Kind: captions Language: en Hey fellow GT&ers, do those of us spirituality with a twist. So today we're talking about one of our absolute fave psychologists, Carl Jung. We're doing a little G&T series on Jung, but we're kind of doing the thing of trying to catch what you might say two birds with one stone because we'll also be talking about Bernardo Castrop who's a really interesting figure. Now uh one of the most popular philosophers on kind of philosophy and I guess you'd say metaphysics of consciousness uh Castrep himself is fascinated by Jung. So we'll be looking a little bit at both of them kind of focus on Yung but looking at the cast of Yung too. And for this particular episode today we're going to be talking about the Yungian concept of the diamond. what it's uh d a i m o n a a diamond not a demon but a diamond and this is Jung's notion of people having something like a guiding spirit so we kind of like hashing it out today and I guess we all get to think about things like do we feel like we have a guiding spirit do we feel like everybody has a guiding spirit do we feel like we always want to follow our guiding spirits those will be the questions of the episode I suppose u but before get we get into all the fun deep stuff. If you could do all the things everybody asks, which would be liking and subscribing and writing review and sharing with a friend, that would be great because our goal is to share as much guiding spirit kind of stuff to everybody as much as we can. And it's greatly appreciated if you'll do that. Thanks so much. All right. Uh so this is the episode on the the diamond. I have to say it's a little bit funny because that Bernardo Castro guy, Daniel, wrote a book about the diamond now too. He's obviously really into it.

And uh I was looking at it on Audible and they put it under demonology because they couldn't tell the difference.

Probably done by AI anyway.

Demon.

So you click on it and then the bottom of the Yeah, there probably is AI. On the bottom of the thing, you start getting [...] about like the Satanic Bible and like weird rituals and [...] So anyways, the flaws of AI. All right. So, so I guess I'll drop a little bit of what this is about and you can like tell me which parts you're interested in as we go, right?

Sound good? Okay. So, you know, we were kind of talking about the person having like multiple parts and this is kind of a typical thing to do when you're trying to like I guess it's in Buddhism or uh Dowoism and these things you start breaking the person up into parts. And I think Castrip does this in an interesting day way with Yung. He says, "Well, let's look at what we covered last episode. If you want to peak that if you're listening to this one, you can go to the previous one where we kind of talked about how the body influences the mind and the like the psychological parts that come from the body into the mind. So we spent a lot of time talking about that. We got pretty deep and pretty philosophical on that last time. And then the other part of this which again I think is a really interesting way that Castrep is presenting Yung is to talk about that is kind of like the lowest part the body part influencing the mind and then the other part is to think about this thing that he's calling spirit. And he does this in kind of an interesting way. We'll get to all the ying ideas by the end. But he doesn't lead with this thing called the collective unconscious and the archetypes. We'll get to it. But he leads with this idea of the diamond. this idea that everybody has inside of them something that functions again something like a spirit guide in Jung's life and I we talked about this a little bit but I don't think we went deep into this when we've talked about Jung in our previous episodes over the years um for Young he had this kind of vision that started uh you know for him at some point he first encountered this spirit guide in the dream it was in autumn of 1913 during this sort of very critical period of his life. And then he started doing kind of an active imagination technique which has popped up in episodes a little bit here and there for us. This idea that you

kind of do this inner journey and you kind of let your imagination kind of flow and you kind of see what the mind produces. So it's sort of a

allowing the mind to kind of like free flow and then eventually seeing what you encounter. And he had already had this dream of this spirit guide experience and then I think it took him a little bit. It was like the autumn of the one year previous and then by January of 1914 he was doing this kind of inner journeying thing and he kind of really hit this figure.

So that's kind of the Yungian backstory of that that's really around your World War II time too. So I think he was young, you know, kind of very famously was feeling the tension in him around like the foreshadowings of violence, you know, and so I think it was like a personal time period for him that was pretty intense, I think, in his personal life and then also the time when it was just intense on the world overall. So

yeah, and we've talked about this before with uh like last episode and previous, you know, with Victor Frankl and and his sort of transcendent moments while he was in, you know, Nazi in Nazi Germany in concentration camp having these, you know, transcendent experiences in the, you know, some of the most hellish, you know, I would say conditions that, you know, humans have ever faced in modern times that we can document. Obviously, we don't know everything, but definitely we would we could say concentration camps are are in there for sure.

