[music]

Hey fellow Gen-Tiers, those of us who like those of us who like our spirituality with a twist. So, we are doing one of the things that we love to do on our little podcast, which is to do a deeper dive kind of series into something of psycho-spiritual importance. And so, we've been talking about Carl Jung and the idea of his metaphysics. Uh the idea for talking about his metaphysic metaphysics comes from this book by Bernardo Castrup, uh who's like kind of a big philosopher of mind now, and he has a book called Decoding Jung's Metaphysics. So, it gives us a chance to talk about Jung a little bit about Bernardo Castrup, too. And uh for this episode, we're going to continue looking at the idea of like three parts of the person, the body, the psyche or ego consciousness, and spirit, and we're in the spirit part. So, we've been talking about this idea of the diamond, the inner spirit guide that Jung talks about. And specifically what it looks like in terms of maybe Gnostic Jung and what it means like to not follow your inner diamond, and then we'll also try to connect this a little bit back to the tantric part of things by asking what's the connection between Jung's idea of the diamond and the idea of the Yidam in like Buddhist tantra. So, I guess the questions of the episode are something like what does it mean to have a spirit guide and not follow that, and how does it connect to other spiritual practices, including the idea of having something like a Yidam, which is like a the kind of the idea of the deity practice in tantric Buddhism. But, before we get to all the good stuff, if you can do the things everyone always asks you to do, which would be like, subscribe, share an episode, write a review. Again, it's you know, as we always say, labor of spiritual love for us, and if you can kind of help spread our stuff around, that's greatly appreciate. Otherwise, into the heart of the matter. I, you know, there's that great Gnostic quote, so I just wanted to drop it at the beginning, Daniel, it's one of my favorites from the Gospel of Thomas. I try to share it whenever it comes up and is appropriate. So, it says, "If you bring forth that which is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth that which is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you." Mhm. Wrong language from the Gospel of Thomas. And it like just hit me because Jung is like a Gnostic person. And, you know, he'd obviously be very familiar with that kind of thinking. So, this whole idea of like whether or not you follow what is within you is would have been a big deal for him. So, that's one of my favorite Gnostic quotes. What do you think about that one, Daniel? Is that one of yours?

Uh I mean, I've never heard it before. So,

Oh, no [...]

I don't know if I don't know if it could be my favorite. I just I just absorbed it.

Well, maybe it will become your favorite.

That's right. [clears throat] It's The possibilities are are endless.

Yes. Yes. Lots of Gnostic quotes, but maybe you like you you vibe with this one in the end.

Yeah.

So, sorry my voice has been a little funny. Uh Yeah, so, you know, I think you know, that's kind of the thing. I in our prepping around this, again, from the Gnostic side of Jung, like you can really feel it in certain parts of his work. I don't know if we'll do this later on, but I was looking uh at the Seven Sermons to the Dead, which is this little short work he wrote, uh which I think he says is almost like automatic writing. It was just sort of inspired and he just kind of did it almost like in a trance state.

Hold on, Eric. Um

Yeah.

We should just talk about that for a second cuz I am positive that people do not know what that is. And so,

A trance state?

No, no, no. Automatic writing.

Well, I think what Oh, what I was getting at it would be the idea of like kind of inspired by some kind of spirit thing, like a diamond, and he just you know, you just kind of write without really even thinking that you're writing at all. You just do it in this automatic kind of inspired way.

Yes.

I think people did hand analysis of like that document after he wrote it, and they were like, "This doesn't look like this guy's handwriting."

Yeah.

So, it's an interesting thing to listen to. But anyways, you want to talk more about the automatic writing part?

No, I just think that like I'm I mean, I don't know, I'm not that steeped into the occult, but from my understanding from people who are very close to me that this seemed to be more popular in previous times, maybe 70 late like 70s early 80s.

I mean, Jung has this interest in the occult, for sure, right? And you know, like extending back to his time, you know.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there are probably still people who do it, but you again, you have to be like in an occult circle. So, it is an interesting thing. The weird part is like the handwriting thing is if I remember correctly, you know, they were like, "Okay, I don't know whose handwriting this is, but it doesn't look like this guy's," meaning Jung's.

And the audience can correct me. I'm not sure I mean, I've I've heard it, but I think it's also with your non-dominant hand.

I don't know if it has to be.

I don't know, right, I don't know if it has to be, but I think it that's what they recommend.

will do that kind of stuff, right?

Yeah. Yeah, and so people will put themselves basically into like a trance state with meditation or whatever they're using, and then just let their hand move.

Yeah.

And it's and it's inspired. You're not thinking or you're trying not to think. You're just trying to be, and you write. So, this sort of like it's a it's a transmission, if you will. But I wanted to bring it up cuz we don't ever get to do too much occult stuff, and I think it's it's very cool.

