparing the word mindfulness to the word bodyfullnes is interesting because mindfulness can be a way where people become even stuck more in their mind and forget their body. I’m thinking about the term spiritual bypass and how, you know, instead of using spirituality to become more integrated and aware, we can use it to just escape our body, our humanity. If you can speak more about that for sure, that would be…

Jorge Ferrer:               

The mindfulness that has become popularized today in the States and in Europe is a some more cognitive approach to mindfulness that is quite mental and that’s not even necessarily the mindfulness that was cultivated in Buddhism and has many differences as many Buddhist scholars have pointed out today. In any case, in terms of spiritual bypass, I will explain the terms for the audience. Spiritual bypass means, in particular, when one goes into a kind of like spiritual practice or teachings in order to avoid facing psychological issues. and to give a couple of examples. Say someone who has a lot of issues about anger, say anger towards their parents or anger towards the world can be very drawn to practice Buddhism. They emphasize the no expression of anger, equanimity, and being super peaceful all the time or someone for example that has like sexual blocks or issues around their sexuality they can become drawn to a tradition that emphasizes celibacy. Is that a solution? I don’t think so. In the best cases, they can transform some of those energies in positive ways and that can help. However, following the path of doing the psychological work, the psychosomatic psychoenergetic work to heal those sexual blocks to really clean the anger within yourself and to forgive your parents and to forgive the world, or whatever you are angry against, and then from that solid foundation build your spiritual practice.

Thal:                 

Definitely, the psychological growth and the spiritual growth go in tandem. We can’t separate both that’s a mistake that I’ve done in my life so I’m learning slowly.

Jorge Ferrer:               

Ideally they should go in tandem, but many times they don’t. We see this all the time, for example, spiritual teachers, you know, they are awake or they have a certain awakening for example in their consciousness or even in their hearts. They get into all sorts of sexual scandals, unethical behavior, and power games, right? So I just want to speak to the fact that while ideally they should go in tandem, very often they do not. I know many Shamans who are masters of the psychic realm and they can be tremendously gifted healers. They are real shamans, now don’t get me wrong. This is very important. They’re real shaman, they are elders in their communities, and at the same time they start doing ceremonies with Western women, but they also have transference towards them. It could be mutual and a two way street energetically, but they then lose it and start sexually harassing them or worst case scenario abusing them and abusing their own power. That is very unfortunate. This is why it is so important that we affirm and we encourage this kind of integrated spiritual growth that includes not only just the heart and consciousness, but the body and sexuality in particular. It is not the same to become mature mentally or emotionally than to become mature somatically and sexually.

Adrian:            

I love that. I want to ask you if someone’s earnestly trying to develop spiritually, they’re involving in practices, learning from different people, reading books. What are some helpful signs that they might be on an disintegrated path? Right? So what might that look like? We’re all vulnerable to it. I don’t want to sit here pretending like, you know, that we can just talk about these things as if we’re outside of it. You know, I think we’re the first to admit that we are all susceptible to disintegration or disembodiment. What does that look like? What are some telltale signs?

Thal:                 

The work never ends really. It’s constant. It’s something that we were talking about, too, before starting the podcast with you. I’m thinking about the Jungian concept of the shadow and it’s like the more you work on your spirituality, your “light”, you still have to be aware of your “shadow” and the dark.

Jorge Ferrer:               

I have a qualification around that because as the saying goes, the greater the light the greater the shadow, I don’t totally believe that. This is the case when development has not been integrated. The lack of development happens when there is a lot of spiritual consciousness and a lot of light but there has not been depth psychological work going together, if a person is developing spiritually and also has been doing a lot of depth psychological work: “I don’t think that the greater the light, the greater the shadow,” even though the saying makes a lot of intuitive sense because light and shadow go together.

Thal:                 

It is a clean box, Jorge, why break it open?

                        (Laughing)

Jorge Ferrer:               

Unfortunately, a lot of times this is the case, I think that is a sign of this kind of a more dissociated forms of spirituality in which people are just developing in some areas and not in others.

Adrian:             

I mean this is kind of related. Since we brought up altered states, this is something that we’re experiencing right now in today’s renaissance of psychedelics both in research as well as just exploration, you know, more and more people that are turning towards these tools. What excites you about this renaissance and maybe perhaps also what worries you at the same time with this current trend?

Jorge Ferrer:               

Yes, many things are exciting and many things are disturbing or concerning. I think there are two levels to this path, of course, it works on the individual level for people who are experimenting and then more on the cultural level, I think there’s two sides of the question. On an individual level, I am a San Pedresta and I do believe in the transformative power of many of these plant medicines. On the other hand, there is a lot of caution too. To proceed with caution is very important. I think we all know people who have done a lot of psychedelic work and you know their egos are not smaller, they are bigger, you know, and sometimes they have really weird ideas. They become conspiracy theorists. They are not becoming better persons. So what is going on? I think there are several factors. There is someone’s baseline kind of character. If it is someone with a lot of narcissistic wounding and let’s say a borderline personality, in a way doing the psychedelic work without doing the psychological healing work, there are more chances that something can go wrong. There are more chances that you become inflated or messianic or just not a good person as you could be. Another factor is community and integration. When indigenous people do these plants, they do it in the jungle, in nature, around a whole community and rites of passage. There is a whole social matrix that supports integration. Even in those cases, there is no warrant that the shaman is not going to be ethical or he is not going to be a sexual harasser. Things are very delicate. The importance of community of peers and friends who are going to tell you frankly. Jorge, you have been doing San Pedro all these years but don’t see you becoming more available for life. You are even a bit more self-centered than you are before. I think that mirroring is crucial. If it’s just one person telling you, yeah, but if it’s like a community telling you then that’s really powerful.

The power of community is really important. On a cultural level and social level, the renaissance of psychedelic research is important. It is legitimizing and it going to help in a few years when it becomes legal, like the psychotherapeutic use of MDMA and probably psilocybin as well. This is good because it will reach more people instead of doing the work underground and in illegal ways. It will open the doors for people who do not want to go that way. There is immense healing that can take place and a lot of suffering can be eliminated or minimized. There are also a plethora of challenges such as big Pharma.

On the other hand, there are corporate interests that are trying to put their teeth on all this research. They are donating a lot of money to all the research. No one believes that they do not want anything back. People who are in those organizations, especially MAPS are very aware of those things. There is also the cultural dimension, shamans and people from different cultures, like the Mazatec who have been using mushrooms for many years, when they hear that the medical establishment is going to take that sacrament and medicalize it and sell it without credit or without honoring the wisdom behind the tradition then of course they are not going to be happy about it and with some good reasons.

Thal:                 

I’m thinking when you’re talking about the plant teachers…and bringing the plant teachers over here…can we still have the element of the sacred or are we also appropriating yet another indigenous method of healing? I mean, what are your ideas around that?

Jorge Ferrer:               

I do work with the plant medicine, after spending 12 years working in Peru, I do belong to a lineage but I am not a native or am I Peruvian. San Pedro is a bit different since it does not have such an old lineage such as the psilocybin.

Thal:                 

Sorry, we lost you for a minute. When you said something important about San Pedro. Can you repeat that please? Thank you.

Jorge Ferrer:               

With San Pedro in particular the tradition is lost. It’s more disseminated, but with other plant teachers it is different. I think it’s a very delicate thing because on the one hand, I would love for as many people as possible in the world to benefit from those teachers. I believe that the plant teachers themselves, they want also that, they want to give. They don’t care if they are giving it to the natives or to other persons, they are sentient intelligences from earth. They just want to benefit all sentient beings. On the other hand, there is the perpetual issue of colonialism. When a culture has been colonized, when their women have been raped, where their lands have been taken, by Western people and now they are taking their sacred medicine.

That is of course will always be a contested area, but I think in the best case scenario, some kind of a dialogue from those traditions should and could take place, and some kind of compensation. Many of those people are just living in misery. It will be something that will make them happy and they will also be more willing to share their wisdom. Their willingness to share their wisdom is their own right but also I think the plant themselves are for all humankind. I don’t think that some people have a sacrosanct right to them and not others because they happen to be born in that area of the world. That’s my opinion but other people will think differently.

Thal:                 

That is true. I actually agree with that opinion. I really think it is the fine line. It’s like the middle way of how can we bring these plant teachers and gift from the Earth. How can we bring them but without appropriation, without the colonial baggage? It’s easier said than done. But yes, absolutely.

Jorge Ferrer:               

You know as a Spaniard and living in the States for 23 years, I never had any issue when I saw Americans cooking piaya but American people did not come to my country to destroy it or decimate it, and rape the women of my ancestry and take our things. The greater the issue of colonialism, the more delicate the approach. The other issues is money. Who is benefitting from this? When a world famous musical band, who I won’t mention their name, uses music from the indigenous people of Africa and makes million without giving back then that is a problem. Money, the history of colonialism and no dialogue with those people, I think are three factors that are very important.

Adrian:            

 I’ve heard you use this term and it’s actually a beautiful plant analogy is cross-pollination. You know, perhaps as a more harmonious way of seeing some of these practices and traditions being shared is the idea of cross-pollination. Can you share what that looks like or your vision for that type of spirituality?

Jorge Ferrer:               

I think I used that term to explain the cross-pollination of mystical and religious traditions. I think this is what is happening today. I used that word to describe what is already happening with the inter-religious dialogue, different monks, and exchanging different practices and different teachings. At the same time I used that word to show that this is where we should be going. Different traditions are good at cultivating different potentials. Some traditions are good at cultivating meditation mind and consciousness, other traditions are good at cultivating harmoniousness with nature and seeing nature as sacred, and other traditions are good at cultivating charity and social action. I think traditions have too much to learn and to teach.

At the same time this can be applied in conversation with indigenous traditions and Western traditions. I think there is a way in which people from both camps approach the other tradition with certain pride. The Western people go like this is primitive, we can take the wisdom from them and we can use it in this way because they are using it in this limited way, while we can use it in these amazing ways and reach many people. We actually know better what these plants are than they know because we have analyzed them in our laboratories. There is also the pride of the indigenous people. They actually come forward saying that we are better, we are the spiritual people. You people are not spiritual and you don’t know shit with what is going on with the plants.

In part, they know much more than we do about the power of these plants. I think there are possibilities of integration with a more dialogical approach in which doctors, psychologists, neuroscientists come together with shamans, indigenous people having worked with those plants and they come together as equals and they share knowledge. They not only share knowledge but they also inquire together. I think that is the future of research that I would like to see. This is not happening in the big universities. Let us come together, let us journey together, and let us inquire together, and let’s do an experience together and then let’s contrast our viewpoints. How do you understand what happened and listening to our different epistemologies and our different methodologies, and our world-views. A kind of multidimensional and multicultural dialogue and inquiry and science! This has not been happening, and I would like to see that happening in the future.

Thal:                 

In a way that is the true work of authentic scholarship, really. When you say that the big universities are not doing that then it’s really sad. The true work of academics and scholarship is to exchange and to meet as equals. When you describe the doctor of psychology meeting the shaman both are inquiring about the spirit but they are just coming at it from a different perspective. Speaking of talking about the same thing but from different perspectives, I am thinking about mysticism. I also know that you are a student of mysticism, and the world itself, a lot of modern minds might cringe when they hear that word. What does it mean to you?

Jorge Ferrer:               

It is a trick question. For me it means many things. I am a student of mysticism, I have also been teaching comparative mysticism for many years. I know the history of the word. I know the different meanings of the word. I know the different meanings the word took throughout many centuries, coming from the Greek matrix through Christianity. Something that is important to consider as preface, and I will go back to what the word means in a second, is the word mysticism is a Western construct. It is a Western term. It was later exported by Western scholars, Christian scholars to understand other traditions talking about access to spiritual entities of realms. For instance, many Buddhist scholars would not like their traditions to be called a mystical tradition.

D. T. Suzuki, one of the most famous Buddhist scholars who popularized Buddhism in the West was completely against the use of the word mysticism and to qualify Buddhism. Most indigenous people I know they would say, mysticism, what is that? That is not what we do here, what about healing, about balance, and about something else. Nothing mystical here. With that being said, the term mystical has many different meanings and it is a contested category. Generally speaking what mysticism means is about direct contact or direct access to a reality that is beyond our senses or we go down to a deeper dimension of this world that we can see. This is the nature of mysticism like the dimensions of consciousness or contact with the divine God in theistic traditions and so forth.

With that being said, my personal take on mysticism is like an integral experience of life, the cosmos, in all of its multidimensionality. So not only the dimension of the natural world but also the different kinds of the subtle realms as well everything that is encompassed by the word cosmos. Different mystics from different traditions would access different dimensions. It is not only a question of access only but it also a kind of creative enactment. This is also part of the participatory paradigm. It is not only about accessing realities that already exists and they do. It is also about cocreating with the kind of generative mystery.

By the term mystery, I mean that kind of creative force that is behind the unfolding of creation. I think we participate as human beings because we are part of that creation and that creative force. In connection with that creative force we can cocreate spiritual insights and practices and even perhaps new realities. I think this has been happening from the beginning of history of humankind.

Thal Ferrer:                 

In a way that’s bringing it to the practical, right? Like even when we’re talking about the plant teachers, they do take us into those “mystical experiences.” But really the true work is after the ceremony, like it’s not just to access those different realms as you said, it’s to bring it back to the everyday.

Adrian:             

I want to ask you, maybe not so practical question, purely just for my own curiosity. I know you’re not a fan of putting things into hierarchy, so I’m going to preface by asking, this is purely just for my own interest here. Is there a mystical experience that you’re comfortable to share that really stands out as the most confusing thing that doesn’t kind of fit, you know, a lot of rational understanding? Maybe actually there is a practical element that sort of brings humility, you know, it kind of brings you back to a place where like, I don’t know what the heck just happened. Is there something you can kind of share on that note?

Jorge Ferrer:               

Yes. My sense is that this is the paradox of knowledge. Genuine scientists talk about this…the more you know the more you realize the little you know. The more mystical experiences you have, the more explorations, the higher consciousness you can access, the more you realize the infinite dimensions that are out there. The more we realize the little that we know or the little that I know, in particular. Many of the experiences have deconstructed certain belief systems that I have had. They also impacted my work and certain theories. I have changed my minds about a few things.

For example, I used to hold that many of the entities that some traditions talk about like angels or sages that people would encounter. I would see it as cocreated by human consciousness until I had my own encounters with sages, astral doctors, and different types of disembodied entities made of energy and consciousness that really persuaded me that they are autonomous. They were so much wiser than I was and they were so much more benign and benevolent than even my deeper self. Most importantly, they had a tangible effect on my experience. I had an encounter with a Daoist sage and I could see him right in front of my face and he was bringing gifts on a purely energetic exchange, a shaktipat.

Therefore, there was this effect on my embodied organism. With ayahuasca it was the same, there were astral doctors moving in the room and healing people by putting their hands on their heart centre. They were performing these energetic spiritual surgeries and aligning the centers. It just makes you want to cry and be so thankful to them. I have had these experiences that helped me reframe my views. It could be some ascended masters or post-mortem scenarios. I do not believe that there is just one post-mortem scenario. I think there are many possibilities.

Some people say that religious pluralism is nice and beautiful but when you die you will see who is true. I don’t think so? I think the post-mortem existence can be much more complex and diverse than this one and different people can go to different places. While some entities could be ascended masters or people who have died, but there could also be independent realms with their independent entities made of energy and consciousness that are probably not connected to humanity.

The thing is that a lot of the entities that are encountered be it angels or others, they are usually very cultural shaped. There are different interpretations, here, where some say is that just an archetypal manifestation that becomes cultural with encounter but the essence is unknowable? The same entity would appear as angel to a Christian or a Buddhist teacher to another. I am not sure that that is how it works because the qualities are different and the energies are very different and the teachings are different, but who knows, the questions are endless, many possibilities and so much mystery. It is very exciting that we are all co-inquiring together into all of these dimensions these days.

Thal:                 

Amazing! Thank you for sharing that. I was transformed into another realm listening to you. Thank you. Yeah.

Adrian:             

Jorge. You mentioned at one point just bringing together a group of people from all the scientists, the Western minded as well as the indigenous and co-journeying. I think that really is sticking as a nice final remark is the idea that perhaps we should all, you know, find opportunities to co-journey with the other, you know, to step out of our comfort zones are familiar tribes and to really connect with the other, to find maybe not common ground, but to find the cross pollination. What gifts do we each have to exchange with one another?