Um, and so it it I think it highlights the capabilities to which we have under intense pressure under really severely grim situations. You know, what what can arise from those moments? you know, depending on how the person is. I don't want to say wired, maybe we could say inspired, you know, as a foreshadowing for the diamond. Yeah. And I don't want to make any false comparisons. You know, we're recording this in May May 2026. It's probably like the darkest time I felt as an American. Not making any false comparisons. Obviously, it's nothing like Franc. But, you know, it's kind of a bleak time. And but it's sometimes what we've been trying to do with this little part of these episodes for us getting a little meta is to like, okay, it's a bleeaker time, but let's do some stuff that's inspiring.

Yeah.

The diamond, not the demons going on.

Yeah, we could use a little diamond as opposed to the demons.

Diamonds are forever.

Girl's best friend. So, okay. Um, so I was doing a little research on this and this is really interesting. You know, the backstory of this with Young's love of like classical culture is really interesting because this idea of the diamond goes back, you know, to the people like the Greeks and the Romans. And you find it in people like Socrates, of course, the famous philosopher, where he talks about having this diamond that's kind of this guiding spiritual force that kind of appears to him and kind of like guides him through his life and guides him through his ideas. And Young, of course, really loves classical Greek culture, too. But I thought it was it's interesting he goes all the way back to that. So Jung is tapping into these very kind of deep classic ideas. The other part that they didn't know about this though was that for the Romans when this diamond idea enters into Rome, this is the this becomes what they call the genius.

Yeah.

The root of this word genius uh really comes from this idea of a guiding spirit that like I think you were talking about inspiration that could inspire creativity or insight or whatever that person needs to be inspired with I suppose, right?

Yeah.

And I didn't I mean maybe you knew that. I had never heard that before. I hadn't made the connection between those two words. But it's interesting because I guess in the classical world, if you felt creative and inspired or uh you had insight or whatever, you would say that something was inspiring you to do that.

But it like kind of took until European culture later kind of more like Renaissance culture where that genius word began to be more used for like someone having a particular personal talent. Mhm.

And you removed it from the spiritual inspiration which is maybe unfortunate you know that it happened right so Jung has this love of these and we'll see it as we go through and we kind of like explore the idea Jung has this love of these kind of Greek and Roman things I think especially the Greek world

and then in other people that young loved too people like the philosopher Nietze

where he kind of talks about this idea too of like a lot of times He kind of talks about I didn't know what I was doing and I was kind of going along but in a way when I kind of reflected back it was if there was sort of a guiding hand taking me through or something right so Eric they have so you know and as you sent me the notes earlier so I have some some prep here um so okay just as a so genius right because I found this to be really quite interesting so the term genius just as a de definition because we like to give uh definitions for things go maroons um Super Chicago where like what's the joke? They define the word 'the'. They define the word uh.

Yes.

Yeah. Uhhuh.

Um so so it's a an exceptional natural capacity of intellect, creativity or skill. And then it says a person who possesses transcendent me uh mental abilities often described as a you know high IQ um something like this right and so that the kind of it the definitions are sort of three pieces ability personal and aptitude. One's ability is exceptional, rare, natural intellect or creative power. And it says natural intellect, right? So someone who is described as a genius has this aspect of them that is natural. But then the the person who possesses this, they say it's they're endowed with transcendent mental superiority. Meaning from me, they are born with this thing. And it's not just a higher level, it's a transcendent level of intellect. And so that that description um has does have a trend. I mean they use the word transcendent, but it does have a higher than mundane level of aptitude, right? So you could say someone is highly apt. So they're very good. But then you say someone's a genius and it's almost irrational or maybe a better word of saying

magical or something, right?

Yeah. maybe better to say unrational rather than irrational. And it's almost like you can't challenge the genius, right? So, a lot of people, and if this offends you, too bad, will say, "Oh, Elon's a genius." Therefore, don't you don't bother using rationality to critique the uh intellect or uh decisions and actions of someone who is a genius because non-genious people cannot understand. And so that goes along and against with what we're saying because on one hand people will say okay well this person has genius to them therefore it's transcendent above everybody else super mundane right it it's extraordinary extraordinary and therefore don't touch them because that's nothing that you could understand. So there's almost like a spiritual aspect to that term. So I just found this to be supremely interesting for the context of this conversation.