Well, we're always right on the border.

We are border We are on the border.

We're we're kind of close.

Yes.

But maybe we haven't done as many detailed things about that since we're chatting.

Correct.

We did something a while ago, and I'm forgetting his name. Who's the who wrote the graphic novel Arkham Asylum?

Tim Miller?

No, it's not Tim Miller. It's the It's another dude. He was really into the occult. If I can If his name hits me, I'll I'll bring it up.

Sure.

But I think we did something on that literally like years ago. We were talking about his relationship to the occult. And I'm just forgetting the dude's name. Anyways, uh he's really into like ritual magic and occult stuff.

Oh, Grant Morrison. Sorry.

Grant Morrison, yeah. And the guy who wrote uh um The Watchman is, too. So, we did a little on that years ago. And we pops up here and there. We could do more of it. Right? It's fun. It's It's a little bit funny cuz we were talking like off mic how I got my first apartment sold by someone by a witch doing rituals.

Mhm.

And the apartment which found us a buyer right before the 2008 crash. So, we live close to the occult.

We are We are occult-adjacent. Anyways, back to back to this guy.

Young will definitely get you there. And well, wait. And you know, we were talking about his metaphysics, so I wanted to look at this Seven Sermons to the Dead cuz it has a lot of metaphysics in it. But as far as the gnostic stuff goes, he really references like deep gnostic stuff in there if you know it.

Mhm.

He talks about the this deity called Abraxas. It's way gnostic. So, anyways, it's an interesting kind of text. But I just brought it up because of the connection to like the gnostic side of things.

Mhm.

And maybe that's it could be conceived as that quote could be seen as sort of like a gnostic law. For the diamond, too. You have to bring forward what which that which is within you. Otherwise, if you don't bring it forth, it'll start to destroy you. Meaning it'll kind of eat you away from the inside. Which is a pretty profound observation, right? If you don't bring out your true nature. Or in this case, if you don't kind of follow the the the guides of your spirit guide, the diamond, you can end up in this place. But anyways, I can kind of go through some of the symptom stuff here cuz I thought that was, you know, kind of an addition to what we did last episode. So.

Yeah.

Yeah. So, part of it is the idea of what they used to call like neurosis, which was like physical symptoms induced by psychological causes. They said neurosis cuz a lot of that stuff would look neurological. People might faint. People might, you know, have uh problems even of like sensory experiences of the major sense organs. I had a patient who lost vision in one eye from one of these kinds of things. But, you know, uh neurosis or what we would probably now call functional neurological disorder, somatoform disorder. So, physical symptoms caused by psychological factors. And then just physical pain. So, you know, from Jung's point of view, if you try to suppress this diamond's guidance and impulses, it doesn't go away. It kind of like reemerges. Almost with the idea that it has a little bit more of an edge

on it, too.

It'll come back like more forceful. And then in that sense, it might appear as physical symptoms, uh you know, and we'll get to psychological stuff like anxiety and uh I think, you know, if the if the diamond is like kind of really repressed, maybe kind of like a flatness, which I've always found kind of interesting in Jung, too. That you might feel just kind of like uninspired, flat because you kind of taken this major part of your psyche {slash} spirit and you tried to smoosh it. But, you know,

Flat Stanley.

Yeah. You kind of What was it? You Flat Stanley, you folded up, put it in the thing, stuck it in the mail. Said, "Bye, diamond." Sent it off someplace else. I think that happens in Flat Stanley.

[laughter]

I read that book when I was a kid. Anyways, you know, that kind of stuff, you know, psychological symptoms, sure, but also like the physical symptoms of that, too.

Right.

And it makes you sort of wonder like then we see so many psychological problems now. It does kind of raise that idea if you're thinking from a union perspective that people aren't following the diamond and then that kind of creates a lot of these problems, you know. So, it's kind of what you were talking last episode like the Victor Frankl existential part of things.

Mhm.

We kind of talk about Carl Rogers and not expressing your true inner nature, but this would be like you have a spirit guide that's trying to get you to do things and you just resist it and then it kind of almost like does what happens in the gnostic quote from Gospel of Thomas. It's kind of like takes a chunk out of you like starts to like be a little spiteful towards you. And then you start these problems on you. So, it's kind of a powerful idea.

Mhm.

So, okay, that's one of the deals. He also talks about addictions and then possible kind of like diversions where you don't follow the diamond and instead you take that energy and you sort of like resist it by pushing yourself into things that are again either addictive, so substance abuse problems would fit within that or other kinds of addictive behaviors or you know, things that are maybe not destructive in that kind of a sense, but like uh you know, kind of more like diversions, semi meaningless squandering activities, that kind of stuff.

Mhm.

I like we were talking before

[clears throat]

we got that mic and I'm finishing up Sorry, my voice is being weird. Finishing up the book on the life story of Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki author of

[clears throat]

Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.