Jorge Ferrer:               

With that being said, that does not mean that everyone has to do psychedelics. There are many ways to co-inquire and to co-journey through meditation and through different practices together. The importance is to include people from very diverse backgrounds and worldviews, different cultures, different worldviews, different epistemologies with humility and openness. I think this will be the challenge of our times.

Thal:                 

Absolutely. Thank you, Jorge.

Adrian:             

Thank you so much for your time today.

Thal:                 

Thank you so much.

Jorge Ferrer:               

My pleasure. Thank you. Thank you very much.

#17: Absorbed by Awe with Kirk Schneider

May 19, 2019 Culture, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality, Technology 01:18:26

The messy aspects of our human experience, our feelings, our flesh, and our psyches can never conform to the prevalent culture of quick fixes. It seems that our technologies are speeding ahead of us. It appears as though we are trying to catch up but to no avail. Are we going to turn into automatons absorbed by our screen or can we slow down, contemplate, and cultivate an awareness of the unknown with humility and wonder?

On this episode, we speak with Kirk Schneider, Ph.D, a psychologist and leading spokesperson for contemporary existential-humanistic psychology. Kirk began exploring the fundamental questions of human existence at an early age following the death of his brother. Kirk believes that one of the keys to human flourishing is through the cultivation of awe and presence, especially as we approach the AI and robotic revolution. Kirk offers his critique of mainstream cognitive behavioural therapy as he advocates for an integrative model of psychotherapy that celebrates the messiness of life. Kirk was the former editor of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and is an adjunct faculty at Saybrook University, Teachers College at Columbia University and the California Institute of Integral Studies. His major books include The Paradoxical Self, Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy, Awakening to Awe, The Polarized Mind, and The Spirituality of Awe. In 2004, he was presented the Rollo May Award from the American Psychological Association for his work in advancing humanistic psychology.

Enjoy!

Highlights:

  • What is Existential-Integrative Psychotherapy?
  • How to Live with a Sense of Awe
  • Restoring Our Capacity for Presence

Resources:

Listen:

An Original Poem Inspired by this Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:

We do have a starting question and we’re wondering about the spiritual orientation of your childhood. If you had a spiritual orientation.

Kirk Schneider:

I was brought up Jewish descent and I really grew up in a pretty secular household, so there wasn’t a lot of attention, there was very minimal attention to ceremony or religion even. Um, my father was pretty much what you call an atheist, I would say. And my mother had that leaning as well. And uh, they certainly appreciated the historical lineage of Judaism. But I would say especially the philosophers like Spinoza, to the degree that we all knew about these people. Miamonides, I mean Jewish philosophers who talked about life and raise questions about life. I think they appreciated the spirit of inquiry in particular.

Thal:

The mystical arm or the contemplative arms of the religion?

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Yeah. You could say that. I would say more the contemplative arms. They were pretty much products of the enlightenment, especially my dad who went on to become a school teacher in math and science, and then he became a principal and then he went on to get his doctorate in education. So he was a humanistic educator and very much aligned with the humanistic psychology temper of the times. I grew up with people like Abraham Maslow and Frank Barron and Rollo May, Carl Rogers, surrounding me. Even in my playroom, I would use some of their textbooks as building blocks to build cities. So, I mean, I, I remember from a very young age of being surrounded by that kind of thinking, but I had a very unique upbringing in that I grew up in an Italian Catholic, German neighborhood, working class neighborhood in the Cleveland area. And so I, I really got to know those traditions in a very earthy way as a kid. I mean I spend time for Christmas with friends across the street and um, I got to know some about the traditions, some of the prejudices too. We definitely were impacted by that. One day I woke up to find a giant Nazi sign painted on our ping pong table. It was hanging in our garage. It made a huge impression. I got caught up in some of the prejudices of the time too as a kid, kind of joining other mobs of kids. And one incident I remember in particular is my father pulling me out of that mob. It was probably the only time that I remember him hitting me. Yeah. Hit me pretty good on the butt. And then sat me down and explained the seriousness of what I was involved in and how hurtful that is could be to other kids. Just more about having sensitivity. People as human beings. It made a huge impression.

Thal:

I hear you when you talk about that. Just for me, I remember 911 was a big event, where I went into an identity crisis after as a Muslim woman in the West. And, um, and realizing that maybe the dark side of religions is the divisions that it creates. And it’s a paradox because similarly they do have, they all have the mystical arms, the Sufism, Kabbalah, they’re all connected and in many ways doorways to experience the divine. But we have to overcome the divisions to arrive there, I think. I feel.

Kirk Schneider:

Well, I’m sorry to hear about the challenges that you went through.

Thal:

I’m sorry to hear about your challenges as well. Absolutely. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Well, it was some, some difficult times. I agree with what I hear you saying. I think one of the great problems of traditional religion, or actually one of the great challenges, traditional religions, is that they all point eventually to the deconstruction of religion that is religious boundaries around human beings where boundaries that make certain human beings, uh, seen in a certain way and others in other way, the whole us-them tension. When most of the great religions are about, in their essence, it seems to me, you know, embracing the stranger, right?

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kirk Schneider:

Being humane to each other. Walking humbly before the vastness of creation. They call it God. But they can do tremendous good in that way. And then we have had some interpreters of religion, I’m thinking of Gandhi and King for example, who exhibited that. Rumi comes to mind as well. My limited knowledge is poetry. She’s wonderful.

Thal:

Yeah. Yes, yes. There definitely needs to be a revival of, of the mystical.

Kirk Schneider:

I think so. Yeah. Although I think sometimes mysticism can also become dogmatic in its own right at times when it’s…

Thal:

Anything can become dogmatic. Once humans start putting their hands.. [laughing]

Kirk Schneider:

That’s right. It’s a human challenge. But, it is why I call myself an enchanted agnostic. If you want to know my religiosity, that’s it. I take mystery very seriously.

Thal:

I love that.

Kirk Schneider:

And I’m, I’m very exhilarated by the notion, the experiences mystery to me. It helps to, to lift us out of the petty and narrow identifications that we get into both towards ourselves and others. Yes. And we forget that we’re participating in something much, much greater and incredible. I mean, I call it awesome.

Adrian:

Kirk you shared with us the challenges of getting involved in the mob behaviour early on as a kid. Um, I’m trying to connect some of the dots there. How did those early experiences lead you towards a path within psychology and more specifically existentialism, you know your interest… Essentially what drew you towards that, that area of human psychology?

Kirk Schneider:

Well it was certainly partly that challenge, that struggle of growing up, feeling somewhat alienated but also crossing bridges with other kids and feeling a part of different cultures, people from different backgrounds and all that stirred in me as well as the teachings I would say that, uh, my dad communicated, my mother as well was very bright and thoughtful and so a lot revolved around discussion, but I would say maybe even more pivotal was the death of my brother when I was about three years old. He died of a convergence of illnesses and, my parents did everything they could to save him. He was only seven at the time. And that pretty much shattered our world for a period of time. And it caused a great deal of emotional turmoil among all of us. I don’t know if I would say particularly me, but I mean myself and in terms of being such a young, impressionable child, I was very lost and actually very terrified of the world and death and illness. I would have night terrors where I would see, witches and monsters at my window at night. I remember I would go through these long periods of crying, long periods of temper tantrums too. At one point I believe I kicked my mother’s tooth out in a rage and I was losing touch with reality in some ways. I know my father even kept notes on me. He was so concerned. Anyway it was by mother, however, who was most in touch with psychoanalysis interestingly. And she was going through it herself after the loss of her son, which I can’t even, it’s almost can’t begin to imagine what she was going through at that. But she referred me to a child analysts. And so I became a patient at a very young age. I was about five years old, I believe. And I saw this guy, middle aged guy for about a year, and it was probably one of the most important contacts in my life and certainly formative in my move toward not just thinking about being interested in human behavior, but you know, really living it and feeling it. I think one of the most important parts of that work is, I don’t remember a thing that we said really. What I remember is he was very calm and a powerful presence really, and the feeling that he had been through a lot himself. He didn’t reveal anything about his background as far as I know, verbally. Nonverbally he felt very seasoned to me. It felt like he could hold me and that’s what I really needed. At that time it was very difficult for my parents to do because of their own turmoil. And, uh, anyway, that started me on a path toward, um, being able to in a sense gradually move from a place of kind of abject terror and paralysis to gradual risk taking with him and expressing my feelings and verbalize what I was going through as well as I could at that age. Uh, and uh, and even intrigue about life and these questions that terrified me before. These were huge questions. I was opened up to at a very young age. What the hell is the meaning of all this? What’s going to happen to me? What’s going to happen to my parents? What is death? What is life, you know, how do we live it? These started becoming more and more intriguing questions to me as I was able to kind of work with such scary places in myself. And I think that was really the beginning. That was my introduction to existentialism. In a lot of ways, my world being ripped open.

Thal:

As you’re describing your experience, I’m just thinking about a lot of adults really out there that are in fear and are paralyzed by fear and are unable to experience awe in their life. I don’t even know how to like if I’m going to frame a question, but maybe just to hear your thoughts around that.

Kirk Schneider:

My thoughts are that in some ways there are two ways to look at that space that gets ripped open. You know, the, the uh, the safe and the familiar, getting ripped open, to the radically unknown, uh, the boundaryless because you don’t have any guideposts at that point. You’re in free fall. That can be seen as totally horrifying and floundering. But I think through good psychotherapy, especially depth psychotherapy which is not just talking about, but meeting the person with their whole body experience, can begin to allow more of a sense of awe, more of a sense of wonder about that space because remembered that the very space that feels terrifying and overwhelming and boundaryless is also a space that’s potentially very freeing, you know, and can enable your imagination, your creativity, more of a self creation in a sense or a communal creation. It allows freedom that the safe and familiar, the narrow path, often does not permit. Now which one is better quote unquote? You know, this is a struggle for everyone. Or a question for everyone. But for me that was very important in a sense. I guess my post-modern awakening that you know, or philosophical awakening that so much of our world is constructed by people. If you can hold that tentativeness about how we’re programmed and how we’re conditioned, you can begin to expand and deepen if you have help. But help is huge. So I don’t want to discount that. And I think that’s to speak to your question there is in terms of how does one move in this direction, we need “helpful witnesses” as Alice Miller put it. Whether they’re therapists, neighbours, you know, clergy, parents, friends, or I’m thinking of Maya Angelou, the great poet found it in books. She went to her local library following horribly traumatic sexual abuse that she went through. But she found heroes and people who related to her through literature. Some can happen in different ways, but it’s so crucial that we have that help along the way.

Adrian:

Yeah. This is so interesting because we’re not just talking about these concepts like philosophical concepts, you know? There’s a practice of this and that to me with the existential therapy is the bridging of that into a real practical level. Um, but for a lot of people, I, I have the sense that they might not know what that, what that looks like. Um, would you be able to describe what that might actually look like in terms of working with somebody in a depth oriented manner and connecting with their existential aspects of being?

Kirk Schneider:

Sure. I just want to add, did I feel extremely blessed to have had this kind of help along the way. Again, something not to be skipped over. And I had a similar pivotal experience or time around graduate school around when I was 21 or so, very far from home and had a kind of anxiety, panic attack, breakdown that I received pivotal help for by a local existential depth therapist at the time. So these, these really were my formative, probably most core bases for my direction and informing my direction. And that I had some great mentors too which we can get into later. Want to, uh, I guess we’re talking about, again, being able to have that kind of support. So…

Thal:

Thanks for going and mentioning it because it is, it is important. I mean, I even, I’m even grateful that I’m able to get the depth psychotherapy that I’m going through. I’ve been going through Jungian Analysis now for two years and I already see the benefits of that. So yes, it is important to mention that maybe not everyone, you know, has that opportunity.

Kirk Schneider:

That’s right. But everyone who goes into this field should, in my view. If you’re not taking that trip yourself, I think it’s very hard to be there in an optimal way for the other person.

Thal:

Very true.

Kirk Schneider:

Or at least in some way that you haven’t done that kind of down and dirty, you know, encounter with your own blocked off places. It’s hard to support, you know actually doing the work. But in terms of your other question about the approach, I guess we’re getting more into the theory at this point. I really see, what I call existential-integrative therapy as formed around two basic questions. Now these are mainly implicit questions in the encounter, but sometimes they’re explicit. Those questions are: how is one presently living? So it’s like holding the mirror to that partner or client to help them to see as close up as possible for them. How are they living right now? What is the state of their union in a sense or disunion. And not just intellectually or not just behaviorally on the outside, but with their whole body experience to the degree possible. And this is the integrative part, the degree possible. The client’s desire and capacity for deeper changes is a very important piece of this. And not everybody has the desire or the capacity to look, let’s say beyond symptoms or symptom change. We’re just getting back to work or whatever, or they’re so fragile that they maybe just need something physiological to help them through whether that’s medication, which I have a whole lot of skepticism around. But I also am open to as a possibility for many people just to get through the night. So how are they presently living? The second question is then how are you willing to live? After you’ve looked inside, you know, with as few sort of consolations as possible, really attempting to see the starkness of where you’re at. Now what does that imply for how you’re willing to live your life? So those really address the kind of a basic philosophical questions of freedom and responsibility, existential questions. You have the freedom to explore and to look at what’s going on. But we also have the freedom and responsibility ability to respond to what we have discovered. I actually call it freedom, experiential reflection and responsibility because it’s not just questions about just simply moving from, uh, recognizing what’s going on to just kind of instantly changing. It often takes kind of a whole body awareness of what’s going on before one has a deep sense of how one wants to change as opposed to just a cognitive conditioning for many people, not for everyone.

Adrian:

Yeah. I wanted to ask you, how does one overcome the inertia or the stuckness that one might experience in terms of, you mentioned freedom, but sometimes freedom is paralyzing because there’s so many choices, you know, which job do I take? You know, do I want to continue this relationship or end it? Um, and so how does one work to the point where they actually activate themselves to, to begin the steps of change?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, I see the therapy as helping the person again, seeing closer and closer into the mirror of themselves as to how they’re living and how they’re willing to live. And for those who are willing to take the deeper journey with this therapy, that mirror and that an intensifying of seeing where they are and where they want to be and not only want to be, but you’re mergingly are willing to be is the impetus for many people. So it builds a kind of counter-will as Otto Rank put it, or a frustration. Some of the Gestaltist put it. As as you, you, you’re very rarely exposed to that kind of that intensity of frustration about the state of your life. And this is a very exceptional space for wanting to keep coming back to, again a very focused and present way and revisiting where it is you are, which is usually blocked. That’s a part of your battle and you’re blocked in some way and where it is you want to be, not only want to be, but are willing to commit to be and to keep going over that terrain. I find that that builds that counter-will for many people to the point where they’re not going to take it anymore. You’re not going to keep living in that prison. You know, whether it’s drugs and alcohol or how they hold themselves back from pursuing something that they deeply desire or are passionate about, a love relationship or maybe a project art work of some kind. It’s a very organic process in that way. And so once they can throw those blockades off they can come into their fuller being, again more of their whole bodily experience, the fuller ranges of thoughts, feelings, sensations, imaginings, intuitions and discover or connect with meanings that were latent before or dormant. But now the person’s will has been strengthened to the point where they can be pursued.

Thal:

I think it was very important what you mentioned earlier too, that the therapeutic alliance is not about the therapist only. It’s also about what the person is coming with. Are they willing to live a full life? Do they really want to go into the depths? It’s not just about what the therapist does. In that relationship. And it’s also important when you said that, um, overcoming those things, then will, you know, take us to a place where there is meaning and which takes us back to that question, the meaning crisis and um, you know, nowadays, you know, in general how we live our life is very mechanistic, very rigid, very in our head. And really this is about coming to life. And what I want to say is there is no fear, this work. I think once we overcome and then then awe comes in. Raw

Kirk Schneider:

Well hopefully.

Thal:

Everybody should do this.

Kirk Schneider:

I agree with that a lot. A lot more people would benefit from this journey. I mean, I feel there’s always a level of some anxiety, at least for me. Um, but I don’t see that as bad. I just see them as human.

