#83 | Béa Gonzalez | The Unresolved Note

So many of these posts are Jungians as well . We have a shared love for Marie-Louise von Franzen and so many James Hollis , all these kinds of characters . You're also an astrologer , you're deeply into the archetypal world . So that's my little blurb , but I'd love you to introduce yourself to the audience .

Once I gave up the academic world I was on route to be a historian , but at the time it just wasn't taking me where I wanted to . So I decided no , I don't really want to do , because I'm a reader like you . That's the first thing . I love reading , and at the time I loved reading history always .

I will always love it , but at the time , obviously literature . And so I came back to Canada . I was in England doing graduate work and I came back to Canada and I basically started writing and so I published a couple of novels .

But after the time I'd started Jungian analysis and of course I thought well , a lot of people that start Jungian analysis immediately think they're going to be Jungian analysts . But even there I thought that doesn't . I mean , I found the whole process very powerful and helpful , but I didn't really want to be a one on one analyst .

So I'm one of these people that I find it hard to focus on one thing , but what I've always had is a group , a group of people that were interested in ideas . Because I don't know about you , but once I left university I felt a need to have discussions that were not dinner table discussions I get very bored very quickly and that's hard to find .

So I basically assembled a group , I went out looking and I would test them by speaking about crazy things Either . Oh , I just read this Jungian book and some people would look at me glassy-eyed and I thought , yeah , that's not it . But some would go , wow , that's kind of interesting . We were talking about the frog king , that fairy tale .

I would , you know , test it by giving them our view that you know we have of the frog king and say and just look and see , are they receptive to this ? Anyway , I collected a great group of people that would get together and talk about things that I thought were originally would read Marie-Louise von Franz .

I think it's a substitution for the kind of conversations that don't happen anymore because we're so enamored of the outer world . So this is all inner world conversations , and they often involve dream world our dreams . And , by the way , that's where I see the combination of the astrological chart and your inner world sort of dovetailing .

It's quite interesting when you start putting those two together . And so , yeah , I started that . And then , about four years into this group which I called Sophia Cycles , I thought , no , I want to . Social media was coming on board so . So I thought I'm going to try to put out some of these quotes . Mostly , I'm going to say because it was a way to .

It was a database for me . I was able to . I was reading all the stuff and I didn't know where to put it . There weren't apps then to sort of you know , put your quotes so you can retrieve them . So I was using Twitter in the early days as a database . I would put in the quote and I thought I can always go search it and get it back .

And then people started following me . I thought , okay , that's interesting . And then I went on all the other social and what I saw from all of these , in all of these places , was just the great hunger there was to have a different conversation , and that first made me very happy .

And , b you know , one of the things that I think I'm most asked to do is recommend books . You know they'll see that I quote this and that . Well , I have this problem . I call it bibliotherapy . I have this problem . What book would you recommend ? And I'll go okay .

Well , you're having a problem with relationships , clearly , the Eden Project by James Hollis , for example . And so it really makes me happy to be able to do that , and I'll always do that as long as I can .

But just recently I went back to fiction because for me , I try to write nonfiction , but my mind is way too circular , and so what I tried to do with my last novel was to write . I thought how do I take all of these ideas and communicate them in a way that people might find them a little bit easier to digest ?

So I wrote this novel called Invocation , where basically the two main characters one's a literary scholar who is young in an orientation , and the other one is more of a , in the McGilchrist way of looking things , a left brain kind of rationalist , cognitive scientist and they clash and then through a series of conversations they try to understand each other's perspective

, although I have to say it's mostly him trying to understand her perspective , and the reason that that's important is that I think in the world that more rational cognitive scientist approach , which is very valuable in some right , is the dominant perspective , whereas a more nuanced Jungian , a paradoxical , spirally kind of way of thinking , isn't .

And so I thought well , how can I have these two ? So I made it into a love story , because then people say , okay , there's something in there fraught with tension , and really it's a tension of ideas .

And , by the way , everybody should read a novel , because what I thought I was doing , or what I realized I was doing with this novel is I was working out my own Venus-Morris problem at square birth .

So I was really trying to figure out , because I have a very strong , you know solid orientation in that left brain world too , not to be reductive about it , but in the idea that , you know , things are linear as opposed to , and then the other side really fights it .

So it was really a conversation I was having with my masculine and my feminine to try to figure it out and of course at the end they come together .

And at the end of writing that novel something did come together which I said to my group and I'll say this to everybody don't worry about publishing anything , just write it to see what is in your unconscious and you will see that , like dreams , there is something about creating a story that is just I don't know , have you ever tried this ?

So you're bringing it back to me because I put the pen down and now I'm in my mid-40s and I'm like I think I was terrified in a way , to be honest with you , to be really honest , like the things that were coming out .

There was like whoa , I thought I was just writing about these characters and a story and a plot line , and I was like whoosh , I had to put it down because I saw my own consciousness work itself through , like I know now that , but it was so . There was so much material there , it was so raw in my early 20s that it was quite terrifying .

To be honest with you , yeah , and I it actually is terrifying it is terrifying because I mean , what's in there , all the fantasy material , you know it's not all kind of like bells and whistles and and sunshine , lollipops and rainbows , and so you start to see that . So you're really bringing back to my mind what that process was like .

So I love this as like , yeah , don't think about publishing it , start writing it , and then you'll start to see , because something takes over the pen , right , I mean something the unconscious starts to sort of show you this thing and you think you're writing about these

characters . I mean , how fascinating as well that you with your mars venus square , um , what a brilliant way , I think , for any square , maybe , maybe , if you know the chart . Just look at your squares and write about those .

The square is a particularly grating kind of thing , right , but it's also you know what I call it , what I've called it , and this is how I look . I'm not a consulting astrologer . I'm very interested in teaching people the language , because I think it's really the most beautiful language that you can find from metaphorical thinking .

That's what really interests me , but I developed this concept of what I call the unresolved note . And I developed this concept of what I call the unresolved note , and it's based on something that shows up in invocation . I have a real love of Wagnerian opera , one of the many things .

I've gone down bizarre pathways , but there's one specific one Tristan and Isolde by Wagner .

Um , so Wagner wanted to depict a love affair that is so crazy , so passionate , and he said how do I do that in music ? Right , well , he knew one thing you don't resolve the , the love affair , because once a love affair is consummated , the , the kind of energy that is squished out .

You know , this is why all these movies have to end , you know , then you end it . So he was a horrible human being , but a brilliant , brilliant musician . He figured out the way you do this , and it is fascinating is you create a five-hour opera where you don't resolve there's a chord called the . Tristan chord and you don't resolve it . You keep going .

Try that for five hours . You're sitting in an opera house . There's a famous conductor . I think it was Robin Bradshaw Bradshaw is the last name for sure , but anyway , he was here at the COC , the Canadian Opera Company . He famously said that that's the opera that you're lucky to get out of alive because you're in such a state of tension the entire time .