Very good book for those who haven't read it.

Great book. Probably the thing that got me started like doing Zen back in my 20s, too. It really was. It's great. And he's a

Now, the thing

Yeah.

Eric, when when you read these I mean I mean when I read these texts and I'm sure when you do as well, these these these books, when you read books or you do audio books, you know, whatever. They influence your thinking all the time. You're kind of in that story regularly and if you can do that intentionally and be influenced by some of these really great, you know, practitioners and thinkers of of our time or time before, you keep yourself steeped uh closer I think to your sort of moral compass or to your, you know, value system if you want to use that kind of language.

Yeah, I really felt that like hearing the like Suzuki Roshi story cuz it kind of gave me that little same spark of inspiration I felt

Yeah.

when I read that book initially. It kind of brought that home. Pulling into our like our Tantra conversations, it goes back to the idea that there's four types of teachers, four types of gurus. An actual person, but also like the literature and the production of the minds of the people who are teachers to you, too. So, I I really I feel that what you're talking about. And then I I [clears throat] like the idea that you can frame that as kind of like a guru then, right? That that text that is like inspiring you is like a connection to the mind or the spirit or the diamond of that particular person, right? That inspired thing.

What were the four Eric just for those who are curious?

Yeah. So,

[clears throat]

it is an actual person. It is um the literary works of people and whatever you're trying to study. And then it's um uh your personal experiences that become teachers to you. And then the fourth one is really interesting. It's kind of like your own spirit that is kind of like a teacher to you. Your Buddha nature, you might say. It has a certain amount of wisdom in it if you think of it that way. And so you sort of learn from your own inner wisdom. Yeah. I guess if you're young, you're going to say that there's this diamond thing too floating around within that and that's kind of a teacher, too.

Mhm.

And I guess as we go forward, we can debate whether that's a part of your own psyche or whether it's like a force entering in from the outside. We were kind of hinting on that at the end of last time we were talking.

Yeah.

So, we'll get to that idea, I guess, when we talk about the yidam, right?

Mhm.

Yeah. And that's a big thing, I think, in Bernardo Kastrup's talking about Jung, too, but

Even in this right here, you're talking about addictions and diversions, it sounds very much like the three poisons in Buddhist thinking, you know, attachment, aversions, and ignorance, which surprisingly almost everything can be boiled down to one of those three things, you know? Like you just they just it's like the circling the drain, you know? Like it's it it's always there.

Eventually, you chip away, then you're like, oh, [...] it's just that kind of thing again.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

I thought you'd be into it, too, just because of like the the diversions part.

Oh, yeah.

Cuz you're so much into the idea of like what's capturing people's attention.

Absolutely.

Such a big thing in like your conversations in this little pod of ours. And like, I guess one of the ways of explaining why people are so intentions splintered from this perspective would be like, there's this diamond that wants to direct you,

Mhm.

it's not comfortable to you, so you kind of just put that energy, and you shunt it into things that are diversions, right?

Mhm.

Yeah. And like

that's the one thing that

that really hit me when I was putting my parts of these notes together. I was like, oh, this is in Daniel's wheelhouse, for sure.

That's the one thing that this society is really gotten great at is diversions, is distraction, is capturing your attention, shortening your attention span, and uh really giving more outlets than you can even possibly get into in one lifetime. I mean, there's so many things for you to be involved in or distracted with or whatnot. And I am not sure how many of them are doing you much good. I I don't know. You know? I mean, I don't have data, so I I don't even like to talk about stuff I don't have some data near me, but like are there more there you can learn so much more stuff, but are there more people playing music? Are there more people creating their own things? But I don't know, but there I we can totally say there's an infinite amount of television shows from all across the world along with movies and short and long-form content like ours included, you know, that are there's there there infinite in magnitude. There's I don't know how many podcasts now, 3 and 1/2 million or something like this, which we're literally in the top 5% by the way, so you know, hats off to you know, tip of the cap and a shake of the feather. That there's so much that you can you can consume that I just don't think is moving you towards your own self actually. You know, moving you towards the you know, or or we could even say that's getting you to listen to your diamond. It's getting you to listen to the sort of inner guidance that you have or the outer guidance from an external teacher or a book or an audio book or any one of these things. I just or podcast. You know, I just don't think that there's a lot. So whenever this comes up and we you know, I take the moment I always like to tell people like, you know, now that we're here listen to yourself. Go inside and listen to yourself. There's a lot of [...] you can listen to on the outside, even us. [...] us. Listen to yourself, you know.

Well, you can listen to us telling you to listen to your diamond, I suppose, but your diamond would tell you that anyways.

Yeah.

But I think like as a diagnostic thing, right? Cuz we are you know, we work with patients, we're diagnosticians, too. This is an interesting way to think of a diagnosis. Diagnosis not listening to your diamond.