Thal:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Flesh and blood and a certain vulnerability, which is part of what intensifies and vivifies life. But the point being, yes, if you can come into that you can feel a lot more vital about living about possibilities, and maybe even adopt a sense of awe towards living as a whole. So it’s not just about necessarily pursuing certain goals or meanings, but a whole attitude towards living that is freer. That whole attitude of being able to open to the amazement of that freedom as you were saying before. It can be dizzying. It can be overwhelming. But the more you can be present to you know, the good, the bad and the ugly within yourself and coexist with that and come into the more of who you are, the more that you can, open to the amazement and really the miracle of this opportunity that we have of being a part of something that’s so far beyond us and that is very elevating. I’m not saying one can stay on that plane all the time or even that’s necessarily desirable, but it certainly can be very powerful and a very important antidote to depression. If we think about people like Viktor Frankl for example, in the death camps, some people in the most dehumanizing conditions are able to connect with something much greater than themselves and their situations and through that find an impetus to go on. Stephen Hawking, another example, with his ALS, attuned into the cosmos, you know. Yeah. Or Maya Angelou.

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the work is not about getting rid of our anxieties and fears because those will never go away. It’s about holding them with depth and um, more spiritual maturity. I don’t know. I’m limited by language. Um, but yeah. But um, on a practical level, what’s the difference between depth, psychotherapy depths, existential psychotherapy, and say the more mainstream cognitive behavioural therapy?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, the main difference is that we’re more concerned with what you might call process as opposed to content. So it’s not that the verbal isn’t important. That’s of course very important to helping someone to become more aware of their concerns and how they want to live in their lives. But probably even more important is how they say what they say, what they bring to their words. In other words, how they hold themselves, their facial expressions. What the energy is like in the room between you. It’s that cultivation of a fuller presence to what’s really going on here as distinct from just helping somebody to move from one way of thinking to another way of thinking. Helping somebody change thoughts, make thoughts more rational if you will, which has all kinds of questions around it itself. Rational for whom? Yes might help them function better in the world in certain ways. But is that really to their benefit in a deeper and fuller way. Like going back to the old job or the old relationship might be, you know, adaptive in some ways, but maybe those are oppressive in a lot of ways and not really helping them or the culture in the longer run. So this notion of, uh, helping somebody to decide the direction of their lives in their deepest core rather than with some overlay of this is how you do it and this is what has been shown through aggregate data that helps people. Yes, through one lens and I’d say it’s a narrow lens and narrow methodology. Often that can be helpful, but there can be so much more. And I think so many people are, are short changed from having that chance to stay more fully present with what is important to them through, you know, some of the more programmatic therapies. There’s a lot around this. I mean, another analogy here, and this is a little bit crude, but I think it makes the point is that sometimes what we’re doing with cognitive and behavioral therapy is we’re changing the window dressing on the titanic, right? Okay. So you can make things prettier on the outside in a way but are you really getting to what that person is struggling with at their core? And we’ve seen so many times where people’s presenting problems, maybe something that seems more on the surface, they’re not sleeping well, they’re not eating well. Uh, the one client who had assertiveness issues with their boss, okay, so you help with that. But if those people stay with you for the longer journey or the deeper journey and are willing to pay attention to what’s going on in their bodies and what that brings up and what that associates with their deeper being, their presenting problems often shift to quite profound existential issues. Like, I don’t want to just be assertive, more assertive at work. I want to live more free in my life. I want to feel more free as a person, want to be able to express myself and access myself. I’ve seen this happen a number of times with clients. You know, I realize, I mean, I’m not eating well or sleeping well. I’m in like a black hole in my life. A bottomless pit. I’ve lost. Okay. So now we’re getting to the deeper questions. Not just to think about them, but to try to be present to those places. As I say to reoccupied parts of oneself, that one has blocked off and that’s often nonverbal. You can’t put that in words as we were intimating there before. You need to experience it.

Adrian:

I wanted to ask you, how do you personally maintain contact with that level of presence to allow for awe to even sort of be part of your experience? How do you, how do you approach that?

Kirk Schneider:

Well, again, my therapies have been very important for me to feel less scared about a lot. And to be able to stay much more with myself even when I’m feeling really down or pained or what have you. That is such a gift. I can’t overemphasize that. To be able to be presented that opportunity to realign with your fuller being. Maybe the greatest gift that one can be given. Because that means you can go into almost any circumstance and be okay, relatively okay with yourself, relative friends with yourself. You’ve gotten to know yourself in many more ways than just intellectual or what have you. So that has helped me tremendously. I really try to practice being connected with something larger. In my day to day life. I’ve had some recent struggles that have made that difficult but also have made it more acute. I’ve recently developed a cervical dystonia, which is a neurological condition, which involves a twisting of the neck. It was extremely tormenting at the beginning. It started with me just laying back in the bed and realizing my head is slowly turning and there’s nothing I can do. And so I’ve grappled with this for the last five years or so, and I have a neurologist and I’ve managed to recruit a number of holistic people. I’ve been working a lot on trying to address the physiology of it. But I think one of the most important things that has helped me and I have improved, notably, has been a determination to fully live my life in spite of, or maybe even in light of it. And, I don’t know, I guess I’ve been blessed or cursed with sometimes anger and frustration helping to drive me on and, and help me feel more free because I get resentful of, I guess when I see as unnecessary tracks that one can fall in.

Kirk Schneider:

But that’s where that paradox comes in again, because often these wounds that we’re experiencing are actually the windows, right? These are the gifts that take us to that next layer of growth.

Adrian:

Exactly. And, and that’s, that’s a real tough one for psychology to resolve. You know, I don’t know if we’ll ever resolve it. But that question of do we need actually need to be shocked or jarred in some way in order to go to the next level of consciousness? You know, a deepening or broadening of consciousness is some kind of shaking the foundations necessary? I don’t think there’s a dogmatic answer to that, but certainly we’ve seen that that has been an impetus for many people who feel vital about their lives because it’s taken them out of the box and, and it’s, it’s, uh, in some ways mobilized to live differently, to find a different way. So anyway, going back to that, attempting to tune in to the awesomeness of life, being aware of passing nature of time. Even right now, if I tune into that. It makes even our connection right now that much more precious realizing that it’s all passing. It’s all fleeting. And yet it’s here right now we’re here. That is awe inspiring, really.

Thal:

Absolutely. I feel like when we’re talking about depth existential psychotherapy, I mean the word seems very… it’s a mouthful, but really it’s also about, um, bringing that depth oriented perspective into our, into our everyday that this is something that we can actually live every day and every, um, so maybe we can talk about how, like how can our listeners orient their lives to become, much more depths oriented.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Many possible routes. I was also realizing that, another way that I found this cultivation of depth as very valuable and very much part of my every day life is cross cultural contact too. And I think this kind of awe-based attitude can be very important to bridge-building among people of different backgrounds because so much of it is about coming to terms with “the other” in oneself, right?As well as the other-other. The other-other brings us in touch with the “other” in ourselves as well. And so to go to your question, I think practicing visualizations and I sometimes work with students around this, of sitting with someone of a different culture or background or mindset than you. Maybe your most challenging client or someone you know, that makes your blood curdle even. I mean, to take this to the extreme, one of my mentors, Jim Bugental used to talk about how appalled he was by Hitler in Nazi Germany. But he often wondered if he could sit with Hitler as a psychotherapist and what that would bring up in him. And that can be an extremely powerful exercise. You know, can you sit with political leaders, religious leaders who totally, repel you. What are the thoughts, especially feelings, body sensations that come up, the associations to those images, maybe memories, what happens when you sit with those and stay as present as you can to them? And then maybe imagine that person talking to you, telling you about their lives and their story. I think one often finds that as difficult as it is to do that or even to think about, that there’s a kind of humanizing that can take place whereby, it’s not not about agreeing with or even necessarily supporting the other as much as attempting to understand, being in a mode of discovery. And I would say that when that happens in actuality, person to person beyond the practicing of the visualization, uh, many more times than not, people find a different relation to the other, both in themselves and the other person. And they’re actually sitting with them. And so we’ve been promoting and cultivating some of these living room dialogues. Actually. I joined a group called Better Angels named after Lincoln’s famous speech of the better angels of our nature, you know, to bring the union back. Where it’s a grassroots movement that is now in 31 states. And they’ve done over a thousand workshops where you have a group of liberals and conservatives, usually Republicans and Democrats come together or are willing to come together in a very structured way talk about their experiences. But a lot of it is really all geared toward attempting to understand and learn about the other, not to change the other. And the Credo is “respect, curiosity and openness”. Those are the pivot points. So the facilitators really try to keep people in that mode and avoiding, you know the “I gotcha” questions or accusations or knee-jerk stereotypes. All of that is bracketed back as much as it can. And it’s people honestly attempting to learn about each other just as a basis. And then from there, it’s interesting what people find. They usually discover something new that tempers their sense of one another somewhat. Will that, you know, revolutionize America or the world? I don’t know. But it seems to me that it’s one of the best, most powerful ways of creating at least the conditions for substantive change and more communalism.

Thal:

Yeah. At the heart of what you’re saying is really, um, conversations without the ego, which is not a very easy thing to do, but is really truly transformative, which again, takes us back to the therapy room. And when you were talking about the cross cultural aspect of things, I mean, I’m thinking about, psychotherapy as a practice that has been dumped, like mostly a white practice and, now we’re moving into a world, we’re all, we’re all suffering from the same thing. It doesn’t matter where we come from. And so I see therapy as a tool that’s going to be much more important in the coming years and, and that it needs, it’s, it’s not a, I don’t think it’s just a white practice. I think it’s a human…

Kirk Schneider:

Oh, a number of us old white guys are trying to change that.

Thal:

Because the thing is cause like even from my own immediate circle, a lot of people were resisting like, are you really getting help with psychotherapy? Is it really helping you? Actually yes. If, if we’re open to it. Yeah.

Kirk Schneider:

Well we really need the infusion of multiculturalism to inform our existential therapy. Yes. Because after all, what is existentialism or humanism all about? It’s about human lives, human existence. It’s not about white man’s existence or this class’ existence. I felt for such a long time that the riches of this approach need to be opened up. The box needs to be opened up for, for everyone because this is a human project. The human project. How do we relate, what is our relationship to life as a whole to existence as a whole? We’re all in that as you could say, you know, we’re all vulnerable, fragile, small beings before this vastness and at the same time have this tremendous capacity to take risks, to venture out, to learn, to discover, create. How do we all work with that? And create conditions where that becomes a more appealing road for every one. You know, so I see a lot of these modes, including the existential therapy modes as experiments in many ways. They’re experiments in living and they’re, they’re very, very precious because they’re just not encouraged in most mainstream cultures as far as I know. Um, and especially with technology now, it’s a whole other overlay that I think is making it even more challenging. And that’s why I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about the challenges of the robotic revolution, which seems to be more and more about the quick-fix, the machine model for living. Speed, instant results, appearance and packaging. The interior life could easily get lost and the capacity to pause. That’s where I think it’s so wonderful you’re in that Jungian depth therapy, you’re cultivating that capacity to be more fully present with yourself.

Thal:

I hope so.

Adrian:

Yeah in terms of, like you just mentioned the AI Revolution, you know, with technology, we’re all vulnerable to massive disruption and it seems like we’re inching closer and closer as you know, these technologies are becoming ubiquitous. I’m reminded of the author, Yuval Harari, you know, he talks about the struggle against irrelevance. You know, what will happen the day when most human jobs are easily replaced by artificial general intelligence. And so these existential questions aren’t just for the privileged who have lots of time to ponder, you know, the big questions, they will become at the forefront I think of of every human being.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. They’re coming very quickly and actually there are people who call themselves trans-humanists who actually desire to see the human being as we know it irrelevant because they think that life will be so much more efficient once it’s mechanized. And once, you know, we’re able to download data, through, I guess neural chips and um, we’ll be virtually impervious to disease because we will become cyborgs basically. And this is seen as desirable post humanism trans-humanism it’s called. I think there’s no question that there is a thrust in that direction and we, especially in our depth existential communities need to be very tuned in to this problem because the whole definition of what it means to be a human being is changing rapidly. And so it raises questions about what parts do we want to preserve of this old humanity? What parts are we willing, again, are we willing to shape differently? And I think we have to be careful on both ends. Not to be dogmatic on, on either end because I try not to be a luddite either. I mean, I do believe technology has done some amazing things. It’s, it’s done some great things for many of us. Think about medicine and science in particular improved our lives, but we need to be circumspect about it. And at all costs I believe we need to preserve the capacity for presence. Because that will be our guidance system to be able to pause and to discern, okay, is this really the direction we want to go? And again, not just because my cognition tells me or some abstract, you know, book told me or philosophy, but because, my whole bodily being is questioning this particular direction or replacement of a, let’s say, a physical part of ourselves where my whole bodily being can go on board with it. Willing to take the leap. Boy, I mean, these are going to be really knotty questions when we’re on the cusp of facing that now.

Thal:

Yeah, absolutely. And that’s why we’re seeing there’s a sort of, meditation has become this buzzword now for a while. It’s for a reason.

Kirk Schneider:

Yes, that’s true. That’s true. Yeah. I, I think, uh, there, there’s, there’s a great value to this mindfulness revolution that we’re seeing. I also think that it, it can be, can become in some sense a technology in itself, if it’s not about life, you know, if it’s not a, where the rubber hits the road about your everyday living and everyday consciousness, if it’s just, let’s say in a cubicle like a yoga studio or one retreat or, you know, kind of compartmentalized. And it’s not a lifetime cultivation. And if it doesn’t allow one to engage, you know, the anxious and the tragic dimensions of living too, as well as that which connects us to something higher or larger. It could end up bypassing important areas of life that I think existential folks have kept us kind of on path and keep reminding us, grounding us, the messiness of life too. And that’s a part of it. Yeah. I would say put it as helping us to find ground within groundlessness and to be aware that we are in suspense both literally and figuratively. And yet there’s so much of that suspense that we can be conscious to, you know. Conscious about and it can be freeing.

Thal:

Yeah. I’m just thinking about it just in closing. I’m just thinking about, um, uh, something that Adrian had mentioned to me just before talking to you. Maybe want to talk about it, about Maslow and, and peak experiences.

Adrian:

Yeah. I, I was reminded by, I think it was an article I read a few years ago about how actually towards the end of his life, you know, some of this never got published, but how Maslow actually he’s, and he’s quite well known for his work on peak experience and he started referring to experiencing those qualities of the peak, the peak quality in the ordinary. So it’s finding it in the mundane and the ordinary. And this was after, I think he had a near death experience that might have actually created some of that perceptual change. Um, is there anything that you could maybe add to that, because you mentioned he was a big influence in your life and here you are actually in the depths of that same lineage of, of work. How can we integrate the peak within the ordinary, mundane world?

Thal:

Especially since he’s just known for the, you know, for that trying, but there’s much more to his work.

Kirk Schneider:

Right the satisfaction of needs and yeah. Self-actualization triangle.