And it's only . This is so dramatic . It's only at the end , when he dies , and this actually is something to consider . Metaphorically , he dies . By the way , this is an opera where nothing happens with three . Metaphorically , he dies . By the way , this is an opera where nothing happens with three . They're basically standing on stage singing for five hours .

You know very little action , but at the end he dies . And then she's about to die because of where he's at . She's got to die and she sings .

She finally resolves the chord by singing something called the Love Death song , which is just or aria because I'm not even quite sure you can call it an aria , because Wagner didn't really write arias , but this piece of music we'll call it an aria where she just , it's crazy .

You know , you can hear it and you can hear the tension break and it's just amazing . And so I started thinking about the notion of an unresolved note and what I started looking at in charts . I teach a subset of group within my group this language . We get together every week and we have great conversations .

We just look at charts and it's wonderful for all of us . But what I tried to look at is in a chart , what is the unresolved note ? There might be a couple , there might be a plural , a square , and how is this playing out ?

And what I tell people and I believe this to be true , being old enough , now that I've lived my own square is that those squares are telling you almost what you're coming here to resolve and what you may actually be an expert at . But it's painful , it's not , you know , and they're probably never going to be fully resolved until death .

And I think that's a true statement this whole day , because that's your driver , that's what's driving you forward to a certain degree , and so some people will keep bumping into the same relationship and they'll go . How does this keep happening ? Let's look at your under-self-cord . Some people power dynamics , some people parental complexes they can't leave them .

But if you can look at the chart as holding the key to what area it is that you're trying to work on and then , through transits and progressions , you can see oh , that's been activated now . I think , a it gives you a little bit more compassion toward yourself so you don't feel like a driven lunatic , which some of us do sometimes , right .

And B you don't project on the other person that may walk in and walk into your drama . You're able to say oh , here's my Tristan chord just been activated by person X , maybe in whatever context that might be , you know , maybe I don't need to act in such a way that I can both damage them and myself .

I can maybe reflect on what is this actually saying to me , what is the fundamental energy behind it ? And you know , I don't know about you , but underneath a lot of these things is longing and I love . Irvin Yalom I don't know if you know his work he said it's very hard to work and this is in the context of relationships . I love this quote .

It's very hard to work with love-obsessed people because really what you're working with is someone who is in love with love , in love with that feeling of yearning . And so if you can say to people , can you stay with the feeling and not let it leave , like not let it land on a subject ?

I don't know if you've ever tried this Pretty hard , especially when you're young . As an older person , I go yeah , I can see it , I can take it back , but that's for anything , right ? Can you sit with attention without action ? And I think you know , you know , yvonne France , you know all the Jungians . That's exactly what they're telling you to do .

That's what Jung said Things resolve and change if you're willing to sit with the tension of opposites , which is what often gets this whole thing going .

They're kind of like oh yeah , okay , let's figure something out about a square . And this is the beauty of a square It'll never resolve . And so it is that discordant note keeps coming in .

Oh my God , again , here we go again , but as you say , and I love that perspective that you could be or maybe you are naturally an expert in that but you've got to go through the awful pain and existential angst and the crises after crises until you realize that , yeah , staying with it until the magical third thing sort of somehow arises out of that .

but then even that thing becomes squared and so there's a , there's a , there's a never ends yeah , never ends , and I love this because we actually were talking before recording about your work on venus and um or the feminine in general . The feminine is the feeling function , the misunderstood feeling function .

I'd love to get into all of that and kind of open a lot of that up . But the first thing that's coming up for me , as you're describing that , is Eris , whose name obviously means discord or kind of disharmony or strife .

Yeah , and I'm hearing within squares as you're saying it , the presence of Eris and the dilemma of Eris , because we don't want to invite her to the party , we don't want to invite her to the wedding , just particularly as a wedding Can't have her there . But if we don't have her there it leads to the Trojan War , right .

So the little thing of inviting her to the wedding , if we don't invite her to the wedding , it leads to the greatest war in history at the time , kind of thing . So it's a really beautiful wedding . It is . It's an incredible story .

. I also say to people , for those of us who've been married , don't like . Of course , the strife has to be at the table . If it isn't , you've got a dead relationship . If you don't invite strife , you're gonna go . You're gonna go completely . It's gonna go underground until it takes over the whole thing like a big monster . And you're right .

The Suddenly the girl is sacrificed and we send boats out to Troy . So it's understanding , archetypally , what is all this pointing to ? Why are these stories so important ? Why do they still resonate ? Because they're in disguise . They're still there . I see them all the time .

I'll be like I was telling you before I was looking at after , I don't really read a lot of genre fiction , but I saw a quote that really hit me . He said look , you can read all these nice literary novels . They're all very serious .

But he said the real archetypal stuff is in genre fiction because it comes to the surface , and I thought that's kind of interesting , right . So I went and started reading modern fantasy and I kept seeing all of these writers and what I did is I just looked at really , really popular like they are selling 30 million copies of books , which is unbelievable , right .

They're actually taking unconsciously motifs like the Cauldron , which Mary-Louise von Franz talks about . I don't think these people are reading Mary-Louise von Franz , but somehow they're channeling a lot of these and it's wonderful because you're seeing , okay , how is this developing ? And you're seeing that the female , the Venus characters have become heiress .

It's much more militant . It is stabby . They call them stabby female characters . They bring Mars . There's an integration of that Mars energy within the feminine . What's interesting ? I always say to men you want to understand women , just read those books , you'll understand what they want in two seconds , flat right .

Don't go on YouTube listening to these insane people . Actually read these books . What's interesting about them is the male characters are equally strong , but they have a great feminine sensibility . They're just wonderful .

They listen , they understand consent , they understand dialogue , and so what's changed is and this is where I think the real change happened it did not happen politically , only in feminism , in the sense of what was achieved for women in terms of equality and what has been lost and we're all fighting for .

Actually , there's a deeper level , which is you're seeing the psyches of women . I'm going to mention something else , because you're an astrologer . All these writers that I'm reading were all born in a specific period , with Pluto and Scorpio . That's kind of interesting to me , the millennial authors of Pluto and Scorpio and so they speak very openly about sexuality .

They're extremely all the Scorpio things . They're all a lot of trauma bonding going on in these books , a lot of understanding of trauma , a lot of people getting together to understand trauma . It is so interesting to me that you can see that encapsulate , like you really see it . I go , wow , this is an entire generation of women , and this was pointed out .

Actually , when I started talking about these women , somebody in my group said that sounds like the raw Pluto and Scorpio and I said , yes , that was in Scorpio between 1984 and about 1995 or 6 . And I think , oh my God , they're all ending up there , you know , and so they're exploring on a deep level . Using very like this is not high fiction .

It's not trying to be James Joyce , that's not the intention . But 38 million people are buying these books and some men are also buying them , some are just women . So I think to myself what is going on here ? You've got to pay attention , right , you've got to pay attention to the three people that are intellectuals , that are going to read Finnegan's Wake .

That's just not where the mass energy is , so I find this very interesting .

Because , as we said , you know the things , that that same thing that you said before about the individual psyche and we write the novel and we doesn't matter if it's getting published , we're working on our squares and maybe our quincunxes and other things that are really deeply challenging within the chart .