Mhm.

The malformed disorder, functional neurological disorder, addiction, distraction, you know, Now, starting to get like a little diagnostic checklist of something like this. Of course, that's a diagnostic checklist for a lot of stuff, but it it's this too.

You know? And so, you know, if you're thinking of things from a Union filter, you'd say, "Well, this is part of what can happen, right?" If you if you have this tension with your own spirit or spirit guide or whatever you want to say.

Eric, you So, I want to add this because you brought that up up being a diagnostician and you know, clinician treating people asking questions getting answers and and I have I haven't asked these questions as frequently as I have in the last 2 weeks. And so, I want to share that here because sometimes I like to share, you know, clinical pearls, you know, and um there's a I I don't know if it's Sandra Ingerman's book or Michael Harner's book, but you know, books on shamanism. These two figures were really uh foundational in bringing the shamanism to the west from a, you know, anthropological, but then also a practical kind of view. There was plenty of books on on different cultures and talking about their rituals, but these two people, you know, there's probably others I'm missing, but those two people at least from my knowledge really ushered in the way in which that I think the west interacts with with uh shamanic practice today. And um I don't know if it's one or both went to go see a a medicine person in in some culture and they asked were asked similar questions. They ask pretty much everybody these same questions and the questions are, "When did you stop singing? When did you stop dancing? When were you no longer enchanted by the telling of stories? And when did you stop finding surrender in the sweet territory of silence?" And I think much of what you are much in line with what you are saying, "When did you stop listening to your own inner guidance?" That those are I mean, like, if you're going to look at, you know, existential somatoform type influences on somebody, I think those are the this is the kind of like mindset that we have to keep when we're going to think about working with people. And for those who are listening, when you're thinking about diagnosing, you know, yourself or your loved ones, it doesn't mean you should do anything about it, but this could be your your your perspective, if you will.

I guess you could flip that, and you can use that as treatment, too, if we're going to be like all medical about this. You can say, "Okay, maybe the answer is to sing. Maybe the answer is to dance. Maybe the answer is What were the other two, Daniel? I'm sorry."

Uh being enchanted by the telling of stories.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's great, right? That's totally in the Youngian wheelhouse, too. But, the creativity to connect in with the archetypes, or in this case, the diamond. The diamond is kind of like an archetype, but it has more pressure on you. It's more individual, right? We kind of talked about that last episode. Yeah, that whole thing, you know, has that quality of like you could flip that around and say, "Yeah, sing, dance,

and then being in silence.

stories, yeah, and be in silence. Jung has this moment, again, cuz I've been doing my little Jung research as around this sort of episodes we're doing, but like I think at one point in his life, you know, in his notebooks we were talking about he kept these very private notebooks that became very creative projects, the Red Book and the Black Book, right?

Mhm.

Red Book um Liber Novus gets published like that. But, anyways, like uh I think it's in that part where he's like talking, or maybe it's in his letters, but whatever. There's this part where he's saying like, "You know, I don't feel like I have a story for myself anymore. I don't have a myth. I don't have a story. And I don't know how to live without a myth or a story, and maybe nobody does when you get to the being enchanted by a story. You know, maybe we all need a story for what we feel that we're trying to live in our lives. And we need a story that feels compelling to us. It's an interesting way to frame it.

Yes, it is.

If your story doesn't feel like compelling to you, then it's not a very good story, or maybe there's no story, right? And I think he was kind of like calling that out as like a problem of like the modern times, which I guess we're still all a part of, right?

Mhm.

A modern time problem. People lose the sense that there's a meaningful story that they're participating in. Which is another powerful way to get the enchantment of stories, but the enchantment of like, "Oh, I have my own story."

Mhm.

Yeah. And that's kind of how you connect to your diamond, right? Cuz the diamond's going to have some kind of tail it's trying to like

Mhm.

get you to connect to. So, it's good advice, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Um as far as the the silence, I mean the other thing in Jung is like the the uh the creative imagination.

Right.

The time to turn inwards, right? That's his meditative technique. You know, I turn inside and I kind of journey inside myself.

Mhm.

And then I meet the characters that are within me. And we talk and we kind of like go through our questions and answers and all that. It's, you know, obviously very He's such a psycho-spiritual dude. He's He's very enjoyable.

[laughter]

He's a very enjoyable man. All right. Well, the So, what we got so far? Psychological symptoms, physical stuff, uh uh somatoform you would call it, anxiety, flatness and emptiness, which is obviously related to things like depression, maybe. Addictions, diversions. The last one was the idea of uh the the fate part of this. That in a way And this gets the idea of like to what extent, going into our youdam thing, to what extent this is internal or external or what this is about. So, we have a little thing we call the shower curtain of wisdom.