Thal:

Right that one.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I’ve always appreciated his notion of peak experience and, uh, I like his direction of seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary. And of course he’s not the only one who’s, who’s looked in that way. Uh, we’ve had many poets and humanists through history who’ve opened to that, seeing the power in that, uh, I guess one of my concerns with peak experiences that it could be seen as a kind of fleeting high sort of the quick high. I distinguished between what I call the quick-boil version of awe and the slow simmer by awe, by the way, I mean the humility and wonder or sense of adventure toward living. So I think we’ve got a fair amount of the quick-boil, um, but we really need to work on more than lifetime cultivation and the more complex sense of the awesome that includes you know, sorrow and anxiety, some of the real difficult parts of life as well. It’s, that’s a part of what intensifies real living in my view. But how do cultivate extraordinary in the ordinary? Again, I believe it’s to practice and it’s a lot about what you notice. Taking time to notice the details let’s say of another person. The subtleties of your interaction was with someone else, maybe their story and noticing and discovering the details of their story, the many layers, all the different influences that go into them becoming them. Um, from a macro perspective, it’s being able to see how we’re all connected to something larger than ourselves. Participating in this great journey of, you know, the earth whirling around the sun 67,000 miles per hour, and the solar system or the galaxy apparently moving through the universe at 1.2 million miles per hour, we’re all part of this, this spaceship. And if we can kind of get that attunement at points, we’re in touch with that bigger picture, it can be so gratifying. I call a number of, of these ways of cultivating awe, “lenses of awe”, I don’t know if you’ve seen descriptions of that, but, if one could attempt to engage or sharpen one’s awareness, like almost like picking up lenses and seeing through the lens of the passing nature of time in life. For example, we’re seeing through the lens of wonder and surprise, can you be open at this very moment for something different to happen? Something that you discover. Can you allow yourself to be surprised, even though you’re going to that same old class or you’re reading that same old book, or you seeing that same old person so easy for us to get into these slots? Right? Well, it doesn’t have to be the same old, same old depending on our attitude or approach something fresh can happen and you can bring that something for you can help to bring something fresh to the moment too. Can you see through the lens of again, how we’re connected to something so much more in the moment? Just think about the histories and mysteries that we all bring right now. It’s so much we could explore about each other. Also the amazement of what brings us here, how we’re all children of the cosmos just dropped in. Does that shift our view of ourselves? I think it sheds a lot of the usual categories. Just seeing clothing or you know, a certain look or what have you. Being able to pick up the lens of what I call sentiment. Can you tune into your emotionality when you’re seeing someone else or connecting with something or someone or a place. Travel can be great part of this too, but can you engage that something with more of your whole bodily being especially how you’re feeling. Can you open to your feeling when you’re with that person or thing. The capacity to be alone, the Lens of Solitude. I think that’s really big. It’s bigger than we have granted in our culture because so much is cut against being alone, we’re so tethered, you know, often to our iPads or iPhones, we always have to have stimulation. How do you help to create or co-create a sense of awe, unless there’s some capacity to bear feelings to bear parts of ourselves that are unsettling.

Adrian:

Yeah. I just feel they need to also mention here we are talking and technology is actually mediating our encounter with you. And so again, without being dogmatic, I think it’s, it’s beautiful that we can see how these things can actually live together. You know, we’re both sitting here, you’re, you’re in California and we’re in Canada and yet there’s a transmission here, right. Our bodies experience things in this conversation that…

Thal:

Even energetically I can feel it.

Kirk Schneider:

Yeah, sure, sure. You just proved my whole thesis. Yeah. I mean it’s just, it’s a great irony in it. It’s why we need to be careful about being dogmatic. I think, uh, a lot of questions can be raised about whether there are significant differences between coming across on the screen and actually living and breathing with each other in person. I would advocate that there are, but, uh, I think all these things need to be explored much more. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing. I recently done a series of lectures to China, to Chinese students too. It’s mind blowing, you know, these thousands of miles and thousands of miles of cultural difference too. There’s some bridges being created and actual, as you say, energy exchanges that I felt. I couldn’t see all of the students. I saw some of them on the screen. And what do we do with that? So you’re right, that is part of the awesome too. Or can be, I think the problem is, comes in, uh, when things are overly programmed, when they’re preset. when, uh, you know, they’ve got an algorithm or when it’s a calculative mode, let’s as Heidegger put it: calculated versus meditative. It closes off and when you close off, what can be discovered and what can happen also. You’re sanitizing to some degree and you’re dulling the potential for radical awe, you know, for our fuller relationship to the mystery of being. And I think that’s the danger. So how do we be careful about closing off our ways of interacting and communicating in laboratory-like settings. That don’t permit greater possibility. Yeah.

Adrian:

Kirk, that’s wonderful. Yeah let’s bring this to an end here. I’m just mindful of your time. Um, but I do want..

Kirk Schneider:

It was wonderful.

Thal:

Thank you so much. That was amazing. Thank you.

#12: Reclaiming the Inner Teen with Avi Zer-Aviv

April 14, 2019 Culture, Life Transition, Mindfulness, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality 01:06:21

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

One of the most important aspects of healing is tending to our emotional wounds. We have all been hurt. It might look different from one person to another, but some of our wounds are deep and carry a specific age. When we are trying to work on our wholeness, we may have to pay attention to our inner child or our inner teen. Bringing back the lost parts of ourselves and integrating into maturity is the essence of self-development.

On this episode, we have a conversation with Avi Zer-Aviv, a Toronto-based Psychotherapist and educator. Avi is a member of the Canadian Humanistic and Transpersonal Association and a LGBTQI positive Practitioner. Avi’s holistic approach to psychotherapy is informed by decades of deep inner work and spiritual exploration. In this conversation, we discuss the role of psychotherapy in modern society and learn the tricky dance of working with activated “inner teens”. Avi shows us how our deepest wounds can end up becoming our biggest doorways to personal transformation.

Highlights:

  • Difference Between a Psychologist, Psychotherapist and Psychiatrist
  • Psychology of the Inner Teen
  • Healthy vs Unhealthy Shame

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired by This Episode

Full Transcript

Thal:

Hello Avi, Welcome to the show.

Avi:

Thank you for having me.

Thal:

Thank you. Thank you for coming on. Um, we wanted to start today with, uh, your personal journey. Um, you have been a psychotherapist now for a few years. Um, please let us know how did you get there?

Avi:

I’ll give you the coles notes.

Thal:

Alright.

Avi:

Um never thought I would be a therapist. Never set out to be a therapist. I had a sort of an early awakening when I was a teenager, sorta grew up in the suburbs of Toronto up in York region and white picket fence sort of life. I’m not really religious. I’m very much consumer. And I started to find myself wanting more of probably around 12 or 13 starting to think about things that, um, mystery, the mystery of life, but I didn’t really have any one to bounce anything off of. Um, and um, I had an, I have an aunt and uncle were kind of at the time were sort of the black sheep of the family and they, uh, asked me up to their cottage up in a Bancroft Ontario and I spent 10 days there, and it felt like I found my tribe. I remember thinking that when I was teenager, like, oh, these are my people.

Adrian:

So how were they different from the rest of your family? How are they black sheeps?

Avi:

Uh, they were, they just didn’t drink the Kool-aid of, you know, what is your, what the program of life is supposed to be. They were travellers, they were um, uh, spent a lot of time in Asia. They owned, they owned a, uh, an Indian clothing store on Queen West and meditated and were vegetarians and just things that were off the beaten track. Um, and um, yeah, so I, I intuitively felt that I’d found people I could talk to about things that I’ve been really hungry to talk about and that was kind of where it all started.

Thal:

That’s awesome because those questions that you have at that young age, a lot of people do have those questions and don’t know where to go and sometimes that causes more anxiety.

Avi:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s very easy to get isolated. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Um, so I felt really lucky, but then I had to come back to my suburban life and the contrast made things even more painful. Um, so I became kind of a rebellious teenager and uh, just was counting the minutes until high school was finished so I could go traveling, which is something really wanted to do and that’s exactly what I did. I, I the minute high school ended I set off and lived in Asia for a year and I myself in India for six months, on a spiritual pilgrimage and meditated my brains out. Lived in south India, different ashrams. The Aurobindo Ashram, Ramana Maharishi Ashram, and I went pretty deep with my meditation practices. But when I got back to Toronto I realized that wasn’t really in my body. I was very much opening a lot of doorways, but I was kind of, my energy was going up and I sort of left body behind and um, that’s how I just might, my instinct was to just to meditate more and that just seemed to perpetuate this kind of feeling of ungroundedness and just feeling of kind of not wanting to be in the world, just wanting to meditate back to whatever source was/is. And uh, then I started getting panic attacks in my early twenties, which was the invitation to psychotherapy.

Thal:

How old were you when you were in India?

Avi:

18.

Thal:

And it’s usually at that age, um, and you know, you going after the spiritual path without the embodied part is what may have caused, um, you wanting to escape, escape your body.

Avi:

Absolutely.

Thal:

And, and so psychotherapy helped you integrate body and soul?

Avi:

yeah, it came very reluctantly. I didn’t really believe that psychotherapy was a valuable tool because of the sort of focus on content, on story and on narrative, on history. I sort of, from a, from a young sort of a this not in not integrated spiritual lens, that was just ego indulging itself and that wasn’t, that was just kind of getting caught in the web of you know, at the time when I called maya, or illusion and so I really didn’t come in, in an open hearted voluntary. I came in really because these panic attacks were getting worse so much so I would have them on the street and feel like I would just couldn’t interact socially. Um, and so I really came to just, I wanted someone to help me get rid of these panic attacks and I gave myself a year to get and get back to my spiritual practice. I could go and become enlightened [laughing]. You know, what is it now 20 something years later? For me, psychotherapy was a doorway into an integrated spirituality. So I didn’t have to leave my spirituality behind. What I did have to leave behind was an idea of spirituality, though that was really about not being here in the world, which in my opinion, any good spirituality is one that is of the earth and is in life. We’re here, we’re alive, we’re in this body, and so why not be here?

Thal:

Exactly. That’s very important to remember because even the word spirituality, a lot of people find it problematic or don’t understand it and assume that it’s about escaping when in reality, all the authentic spiritual teachings are about being in the world and enacting your humanity in the world.

Avi:

Yes, yes.

Adrian:

It sounded like you had your panic attacks and so it was when things were so bad that forced you to, okay, now try, try new things. And psychotherapy, you went into it somewhat skeptical. It sounded like you, you know, you didn’t really fully buy into the idea of it. Um, you even set a deadline in a year if you want to be fixed and then you can just continue on with your meditation. What changed? So what at what moment did it start to shift for you when you realize, okay, this is not what I thought it was and what was it? What, what did it become for you?

Avi:

I worked with a really interesting therapist who was very much all about the here and now. And I thought, oh great. The present moment. There’s nothing like the present moment. This is a spiritual approach. Yet I didn’t, I didn’t have a sense of how much I didn’t want to be in the moment emotionally and vulnerably that I wanted to be in the moment with lofty concepts of mysticism and um, uh, you know, big picture stuff. But to be finite in the moment, to be raw, naked, emotionally naked in the moment was not only painful but was… Opened the door to my deep wounds and all my… And so I, this therapist was really challenging, did not, did not really like it, did not, not so much like, but really challenged me to stay in the moment with him. And, um, that’s not an easy thing when you haven’t been, when you’re not steeped in that and when that isn’t the way you’ve been brought up.

Thal:

Absolutely. And this is the, um, I guess, psychological arm of this spiritual path. A lot of people, um, you know, seek spirituality as a way to bypass a psychological trauma.

Avi:

yes,

Thal:

You know, developmental trauma, whatever, the pain of being human. And um, and so it sounds like psychotherapy in your life was a tool to bring you back into your body.

Avi:

It was. But you know, it’s interesting, when I first started spiritual practices at a really young age, Yoga, vegetarianism, I was amazed at how much clearing happened. And I think it’s a very common experience for a lot of people that don’t, that have just kind of, it’s a great starting point, spiritual practices. And it really does have a way of. A lot of these practices have a way of clearing energy and opening energy and expanding energy. And so, um, you know, in the moment you can be a little bliss bunny because you go from living a humdrum, mundane life to all of a sudden having visions or feeling waves of energy. I, everyone has a different thing, but it’s very intoxicating and beautiful doorway possibly for a lot of people in it. I think psychotherapy is just the downward movement. So if you think about spirituality is an upward movement. This is just the, the integration of, so you could say cosmos and the mundane and the transcendent and the imminent.

Adrian:

Since Thal and I are both training to be therapist, we are commonly asked what is the difference between psychotherapy and seeing a psychologist or psychiatrist? There’s all these kinds of terminologies and credentials. Maybe this is a good chance for us to help kind of differentiate a little bit some of the differences and why you might seek one over the other.

Avi:

Sure, sure. Um, you know, psychotherapy up until the last few years has not been regulated in Ontario. So anybody could call themselves a psychotherapist and the focus of psychotherapists is psychotherapy, is counselling. It’s interventions around looking at people’s struggle, all of our struggle that the human struggle that we’re all in, but then our own personal struggles in our lives and essentially what gets in our way. That’s the, that’s the core of everything is what’s, what gets in our way of who we know we already are in how we want to live. And uh, the work of a psychotherapist is to help a client open to that and explore that and help the client get out of their way if they want to. Tt’s soul work. It’s the work of deep soul work. Now this is my lens of psychotherapy. Now there’s a lot of different types of psychotherapies. There’s cognitive behavioral therapy, which is more practical and psychoanalytic psychotherapy, which is more interpretive, but the kind of psychotherapy that I’ve been trained in and that has been my healing path is more a relational psychotherapy. It’s more psychodynamic, more, um, more opening to the mystery of self and without trying to fix or solve, but really taking the invitation to go deeper into the mystery. So that’s my unique experience and sort of how I look at psychotherapy. Now psychotherapy is now regulated in Ontario as of the last few years, um, through the college of psychotherapists, CRPO and um, uh, so to be, to call yourself a psychotherapists you have to be a registered psychotherapist. There’s a whole training involved. Um, do you want to know now that it’s sort of the distinction between…

Adrian:

I think it’d be helpful because some people have heard of, okay, I saw a psychiatrist and maybe they are also don’t know, is that psychotherapy? Right? Or a psychologist, you know, even looking at like in a very practical sense like insurance coverage, they might see, oh, I’m covered for all these things, but what’s the difference? They all start with a ‘p’ and I don’t know, you know, they’ll have psyche in it. They seem to be related to the mind because I, I’m sure there are lots of overlaps, but for a consumer who is new and is searching, it might be helpful to provide some guidance.

Avi:

Psychologist, it’s a doctoral program and they’re trained… The specialty with a psychologist is diagnosis. They’re very much trained around diagnosing mental health issues, mental health conditions, and they’re legally allowed to diagnose. Psycho therapist can assess, we can’t diagnose, but we can treat, um, whereas psychologists can diagnose and treat. There are a lot of psychologists that do psychotherapy in the sense of counseling and having these kinds of conversations with people. Um, the focus for many psychologists is diagnosis in that sort of their specialty area. Whereas the psychiatrist is a medical doctor who is trained in their specialty is prescribing medication. And um, uh, now, you know, a psychiatrist can do psychotherapy and psychologists can do psychotherapy, but psychotherapists can’t diagnose like a psychologist can and psychotherapists can’t prescribe like a psychiatrist can. So does that kind of clear up a little bit of the…?

Adrian:

I think that’s a great distinction. Having a sense of even the scope of what they’re trained to do and what they offer.

Thal:

I’m a second year student, a phd in transpersonal psychology. So, I definitely cannot prescribe or diagnose even because it’s not clinical psychology.

Avi:

Right.

Thal:

Um, it’s more, I would say it’s closer to the psychotherapeutic arm of mental health. Um, but a lot of people do also ask what does transpersonal mean? I’m from your description of psychotherapy. That’s, that’s the transpersonal, that’s the, uh, the, the, the space beyond the ego and um, and, and, and through my program, um, we’re able to sort of connect that with empirical research and I’m sort of, we look into how the brain functions during meditation and altered states and all that. So, um, and that’s all within the realm of mental health.

Avi:

The word transpersonal is misinterpreted heavily because the word itself, trans beyond personal beyond the self. Yes. There is an aspect to us that is bigger than ourselves, but it doesn’t mean we don’t get to take the self with us. It doesn’t mean the self sort of dissolves into nothingness and the spirit comes through and um, you know, is running the show without any. I like to the, the sort of adage that I really like when it comes to helping people understand what is transpersonal psychotherapy and what is just the transpersonal itself is, you know, do you guys know the saying it’s not the uh, you know, that whole idea of spirituality being like we’re like all like drops that drop into the ocean and sort of the ocean as the bigger, bigger consciousness, bigger, whatever your name for that is, whether it’s God or Goddess or whatever your thing. So I like to, when I, when I’m trying to explain what is transpersonal, I really like to say it’s not the drop that slips into the ocean, but it’s the ocean that slips into the drop. And that to me is what an embodied spirituality is. You don’t actually get to dissolve yourself, but you do get to take yourself along with, for the bigger ride that is bigger than you. It is bigger than your what do I want? What do I fear? It’s bigger than your wounds. So there is a place that’s bigger than our wounds. Truly. Yeah.

Thal:

And to get to that place, we have to understand her wounds and confront them.

Avi:

Absolutely. Absolutely. That is the price.