But then , on the collective level , the authors born with Pluto in Scorpio , which , as Bea was saying , is around about that 84 to 95-ish those are the authors who are millennials , who are working through , and that's the beauty of these outer planets and it can show us that .

So you know something on the mass , uh , mass consumed literature today , because it's not necessarily intellectual and it's not kind of plugged into that . Then it's more . It's closer to the , therefore , and then closer to the actual things that are going on . What a great way to sort of get in touch with that . I love that .

In every discipline . We suddenly decide well , nothing , the outer planets can't be used . And I think to myself okay , let's think about this rationally . What has never been seen is suddenly cited . Think about it as a psyche , right ? So you're going to act like once you had Uranus showed up , that it didn't exist .

It's a little bit like saying , oh , you saw something in the unconscious , you've gone to Jungian analysis , but you're going to just ignore that shadow quality because it doesn't fit into my paradigm . So I look at it and I go this doesn't make sense . You're actually trying to .

You know , and what I find and this is something that I discussed with Jenny , she co-hosts this kind of it's called Archetypes on the Planets . It's very specialized . We talk mostly about Jung and the planets and we're having a talk about the perils of prediction .

And I said , the problem with prediction to me is you're trying to A , you're trying to localize something , you're trying to control something that is fundamentally not going to be controlled , and you can get it right sometimes , but then it becomes like a parlor game , which I don't want this to be turned in , because I think this is a serious language .

But secondly , on the issue of this , of these archetypal energies , which are all the planets that were sort of cited for the first time post-1781 , they're very large archetypal energies that are working on the collective but also at the individual level , and so the idea that they don't exist because they don't conform .

And then I thought you know , the problem is that it's a left brain problem here , that a lot of the younger astrologers that are coming up using these techniques are trying to use the gaze like very focused gaze , right , not the diffuse gaze , which we need both , but we need the diffuse should never go away where to prove that it's a science or that it can

be quantified or that it's real . And what's not understanding is what Joseph Campbell always pointed out , right , that something can be real without it having to be that way . Yeah , there's two ways of seeing , and so it's disappointing to me . I guess that you're seeing this division mostly in younger astrologers , who can be absolutely dogmatic about this .

By the way , yeah . Dismissing it , and I think things develop . The psyche has . I hate the word evolution because it sounds like it's always gone , but it is actually evolving to something different , right , If you want to use it that way , you cannot go back and stay there and as a historian , someone who's studied history so many years , it's illogical .

Even the way we look at history we were talking about that David Graeber book , the Dawn of Everything changes because we as humans change and we put a different eye to it . And if we didn't , we'd end up with the same old interpretations , the same old stories . So does that bother you ? It does really bother me that these are being dismissed .

only this . And I think that's why , for me , I consider myself a bit of a rogue astrologer , which you obviously probably consider yourself that too . I just don't get caught in it , because when I see that I kind of like unfortunately , I just switch it off . I mean I just can't , because it doesn't .

To me , astrology is a way to get in touch with the timeless . So I guess , if I'm in any era of astrology , I'm in the classical Greek period , which is of course pre-Hellenistic . So then , in a sense , I'm staying with the timeless that's there and I'm not trying to get it too refined .

Actually , my whole practice is not too refined , because I want the chart just to start speaking to me .

However , it wants to start speaking to me , and if that's because Neptune suddenly shows up , it's like it comes off of the page and starts singing to me for some particular peculiar reason , even though it's not a personal planet , but something it's like oh my God , neptune's in the night .

So I really need to kind of like get into that and I'll just go with that . So I try to . I think what you said before and this is what .

See , I just had Joe Landwehr on the show and he talked about Terence McKenna saying that astrology is a translinguistic something , something art form maybe , but the words were translinguistic and I love that because to me , exactly that's a language , and the power imbalance between me and my client is usually I speak the language and they don't , and so then I'm

just trying to get across the things that I'm seeing and I'm trying to translate it into the language . They know , if I get stuck on anything like a technique or a thing like that , or or as you say , like I can , I can't a purist , I can't use these out of plant , whatever .

It is like I'm getting myself stuck in a place where I need to be very mobile , I need to be moving , because I've got to move all the way over to their worldview and come all the way back to mine in the space of an hour or 90 minutes . That's really crazy .

um , you know , obviously I do more long-term work now , which makes it much more viable and much more right , but I but I'll go into myth and story now , because that's where all of the action is in which case the chart that could be technically read in a particular way may present in a completely different way , and I'm okay with it , and so I'm not trying

to prove it . I actually just wrote an article for the federation of australian astrologers and um , and I talk about astrology and the oracle as an oracle , uh , so oracular science , yes .

In which case in the article I have to go back into where the oracle was considered to be the highest of of wisdom you had , like teresias and in ancient greece you know you had the blind seer , you , you had the Pythia .

So , in which case , the highest form of knowing in that particular world , which was , in history , the highest forms of knowing that we sort of arrived at , in some ways , classical Greece , in that period where we had Socrates and Plato and everything , it wasn't Pythagoras , plato and Socrates and Aristotle , it was the Pythia , so if you really wanted to , which was

a priestess who was in an altered state , who was taking in unconscious material and delivering it Like that's where I want to be positioned actually .

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I mean , really what we're living is a disenchanted universe that wants to be re-enchanted and so once you are doing that , taking that spear and saying that's it , that's what's going to happen , you've totally lost . In my view , you've lost that narrative connection . So the way I teach the group that I do is don't tell me just the aspect and what it means .

Tell me what story could evolve from that . Perhaps because I'm a natural storyteller . I can't get away from it .

But what I find is it's so interesting that people , when they're connecting things , what you're trying to do is connect principles right that seem disconnected on a page or on a flat surface , but the act of connecting them , there is something that happens in your body .

You can feel it in an interior way I'm sure you do when you're doing it , where something clicks and it's hard to even describe to people that don't do this and then you know you're on the right path . And it's not because you're going to determine that tomorrow you are going to be with such and such and probably going to get the job .

It's because something you're saying is a bit like what you're describing , pythia or you know , because oracles often speak in double speak . But I'm telling you straight up .

But when you're with a group , I find the group has an energy and a collective wisdom that , can you know , one of us will have the key to whatever symbol . The person who has the dream has the first , but then somebody will say , well , it's interesting , and the last is the right question , because it's really about a question .

You know what question are you going to ask next ? And what I think is really interesting about that dream , looking at that dream world , is I look at the chart kind of like a dream . You know it's telling us these symbols , it's giving us these symbols and you know they keep moving because things keep making aspects to it that you know . Nothing is fixed .

What stories are going to evolve from that and what ? I find ? It's an intuitive knowing . Sometimes something hits and that is more healing , just like when you hit on a dream interpretation , which is always open , because no dream is ever really fully interpreted . But there are some moments where it just hits you and you think , oh my God .