Mhm.

Across the hall over here in this bathroom. Where it someone gave it to me as a gift, so it's kind of like the great quotes from the people that I admire on the shower curtain. Shower curtain of wisdom. You can sit there and, you know, relieve yourself and feel emboldened by wisdom.

[clears throat]

So,

[laughter]

good times are had.

Really? You can relieve yourself and be emboldened at the same time.

Things are coming out one end and going in through other ends.

Right?

So, uh so anyway, so the trap of fate is this kind of interesting thing. And I have my little shower curtain of wisdom. There's this line where he says, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

Yeah.

So, I guess the idea there gets to be you'll be kind of like disempowered in a way.

Yes.

And I And I suppose you can frame that in different ways. You could make it like you'll lose your direction and your life will become directionless and therefore just like ping-ponged along just by the events and the the fates of whatever seems to like transpire upon you.

Mhm.

And then the other part, and this gets to like the internal external part of this in kind of a weird way. Well, continue to talk as we kind of take apart our little Jung series here. He's fun to talk about. What would be the idea there whether or not the diamond is something that transcends your own personal identity and starts to [...] things up with you in like sort of the outer world, too, which is an interesting way to think about this, right?

Mhm.

So, the fate might come somewhat under the control of the diamond in the sense that it'll start to do stuff to you to kind of compel you in the circumstances of your life to try to drive you back. Which I think he thinks something like that. Right? And we'll do some stuff on synchronicity, one of his big ideas, later on cuz that's a huge part obvi- obviously of his metaphysics. But eventually events in the outside world events in the outside world would start to like transpire you against you or something like that.

Mhm.

So, I guess we'll explore that more deeply, but it's interesting. I guess you can make that internal thing or you can make that an external thing.

Yeah.

So, what do you think? Like directionlessness versus external circumstances. I don't know what you think about that stuff, Daniel. You got thoughts on that one?

No. I mean, yes, but yes, but

right?

Yeah. Yeah. And also, for time purposes, I want to move it a little bit.

Okay. Okay. Um All right. So, um now we have like the start of like a diagnostic thing, I guess, right?

Mhm.

You know, with including the idea that you'll feel kind of directionless, you'll feel like you're just being tossed around your life by circumstances, I suppose, is the last feeling of this.

Mhm.

Um which gets to the idea that we talked about a little bit last episode, but you know, the brief review would be like, well, why wouldn't you do this? Why wouldn't you just follow this diamond? And the idea is that sometimes it'll ask you to do things that you're not comfortable with, right?

Mhm.

Ask you to take risks, ask you to kind of maybe do things outside the box. Yeah, especially like in connection to the social world.

Right.

the only thing I had to add about that was just, you know, Jung being Gnostic, and then we can talk about the Yidam stuff. But the Jung being Gnostic, he kind of he doesn't say this exactly, but you know, he knows these Gnostic things, it's hovering around. He obviously has a sense that the world is not always going to be supportive of your spiritual endeavors. One of the Gnostic ideas is that the world is kind of a harsh place on some level. Um and it's kind of potentially oppressive. So, you know, the the world can be like that that oppressive deity, uh you know, they have a Gnosticism, this Demiurge thing. Like recognizes that piece. And so, um especially when you look at it in terms of like social cultural demands, those things are expressions of like the Demiurge from a Gnostic point of view, and then you might find yourself in clash with them to some extent. So, anyways, I think I just wanted to kind of like, since we were looking at the Gnostic side

Mhm.

just kind of bring up that piece. I don't think he hits that super hard, but it's obviously hovering around, you know, where the social world can be an oppressive place, and your diamond might be trying to get you to do things that are either like personally pushing forward or sometimes even trying to push the collective narrative forward, which you were talking about some episodes ago, too, didn't you?

Yeah.

You start doing things, and it pushes things in a new direction.

Mhm.

Maybe probably because we're all interconnected in that way.

Yeah, and I think there's some people have like maybe a bit of a nihilistic view on their influence on the species or the culture or whatever overall, and they feel like, "Well, unless you are of great power or great fame, you know, or of great recognition, your ability to affect change is minimal." And maybe on the gross level, there is merit to that argument. I'm not going to say that, you know, I have the same power to drive change as I don't know, you know, name somebody, Leonardo DiCaprio.

Or Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or

Yeah, I was I'm trying to think of people who I give a [...] about. Um

I didn't know you gave a [...] about Leonardo DiCaprio.

Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, he's done some good movies. He's done some good movies, you know.

Is it Inception? That's a kind of a Daniel

movie. Yeah.