Adrian:

So on that note, since we brought up, um, you bring up a few things that are, I think are really important to highlight just so your approach to therapy as embracing the mystery of self, right? So really it’s a journey of getting to know parts of yourself that maybe you have either forgotten or didn’t place much attention and the wounded parts being probably a key part to actually focus on in the therapeutic relationship. Can you maybe share with us what that’s like for people that might not have experienced therapy? What does that process like and how might these old wounds show up in people’s current lives and how they experience the world?

Avi:

Do you mean how therapists work with wounds or how I would work with a wound as a therapist?

Adrian:

Maybe give an example for how it would show up for a person that might not be aware that these old wounds are affecting their experience of the world and that the way they interact with other people because it perhaps is not conscious yet.

Avi:

I see. I see, um, well wounds are a tricky business because to be alive is to be wounded. And what I mean by that is we’re our, our true nature is vast and spacious and wants to merge with everything. This is kind of like the true spiritual identity of who we all are. And so, and then we’re all tossed into this existence where you have a body and you’re called Adrian and we all have different names and you have a, you know, we have separate bodies and separate experiences and we’re sort of tossed to figure it out on our own. So that in itself creates an existential crisis that is just called life, right? This vast, expansive spirit trying to reconcile, living in a finite, um, singular experience. It’s William Blake, one of my favorite, a really great poet, uh, you know, he says eternity, which he’s saying like life source, eternity is in love with time and space. But to become, to go into the time and space, it has to be dismembered. It has to be broken. That pure vast spirit has to be. It’s like a shard of broken glass that you call it, that we’re all calling our separate selves. So it, you know, um, just to breathe and to take up space in a way is to be wounded. There’s a book called, uh, I think it’s called The Trauma of Birth and it’s essentially not, not birth trauma, but it’s just traumatic to be born in an existential sense.

Adrian:

It’s the price of admission.

Avi:

It’s the price of admission. So it’s, it’s a negotiation and um, you don’t have to have had a terrible childhood to… You could have a great childhood and you’re still in those waters. Now, for some people, like you said it, some people are more tuned into that level of, of their self, of their being, and other people are less tuned in and that’s okay. That’s, there’s no, I don’t think that, you know, at some point in life we all will struggle with this for a lot of people. It does come out around Midlife. It’s when a lot of people start to become a little more reflective, but some of us, and that’s all of us in this room actually, um, or just kind of have more of an orientation to introspection.

Thal:

And some people want to tune in, but have palpable wounds that maybe act as an obstacle. Um, and perhaps that’s what Adrian was trying to or was hinting at. Um, maybe developmental traumas or actual traumas. I mean, we’re not gonna go into the details of that, but that, those also can be obstacles or the tools. Yes. If confronted to, to, um, like tune in to the bigger self.

Avi:

Well, because our culture doesn’t give us enough tools, there aren’t enough elders in the culture to help us understand what these wounds are when they come up. The they come up through symptoms is, is because we don’t have enough elders to guide us. They do show up, but they come up through, you know, when I mentioned panic attacks in my case or it will be something different. Most people come to therapy for one of two things. Anxiety or depression or some variation of anxiety or depression means a hyper state (anxiety) or a hypo state (depression). And most, you know, the way, um, it’s like coming back to my story, just I want to get rid of this. It’s just that helped me get rid of my wound to help me fix my wound so I can go back and become spiritual person again. Whereas from an integrated, from an integrated psychotherapy and an integrated spirituality, those symptoms are the doorways to the gods. And what I mean by that is that in, in the exploration of what we’re calling wounds. What we’re calling our symptoms is not just pain and suffering, but is a whole ocean of, of who knows what, desire, longing, yearning, heartbreak, unmet dreams, unmet potentials. And if you follow that, it’s hard to follow that. To follow that means you have to really feel it. And, but if you can stay with it, if you can, if you can follow that thread, um, entire doors that were not there will open for you. So at the end of the day, it’s not so much, okay, I fixed my wounds. Now it’s more, the wound is an invitation into living a fuller, richer, more embodied life and having richer connections with people. I think the deep longing of the times is around connection. Um, there’s a deep isolation that we’re all of us experience and um, the instinct is to fill it with stuff, just name the substance that you know, just think about your life and what substance you go to to fill your need for connection. Right? And so this approach is like an alternative to just try and fill that place inside with stuff. It’s actually looking at the raw energy itself of the desire of the need and seeing how you live in your own skin and how do you, how do you feed yourself spiritually, how do you care for your own being? And a lot of that, that’s a mystery to a lot of people. How to just self care in the sense of …

Thal:

Inner work.

Avi:

Inner work and just being kind, being kind to self. That’s a mystery from..

Thal:

Self compassion.

Avi:

Self compassion, right?

Adrian:

I think a lot of people might actually be surprised to hear this, but even as adults, you’re walking around thinking, okay, I’m a full grown adult that we’re carrying with us many parts of self, including our child selves, right? Especially the ones who are carrying the wounds if these wounds happen early in life. Um, so we are walking with all these selves all the time and I think it’s a helpful language almost to even be able to name some of this stuff and start to just begin to get some clarity in the potentially messy experience that we’re having, you know, when, when someone is overwhelmed with anxiety to realize that, you know, maybe some of it is a longing or a crying for help and it’s coming from the inner child parts. Um, would you mind sharing with us what that might look like in a therapeutic setting where people are working with their, their inner child or. Sure. Or the term, you know, we often hear is reparenting, you know, when we’re learning to reparent these wounds.

Avi:

Something that you said just now, I’m sorta just, I just want to come back for a second to the cult, to our culture itself.

Thal:

Modernity.

Avi:

Modernity. Krishnamurti, a modern philosopher from India said, it’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. And the reason I want to come back to that is there are people that are just more sensitive by nature and those are the people that often end up in therapy, younger. It’s all of you, all of us. And uh, you know, to be sensitive in a world that is on fire, on, in so many ways is a very challenging thing to be really awake in these times or environmental catastrophe. And crisis of meaning. It’s to really look at that, to really be open. It’s, it’s not an easy time to be an awake person and to be a sensitive person. So, um, I just want to say this because just to give people listening a compass here actually, if you’re, if you’re feeling wounded and you’re probably more healthy. So I’m being a little facetious, but what I mean by that is, um, it’s okay to. It’s okay to feel. It’s okay to, um, you know, struggle. It’s actually a sign that you’re alive when you struggle.

Adrian:

I think that’s so important to highlight. I mean in a, in a culture that is I think celebrates intellect and being able to rise into the cognitive parts of being that we lose sense of like it’s talking about the sensitivity through the body, through our emotions, and although it’s painful, it might actually be a sign that you’re waking up, that your beginning …

Avi:

And that you’re and that you’re part of you is listening to what’s happening around you.

Thal:

That you’re alive!

Avi:

Yes, that you’re alive! And reacting to what you know.

Thal:

Congratulations, you’re not a robot. [laughing]

Avi:

You’re not a robot, you’re not a robot. There’s such a fear right now of being impacted of impacting each other, that, that what you do and what you say in how he, God forbid that should impact me or God forbid what I do or say should impact you. It’s like we’ve come to a point now where it’s like, it’s that absurd, right? We’re afraid of impacting each other, where that is the whole point right here. That’s the whole reason of being alive is that’s the other word to say that is relationship. I impact you and you impact me. That’s the nature of relationship and so I’m coming back to being wounded, um, you know, using that as an invitation to what’s happening around you, what’s happening inside of you and all of your relationships inner and out. And so yes, we have Adrian about your question. We have relationship with parts of ourself that are at different stages developmentally, including a younger, more, um, a younger aspects of our own history, of our own self that live in us and we are in relationship with them. Uh, whether it’s our infant, part of our nature, pre-verbal part of our nature. I’m sort of more adolescent aspect. We, we do have relationship with aspects of self and I don’t mean that in a sort of defined sort of compartmentalized way. I mean it in the sense of who we are as a tapestry. Yes, just like life. And so we’re, we’re relating to different aspects of ourselves all the time. Unconsciously. Mostly.

Thal:

It is the complexity of being a human. We are not too deep, like, you know, there, there are so many layers to our existence and speaking of that, we’d like to go into the inner teen. That’s a term that we’ve heard you mentioned before. And um, what, what, what does that mean? And um, yeah, yeah.

Adrian:

How is it different from the Child?

Thal:

Exactly.

Adrian:

Yeah. There clearly are differences when we entered teenage years and how it affects us psychologically.

Avi:

So just coming back to what we’re talking about is the collage of our inner self. There’s different parts, um, were mostly encouraged to walk around with what we call an adult. If we are in adults, assuming we’re assuming chronologically we’re in that part of our life. And that could be different things too, but the idea is to be, you know, the adult part of us is autonomous and can make decisions for ourselves and is in negotiation with life, with prioritizing what’s important. And it’s, it’s kind of, you can think of it as a muscle in your, in your mind that, uh, is discerning and that knows how to respond to situations and people. And, and, and there isn’t, I just want to say when, because it’s very easy to fall into, um, perfection. We’re not talking, I’m not talking about any kind of utopic idealized sense. It’s just you could say the part of you that the part of us that knows how to navigate our life and knows how to, um, I don’t know, what’s the word I’m looking for is that knows how to.

Thal:

I’m thinking maybe like these are like bringing up these terms are just tools for us, like you said, to help us navigate our lives. Um, and uh, it’s not an end goal and it’s not. When we talk about the inner teen does not mean, okay, that means I have to grow into the adult. Yes. It’s, these are just tools for us to navigate our growth, our path in life.

Avi:

Yeah. It’s a lens to Lens.

Thal:

Yes.

Avi:

So this lens of adult is this lens of who we think we are mostly. And um, and then what do we do with the parts of us that come up that are more at a different developmental stage, the teen, the child. And so what is the teen? Uh, you know, it’s really interesting because there isn’t a lot of, we don’t often talk about our inner teen. You hear in popular psychology in books, the inner child is like, there’s hundreds if not thousands of books written on the inner child and how to work with the inner child. And that’s an easy concept for most people. Yeah. You got to have a young kid living inside of you. The kid feels things that kids feel it just named them. If the kid is, if the kid is a happy kid, the kid feels spontaneous and joyous and wants to play. And if the kid is not happy, the kid feels ashamed. The kid feels, um, maybe self-loathing, whatever it is. But it’s a very easy concept to grasp and most people can go, “oh yeah, yeah, there’s part of me that feels very young and shy and all these things”. But when it comes to the inner teen we’re getting into the weeds, because what happens when we actually move in our actual lives, when we move from being children to being adolescents, there’s a radical change happening in our bodies and in our minds and it’s a time where so much energy has to be mobilized to make that transition from childhood to adulthood. It’s a liminal intermediary time. And so the sort of life force us to really mobilize because if biologically, if we can’t do this, we really don’t grow up psychologically. And so there’s a tremendous energy that comes through in being an adolescent and we don’t, again, coming back to the culture, we don’t have a lot of guides for adolescence. Um, you know, there’s, there’s just such a lack of mentorship around what all these changes are. And so we’re, we, we’re often taught to shut it down and anything you shut down goes on the back burner and then it will show up later. And so a lot of us adults are walking around with a very activated inner teen and this inner teen is different than the inner child is not so much about the child kind of just wants to be nurtured in a very basic, elemental level. Children need gathering, support, to be seen, to be acknowledged. It’s very much about dependence needs from a childhood developmental level, an adolescent as a very different developmental need. It’s a time where you don’t want to be coddled and sort of held in that same way. It’s actually a time of… But it’s actually not a time where you want to be left to do your own thing either. In that liminal time it’s a time of rebellion, but even in their rebellion, you want to be there. There’s an energy that teenagers… I don’t know if anyone has teenagers in their life here…they want to be met often, even in their rebellion.

Thal:

My son is a preteen, so this helps.

Avi:

Okay. Well, especially boys, a lot of, a lot of boys with their mothers. Relationship with their mothers. It’s really a time that the psychological umbilical cord is cut and so on the one side that’s “get away from me, mom” but on the other side, on the other side, it’s “don’t leave me”, right?. It’s helpful for when the teenage knows there’s a place to come back to, to check in. So it’s an interdependent time, not a time of independence and not a time of dependence. It’s an interdependent time. It’s a very tricky dance and again, because the culture is very young in the sense of what to do with these energies. For many of us, we just bury that teen at the time when it’s happening, or spin out. You can bury the energy or you can spin out and act it out. So it’s that more stereotypical, rebellious teenager that tells everyone to F off and, you know. But even that it doesn’t fulfill the deeper need there, which is, um, “what do I… What the hell do I do with all of this life force channeling through me?” There’s an inner sexuality that’s being awakened. There’s um, you know, there’s an identity that’s being shed, but the new identity hasn’t been formed yet. So many, so many things happening. And so.. Fast forward later in your life, we all have an inner teen. I was a very rebellious teenager and just did what I wanted and didn’t really care. It’s a time of risk taking. I took a lot of risks as a teenager. Like I had a lot of luck. I didn’t get into as much trouble as I could have. And not everyone’s that lucky, but you know, I find that people that have been more on the Yang side of risk taking and acting out later in their life. Like I’m in my forties now and what I’ve been confronting over the last few years is an inner teen that is more quiet and shy. And that is a really unfamiliar territory for me because I was the exact opposite. So it’s kind of as when I tune into my teen he’s often really shy and I find working with people who have had the opposite experience kind of people that say “that oh my teenage years were fine. I didn’t really have any, you know, I was kind of just an obedient, quiet, good, good girl, good boy…”

Thal:

Yeah, you’re describing me! [laughing]

Avi:

People like you are fascinating because then they come to therapy and it’s like all this, all these jars just started opening and then all the, all the unmet, you know, all that life force. And it’s like, what do I do with it? So it’s good to create a podcast.

Thal:

Thank you Adrian! [laughing]

Adrian:

Even tuning into the energy of the conversation. I feel like this, you’ve mentioned the mobilization of energy. I’m feeling it as we’re speaking to, the teens are in the room now. You know, they’re mobilized. But I’m also getting… Kind of picking up on the importance of grounding that energy. And that sounds to be the key to this work is to find a way to work with that energy, not to diminish it and not to waste it.

Avi:

Yeah. The trick is grounding without shutting down because there’s a lot of talk about grounding and grounding is great, but you have to. We just have to be careful when it comes to the teen. The teen doesn’t want to… That energy does not necessarily want to ground. This is why working with our inner teen is not so simple. The nature of therapy is containment. You come in, you sit down, you have a conversation. Teenagers are future thinking. They don’t want to talk about what happened when they were five or what or what happened…Even when there are few…. it’s a drive. It’s visionary. A visionary energy. Therapy can feel like another suffocating place for an inner teen. So yes, that energy that you’re tuning into definitely needs grounding, but it has to be a very clever kind of grounding. Otherwise it can be instructive and it can come across as just someone telling me what to do.

Adrian:

Which is the last thing a teen wants to hear.

Avi:

So how to sort of, you know, trick somebody into grounding themselves. And it’s a, it’s like I love working with people’s inner teen because I know that place really well in myself and it’s not, it doesn’t freak me out at all. I actually find it really energizing and very… As a therapist, I’m learning a lot because I often get pushed back like, you know, “I don’t want to do that” or “God, I’m so sick of this”. Or “Oh God, you know, another therapist”. I don’t. “I’m sick of talking about my mom and dad”. Great. Because for me, I have to throw out the book of what I think I’m doing and I have to create a new therapy for this person by following them. And so yes, grounding, but on the teens’ terms. That’s where it gets complicated and tricky. Yeah.

Adrian:

Yeah. And, and the word sometimes I hear people use is transmute. So we’re maybe perhaps working with that energy. So by grounding it in where they feel like you’re trying to control them, it’s probably squashing it and we’re squandering this opportunity. I’m the visionary energy. It almost sounds it can be very productive. That’s going to actually, you know, it might be disruptive as it’s appearing in their life, but perhaps with the right guidance, it can actually be turned into a very productive transformation.