Yeah. Yeah. It's almost like a term that's like then torn kind of, isn't it? Yes. Because the older view would be like, no, this is someone who's inspired by something more profound, you know, and it takes away the ego aspect of it in the

in the arrogant sense, right?

Yes. In the porative,

in the pjorative sense, it takes away that not in the Buddhist sense or the yung sense or whatever, right? You know, like being arrogant and a lot of the problems we have now is like arrogant actors in the world. There's no doubt that that's the case, right? And then you're right, there's a kind of a weird,

I don't know, coercive move that goes, "Oh, you can't challenge Peter Teal. He's like a special genius or whoever you want to try out."

Yeah.

Is the exemplar of that kind of like I guess honest to say toxicity, right? Because there's an arrogance around it

around the whole concept. Yes. I think that's a good call in that it's a very it's a it I liked hearing that it was an older word with like a different meaning that I wasn't familiar with, you know? Oh, that's interesting. And it's almost like something then goes ry with the word and then it ends up being being arrogance and it also is used as kind of like a cudgel to shut people up,

right?

Can't challenge so and so because you know Elon's the genius or whoever you want to put into that role. Yeah.

Uh this is like Yeah. Go ahead. Even it says the etmology of this word it started in the uh 14th century Latin and it's a guardian spirit or deity uh which watches over each person from birth and then over centuries it evolved to refer to a person's inborn nature and creative talent

yeah the word

but that's not what they're talking about even and even to a larger point Eric people use words that I think have or they assume have a relative universal iversal definition and so they make the assumption that other people understand the word in the same way that they do but I think more and more we should be challenging the framing in which things were used. though I have I was interviewed for a mag in a men's mag or in a in a magazine that's doing a men's article coming out here in in uh in June and many of the questions that the reporter was asking me I would ask her her framing of the question what why are you framing the question this way what are you writing the article about and then what I would do is before I answered I would change the framing of the question because I didn't like how it was trying to guide me in certain ways so I think instead You know, a word to the wise instead of just accepting things and arguing within the box that is preset for you. Take a stab at the box first to make sure that the playing ground is even. So when someone uses a term that we just all accept is the, you know, standard concept for that term itself, maybe it isn't so standard and maybe we should look at where it comes from, such as the word genius. Like Michelle Fuko, the French philosopher, hasn't come up in our episodes in like a long time. He came up like years ago, like one time,

but you know, you can get a little suspicious about how these words are used. And then you could say, I know this is happening in the article that you were being interviewed for.

But obviously words can be used neutally or words can be used to like have an edge,

to twist something or if you want to get darker, manipulate, right,

or oppress. So I think it's a good call. Obviously, I think Young would agree with that, too.

Yeah. So it was I know I found something great about like just seeing that this word that has this very narrow thing now relatively speaking

had this source that was you know for the point of what we're talking about with Jung and a lot of the spiritual stuff we like to talk about I think much more profound. So

um awesome. As far as like super geniusness this is we're recording this on the day when the last episode of the boys is going to be on.

Did you watch any of that ever Daniel?

I have. Yeah, of course.

Oh, of course you have. Okay. We we never did any boys episodes. Maybe we just should just for the [...] of it. But um you didn't want to do it. But there's like Sister Sage, right?

She's this super genius. And I'm kind of interested how they're going to play that character out.

But the odd thing about all the superpowers on that show is they're not natural at all.

No.

If you haven't seen the show, they're all artificially induced by these chemical, you know, combinations, right?

Um All right. Anyway, so little boy side. And I I'll I don't know if I'll watch it tonight. I'll catch up with it eventually. But all right. So for Yung, he does have this experience of having this personal uh Diamond. And for him, it's this character named Filimon. And he appears as kind of like a what you might call a wisdom figure. Kind of like an older talk about sister's age. Kind of like a sage. Like kind of like the wise old sage looking figure like a Merlin or a Gandalf or something like that, right? if you want to get to those things, the Dumbledore or something. He also has these kind of wild wings that they describe as kingfisher wings.