That's a Daniel movie, for sure.

a absolutely a Daniel movie, yeah. Um You know, but you you that but regardless, you they those people, you know, actors, artists, they have influence by the merit of their work or by the in you know, and therefore they they're given influence because of that. And I think that some people might feel like disempowered because they don't have that. So, then what's the point? I My My point is more of one of individual empowerment to say that like every experience, I think, is going towards the collective unconscious and moving us in a positive direction. So, we'll tie it all the way back to earlier, just like listening to a book or reading a book influences your mind even when you're not reading it. I think the actions and the beliefs that we have influences the humanity's psyche even if we don't know that it is.

Yeah, I think in Young's idea of the diamond and the collective unconscious would be like even when you get the artists who are going to have a big impact, sometimes what they're doing is they're channeling those aspects that are kind of there in the collective anyways.

Mhm.

Right? And I think you get artists who try to talk that way. You know, they recognize like there's something going on beyond them and they're trying to tap into that zeitgeist or something, feeling of the age or something, right? But it's like a momentum happening in the collective unconscious. And then your creativity comes from that space. Obviously, there's people who do that to different degrees, but I like uh David Lynch as a director, you know, passed away a few years ago, last year, the year before. But, you know, uh Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and all these kind of crazy ass movies, but he would talk about like the idea like and a and a big like transcendental meditation guy, too.

Mhm.

Yeah. But, always did it every day, you know, kept it up his whole life, you know. So, you know, real real believer in the meditative experience and uh you know, his book on creativity is called like Catching Big Fish, which is the idea like you're not coming up with the idea, you reach out into the you're fishing into the sea of ideas that's probably out there and you're trying to catch them. And when you do that, you can bring in things that have meanings beyond like yourself even. You're kind of operating within this kind of collective thing. And Jung thinks that way, obviously, you know, that you you're reaching out in your creative activity in doing that. Or even in our little pod or, you know, our medical work or whatever, we're tapping into something that's a momentum, if it's positive. Right?

Mhm.

And in that sense, you're connecting connecting with the diamond, too, you know, in your creative, meaningful activity.

Yeah.

I had like a dude I knew who was really into like Ken Wilber. I was never super into him. He's like a spiritual philosopher.

No boundaries.

More into him maybe than even than I am.

Yeah.

But there was some idea in him, which I think has a root in like social psychology, social science, too. That it just doesn't take that many people to start creating a tip.

Mhm.

Right? So, if you start to get like I think the number I heard was like 10%. Of a a group of people start pushing in some new direction and they really do it, it tends to create this magnetism, this pull of pushing things in like a new way, you know? And I think that was the number, you know, we can look it up and correct me.

Uh well, it depends on what who you're talking about. If you're talking about like Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, that number is going to be closer to 30.

Oh, he says it's that big. Yeah, okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Um so, like they would, you know, if they have like a typical nine or 10 person board on a in a corporation, you know, a larger company, that until you have three people of either minority or gender, right? That it becomes more than a token. They become a group, and that group can then influence the greater group. So, if you have a board of nine directors, again, on a company's board, if you have less than three women, they're just two women. And they're just get can't make the same impact on that group.

Right, but when there's three, now they can form a little trio. And the same thing for even ideas, right? It doesn't necessarily have to be women or minorities or whatever, but people who are conglomerating around an idea, once you once you reach that 30% mark, okay, now it starts to be a thing because they have a little bit of power as themselves. And you can't just move them uh very easily.

Yeah, I was thinking about the Malcolm Gladwell thing. At the same time I was thinking about the Ken Wilber thing. I just didn't Yeah, I didn't know their numbers. And I knew you knew more about them than I did.

Yeah, yeah.

Um I'm not I I want to say it was 10, but you know, I guess you can debate the numbers involved. Were either of those two sets of ideas, you know, ever

you know, uh I don't know. That's I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent about the Malcolm Gladwell aspect, but I Is that based on like some specific research thing or is that more of a theory?

Okay.

Yeah, because I just I just read uh Revenge of the Tipping Point uh maybe like 2 years ago. So, I'm I'm familiar with this.

Yeah, I mean it's that Well, I mean like this was part of our I don't want to go on this tangent either, but it was part of our discussions about Amaga, too, because you got 30% of the people that are not going to break out of that cult. So, what does that mean?

Correct.

Yeah.

Correct.

Yeah, I think like on the psycho-spiritual side, I want to say it was 10, but I'll fact-check myself. And there's the another great writer, Robert Graves, who kind of threw out that kind of number, too. You know, you need like a certain number of people that will start to like really energetically start pushing in some new direction. I think Jung believes in that, though. I think he believes that you can create a tug on the collective conscious and unconscious, and you can also be this kind of mind that connects us all in Jungian thought, right? All of our minds are kind of interconnected. Obviously very Asian spiritual idea, too, or traditional spiritual idea. Uh but also that you can be inspired by currents within that and kind of like be part of that process. So. And I guess if you don't, well then that has a again its own impact because the impact goes beyond you. So if you do it, it has an impact, but if you don't do it, it has an impact, too. I thought about that in my life. I think this is my last subject. Maybe I'll have to save the unit for next time.