Avi:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I think so. And um, it’s only as we are seeing in the culture right now, it’s only young people that are going to be the leaders, to face the evolutionary crisis that we’re in right now. The environmental crisis and the crisis of meaning. It’s really young people that are going to pave for the way forward. And we just saw it in the United States with the midterm elections that just happened. All these incredible young people being elected, um, that are visionaries and are not afraid to put bold ideas that are necessary if we’re going to meet the sort of struggle of the time. And so it’s really, we need this energy. We need the energy. And yet we have to figure out how to help people, actual real teenagers, how to hold that energy because the life force in us is not. It’s actually transpersonal in the sense that it comes through us. It’s too big to hold. And when that kind of awakening starts to happen in people, it’s scary.

Thal:

It is. And when you say the word grounding, I remember that word. I like when I first started my own therapy. I was so annoyed with that word. I’ve been in the ground like “I’m done with being in the..” you know. Yeah. So, um, so even that word, like what does it mean to ground? Yeah.

Avi:

For me, what it means is to help somebody figure out how to be in what’s inside without shutting down and spinning out. And that’s tricky. And maybe channeling is a better word than grounding. I don’t know. But working with, working with the life force energy.

Thal:

Energy.

Avi:

Yes. I mean sometimes grounding could be a matter of just speaking the truth. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience of feeling sort of incredibly grounded after you’ve spoken the truth.

Thal:

Yes. Yes. It’s actually part of my journey to, um, uh, you know, express and, and heal that the parts that have been silenced or repressed at a younger age.

Avi:

Yeah. For anyone that wants some reading on the inner teen. There is one good book. There aren’t many books on the inner teen, but there’s a book called Brainstorm by, I believe it’s Daniel Siegal. The book is called Brainstorm and it’s all about the inner teen, but also it’s written for teenagers. I think it’s one of the better books on what this whole wild phase is or transitional phase is all about. And it’s a very practical book. So it would be a good one for your son.

Thal:

Oh, absolutely. And we’re going to look into it. Um, I also want to bring up age and also the word that’s coming up for me is shame. That people might feel like, wait, “I’m an inner teen inside?” And feel shame. There’s that. And then there’s age where, yeah, well there is biological age. There is psychological age, emotional age. Perhaps even spiritual age. So yeah, these are things to put into perspective and think about.

Avi:

If the energy of shame is coming up around the inner teen, that’s a really good clue that shame has happened.

Thal:

Oh, absolutely [laughing].

Avi:

So it’s not a coincidence. If you’re listening to this podcast and when you imagine inner teen, you’re going “ugh”, that’s a clue for you as to… Probably something in your own psyche. It’s really more about, you know, so that would be an invitation for somebody who does feel shame because not everybody does get shamed at this time of their life.

Thal:

And to be okay with it and work with it to have self- compassion.

Avi:

Well shame has two faces, right? There’s the healthy aspect of shame, which is a teenager needs to learn. They are limits. They’re are finite… there are limits to what you can do with time and energy and you can’t just, you want to go future, but you can’t conquer the world. There are limits to what you can physically do. And that’s healthy. It’s kinda good to know. Okay, and if I, you know, I’m just go and do what I want. It will have impact. It might have negative impact and I need to know what my impact is. So shame has a good side, but where a lot of us have been mentored in is the toxic side of shame. Where it’s about an identity. Shame becomes an identity and it’s not about teaching limits, but it’s about the whole sense of “you’re wrong”. You’re wrong for feeling what you’re feeling. You’re wrong for doing that or thinking that. If we live in a family unit where the emotions, the life force is not allowed to flow and our parents didn’t know how to ground and channel that energy in themselves then all of a sudden it’s coming up in us, we will be shamed on some level. And shame doesn’t have to look like scolding. It can look like just being ignored.

Thal:

It’s a feeling in the body too.

Avi:

Feeling in the body but just being ignored or being, you know, that could that deeply, that can be deeply shaming. So when shame turns into an identity, that’s the work then to work with shame.

Thal:

And from my own personal experience and experiences of like friends around me that shame actually causes a lot of stuckness in life. And, and you know, that question of what’s wrong with me? Why am I like this? It becomes a loop in the mind. And um, you know, all I think about is more compassion, more forgiveness towards self.

Avi:

You know, the first step with shame is an not necessarily compassion because they’re just wishing there isn’t compassion. The nature of shame is almost itself punitive, right? It’s the first nature. The first sort of thing to do with shame is to externalize it, to speak it, to have someone witness cause shame lives in hiding places. It’s that thing of I’m defective. “Something is wrong with me” and “I have to keep that a secret”. “No one can know that I’m flawed”, so I need to, I need to hide. I need to shut down. And when you start speaking it like I feel unworthy. That is the first step in the direction of healing shame. And um, later it’s really about going into the feelings around it and doing the deep feeling work. Um, but you know, the self-compassion will come later.

Thal:

I was skipping ahead. [laughing]

Avi:

Well, and that’s the thing is, you know, oftentimes people will get shamed in about being ashamed. Why are you so hard on yourself? You’re such a sweet, sweet person. What? Come on.

Thal:

I’ve actually heard that many times. [laughing]

Avi:

“Just be nice to yourself”. And if it was that easy we would all do it and it’s um, it often isn’t helpful to, to, um, to just let someone know that, you know, they should be different. So yeah.

Adrian:

I think that’s so important. Just you talked about… Like we need the courage, we need the courage to begin sharing, you know, and the healing that begins when you start to allow these inner things to come out into the open. I mean just personally this project of doing this podcast has been incredibly challenging because our own shits coming up all the time. We are stepping into a new territory or being exposed feeling more naked than ever. And so yes, like we are seeing it firsthand, you know, our own stuff is mixed in with this creative project and so we’re not just talking about it, you know, as some sort of a theoretical thing. It’s live.

Avi:

I can feel it through the whole…. I can feel a sort of an energy as we’re trudging along that is multilayered and has different aspects and feels strange at moments. And inspiring. There is a real energy here. So you guys are cooking whatever it is that you’re doing. You’re really in something here. And what I love is that you’ve decided to not be perfect in it and not try to get it right. It’s like, let it be messy. That’s great. Forget your perfect offering. Have you heard that? It’s a that Leonard Cohen Song, forget your perfect offering. And the next line is there is a crack, a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. So it’s, it’s your humanity that will probably make this unique.

Thal:

And you know, and I just want to also highlight that this is a universal human experience. I was brought up in a different culture that’s a little bit more collectivist and a lot of, you know, my individuality or individuality in general is usually squashed. And um, but then half of my, more than half of my life, I’ve been living here in Canada and I’m noticing that, wait, even here the same problems. It’s literally exactly the same problems that I’ve encountered as a teenager in the Middle East, people encounter here and personally, for me, I just don’t see the difference. Obviously context is different, but the essence of our human experience, our human pain, our wounds, shame, guilt, all those things are similar.

Avi:

I agree. Yeah. And I think Toronto is a unique place to be doing healing work in 2019, but we are. This is the social experiment. Toronto is a social experiment and it’s by no means, um, you know, a perfect microcosm of a global village. But it is, in my experience as a traveler, one of the better models we have in the world. I really …that the consciousness now is that we are, we’re all in this together. No matter where you’ve grown up, it’s, we have to figure out how to be with each other. And I think Toronto is a really good place to be doing healing work at this moment of history. A: we have the luxury of not having physical wars here at this moment and B, there is a consciousness in the city. I think if you’re tuning in, there is an openness to, to, to kind of stepping into the new. So I feel lucky to be here at this moment.

Adrian:

Yeah, we just had a conversation a few days ago with, with Andrew Harvey and he talked about we’re going through a birthing experience collectively and it’s a birthing of a new human that he was sort of referring to and it’s, we don’t know what it’s going to be. That’s part of the surprise, the mystery and we’ve been going through this, you know, on this planet time and time again, you know, there was a period where most species were underwater and we were a bunch of fish swimming around and at some point that the water got so polluted that some fish had to take the risk to go into the unknown. And some of them ended up on the shore, on the sizzling shore, in air without the proper, you know, gear to, to survive. And yet some of them did and that created the new birthing of an evolutionary transition and it’s such a beautiful metaphor because I feel like this is kind of what we’re referring to you right now, you know, with this collective, a yearning for meaning and people try new things and pushing the boundary that we’re about to see an emergence of perhaps many versions of a new human being or new ways of being.

Avi:

No matter what you feel about the times right now, whether you’re more cynical, “we’re all gonna go to hell in a hand basket” type person or, or more of the, “Oh, you know, we can, we can save our planet” type person, wherever you fall in that spectrum. And we’re all on that spectrum somewhere. And it might change every day for you. Um, these, these are fascinating times to be alive. Forget about what might happen. It’s just a pure wow, we get to be alive in this… What are we in? It’s like, what? What is this chaos that we’re in? Yes. It’s interesting.

Thal:

Absolutely.

Adrian:

There’s never a dull moment.

Avi:

It’s not dull. It’s not dull. Sometimes we, I think we’ve, a lot of us sometimes the wish for the volume to get turned down just a little bit, especially in the last few years with on so many levels, but I think coming back to what Andrew Harvey was saying, the volumes not going down if anything, the volume is going up and um, we’re gonna have to find ways… And this connects to the inner teen. We’re going to have to find ways to stay present with each other and with the crisis that we’re in a evolutionary crisis that we’re in. Um, we’re going to have to find clever ways to stay present because you know, it, it’s just too easy to dissociate. Right now [laughing].

Thal:

And mental health is at the forefront because of those reasons. And we’re learning now that mental health is just not just the brain or just the cognitive side of things and that there is more to mental health. Then just, um, then just that. Yeah.

Avi:

I agree 100 percent. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to have to find a new model of mental health. I think too, that goes beyond…

Thal:

Everybody should go to therapy [laughing].

Avi:

Whatever your therapy is, I just want to say, psychotherapy is a method. And honestly it’s worked for me and that’s what I do with my life. It’s, you guys are all here because it’s working or has worked in some way for you. If somebody comes in and it’s just, you know, for people listening, you try it out. If it’s not your bliss, if it’s not your path, find another method. There’s really, there’s, there’s so many other ways in. What I, what I really do like about therapy, a good integrative therapy is non prescriptive and so it’s the hunger of the times, uh, to, to not be so regimented and not be so “okay I just need to improve”.

Thal:

Yes, one solution-oriented. Right. And that’s important. Because I’ve like, again, I’ve had people come and ask me, “Oh, so then what? We all need therapy?” And that’s why I made that joke. Therapy is just a tool inwards, like you said, there are many different tools and if it means that you seek a therapist world for a little bit in your life, then so be it. And if, I don’t know, if you decide to start dancing, then so be it. [laughing]

Avi:

I think. Yeah, you’re speaking of therapy is not so much like a session but just, you know, therapy in the sense of, the true meaning of therapy, which is the word therapy comes from a Greek word Tartarus. Tartarus is the underworld in the Greek mythological lens and the underworld is where you go to, um, find yourself in a deeper way and it’s where you go under your body under, down. And so we, yeah, we all need therapy in that sense of I’m tuning in, connecting to, to ourself into the larger sphere. Absolutely.

Thal:

Yeah.

Adrian:

Avi, thank you so much for your time and happy suffering. [laughing]

Thal:

Yeah, thank you. Thank you Avi and may we, you know, conquer our fears and shame and whatever it is that we need to do to become attuned with our inner selves. Thank you, Avi.

Avi:

My pleasure. That hour went really fast.

#11: Living Your Personal Myth with Jean Shinoda Bolen

April 7, 2019 Culture, Life Transition, Podcast, Psychology, Spirituality 01:08:04

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” – Mary Oliver

On this episode, we have a conversation with Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst and an internationally known author and speaker. Jean is a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, a former clinical professor of psychiatry at Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute at the University of California Medical Center. She has been a board member of the Ms. Foundation for Women, the International Transpersonal Association, and the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. She is the author of thirteen books in over ninety foreign editions.  She is an NGO Permanent Representative of the Women’s World Summit Foundation to the UN. She is in three acclaimed documentaries: the Academy-Award winning anti-nuclear proliferation film “Women – For America, For the World,” the Canadian Film Board’s “Goddess Remembered,” and “Femme: Women Healing the World.

Highlights:

  • Finding Purpose in the Second Half of Life
  • Archetypes in Every Person
  • How Children Carry the Un-lived Parts of Their Parents

Resources:

Listen:

Poem Inspired By this Episode

Full Transcript

Adrian:

Wonderful. I’m so glad this worked out.

Thal:

How are you?

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

I’m good. I emailed you, I didn’t know if you had a chance to read that. I realized that I was saying more in it than the questions I asked you on the phone.

Adrian:

I just had a read. Um with Mary Oliver and also a little thing of Lao Tzu. Yeah. Very nice.

Thal:

Oh she’s one of my favorite poets. Um, her passing away was a, um, it was like big news for me two weeks ago.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

It was like losing a friend.

Thal:

Aw. Yeah. She helped me through some very dark times.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

There’s, there’s the nature part of what she writes about, but then at the end of several of her poems, she just says something so wise.

Thal:

Yes.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

So are we being recorded as is right now or what? What do we do? Please help.

Adrian:

So we are officially recording, but we, we can officially welcome you to the show. So thank you for coming onto our podcast.

Thal:

Thank you.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well, it’s an adventure always to have a potential depth conversation with people who are interested in such things. And I never know where the conversation will go. And I often feel it in such conversations, words come out that have never been, never come out before and link things together. So there’s an energy field between people. Uh, I know in my office as a Jungian analyst, the geometry of the space, it’s like two equal chairs and, and in between. And the invisible in-between is really the larger self or our soul. It’s a Soul space essentially. And, and a creative space because again, it’s just, it’s a conversation between two people, but it’s different than what you and I are doing because what I do in my office is the other person provides the information and the dreams and the thoughts and the angst and the losses and, and I receive and comment and back and forth. So I’m hoping that out of this intriguing sounding, program that you have, Soulspace. I actually responded to that. I thought oh, I know about different varieties of Soul space. Let’s see where this conversation takes us.

Adrian:

Well it’s a real honor. I, you know, when I, when I reached out on email, I didn’t know, you know, how busy you might be and whether you’d agree to come on. So this is a real honor for both of us to have this conversation with you.

Thal:

Thank you. Yeah.

Adrian:

maybe, um, I’m thinking actually right now what I would love to, to hear from you is actually how your journey began. I’m really curious what you were like as a young girl and how that evolved into, um, just early in your career and how your path brought you towards the work that you’ve done, the books that you’ve written and, and your current life. So it just the early experiences and um, I know it might be difficult to kind of condense the story, but I’d love to hear some of that.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well some of that it comes to me quite easily because I had been working on a memoir based book, which means I’ve thought about some of these questions that you raised. And my ancestry is Japanese American. Both of my parents are born in the United States of Japanese ancestry. So when World War 2 broke out, every person of Japanese ancestry on the west coast was to be rounded up and put into relocation camps or concentration camps. I had a very, uh, I had very good parents, uh, who knew something about making choices and, and gut and take going on paths that needed to be go going on in my, and my father and mother then worked to get us out of the state of California ahead of the martial law that Japanese Americans came under. And consequently, I didn’t, I wasn’t put in a concentration camp. They are referred to that. They were called relocation camps. Basically. They were camps in the desert with uh, armed guards and, and, uh, uh, hastily built tar and wood and paper barracks, really. So instead I left the state and we went to New York to Kew Gardens to Grand Junction, Colorado, to, to Blackfoot, Idaho, to Denver, uh, during the war years and returned back to California as soon as it was possible to come back. And that meant the war was over. Well, what has this done on many different levels is that one becomes as, as you might be as apparently Asians of… in Canada, you, and yet there’s this place of being, of the words I came across in my time in becoming a psychiatrist, somewhere along the line is the idea of positive marginality that you can, you can be with other people who are not like you and yet you’re not marginalized in the negative way. Because I was this upbeat kid, always. I was. I came in privileged to be loved and privileged to, well, just come in maybe with a sunny disposition. So I became in, in going from elementary school to elementary school during the war years, uh, I was accepted and yet, I was different. And so the consequences is that you kind of be in the space of, of positive marginality, which you then are able to see much more clearly because you don’t just drop into being unconscious with everybody. You actually are aware that you are different and yet it’s perfectly acceptable and the differences help you to make your way and to appreciate what acts on you and what is in you. And actually that’s a way into describing something about why I would have the vision I have of thattThere are archetypes in us, there are like talents are, I mean they are, they vary in strength and they act through us whether we know it or not. And if they are acceptable then we blossom. But what if what you have in you is an archetype that is not welcomed in your particular family or culture. Then you have… You’re caught between two. We all are between two, the archetypes in us and the projections and expectations on us. And essentially what the work of depth analysis is, is to find out from what the dreams are saying from what your life has taught you so far something about who you really are. And that combination of who you are inside and what you were expected to be outside. Being the conflicts that created growth experiences or real difficulties.