So these kind of like, you know, wings that are popping out that he saw. If you want to search it later on online, you can just kind of put Filon Jungen and you can get some images for it. Um, and it was curious because Jung saw him as this kind of source of wisdom for all these things he wanted to understand. So on the one hand, Jung kind of very famously is interested innosticism. We've done some episodes around that too. Uh we did an interview with Miguel Connor about nastism way back in the day uh from AMN Gnostic Radio. So anyways, we've talked about this, but um Filimon becomes sort of this Gnostic figure for him, kind of opening his eyes to that and kind of the teachings of Alexandria, the Gnostic teachings from the past. He also kind of like enlightens Jung about things like alchemy, which Jung got really fascinated by. And there's a little subp part where he kind of taught Young a little bit about the what the relationship is in like love and sexuality too that in some ways Filimon was teaching him about um the connection of the feminine masculine principles as well.

And Young saw him as sort of the embodiment. There's kind of a weird character in like Christian history named Simon Magus. We haven't talked about this guy too much, but he's this figure who's supposed to be one of the first Gnostics. He actually has clashes with Peter in the New Testament, but the people who are more on the Gnostic side saw Simon Magus as like the true voice of Christianity. And he has a feminine partner whose name is Helen. And so I think as Filimon was teaching him, Jung saw that he was also learning stuff about what you might call the alchemical marriage, the meeting of the masculine and feminine principles too and how that could be a part of your life in love and sexuality and romance, but also like psychologically how those two polarities meet within a person. So you know becomes this kind of massive spirit guide. And uh that's the basic idea of the Damon. I'll throw it to you Daniel for a second to see.

Yeah. So I wanted to just mention that um so Carl Young you know is famous psychologist known for archetypes the collective unconscious dream interpretation right student of of Sigman Freud but definitely a a branch okay not like a rep repetition for sure known for his sort of shamanic leanings and things like this you know a little bit more of the metaphysics physics of this of the side of psychology. And you know, we've told this story before, but for those who are just hearing it now for the first time, he wrote a book called The Red Book about his his spirit guide, if you will, Filimon, uh, before he passed, obviously, and he had it in his will not to release the book, I think, until 50 years after he passed. Yeah. I don't know the exact dates on that, but he kept it on the QT. Very few people saw it, you know.

Yeah.

And it was just released maybe a decade ago.

Yeah. I got one sitting in the other room over here in my little meditation room. Yeah.

Yeah. A big thing actually. Yeah.

It's a big book called uh the red book or filon or something like this.

Libra liberas or something. It goes under different names. Yeah.

Yeah. And it uh it's just interesting that uh such a prodigious you know um phil philosopher psychologist you know what do you want to call it voice of modern thinking had a metaphysical work of great depth that he had been working on for a very long time and then as an intentional and conscious part of his life and understanding of his work beyond his life had this important work for him intentionally delayed until many years after he passed with the assumption that he didn't want it tainting the rest of his work and wanted his you know the people who were still associated with him to put it out but to put it out almost at the end of their life so if he took any flak from you know how people might perceive his words from this book that it wouldn't harm his legacy which I just think is such a such a foresight, you know, such a deep level of perspective.

Yeah. It's an amazing thing that he saw at some point maybe after I'm gone, people might be ready more for this work. I think he maybe had that thought on some level, right?

That comes up in like the Tibetan Buddhist world where they'll have these texts that they say are revealed later or something, right?

Yeah. Yep.

So, the idea of a revealed text, but it also gets to something interesting about this filon thing. We'll explore it as we go, I guess. But that on the one hand, he felt this pressure to do these spiritual things that had a certain amount of risk he felt with it, right? Like he felt a little bit of like I better explore this and he felt like he had this inner spirit guide thing

kind of pressuring him and it was not always comfortable for him, right? because it would force him to take risks. And he I was listening to a patches passage uh in the MDR, which is kind of his memoirs, memories, dreams, reflections, where he talks about this diamond idea, and he's like, "Yeah, I had this diamond and uh it really pushed me. It pushed me beyond my comfort zone in some ways." I'm paraphrasing obviously, you know,

and sometimes it it pushed me in ways that, you know, affected my relationships, affected my life, affected me professionally. and he drops this weird phrase of like it pushed me into the ideas that I probably looked silly and foolish to my peers

and you obviously can see like he's around these other people like Freud and these other psychologists and he's really coming up with these ideas that are very psychosspiritual and you know that was going to be rejected there's no doubt that was not going to be accepted by people who were his peers but he felt like he need to keep doing it which says something interesting about the whole Damon idea or I keep saying the diamond idea I've heard it both ways, so sometimes I flip. But anyways, yeah, it's a really good it's a really interesting story.