Maybe, yeah.

Yeah, but like the whole idea of um doing things cuz you want to have it resonate outside of your own space. I thought about that in the course of my life. You know I mean the decision to do the traditional Chinese medicine thing, it was because well, I want to make an existential statement, I guess you could say, right? I want to have my life feel personally meaningful. But I also have had the thought like, okay, I can try to be part of a little something, you know, you're your own little droplet trying to add to the wave of something. And I thought about that with different parts of my life. Like I want to do this because I want to be part of making that statement. Obviously spirituality, too, doing Zen things and tantric things and the stuff that they're doing. I've had those thoughts. I'm sure you have, too, right?

Yeah, I mean, one of the things that, you know, you were talking about this earlier, but you know, in reference to the diamond and how it influences you, one of the things for sure that it's doing is getting you to break through to face your face and break through your fears. Because generally one the things that it's asking you to do are not easy. And sometimes in the social settings, it's hardest because you're going to be butt up against values potentially of the in-group that you are part of. And that this thing is intentionally trying to say, no, you need to not be part of this group, at least for this particular action, because you need to learn something or you need to do something or you need to change something in order to do those things or accomplish that task, your drive is going to be to butt up against the situation around you. And there's a lot of hesitation in that. There's just a lot of There's fearful.

Yeah, there wouldn't be spiritual progress unless you're like you have some resistance you have to move against, right? Yeah, to go forward. Jung was like again we're to the end of the episode, but Jung was and I'm sure this will come up again, but Jung was a big proponent of like rethinking human relationship, too. I'm really into the uniqueness philosophy as opposed to the exclusiveness. I'm you know, that's a big deal for me. And um so you know, it's something that comes up on our podcast here and there. Esther Perel uses this idea. Are you going to be real conventional in your relationships? Or are you going to be a little bit more based on the idea of like I'm going to find the people that I feel like I have a unique bond with that and even if those that's you know, not in your standard relationship formats. You could talk about polyamory things or maybe relationships that are maybe a little bit outside like the strict boxes how people normally think about things. He was a big proponent of that. And I learned about that in my 20s. We'll probably talk about that in some other episode, but I I was like yeah, I wanted you know, we can all make our own choices about this, but I wanted to kind of advocate for that alternative ways of thinking about that.

Mhm.

I did have the thought like maybe inspired by my own diamond on this point. I sometimes wonder about that. That didn't seem like an entirely just personal decision. That did feel like okay, there's a there's an alternative way that has to be put out in the world and you could be one of the people that puts out this that is an alternative. You know, and we all have to make our choices, but a lot of those kinds of things are like that whether you take that as an example or where you do your profession or how you think about your spirituality. It's the idea that you're trying to progress things forward in some way. And the diamond bush. Yeah.

I'd be remiss if I didn't think if I didn't say what I was also thinking, which is the discernment aspect of this. Because you know, what is guidance and what is mania or madness?

Yeah. Mhm. So, I think Jung is aware of that. He kind of gets the idea that you can get overly inflated by these, you know, uh uh big spiritual forces or something if you don't learn how to ride them right. So, he does talk that way, right? And it can push you into directions where Again, he'll use the word inflation for it. You know.

Oh.

Yeah, so I mean, we all know inflation.

[laughter]

Yeah.

Um so, but the idea that you inflate and you can get a little bit Yeah, you go maniacal or something, right?

Mhm.

That an archetype can make you ego ego maniacal. It's weird in Castrup's book, Bernardo Castrup, we kind of been referencing him a little bit too. Again, big philosopher of mind and consciousness and this kind of the thing. And he talks about the hero archetype, but his example is like corporate executives.

Oh, exciting.

And I was like corporate executives who are founding a company are living under the hero archetype. And I was like, I don't know, Bernardo.

I mean

I'm not sure, but

I can say you know, friend of the show who's been on before with us um Pete Cayden's, you know, we had a long discussion over the weekend about entrepreneurship. And I think in business at the very like sort of root level the people who create companies you know, the actual like the the the company inceptors, the people with the vision, the ones who are doing the actual work when it's just them or them and a small group it is definitely a hero's arc, for sure. There's tons of uncertainty, lots of risk, and tons and tons and tons of ingenuity that goes along with problem-solving and bringing people together and so on and so forth. I think the issue that we have around it is the um let's say hyper-immoralization of greed. And therefore, it seems like that he is uh fantasizing money hoarding, which is the same as uh ketchup packet hoarding, except this has slightly more value in our world. Although, uh no offense to ketchup packets who might be listening.

It might get pretty desperate. You might need to be able to hold on to all those packets and you know

[laughter]

you might need to get the mustard, grab some of those little paper salt things. It's not easy times.