Thal:

It’s very interesting when you mentioned positive marginality. Um, I mean I am someone that comes from different backgrounds, um, African, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and I’ve been going through my own Jungian analysis the past two years and I’ve been thinking about those things and, and reading your books and just thinking about Jungian analysis and how it can also help people who are marginalized, but that there are not a lot of people that have explored that path that are from my background. So just listening to you, so reaffirming. Thank you.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

You’re welcome.

Thal:

Yeah

Adrian:

I have to ask you, so which archetypes for you were emerging that maybe didn’t play nicely with the surroundings when you were growing up? You talked about possible friction or conflict. Where there any that come to mind?

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well the archetype that has been my strongest one is Artemis. Artemis is the Goddess with a bow and arrow and the moon. I mean, she’s the Goddess of the hunt and Goddess of the moon. And she is really the Goddess of Sisterhood. Um, she’s the only Goddess that all of her mythologies has a great deal to do with what the women’s movement is up to really because she looked after young girls, um, and during the time that they were under the protection of Artemis, they could, they could be free like an Artemis girl. They could, they didn’t conform to, um, early marriage and things for that one year that they were under her protection after which they were had to live up to conformity and all of that. But Artemis is the kid who starts out with this innate, uh, watching say boys allowed to do things that girls cannot do. The Artemis puts her hands on her hips, so to speak, at four years old and says, “that’s not fair!” There’s a sense of equality, there’s a sense of competency that is pretty innate. And in an Artemis person who also likes to go off the beaten path and has an innate sense of, of nature. Um, I was realizing my privilege, it is to appreciate nature. I was just in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and every time I go there, I think I should come here more often because it’s, there’s something of nature there. The sky, the vastness of the sky and the quality of the air and the panoramic views that art for me, it’s a soul energy field as where I live. I’m talking to you right now and let’s see now at over the Bay, I live on the south side of Mount Tamalpais in north of the Golden Gate Bridge and, and it’s beautiful. And there’s something about the archetypes that respond to beauty, and this is another one. This is Aphrodite who is mostly known for being the Goddess of love and beauty in ancient classical mythology. But like as patriarchy got more and more, um, judgemental about women and women’s sexuality, she got to be, she went from what was considered, uh, she was considered awesome and revered. Now you don’t usually think of Aphrodite as revered but in ancient days she was, and, and as Goddess of love and beauty, it was not just sensuality of the body, but it was appreciation of the sensuality of the world really in general. Moved by beauty. Not everybody is moved by beauty, but if you have the archetype in you, you are, and what happens with an archetype is you drop deeper into your soul space. That’s what the archetype does. Otherwise, you, you live, in Jungian terms, the persona. The face you wear for the world. And that is what needs to be acceptable to many families and cultures. Can you wear a persona that works? Well, I was able to do that. Um, I, I didn’t come up against, well, I was well brought up so I behaved myself. So it, and it didn’t innately just, uh, live from my archetype. There’s some people might and might get in for trouble with it as well. So archetypes in us, are patterns, like every talent is a human talent. Not Everybody has the same amount of artistic talent or, or mechanical talent or athletic talent. They vary their gifts. So I think of archetypes as basically as similar to the gifts that we come into and we either have an opportunity to develop them or we don’t depending on the possibilities of their main culture.

Thal:

Um, I think this is very important for us to understand as we had approached you where I’m coming from this new generation and there’s a lot of clashes that are coming up everywhere. So you talking about the role of myths and archetypes and helping us to drop in deeper and understanding ourselves better. I mean, even considering all the, um, the current resurgence in feminism and a lot of, um, sort of reactionary behavior, which a lot of it is also coming out of wounds that have not been, um, like not understood or not addressed. So, um, so how do you, how can we integrate mythology back into our lives? Um, in our current times?

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

The archetypes, uh, are patterns, human patterns in us. They conform to mythology in many ways, but they exist without us knowing any mythology whatsoever. It’s what you know deeply in yourself that’s true for you and such things as what are you doing when you lose track of time? What are you involved in when you are so absorbed in whatever it is that it seems like three hours have passed like 20 minutes or 20 minutes has dropped you into a timeless zone. I mean, there’s something about only the person who lives in you can know what truly deeply feed your spirit. Uh, what is a soul space? And they are related to the archetypes and the sense in Jungian psychology is first if there is that persona, uh, that many mothers are, are especially concerned about that our kids, their kids go out in the world and are well brought up and acceptable, et Cetera, which helps the child to navigate the early world. But persona is the layer in its, it’s the, in theater, there used to be in ancient Greece, the smiling face and the frowning face representing the faces of the …. And they used to put on masks and go onto the stage. A persona is a mask of sorts. And if you, if you have a persona that really reflects you, then what you inside and the mask is not mask like, but if you have to conform to a culture or family that expect certain things of you, no matter what, then you create a persona that is not exactly who you are. And the more you identify with a persona, the more distant you get from what you are inside. So there’s persona, then there’s ego and that’s the part of us that that makes choices and speaks from the word I. And then there’s the deeper level of the archetypes, which, and these, especially the archetype that has to do with, with um, spirit or soul, or what Jung call the archetype of the self. See human beings do seem to have an affinity … an affinity for divinity essentially, that there is something in the human being that has worshiped forever as far as back as we can see images on in caves from thousands of years ago. I was just learning a bit about Mot, the ancient Egyptian goddess. And uh, you know, they go back thousands of years before the, the Greek gods goddesses. And it seems as if human beings have had a sense of awe and then from that, worship and then they’d been, the question about you, whatever it is, it is, divinity is so much broader than a human mind can wrap around that, that somebody will have a genuine experience of divinity and then thinks that that experience is the experience. And then if it’s a powerful male running something or other, you have a patriarchal religion that says this is what God is. And, and one of the interesting things about words and all is that when you own the words, someone can have a experience of divinity and not consider that it was until much, much later because when they were growing up, God was defined as this and the idea even of goddess, that there’s a feminine aspect of divinity, not in many religions. So what do you do with the experience that you have inside when the world outside has no words for it? One of the things is the more you have words for something, the more you can feel it growing in you and I had um, my own life trajectory has a lot to do with, with coming in touch with a sense of, of whatever God is and feeling, uh, the mystery of it. I mean, interestingly the word mystery, it comes from the word mystes, which in ancient Greece was the word of the initiates, the initiates who entered the Eleusinian mysteries and had a sense of, of, of a goddess actually then no longer feared death. And that is one of the things that actually does seem to happen to people, especially as they grow older and connect with soul inside in a sense of divinity out. That it doesn’t seem to be well okay, well there’s something on the other side that there, and this is the basis of all religions. Mostly all religions… And so each of us has accessibility to this. We don’t need a particular gatekeeper, which mostly most of the religions seem to feel and insist that they are the gatekeepers. They are the only way to the truth when built into each of us is our own ability to experience depth and soul and love for example. Um, I remember when when explaining things to little children. How do you explain God? Well, how is it that they know the word love? If you say God is love, oh that seems to be much more easy to grasp and yet that is just as difficult to describe to someone who doesn’t know it as it would be to describe God.

Adrian:

Yeah, that was beautiful. A lot of things come to mind when you were just saying that, um, I think it was Michael Meade where I heard him talk about the pathless path and how at some point we have to drop whatever maps that were helpful initially and go on her own individual quest. Um, what would you offer as guidance perhaps for a lot of young seekers who are maybe self initiated, you know, finding themselves in times of transition and kind of confused and overwhelmed. Um, to be honest with, with the information overload that we have with the Internet and access to, you know, as much knowledge as we want. How do we, how do we receive guidance and, and make sure that we’re discerning. You know, I think discernment is part of that question too.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

The Greeks had two words for knowledge, logos, meaning the mental apparatus, the intelligence and gnosis spelled with a g, like the Gnosis, but pronounced gnosis and knows this is what you know in your bones. So what to know at the soul level which is some kind of inner certainty or inner compass that says, oh, I feel at home here. I trust this person. And often we need to find some blessed solitude, actually, that’s how you kind of find your way. And one of the things about current culture is a bombardment of emails and there’s hardly any time unless you choose it to be by yourself or by yourself in nature. Um, and conversations. Who is it that you’re comfortable with without words? Um, where do you go to find peace? Where is your soul space? Now those are, that’s a gnosis thing. The intelligent mind, well, you know, can give you options and things, but only when you get to a place that feels safe, home, peaceful and then you stay in it. I didn’t do it. Meditation helps people who otherwise wouldn’t even create a space, but it’s also very natural for us, unless we have some heavy judgment in our head. And then the idea of concentrated meditation often allows a person to be in a space without the critic or the judge or the whatever that that makes internal comfort difficult. So there’s gnosis, trusting what we know in our bones about, about what really matters.

Thal:

This is definitely an important reminder. It’s like tuning into our internal compass to, to guide us.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

That’s true. And the poetic side of us is the gnosis side, by the way. Left brain right brain. Left brain knows a lot and it has details then it, and it… but it’s poetry that speaks to what we know inside, at a soul level. And so when, when I heard that Mary Oliver had died, it did really feel that I had another friend who died. Now, I’d seen her in person in San Francisco when she first made her first trip out of her life at Massachusetts in the, she read some other poetry and she was interviewed on stage. So I did have a sense of her in person, but mainly I knew her through her poems. And, and every once in a while there are words that come from her poetry that just is such soul knowledge. Um, there was one poem in which she wrote, and I may be paraphrasing cause I didn’t set out to memorize your poems. It’s more that they sort of sunk in. And so I can have access to some of the lines. It really has meant something to me. But one that said, you do not have to be good. You do not have to walk through the desert for a hundred miles panting, you only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Now… What is that? What is that trusting…knowing…not confused part of us that we came into this world with and we got it diverted by so many dysfunctional families and dysfunctional cultures and especially for boys or is more than girls are trained to not be vulnerable. Girls, we make friendships through our vulnerability and from sharing things. Boys don’t. And so they’re much more apt to be cut off from the poetic side of their souls, or if they’re smart enough, they know to keep it sacred and not share it because somebody will belittle them, or will make fun of them. So they learned something who and with whom can they share their soul space? And often it is with a woman or if it’s a gay man with finally meeting another who has a soul space, as much as, as his own. So there, there is that. And then, then I’m remembering, uh, in one of my books, uh, Crossing to Avalon, I have a poem by Mary Oliver written, right, the whole poem is right in the middle of it. And it’s the one that is called The Journey. And it begins one day you finally knew what you had to do and began. That is when you start your individuation journey, when you listen to the inner compass. And I’m remembering also a quote from a man who rose to the top of, uh, his corporate work, he became head of Newsweek when Newsweek was very popular. And he wrote a line that said, he talked about the ladder that he climbed to the top and he got to the top of the ladder. He was made editor and chief of Newsweek and he said, I found the ladder had been put up against the wrong wall.

Thal:

Hmm.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Because climbing a ladder is sort of like going on a journey and, and then, uh, there is the end of the poem in Blackwater Woods in which Mary Oliver says, to live in this world, you must learn to do three things: to love what is more mortal. So hold it against your bones as if your life depends upon it. And when it comes time to let it go, to let it go. That is real depth, soul and psychological wisdom. And, and uh, what I have been doing workshops, um, past couple of years, I haven’t, not on my schedule right now, but I took a line from a poem called A Summer Day in which she ends up saying, doesn’t everything die at last and too soon? Tell me, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? And I’ve taken the phrase “your one wild and precious life” as a way describe to describe, you know, being on your soul path. Individuating. Living the life you were meant to live. Um, as, as uh, with “wild” being what you came in with. I mean, uh, uh, wild is, is like a forest of virgin forest. Nobody has logged it. Why are these your natural instinctual itself? And so when you are in your second half of life, especially when you’ve lived the life that you were supposed to live and either succeeded at it or failed at it, I don’t know. But in the second half of life is when you start to wonder what really matters to you and will you have the courage to follow your heart. And courage comes from the word cor, meaning heart. And that goes back to what was innately you. That’s the wild part. What will you do with your one wild or you could say archetypal that would fit too, your one archetypal wild and precious. Precious is something you also have to really value that, that who you are and the energy you have and the time you have and the words you use. This is, this is all you have. Time goes by so fast. She, you really get to know it. As you get older, it’s zip! And you get to where you wonder, how did I get this old so fast? That happens through where I am right now. How did I get to be this old? Let’s see, I was born in 1936, so I’m, um, I’m 80… um I don’t like that. [laugh]

Thal:

[laugh]

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

So, so and yet there’s a perspective on this.

Thal:

Hmm. It’s just amazing listening to you, you know, um, you’ve, you’ve led such a soulful life, so it’s so inspiring for us. Um, just listen, listening to you talk. Um, but you bringing up poetry is so important because, I’ve always felt that there was a poet in all of us. And um, when I was younger I started writing poetry. I published some poetry, but then I started the path of the academic path. And I, um, uh, I have a degree in English literature, my masters and I found that sort of the academy like academic path moved me away from my soul writing and now path of yeah. And, and now that I’m in my, um, hopefully individuating and in the path of healing, I’m going back to poetry and hopefully integrating that side of myself.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

When you listen to this or I do as an analyst to someone telling me something that is deeply meaningful and food are there and they have a vocabulary such as you would have with your academic background, what comes out is like poetry because it’s so true. And uh, in it unedited, we all tend to edit our stories as we tell someone else. But when you’re in analysis and you reach a deep place and you’re talking from your soul level about how awful it was or how deep it was or what the loss was like, it is like listening to a poet. Now I need to wait and stop for a moment because it says low battery. Okay. I need to go get a plug.

Thal:

Sure. No problem. No problem.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Okay. It’s good now. I didn’t think it would run out of juice, but it, you know, did.

Adrian:

That’s okay. That’s a good catch. Maybe it’s just the charge that we’re… Coming through our conversation. Jean, you talked about young boys. I mean, I can’t help it, you know, I was listening to you carefully there y’re about growing up in, in modern society and how we’re often encouraged not to be in our bodies, you know, the feeling body and be receptive to this poetic language. Um, and so for me, this is a very new territory. You know, it just within the last year, maybe two years to really explore, um, the essential aspects of being, you know, dropping out of my mind and the intellect, but not to demonize it. Right. Recognizing that’s been a gift along the way. Um, I love to hear you talk about the embodied spirituality. I mean, we, the new age movement has, has brought, you know, lots of different versions of spiritual life. And I feel like there’s something very important about highlighting the embodied spiritual path.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well we get to be so out of touch with depth of body and the depth of body being not only having feelings but like the heart is usually considered in the body. Certainly and yet there is the heart chakra or the heart center, which is in the same general area as the physical heart. But the more you understand and feel in your body, what that Heart Chakra is responding to, you learn something about what really matters to you and you’re move by it and over years what happens is you either constrict it and lose touch with what is meaningful to you or you find it being like a receiver that grows over time, that becomes larger because you are, you can love more, you can feel more, you can, you can have a sense of connection with more that is. So those are the, those are, that’s an embodied part of us. But when you go out into the world as a little girl or little boy and you’re, especially if your family expects you to be an of themselves and not who you are, that’s where things really get into difficulties. Because if you are supposed to be living out the unlived part of a parent or to be socially acceptable because it’s a tight issue for them, then as you go out into the world you need to conform to be that person. And if you’re a little girl or little boy, it’s like there are certain qualities that that if you’re an extension of some hope for… if you’re a cute little girl, then that may be really emphasized. Or if you’re a bright little boy, that might be really emphasized. Um, and then you enter a culture of school and school is interesting because when you go into kindergarten or first grade and there is a difference between the school yard and inside the school room. And especially for the little boys, the bigger boys that are a year or two years ahead of you are bigger and stronger and they have… especially if they’ve come from homes in which they have been bullied, what kids do, boy, kids especially is they turn around and they identify with the aggressor at home by beating up on little boys who they can beat up on. And so a little boy with some sense of what you need to do to manage on the school yard learns about you go along to get along.