And what I tell people is if you think your dream , think about this . When you're doing a dream interpretation , you think your dream is interested in who you're dating , what job you're getting . That's ridiculous . It's not interested in your outer world , it's interested in you and your psyche and your growth . The outer world is the vehicle for that .

But the actual thing , the dream , doesn't care . If I publish a novel , why would it ? An interior world is vast . Why would it try to locate it ?

And I think that's why those two done in tandem , doing the dream work and doing the chart it's just fabulous because you're wading into the same territory and you're understanding this is speaking to a larger reality and it's connecting you to a larger reality .

So I find that often with dreams , I'll actually bring in the chart and I go okay , that's what's happening by transit . This is why this is coming to the surface . But how is it materializing ? Well , it's not in the outer world . Yeah , you'll see signs of it .

I'll say , oh , suddenly I'm really interested in the subject or whatever , but really , what it's telling you is that unresolved note has come to the foreground , and this is how it's manifesting

. And how do we know it's manifesting ? Well , you know this because there's a conflict in your dream life . Something has come up and something is out of balance and really , at the end of the day , all your psyche is looking for is balance . Doesn't you know this , or that it's just wanting to be ?

If something is way out of whack , you're gonna get that dream that says it's way out of whack but it's not out in the world . Don't get rid of your husband . Don't , you know , lose the job . It's maybe in your , in your inner self , but yeah , it's hard because people just want the rom-com .

But actually , as you're saying , the longing , the longing is still there , no matter what , no matter what we put on the outer world , no matter how much in the American nightmare we're getting ensconced . It's actually like the dream world is still there and also , I would add to that the daydream world .

Right like I think yes , as we've encroached into the night world with our day world , with all these lights and everything you know , then the physical and all of these kind of like awakeness and and all these machines that keep us kind of like away from the deeper levels of dreaming . I think the deeper levels of dreaming come into our day world more so .

Actually we're living out those fantasies much more so even , because some of my clients are like but I don't remember my dreams , so that's totally fine , don't worry , you don't your life is but a dream , right like it's happening all around and and your dreaming is all around like tell me your stories are here and we'll work with them as dreams , because those

are archetypal figures wandering in , like you say . You know , like when you see in a square , I love that what you said oh , that square , oh that person's like holding , because I have the Mars-Saturn square .

It's like , oh , that person just came and did some Saturn here or did some Mars , and now look at me getting all Saturnian because they're getting all Martian and it's like oh here we go .

That's when you start to gather a little bit of that wisdom and , as say , you know , the mcgilchrist kind of model where the right brain is actually the one that can do the healing , that has the capacity for the healing , the imaginative brain has the capacity for the healing because it isn't stabby , it isn't , it isn't a separator , it's , and so if we can't

um kind of ignite that , it's like the asclepian traditions , which I'm , and deeply , that's the one of the areas I'm looking for , looking through you , the asclepian traditions which I'm , and deeply , that's the one of the areas I'm looking for , looking through , you know , asclepius in the dream healing , because I think that's what jung ultimately brought back into the

world through freud , originally , originally too , right , like he did too , like the focus back on dreaming as the healing . Dreaming is the healing in the asclepian tradition and we just need to get deep enough into our dreamings and a lot of , even our physical things , will heal at the deep enough dream level . Oh yeah , oh yeah .

You have to look inside , not always outside , hard , when people haven't been really taught to do that .

We're living in a world which constantly has us focused on the outside , and one of the things I love about McGill Chris is he always says it's not either or or both , and it's either or and both , and so what he says is look , you have this great sort of place . Let's talk about it , because actually I had somebody question me on threads about this .

You know they want to get down to and you know the actors that are trying to push this , that order is good and chaos is bad . So , he asked me well , you know chaos is feminine , isn't it ? I said well , first of all , if you're going to get a definition of chaos and order , please read Eric Neumann .

Don't read certain other people , because I think there's a really sophisticated version that comes from Eric Neumann that isn't showing up in what we're seeing in some of extract from that mass of chaos , something that is very important .

You look at it with that eye , you know , that bird eye that sees it , but for it to end , you have to bring it back into the other side , and what happens is what we're doing as a culture is we're extracting it and we're leaving it there . And there's no integration and when there's

no integration . I think this is what McGilchrist says as a psychiatrist he saw , and jung saw it , he talked about . He was seeing it in his consulting room , right in the way of diseases which , uh , you know , have been unleashed , as he said , by journalists , and we're seeing it all again right now .

They get a little bit confusing , but really it kind of maps well onto it that from the mass of confusion you take that piece that you you've differentiated , you know what it is , and then you bring it back and you've integrated it , and that's the third part . And if we can do that , we go back to that whole business .

Let's go back to this discordant note , this unresolved note . If at the moment of you know what's going to happen , right , you resolve it . And then the second that it's resolved , something is already brewing again . It's already starting again because it's a process . It's already brewing again .

It's already starting again because it's a process , it's a spiral , it keeps going and going and going . You know , when you say about Asclepius and the idea one of the things that I always tell people about Jung they should read the Red Book , because the Red Book was talking about dreaming awake . I mean , that's what he was doing .

He was doing active imagination . It's brilliant . Everybody needs to produce their own Red Book .

I say your life is kind of like Calderón de la Barca said , it is kind of like a dream . So what's happened to you ? What have you been noticing ? What has been going on in your life lately that keeps reappearing . That's pretty well .

Like you say , the I must prove something are understanding that a lot of our judgments are based on unintegrated qualities that we have . So we tend to be a little more compassionate about the way we might see the defects of others , and this is ultimately what we're all trying to do .

I hope this is why we're here To learn , you know , hopefully , and so it can be a language that says , yeah , you know these questions about women , men , race , this is all pretty silly .

Let's go a little bit deeper and see where are the divisions within ourselves , because once we locate that , I don't think you'll try to find a group to locate it onto , because you're working with it already , right , and so , yes , I do believe the daydream world is super important , and I'm joking , not everybody has to write a novel if they don't want to .

It's just one way to have a dialogue with the unconscious . I think what you're saying , if I'm hearing , some of your clients are not even aware that there is an unconscious to talk to . Does that not happen ? And then you have to say and does it not open a world for them ? You go , oh , this is like , I don't know about this . You must get that .

Yeah , definitely .

And these symbols just help you do that , which is why I could never be caught on technique in a way , because it's like I need that to be very fluid . But I'm interested in this what words resonate for you now , rather than masculine , feminine or unconscious , conscious ? It's really tricky around the language , right ?

This is why I'm doing this course with the Junger Academy on Venus , the archetypal Venus , and what I'm trying to show is this is so rich and you go through the stories and how it's developed , how we have consciously evolved or unconsciously evolved this archetype , and you see it's very flesh like .

There's so many dimensions and unfortunately , one word like feminist or feminine story or masculine , really limits what this means . And also , you must see this it gets people into , especially on social media , where everybody , I think , just loses their sense of what's appropriate . Sometimes they get so upset and I think , think about it .

You're getting upset about a word and partially it's because we are so driven to define something in a concrete way that we can't see the possibilities , the fact that there might be paradox , even in something like Venus and the feminine right , there might be a paradox hiding in there . People are not geared that way .