That's right.

call for desperate hoarding. Uh uh my only reaction to it would be like, I don't want to like slam Bernado Castrup either cuz maybe he has ideas of forming good stuff. And obviously, we've had P Cadens on.

Yeah.

great guy, definitely like humanitarian spirit. Want to do things beyond just like accumulate for himself, like very obviously. Mhm. The thing that strikes me about that particular framing though, when you look at some of the more potentially toxic people under the thrall of that particular thing.

Yeah.

Is like you can inflate and maybe that does lead to like a toxic version. And we can throw out names, you know, cuz it's the end of an episode, but you know, like your Elon's or someone named Jeff.

Oh god, yeah. Teal and Wexner. I mean, yeah, there's there's I

Mark Andreessen. Yeah. I mean, there's yeah.

You know, Bezos and Gates and I mean, there are not to I mean, even uh what's his name? Soros? I mean, there are very few people I think on on that level of being who are A, not on the Epstein list, and also B, uh positive, you know? Like really in a

And not inflated by a hero story archetype that they've owned for themselves and they're blowing themselves up really big. I mean, that'd be the Jungian warning, right?

Yeah. Just to add a C to your list, I didn't mean to cut your flow, but yeah, it's like that, right?

Yeah. Yeah, there's no doubt. So, you know, that's I I brought I brought that up because I would feel like if for those people who are here, and if you're here at this point, your attention span is top 4% of the entire world. The best of the best of the best. That's how good you are. So, congratulations to making

you're diamond and you haven't got diverted away by hitting like uh click off of the listening.

Yes. Yes.

have that problem.

Yeah, I know, you're you're good. Um but, yeah. Yeah, it it's uh it there's something to be said to following your inner guidance and then something also to be said about listening to uh what you believe is guiding you and not taking it also like infinitely seriously. And like you talked about earlier, whether that comes from the inside or the outside. Right? I I hear plenty of people who uh talk about, you know, political ideology. And people know where we stand at this point, so we don't need to discuss it, but it's not your identity. It's things that you believe in and you can believe them fervently, but if you listen to anything with too much intensity, it's going to alter you. Just like listening to a book is going to shape the way that you think. Just like listening to your inner guidance is going to shape the way that you act. So, everything with discernment. Like uh our uh colleague or, you know, former guest on the show, uh Mary Kay Ryan would say, "It's good to have an open mind, just don't let your brain fall out.

Yeah, I love that quote, too. And then like as far as Jung goes, that could apply for him, too. Having an open mind but don't let your brain fall out. You have to like think critically about these forces, too.

Yes.

And I I like that, you know, I guess the Bernardo Castro bringing up the business thing would be like, "Okay, you could inflate." And next thing you know, you become more and more uh you know, compelled by your own awesomeness and then you feel like you need to send your sperm out all over to like employees that you're going to pay to like have your kids.

Elon. Yeah. Or, you know, or that doctor from Indiana who literally used his sperm in his own sperm bank to you know, impregnate like hundreds of women. Right. So, you know, it it's there's there's plenty of opportunities for grandiosity.

Yes, grandiosity. And then you're inflated would be the Jungian thing. Yeah, so you have to have proper discernment of that. Mhm.

Well, that's why we have to

Well, that's [laughter] that's a hell of an of an ending talking about like people spreading their sperm far and wide but uh You know.

We bring it We bring it home there. Here we are. You heard it here first.

[laughter]

I did I mean, this is nothing like the ending of the episode but I was listening to people talking about Elon and you're like, "That dude is crazy." But you would say he inflated. Whatever maybe whatever his original intentions were. If you want to say in the Jungian framework, you can inflate.

Whenever you have people in positions of power, all of their actions are hyper-analyzed and are given descriptions or understandings of genius and or madness, when in reality, they're just decisions the same as everybody else. They just have outsized influence based on their financial capabilities. It's

I just suppose it's true. I mean, but you know, there is the if know, go back to the union thing is the closer that you could inflate.

Absolutely.

of a sudden that hero archetype becomes I'm the savior of the universe and we all have to go to Mars or whatever and I'm going to like compel everyone to do that. You know, based on my inflated sense. I mean, you would could go you don't know the dude, you know, Elon, the man who wants to walk on Mars. Is there life on Mars? David Bowie. Um, you know, that whole idea of like, okay, what happens to someone and you would I he saw a very rich and successful people.

Yeah.

You know, and he was like, okay, yeah, some of these people inflate. Right?

Yeah.

Okay, cool. Thanks, Daniel.

You got it, brother. Thank you so much. Audience, thank you for tuning in. Uh, email ginandtantra@gmail.com. Instagram, the gin and tantra. Podcast coming soon. ginandtantra.com For Eric, this is Daniel. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.