Thal:

Hmm.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

And so that’s why you have like boys watching the bully picking on a kid and nobody speaks up because you don’t want to be identified with the kid is being made fun of. And you just might, you know, and this, this pattern is actually is sort of, it was difficult to sort of call that patriarchy, but it is, it’s exactly the same as a later on. I mean, I saw the movie Vice recently, about Dick Cheney and the kinds of things that went along in Washington DC and it was like bullies beating up on weaker people. And the culture of the school yard begins that story where the boy learns to go along to get along to not challenge authority. And what happens is if they didn’t have, if a little boy kept saying things that were not welcomed. He often feels a lack of worth as he grows up too. And one of the things that little boys seem to have, um, difficulty with is saying the truth about how they really feel about something. Fortunately, often they can do that at home. Uh, with some families, uh, they also, if they can have a good friend, I think it’s very hard to be kind of just one of the kids without a really good friend going through elementary school for girls as well. And yet, you know, it is through… The question is, if you have suffered as a child and nobody gets through life without suffering, you’ll get your, your share of suffering all along the way. But what, what you do, will it grow you? Will it grow you to have more compassion for other people and for yourself or do you deny it and want to disidentify with anybody who is suffering something that you suffered from in the past?

Thal:

Yeah. All that you’re saying is so deep. It’s resonating deeply within us really. Um, and you talk about the young boy and the young girl, um, I realized that part of my healing is to heal the feminine within me, but it’s also to heal the masculine. Um, I know that it’s very, it’s using dualistic language when I say feminine and Masculine, but the truth is, um, they’re inseparable to heal the feminine is to heal the masculine and to heal the masculine is to heal the feminine. I mean,f I would love to hear what you think about that.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

There’s an interesting concept in near here in psychology about the tension of opposites. That the reason for often describing masculine and feminine as being separate and different is to be able to kind of label qualities. People, human beings seem to like to label things, but they’re all part of the continuum of being a human person essentially. So what is allowed on that big continuum? And uh, what Jung described as masculine and feminine in the unconscious, he called Anima and Animus. Uh when like when you’re a girl who, uh, girls these days are able to become whole people much easier than boys, at least in the United States for North America where education is so important and competition. I remember when my daughter went out for soccer at eight years old, you know, that’s a different … Teaching a little girl how to play soccer, play as a team member like competitively she is learning something, about physicality about teamwork and about the will to win, which is usually considered animus or male side. And, and um, education itself develops the whole right brain, left brain. And the more she goes up the the education ladder and in develops that side of herself and get some authority through that, the more she is, it isn’t her like, like there’s a place where you think “hey listen it isn’t my animus that’s doing the thinking. I am thinking clearly myself!” because you, you understand what the animus is when it takes you over, when is not who you are, when you are being defensive or something and, and you get out of relationship with the person you’re talking to because you really had been, there’s been stimulated. So then you are in your animus. I could recognize… I used to recognize and recognizing don’t do it as much when I’m in my animus versus when I’m just being me thinking clearly even though that is not probably my primary, uh, uh, I think I’m more feeling type than a thinking type, but the thinking type really get’s educated along the way. You cannot go through all the education I’ve had without really doing justice with the thinking type. And then that had happened then it happens to be who you become rather than some autonomous part of you taking over. That’s one of the things that are of value, to have an understanding of a concept that you could actually watch happen in yourself rather than watch happening in somebody else. But you can see it happening in someone else when they’re centered, when you’re centered and when something prods another part of you to come out and you behave in such a way that if you, fortunately have enough observing ego that you realize it’s happened at least afterwards, you can learn to change how you are behaving because you don’t happen to like that way of behaving.

Thal:

Thank you. That’s amazing. Um, I, I’m starting to slowly recognize when my animus is triggered. It’s pretty ugly. [laugh]

Adrian:

You mentioned, um, for females it might actually be easier in today’s society to be more whole. Um, can you expand on that a little bit? I’m actually curious, so, um, how, how is it possibly more challenging for males growing up in patriarchy type of a culture?

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

It’s because of the issues of power. And it being part of a culture. Um, I mean basically though the women’s movement and the education of women have made many parts of the world much more egalitarian in what a woman can aspire to and accomplish. This is fairly new and new on the other side that the gender with power, it has been men and so that’s been patriarchal. Well patriarchy is hierarchical and it’s a a sense of dominance. Who you have power over. It means that if you’re young and new at any of this and a guy, if there’s any part of you that is what has been suppressed in somebody higher up and you are showing what he sacrificed or judged badly and squashed in himself, he’s going to squash it in you too. And so the diversity within a person gets acted on by the family who can’t look at it and only likes certain qualities and culture says, you know if you, if you meet the stereotype, if you’re a boy who is naturally aggressive, who is extroverted, like this is an extrovert culture. So if you introduce a new ball or a game to five year old, six year old, eight year old little boys, it’s the extroverted kid who goes right in, wants to learn about it and the introverted boy. So he’s on the sidelines and watches and, and he’s nudged, he said, oh, what’s the matter with you? Why don’t you go in and play? His natural tendency and for the girl too is “I want to see what the rules are. I want to understand the game and I also want to figure it out by watching whether I want to even play the game.” But that is not acceptable in an extroverted culture when if you are there, if you wave your hand, “I’ll play, I’ll play, I’ll play!” and you go in and you play well and most of the games are pretty competitive and you do well then you really are a solid guy who’s gotten a lot of accolades for being an aggressive little guy and then the quiet guy who was taking it in and all doesn’t really see it. It’s like “what’s the matter? Are you shy?” Being shy is not a very positive word and yet the introvert has to be able to have some time out and time in in order to develop that side. So that’s some of the ideas of…

Thal:

it’s interesting when you, when you talk about the, you know, extroverted, introverted, and again, going back to the young boy and the young girl, I know I was brought up in a very patriarchal culture in the Middle East in the 80s. And I used to love to play soccer and I got into so much trouble because of that. And now that I’m a mom and my son is, I have a son, I tried to get him into soccer, but he just didn’t like it. He really refused and I kept trying for a good three years and he just does not like it. So..

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well you’re starting early to, to realize that, that what, what parents seem to want to do is to have their child be able to do those things.

Thal: Yes, absolutely.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

It was a child and you’ve got a who has a sense of himself.

Thal:

Exactly. Yes, yes, yes, absolutely. What you had mentioned earlier too, the whole unlived life is really what started my inner journey and reading… Um, uh, I think it’s, I can’t remember his name, but reading a book on, on the shadow and parents carrying the unlived life and the children carrying that weight, um, really woke me up. Um, so… I don’t even know if I have a question around that, but you know, just hearing your thoughts is amazing. Really.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Yeah. The writing side of my life. Uh, yeah. Well they actually began with the Tao of Psychology: Synchronicity and the Self, but the book after that called Goddesses in Everywoman and Gods in Everyman that followed were the ones that made it possible for somebody to read about and relate to a particular pattern which had happens to have a Greek God or Goddess name. And then there is an insight like “oh, this is why I’ve had so much trouble with my father or my mother or why I am who I am” and, and the idea of valuing who you are and not accepting the other choice, which is to conform to what it is your parents wanted you to do. Up to a point. It actually is adaptable to conform up to a point. But then it’s like you get to Midlife, you’ve lived out the life you’re suppose to.. you see, you individuate earlier if you don’t manage to do it just right the way your family wanted you to do. If you happen to be the archetype or the psychological type that fits the pattern in your first half of life, everybody says good for you, good for you. You know, and, and it’s easy. Except that you get to midlife and the sense is “is this all there is? Okay, you know, I got my education, I’ve got a good job, I got married and got kids. Is this all there is because I feel empty inside and this is why Jungian work is often second half of life work. It’s because there is a whole unlived out part. But then if you are nonconforming, you couldn’t be the boy your father wanted you to be or the girl your mother or father wanted you to be like you were introverted in an extroverted family. I remember working with a, uh, a young woman who was quite herself introverted and she was in this large extroverted Italian family and it was pretty difficult to be her.

Thal:

Hmm.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Or if you, if you, uh, are interested in things, your, your, your family is all into sports and corporate advancement and you are into the arts, uh, well in certain families that’s okay. But in other families you drop it, you don’t follow and you don’t do that which you would naturally gravitate to and.. Or you fight to do it. And when you fly to do what you start to individuate early. If you cannot conform which many gay boys have found true, they could not confirm. They would have liked to have conformed. Some of them managed fairly well to conform, but if they didn’t conform just to be who they were and have other people pick up on it meant that they were bullied, meant that they felt terrible about themselves. Except that now the environment is changing. It’s like for women in the 70s, for the first time there was uh, uh, the, the first woman’s was second women’s movement really first women’s movement was 1848 with the, when there was a whole issue about voting, but it was, it really in the late sixties and seventies, when the women’s movement that we know of people like Gloria Steinem coming in and seeing and expressing and then opening the doors for women to do, uh, what has been unacceptable before you could do now?

Thal:

Hmm.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

So the, the world has in, in in many places is a bigger world where we can grow into more of who we are and we can make more mistakes too. This is what happens to people also, when you have choice, you want, you can make mistakes or not. Maybe they were just, I like to use the labyrinth as a model for the path, not, not a straight line. And in the labyrinth you think you’re moving towards your goal and then, oops, there’s a u-turn. There was a block, there was a pain, there was a loss. Well, you’re still on the path and what will come next keep shaping you.

Thal:

These are very important things to, to um, listen to, especially for our generation because we’ve been brought up to just, you know, everything is so goal oriented. Um, once we are on the path, well, when am I going to become enlightened or when am I going to know myself better? Um, so keeping that in mind is, is very important.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well, it’s important to remember, uh, when you’ve had it… it’s like if you can, if you can hold on to the best of each of the stages you’ve gone through, you know, you, you’d start out holding onto the kid self that had a sense of wonder, you’re going to hold onto wonder and take in a new experience or a person or something with a sense of wonder. And then you go into adolescence where were there really did a lot of idealism in adolescence. Can you hold on to that? Can, the maturity that comes later and the wisdom that comes along the way. The whole integrated person has an inner child, an inner adolescent, an inner masculine, an inner feminine, an inner wise person, a connection with divinity, however you define it. And with it, with that part of divinity, you have a sense… You have a sense of soulfulness in yourself. You have a deep sense that you matter of some level, there is something called grace. There’s something called the divinity. There’s something called mysticism that you have experienced and you have been blessed and all you can do is say thank you. And as soon as you have a sense of gratitude, of privilege that I, I now see that, you know, relative to say that the other kids in my family, or when you meet people who are disadvantaged and you start to realize that you’ve been privileged, you had no reason to feel superior, you have more reason to have gratitude. This starts to be soul shaping as well. And it could be that the whole work we have if we come into this world as a soul, and I think we do, I think we are spiritual beings on a human path rather than human beings who may or may not go on a spiritual path. So we come into the world as a spiritual being in a helpless little baby body into our version of dysfunctional family, in our version of dysfunctional society. And somehow this life that goes by so fast must be a major, major opportunity to grow soulfully to make a difference to others, to do something that makes you feel that you are doing what you came for and that sense of right rightness when you are doing something that you know is being true to who you are inside that is that you can’t, it isn’t a sustained thing, but you dip into it and you feel, oh this is who I am. This is what I came for. I am living my own soul journey. Which if you talked to Joseph Campbell in a way you’re living at personal myth and you are being true to it. And that’s a shorthand way of saying what individuation is about. Jung uses so many technically sounding words like individuation, anima and animus but underneath it all is such a deep evaluation of what it’s like to be human. And the opportunity for you have to be human, maybe, especially now, it’s the responsibilities of being human. I think about how I went through the nuclear stuff, uh, earlier when, when, when it seemed like people were right on the verge of pushing the button. Well, there are a lot more nuclear weapons in the world now than then, but now we’re looking at the environmental crisis, which could it end it for us as well. And so if you come into the world as a human being during a time of crisis, the responsibilities or the opportunities to make a difference are much greater. And for now, to be a woman at this time in history is both an opportunity and a responsibility. Like my major activism is to support feminism within the United Nations to have a fifth women’s world conference, and I now have a sense that it, that it will not, not be sponsored necessarily at all by the UN, but they will come into it, but it will be created in India in 2022. So I’ve had these buttons saying five WCW India 2022, because when you bring women together who have Artemis, the sisterhood architect as part of who they are, and we have the technical ability to communicate by all kinds of devices, we could have a, the rising up of a quality of feminism that feels like siblings with men, because this is Artemis also not patriarchal, but brothers and sister. Cause Artemis was the firstborn of twins. Apollo was her twin brother. And what she went in, her mythology she was concerned about she came to the aid of her mother. She came to the aid of children, um, and she did develop your own skills with a bow and arrow plus a sense of, Goddess of the moon means that there’s an element of mysticism. There is an enormous mystical element in nature if you tune into it. So I think that this, I would love it to see that, see more and more Artemis rising and so I’m doing that at the moment too.

Thal:

Amazing.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Activism is soul work when you’re doing it from a space in which it’s your journey and you’re doing, helping others.

Adrian:

That’s so beautiful. We just had the honour of chatting with Andrew Harvey last week and you know, he talks about sacred activism. So as you’re saying this, you know, it feels like there’s such a hunger right now. Um, I think for this type of energy to emerge in larger numbers and also for, for, for the elders, right? For, for the young seekers to connect with elders such as yourself and to make sure that there’s wisdom isn’t lost, you know, that we don’t have a disconnect with, you know, just this lineage of, um, of experience and wisdom that’s been passed down, uh, just to, to bring things to an end. Is there, is there anything you’d like to share as sort of last words, um, for, for the next generation, you know, of, of activists and seekers and, um, and, and, and curious souls?

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Well, yes. In the last year I started signing off on my emails with “love, hope, perseverance, trust and gratitude”. And I think as it is, we kind of a mantra. Love then hope are certainly obvious energies. Perseverance seems to be required to do anything that really matters to you. To become a doctor and a Jungian Analyst or psychiatrist. I mean it took a lot of persevering through subjects that were hard or not interesting. Again, the Artemis idea that you have, if you could aim at a target that is far off, but if it’s your target and you aim for it, can you tolerate what it takes to have setbacks, to have to do hard work. So perseverance and then trust is much more in the spiritual world. It’s the word that means that you trust that it matters what you do with your one wild and precious life. You trust that there is a world of invisible spirits that you can call upon that support you, through some difficulties you can count on prayer, you can count on a sense that there is a divinity that has…that you have access to. Even if you don’t know very much about what it is that it doesn’t mean, it doesn’t exist. Oh, are there people that have died? Then the whole tradition of the other side, if there are there, what are they? Angels? Maybe they’re angels, but then there’s this whole world is cares about what we do here too. That is trust. And the last thing is the motivation that can make us appreciate what we have, and that’s gratitude.

Thal:

Thank you so much. That’s so beautiful to hear. Thank you.

Adrian:

Yeah. With gratitude. Thank you.

Jean Shinoda Bolen:

Thank you. Namaste.

#3: Psychology of the Unconscious with Jungian Analyst Christina Becker

January 20, 2019 Culture, Life Transition, Podcast, Psychology, Technology 01:04:56

Some of us wake up one day to realize that we have been living someone else’s life. We leave parts of ourselves in the realm of the shadow, which may sneak in on us through unconscious behaviors, tensions in our relationships, various addictions, and neuroses.

On our third episode, Zurich-trained Jungian analyst and registered psychotherapist, Christina Becker (@JungianPath) talks to us about our unconscious. She even guides us through a live dream interpretation. Christina shares her journey into becoming an analyst, a calling that came to her when she was in India in search of meaning in her life. Besides psychotherapy, Christina has a background in music and is currently a consultant for the nonprofit sector. She is also the author of the book The Heart of the Matter: Individuation as an Ethical Process. After all, authenticity is about the heart – the meeting place of the individual and the divine.

Highlights:

  • Depth Psychology
  • Individual and Collective Shadow
  • Functional vs Dysfunctional Personas
  • Dreamwork
  • Recurring Dreams

Resources:

Listen:

A Kernel of Truth, inspired by this week’s episode:

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Adrian

Welcome Christina.

Christina

Thanks. Nice to be here.

Read More