So when I look at those words , what I try to do and of course it's very wordy , which is why I have to write a novel , you know , 300 pages is that you almost have to work it out that way . It's not just how do I look at this ? Well , what's in me , right ?

And then you start having that dialogue with yourself and inside yourself and with others , and you realize that , to define those terms , it's an ongoing conversation and I don't think people want finality . They want well , this is it . This is the biggest trick we have in the brain , right ? We need to know now . This is you know the whole behind fundamentalism .

I need to know , well , you know the whole behind fundamentalism . I need to know , well , you know what Fundamentalism ?

One of the quotes that I just put on Blue Sky that somebody questioned was Robert Johnson , but he's mirroring Jung that anytime you hear someone say something very definitively , what they're doing is covering up their doubt , and I think this is so true which is why fundamentalism really scares me , right ?

Because what they're really doing is trying to shut down that part of you . That's not really sure . So you just scream it louder , right ? Scream it so loud . So people are screaming to me , are full of doubt , and I think and this is where you know , this is where it gets the words can trip us up .

The feminine is in some part associated with vulnerability , with being open , and I think people , when they're some people who are taught that safety means certainty , feel so vulnerable when the idea of paradox comes in , or the idea that you have to hold two things , that they scream . And they're really they're screaming loudly because they can't stand to feel .

And you probably do this , I know you probably do this . You understand that to feel means to go into your body without thought and to weather the storm . Right , who teaches kids , who teaches anybody to do this ? And I don't know . When I do it , it's painful for a little while , it's like a contraction .

When you're doing childbirth , it really gets painful and then it resolves , right , it goes up , resolves Again the unresolved . It's all kind of coming together for me in my head , and so the idea is can you live with that tension , and that tension is going to include . I don't have a definite definition of this . I mean , there's a word .

That's why symbols matter . This is why astrology is , for me , the mother mythology . It is guiding us to a richer world if you're willing to deal with the tension which you're going to have , and then you see it unfold and it's beautiful . I think both of us are probably attracted to the same thing the fact that somehow everything comes alive .

But if you have to actually translate it this is the problem with the word mercury that comes in how do I translate this into something that someone can quantify , predict ? This is where the magic goes away . No longer feels unsold . What it feels is diminished , because you can never capture it in in one . It's just not possible .

But for me , this is a great part . Maybe I'm just like . I have Pisces , with Jupiter rising right on the Ascended , so you're probably hearing the Jupiter , okay , I am so in love with the world .

I think it's magical and one of the things that I see is that , if you're willing to have this conversation we're having an ongoing conversation on this level , which is what I have with my group I swear you feel so much better on so many levels and you feel so much more alive and you feel like you're connecting .

And I think that word okay , you want the one word that I think at least the feminine , masculine I think discernment is the highest expression . They really understand what matters and what doesn't matter and that , by the way , requires a deep value system and real deep knowledge about yourself and others .

So it can't be done in one day when you go into a consultation . You have to go back and have that dialogue . They should maybe be seeing you once a year and you can continue the dialogue and then maybe they should be studying in themselves . The highest word for me , for the feminine , is connection . It's connecting . When you're separate , something is lost .

For a while it's okay , but then you need to connect and honestly , don't you think that's what we're ? I mean , fundamentally , that's what we're all looking to do to connect to something , another human being , an idea that gives us hope , anything that just puts us back together , because you know when you're separate it doesn't feel complete .

Does that make sense to you ? I mean , that's the only way I can actually define it it makes a lot of sense and I'm as you're speaking .

We know we've got to come together , but someone's watching , right , because then there's the superegos checking us out , the moonlight's there , we're in the grove and both things are trying to happen at the same time .

The separation and the connection are trying to happen at the same time , and I think maybe it was interesting because I asked what words would you use and what emerged in your answer was Venus and Mars , and then what emerged slightly after was Mercury .

Because maybe it's as simple as our inner planets , of the ones around us , the ones around the Earth right is just those ones Venus and Mars , those two .

How do we get them working , where one separates and one connects and both are actually good and okay and how it's meant to be , but we need to separate and connect and it's sort of like coming back , you know , back to the McGilchrist thing , come into the left brain , but then we forget that .

I feel like , if I'm going to diagnose the sort of modern world , it forgets the third thing in multiple different ways . It forgets the return in a ritual right , like think about COVID . We had the separation , we had the ordeal , we never had the return .

Nobody said like this is over , nobody said like let's come together , let's talk about what everybody went through .

So everybody and I speak to a lot of people that are still in a real trauma state around that , because they're still frozen , of course , because they're left- in the separation and the ordeal and nobody said like hey , come back now , everybody , we're all in the same story . We're all you know .

We see a lot of this Mars and Venus trying to figure this thing out right . We see a lot of that kind of like attempting to happen . Even Tiresias was female for seven years , so that makes him an interesting character .

Yeah , so he , he got to , and maybe that's why zeus , as they were having their disagreements which were ongoing , you know of course they went to teresias because , because he had that experience of like having bothness in him , and then that's what led to him being blinded , so he was no longer transfixed or could no longer be under the spell of the outer world ,

he was fully in his inner world , which is what made him one of the great seers of the ancient time , and we're talking about a mythic figure . But this is the thing , right , but it's the principle . Yeah , it's the principle . And that does come back to characters like Thetis , who also has the blindfold and the sword and the scales .

So we've got blindfold , sword , scales . It's kind of like those all together .

interesting . You just mentioned something that never occurred to me until you've said it , when you say the inner planets , which I think are the ones that are the main drivers of our personal psychology . It's funny how , if you think about the myths , we have many stories about the inner planets . Right , think about that Neptune Pluto .

How many stories do we have on those three ? Well , we have very few Uranus , like we have the castration right . That's it Neptune we have . Well , there is one story about Neptune that's never told , which I think is kind of interesting because it tells us a little bit about Neptune , which is it's not told as much .

You probably are well aware of it , but that's the one where he rapes Medusa in Athena's temple , and that's why she becomes Medusa and it's kind of an interesting thing to add maybe to and you think about , that's the power of the unconscious .

Yes , yes and the Hecatonchires who have the hundred arms , which I think is a really amazing split of masculine and feminine Grasping , but also the hundredness of it . So the ability to look at many , many , many , many . And then the one .

Yeah , yeah , yeah . This is hilarious .

Or I was like this , and then suddenly somebody can say what's needed and then we can all laugh and it's a release of tension . And I think the mind at this highest level can do that if they're able to see , if they're able to go beyond the opposites to something bigger , right to , without getting into the judgment which in that story that's what happens .

But in general I think of pluto , pluto , you know , very , very sketchy , because we don't have many stories , you know , we have maybe the , the big one , obviously , persephone , which is big right , yes , and even iris , iris we have the the big one , obviously . Persephone , which is big right . Yes , and even Eris .

Eris , we have the big one because , again , you know , it's a new archetypal . By the way , I mean Patrick Watson's made this point , which is really interesting , you know , eris , the discovery of Eris , and I just love that . The guy who discovered it , mike Brown , wrote a book called why it Killed Pluto and why it had it Coming to it .

Then , out of all that , twitter , all the other stuff that evolved , came from that one particular thing and I thought it's so iris , because iris is , I mean , one thing she can actually speak to and I think this is a big , big story is who's not invited to the table . So we have a lot of groups of people that haven't been invited to the table .

You know what they're knocking and you better have space . And I think the fighting against that , because people don't want certain people at the table , is one of the stories of our time , and Iris isn't going to give up . So I say to people I think you should start having a dialogue so that that there's not a lot of consciousness .

Often you will create discord , which is exactly what's going on , and then you know . Of course you can talk about it in a political level . We're talking about it symbolically , on a symbolic level . It's just , it's interesting .

And then that leads to the real divide , when it's like yes , the golden apple like the most likes and the most followers and the most things so just roll that down the table , let's find out .

Right , Write a novel and see if those coincidences fly with an editor . Right , They'll immediately tell you that is just not on , it's too much . But it's happening all the time . No-transcript , it's not great for anybody certainly not for kids , not for teenagers , although I would argue that there are a lot of deeper things that might be .

I return to the book that I was discussing with you prior to us starting to speak , which is the book by James Hollis Under Saturn's Shadow , because he talks about the wounding of men there , and I think it's such an important book for people to be reading and I think there's a lot of really bad takes going on , really superficial takes , and I think he takes

you to a deeper , deeper level .

And I heard a Jungian analyst , robert Tominsky , recently on Jungianthology . It's a podcast . That's , I think , the Chicago Institute , jung Chicago Institute , and he works with teens and he said something that really struck me , which is , he said , a teenage boy .

When we start working with them , what they're most afraid of which is sort of what happens when you go into puberty is to look inside , because they associate it with feminine and they associate it with they feel weak .

And yet the ability to look inside because they associate it with feminine and they associate it with they feel weak and yet the ability to look inside is fundamental to our mental health . So you have a bunch of young men who are so scared of the feminine have not been talked to . In a way . I have young . I raised two men .

They're wonderful , the feminine is really well-developed , but we have those conversations where they didn't feel it was embarrassing to discuss issues that are of the interior world . But he said it causes great damage because then they look they're so vulnerable they go look for exterior examples that can make them feel better .

And this is how you end up with Andrew Tate and all these people that are portraying a form of masculinity that is beyond toxic . It's violent but it's a way to feel like not vulnerable . And so I think James Hall's book is so important for women and men , both because it's teaching .

If you do not have , if you do not teach people to , especially young men , to have these conversations early on and model it , because one thing is to teach , but if you're not seeing it's not happening , it's not going to happen .

You've got a society where you know horrible things happen because it's interpreted through that lens , where it's okay to be misogynistic and violent and whatever . So it's a deep conversation we should all be having , but you know how many people want to have it . Well , I think .

I think that I think the longing is very deep and I , and you know I've been going back to Hercules a lot lately , or Heracles in the Greek , because you know , to me it was such a powerful image when I realised that Heracles , under the spell of Hera , killed his mother , sorry , killed his .

That's an interesting slip because she kind of plays out the mother , sort of a stepmother , evil stepmother kind of archetype , and he is caught in the mother because he's named Heracles , glory of Hera . He's caught in her thing , but he under the spell , so under a sort of a trance state , he kills his wife and his children .

So he destroys innocence with his strength , not because he wanted . His strength was built to protect , because it's the glory of her , to protect the innocence , to protect women , and that's what Uranus was made of , is protection .

The masculine was kind of like , created for that innocence , in this mythological way , to provide that protection , and it wants to be protective of the innocence of the world and it wants to be this kind of protective layering in which the beauty of the world can be created . That's the Mars-Venus paradigm , how it can work really well together .

But under this trance state he sacrifices them without knowing it and then obviously wakes up out of that state and wants to kill himself . You know like he immediately goes to kill himself .

Theseus , the thinking man's hero , stops him and says wait a second , let's have a conversation , and this is the conversation that I think we need to have between theseus and heracles . Like heracles is your andrew tate and you and you all these that that stuff .

Because , like , yeah , they want to be masculine and here's a way to be masculine have these cars and chicks and stuff . And it's like yeah , I guess that's a way to be masculine , I suppose . But no , because that's something completely different . But Theseus is able to say wait , so what actually happened ?

And he said I don't know , I blacked out and all this kind of stuff happened . And he's like , well , actually happen . And he said I don't know , I blacked out . It says and all this kind of stuff happening . So well , hera put that spell on you . So is it you or is it hera ?

And that's the tension of like , that's the conversation , and the tension of of like , wait a second and not answer that , because they don't answer it between the two of them . They don't herically saying it was me . Look , here's my weapon . It's got blood on it and you can see I should throw myself off .

I'm the avenger , I should throw myself off the cliff right and these is like but you weren't in your mind . Harrow was in your mind . So where do we , where do we draw the line of what's you and what's ?

Not you , and then they have a really interesting conversation that they have to bring that to the pithier and the pithier gives them the 12 labors and then we see how that plays out through each one of the 12 labors .

What is the mother Like ? I always tell people when you see your mother in your dream , it's not your actual physical mother . It will have aspects of it . It's the mother complex . What is that ? It's the fear of venturing beyond the known boundaries .

They need to be safe and at some point we could all be captured by this are locked into that mother complex where you do not take risks , you do not step outside the bounded kingdom . Remember Parsifal ?

My favorite myth is Parsifal and the mother makes sure you don't even have a name because you're not leaving this bounded kingdom , because if you do , you're going to die .

And , by the way , as a mother , I can tell you that is such a deeply ingrained fear that you really have to work on yourself to say no , I push you out Because if you don't , you are going to be tied to me forever .

Some mothers want that , consciously or consciously , but we have to , as mothers , make sure that this isn't the spell that we're putting on the child which is Parsifal's mother . What happens when he leaves ? When he , you know , finds the rock star , uh knights and follows it to arthur , he leaves , she dies , right , because that's it .

He's in a way the mother complexes collapse once you step outside , beyond those boundaries . So , hollis , when you the story just told , is exactly the hall what hollis says is needed . And we do not have the rituals , we don't have the containment , we don't have anything like .

We just push these young men out there and say , okay , just swim whatever way you want to . And we're living in a world where there's a lot of fear . So you see more mother fear than you've ever seen . Everybody's trying to keep the kids safe and the media will say that if they step outside they're going to die .

So we've created all this anxiety around it , but fundamentally they need that separation . So that story is brilliant because it so connects to yes , when you're in that spell of the mother , you don't even know what you're doing . You'll do everything unconsciously and then you go oh my God , damage .

Well , you weren't there , you weren't present to what was there , because you were under the capturing of that , so it's brilliant . And then , of course , the labors would be . The differentiation begins . You have to go out there and each one has to be taken on as something that becomes part of the personality .

So now he has and it's tied around his heart , so he loses his feeling functions that the feet are tied around the heart . So he loses his feeling function there , which leads him to the second labor of the hydra who's attached to his leg .

So there's , this is the mother wound , ultimately the attachment to the wet , the leg , and then the breathing of the fumes into his face .

Each one of them is about the planets , a specific planet , and that's just been . By the way , a scholar discovered that in 2017 it's oh , wow , it's a yeah , and he realized that cs lewis had been .

So Lewis had been so heavily influenced by medieval cosmology that he decided to write , quite consciously you know the line , whatever they're all in there and they're all the planets , and you could read them

. And I'm just wondering if that's not also because everything always ties back . I think I do call it the mother mythology .

There's probably places on Earth which didn't look up at the sky as much , but most did , and I feel that a lot of this and this is what Jung and Montfranc say we projected our psyches onto the sky and we're retrieving them by having the dialogue . We're going okay , come back so we can have this ongoing dialogue .

And then there's that mystery that there seems to be something that the inner and the outer world are always having a dance and so they're together . But it is the projections we're trying to bring back right . So I'm just wondering and our stories generally do so . I don't know if you've , if you've , looked at the 12 .

I haven't looked at that story , um , uh , closely enough , but would there be a correlation at all with so you can look to um ?

In his third labor he has to track a deer with golden antlers . For a whole year , puts his weapons away and just tracks and he's instructed not to harm this deer at all . And it's the fifth deer of Artemis' carriage . She was when she was a child . She had to gather up . There were five deer running around a field .

She gathered up four of them to run her chariot , because a lot of these gods have got to have chariots and then different animals that run the chariots , and the fifth one was free , and the fifth one was free and the fifth one remained free . And this is the deer that he has to just track . Put all weapons away .

You've just been through the solar and the lunar , the Leo and the Cancerian labors and now you just have to watch and wait and integrate through the Virgoan . So those three fit really well .

in the planets by the traditional . yeah both ways . You can do it both ways because we know that in the traditional system everything is ruled by except the luminaries . Everything has two signs . So , you can actually go around the wheel both ways .

I used to do these tours , literary tours , for a great organization here in Toronto that would take people to study Lorca in Seville , or we studied Juan Rufo in Mexico , and you take them and it was kind of a literary tour . They always wanted writers , novelists , something you could really get . But what was really always missing ?

I love them , I love having the conversations with people that were willing to go to Seville and sit in the courtyard and discuss Lorca . I mean that's pretty cool . But I always thought that what was missing was that level we're talking about now .

Because when you keep things at literary level , like literary analysis , which is great , it's beautiful , you know whatever there's something about a poem being very beautiful , but then when you dissect it , it loses some of its beauty , because the beauty is in the fact that it's symbolic . The words transcend . You know they're .

So , yeah , as where poetry is much higher level than anything fiction can ever do , unless it's some types of fiction .

Anyway , I missed that third level of analysis that you just did through a myth , and I think myth really makes it possible , Although I do think that a lot of writers are incredibly mythological without realizing that they're doing this because they're accessing a part of the unconscious which I think we all share .

So it's not just limited to poetry , but what you were talking about is that level of analysis that when we do it at least in my group we all feel so much better , Something that we said . I don't know what happened in the last five hours . Or something happened and we all walk out going , oh yeah , and as women , we all hug each other in death .

It's like , oh , you know , I used to do this with my kids when they were young . I would actually play them the E-flat that starts the ring cycle , which seems ridiculous . I even went into schools and told them that , and then I would play them a recording of the Big Bang . That was the radiation that you could get , I think , from Harvard One of them .

They have a recording and I would say look , the ring starts on an E-flat , we on an E-flat , we go there and this starts on this noise . One is one type of storytelling . That's what I was trying to teach them . The other is another type of storytelling . Both are valid . They're both different ways of looking at the world .

You never want to abandon one or the other . Mostly we've abandoned the E-flat , but I think that if the and we don't want to abandon the other one because it's telling us a lot of information , I just want to bring the E flat out . And it's so interesting . I would go into grade one .

I mean , these kids were six and they were so creative and they were so into it that I'd say you know what happens next , there's a dwarf . I would always only tell them like the first five minutes of the ring cycle , because it gets pretty , pretty involved and pretty crazy soon enough .

But the dwarf , uh , albert , of the idea that he is stealing gold because he's rejected . And I always tell them . You know , I would say to them why them ? Why do you think he's so angry ? And they said because he's sad . And I go , that's right , and you could teach kids the ring cycle , for God's sake .

And I'd even play the E-flat , the first bars , so they could hear the world coming into being , and they'd all have these big eyes because they're still open to it and they'd be so excited about hearing the world coming to being . And then I said , okay , let's listen to the Big Bang . It's such a cool way , you know from the beginning , to speak to children .

There are two realities and one doesn't have to win because it's not a competition .

So you go projected onto somewhere , you're somatized or something happens right , and so you could just teach kids from early on that those two realities were operating through myth , through story . Kids are really open and , by the way , kids can handle the violence in fairy tales . It's just you know people , you know how they try to disnify everything .

Don't do that . Kids like that , you know the way they're fighting it , they're understanding , they know these things are in them . They can't articulate it , they can't tell you , but they know right . So it's a way for making them . Also a way for them to understand aggression .

We have to make sure that it's contained so you're not hurting people , but it's a normal human thing Anyway . So when you told the Hercules story , that's when it all kind of came back about this idea that what you're doing is you're introducing mythos in a world that is sadly deprived of it . It's so important that we do it .

You know , I was really drawn as soon as I found Joseph Campbell . I was really loving that , you know . Although he was very intellectual , I really felt myself longing for more of the actual stories . Then Robert Bly , and that stuff was like so cool .

But what she does with fairy tales is like oh , and you know all this stuff , but it's like really next level stuff , but all of those .

Whenever someone was working with story and then working with the subject matter and putting it in mythological context or fairy tales , I was like , oh , this just I can rest into it and I really enjoy it , it doesn't matter .

I'm now working with it on that level , so it's kind of like you know it's not as you say , like yeah , so I guess it's an intellectual pursuit , but it doesn't feel intellectual for me it feels very much like the soul rhythm and you know so it's going to the places you enjoy , like the child in me enjoys it , which I think is the mercurial , uh component ,

right , mercury , the hermetic . I mean I have my Mercury in Leo , maybe in the ninth , so maybe that would conjunct .

I don't care who they're with , I don't care what they do , I could care less but I notice what they notice and what makes them feel alive and I just think that makes a human being , and there's so many infinite ways to feel alive . So you know , I'm not saying that we have to dogmatically tell everybody you have to be interested in .

Thisos ends up and you know , sometimes it's in the soccer pitch , right , people go out , they get all excited , they're participating in a Mars activity and that's how they're working it out and they're bonding with other men . Bond away . I mean , do whatever you have to , don't let it get toxic . But you know , let it happen .

But we have to have a conversation around why it's important and not just leave it to the consultants rooms . Because that's that's , and I think what I loved about the myth of poetic movement . Still do Martin Shaw still doing that , although lately I think he's retreated a little bit from that .

But anyway , what I loved about it is the gathering of men to discuss their feelings and they felt safe with other men , which , by the way , isn't , isn't really . Where else do you see that ?

You don't see that and the reaction , I think , at least in the early part I don't know if you're discussing the same reaction was from women who misunderstood what they were doing .

I loved Robert Bly . I will go on YouTube and just listen to him . There's one reading he does of the grumpy ruby and I just love it . Sometimes I just go listen to it . It's such character you know , it's so great . And the way he told his story it's great . I just loved him .

Let's have this happen , you know , and obviously I'm a huge Hillman fan and for him to get like in . That is just so cool . You know like these guys are .

You're bringing , bringing people into a kind of conversation they don't have , and this is what my last novel was about . Conversation is the way Like we have to dialogue . There are many ways to dialogue . One way we might want to dialogue is through story .

That's a fantastic way , but at some point we do have to have that conversation and we don't do it by screaming at each other on social media . That is very unhelpful . But these kinds of places especially I mean I love the redwoods , I once went to visit Northern California just to see the redwoods .

Let's take the other side of that , and let's take the other side of that and just keep moving back and forth , because then we actually get the healing we're looking for in the world . And I think part of the these um , this world without mythos because it's , you know , like , what myths do we really have ? I don't know .

I I feel like they're always trying to come back of course they're always in the background because they are timeless . But what do we really have now ? And and without that , we get sort of a dry world , and and in that dry world we come up with solutions that really don't fit the problem at all . So let's say the problem is that there's toxic masculinity .

What's the solution to that ? Uh , bury masculinity . You know like , bury it , just try to get it out of people . And it's like , no , we've tried that , we've tried to suck the masculinity out of men . And you know what it does it really disturbs the world . And it leaves again a really big longing .

Yeah , and if you're deciding that the whole world is about adding spreadsheets , stem programs , and we're not going to have these , and music is gone and art programs are gone , and we're not going to admit this , like , why do we need it ? What the hell are we left with A very dry world where , you're right , things will burn because that longing is there .

It goes back to longing . It's there . It will just manifest in whatever way it can and there's no ritualized way to do it . Yeah , it's going to come out in toxic ways , which you know . And so , with all due respect to these great social theoreticians like Jonathan Haidt , who want to write books where everybody goes oh , this is perfect .

You know , this is all about screens . It's not all about screens . It's been going on for a long time . The screens maybe made it more obvious to us , right , but it's there . It's been there since you know , whatever . And so we're not having it .

And , by the way , women have to participate in this and they have to participate in , not the way they attack the methodological movement . It's terrible what happened there , because it wasn't an attack on the feminine .

On the contrary , it was a way to integrate the feminine into the masculine right , and they have to participate , but they also have to be taught that not everything is an attack . One of the things I see in a lot of what women can do sometimes , which is something I try to point out kindly is they'll say all men are evil . This is no discernment .

That's not true . There are some men who are evil , just like there's some women who are evil . And what is even evil ? It's such an extreme word . Anyway , you can say they're all unconscious . Are they really all unconscious ? The one thing we have to value is the power to discriminate between things .

When you don't have a masculine built in you , you tend to make these crazy big statements and then you go after movements like that movement without any level of sophistication , and it's tragic . I think it doesn't help anybody , and so that's why I think they have to work in tandem .

We have to have both , and then eventually they have to understand that we're building . It gets complicated because we all know that some women have more of the masculine developed and less of the feminine , so then you have to go .

It's not as simple and clear cut , but in a general way , I think what Michael Mead is doing , what you are doing , is so much more productive than writing a book about how do we limit screen time . First of all , don't try to limit stuff that you're not going to be able to do . You can impose as many rules . Something is out in the world , it's there .

What I'm trying to do is get people to have a different perspective . That is not always there . So you're not going to have 4 million followers , I don't care . If you pick up one of the books that I'm reading and thinking it's worthwhile reading , that's great , because maybe it'll get you out of that world for a little while . And that's what we're doing .

It's a one person at a time thing . That's all you can do . But this great analysis don't really look at what has been in existence since timing memorial , which is the stories told us . But the analysis . It tells you a little bit .

So actually you reduce by being holistic , by being too holistic , by not being discerning enough , right then , that's what happens when you lose the masculine out of the world , then you'll actually become shadow reductionist .

Like well , all , all men are like , you know , like whatever it is this big blanket statement , it's like there's no discernment within that because the shadow of that whole ism is reductionism . And I will say about the screens , it's like I've been thinking about it .

It's like , well , let me imagine that for you , you know , that's something that the screens can do , but that's really since Neptune was found , right when we started to make pictures . So then it's like let me just imagine that for you .

So then , but the thing is like the other thing this technology can do , like what you do , and hopefully what I do is start to tell some stories , again using this medium , and then you're not looking at a screen , you're listening to someone tell your story or you're seeing your quote , which is which are always so great on your I mean , I just see it on

your facebook , wherever you still , wherever- you . It's like huh yes , because that quote means something to you . You've sat with it , You've done something with it . It's not like you've just seen it and then copy-pasted it .

I know that when I see your post , it hasn't just been like , oh , that's great , I'll just put that here Like here's someone else's wisdom , and I'll mirror that over here . You've felt it , you're in it , you're already reading that and now you're sharing it from that depth .

That to me is like great and you're using it with this thing that was used to rate women back in the beginning .

Right , I will say this that the thing about someone I get like I've been posting on Twitter and all these other places Twitter less now , because it's become crazy but you know these other places , there's like Blue Sky and Threads , and everyone saw someone would jump in and say why do we never hear from you ?

And I say , hey , I've got three novels published , I have two podcasts on the go . You're hearing from me . If you want to .

That was my friends when I wrote the books , and they've taught me and they've instructed me . So I'm just sharing what has touched me , but it's not indiscriminate . I mean I have . I use ReadWise , which is an app that extracts my highlights . I have 55,000 quotes , so you're definitely not getting all my quotes , but there are some .

And there's a synchronicity to this . By the way , we'd wise will pop up and say this is a quote that you know love the app and I'll say wow , and you have a daily review and sometimes I'll go through 60 of them and one just hits me and I go wow , this is it .

One through YouTube she saw one of my YouTube video essays . Another one came through , found me on Twitter , and the other one is now from Madrid and she comes in remotely and found me through the podcast . So I'm thinking , wow , all these things you're putting out there , you're creating these great people to you too . I've met wonderful people , including you .

That would not have been possible had I not been posting . So I think that's the gift I get back , and it's a pretty good gift .

And you know so so similar to me about you , by the way , so I was listening to your podcast because you gotta check them out . Yeah , so that then , that's the leo aquarius .

You know , like the , the way that the audience and the and the uh speaker are connecting to each other you know , and and and hopefully having a really nice reciprocal relationship , because you know , we're speaking into thoughts that people are maybe having but can't articulate , and I think that's what the sort of role is .

But then they bring us together , so that's so cool .