Um, well, I was going to compare it to the archetype idea because you brought it up, Daniel, so that's really interesting. I think a lot of times we think about young, it's the archetype. So, you would go, what's the difference between this and an archetype? And um, just to understand this a little bit more. So I think the the diamond idea is different from the archetype and that the archetype talking about Greek stuff is more like the platonic forms, right? This idea that there are these fundamental ideas, fundamental templates that uh kind of reflect how people see the world. They're the lenses through which people see the world. And if you get to like Plato famously, he talks about this kind of idea that there's these like archetypal forms. And if you kind of look at Jung in that way, you can see that Jung is kind of channeling these older ideas and trying to reinvigorate modern thought with things that were Greek and things that were, you know, more traditional gnostic and so on. So examples of this archetype thing would be like there's a mother archetype and a father archetype and an archetype of femininity, the enemy, right?

And an archetype of masculinity, the enemists and tricksters and shadows and all these different kinds of things. So with that it's kind of the notion that these are kind of the general templates that are kind of there for everybody and this leads to this idea and we'll get to Castrip's talk about this later of the collective unconscious but it's really interesting to emphasize not that but this diamond idea which sort of has a archetypal source in a way but then is sort of a a channel that becomes much more personal and much more kind of embodied in something that's connected to that particular other person and their way of seeing the world. So, it's it's like an archetype that's very important for that person, but also in a certain sense very personalized and very connected to that particular person in some way

that has a real strong meaning for them outside of just, you know, being an archetype that's sort of a universal concept or something. So, I think that's really interesting and I think that's an interesting place to start. If you think about the body influencing from one end and the spirit from the other end and you start saying there's these spiritual diamondlike figures that are going to like be part of each of our own inner worlds. That's quite interesting, right? You got something more about that before I you're cool with it? So anyways, you know, and one of the things that's talked about with this, and you could see Young feeling this way about this character Filimon that he felt he made this connection with, was that the diamond has sort of this deeper sense of vision for that person, a sense of what they should be doing, a sense of what might be their fate or destiny or the deeper meaning of their life. Again, Jung talks about this in his memoirs, feeling this feeling and then, you know, acknowledging that in a way this whatever this is, you know, this diamond thing has more insight, more depth than that person's kind of normal sense of self or like we'll get to the concept later on, but what you might call ego consciousness, the sense of your own kind of individual identity. It's using the word you was using earlier, Daniel, it's kind of transcendent of that. It's a genius, right? So it has insights into things that are kind of um you know again beyond what would be the normal range of understanding for that person. You got something on that?

No.

Okay.

Yeah. So, you know, it's it has this idea. There's ups and downs you can see with this. And I have to admit I'm going to like this part of this episode I thought was interesting when I was thinking about it, Daniel, because you know, I imagine you and I are going to like talk this through in a big picture sense, but it's going to have a lot to do with the way we're going to react to it, too. So, I sort of acknowledge like, okay, this is a little bit how I feel about this notion and, you know, for you, too. So, we'll we'll chat through it. We'll try to do justice justice to what Jung was saying, but with the acknowledgement especially in this part that it's going to have a little bit of our you know at least my own thought involved with it. I imagine for you too. So I think the big thing this is that this diamond is going to push this individual forward and especially kind of spiritually it's going to have this push, right? If you look at Jung's Filimon experience, it wasn't like pushing him about like nothing. It was pushing him in these in these areas that were very profound and meaningful and trying to open up new gates of understanding for him. And this was weird because when I was like listening to people talk about this sometimes I felt like that part was missed that word spiritual. And I'm not sure if it's because again I listened to some psychologists who were yungians talking about this and I thought well okay that that idea that what's happening in the diamond is it's making not just a push but a push that's for spiritual depth and profoundity they would sort of gloss that in some weird way. And I don't know if that's because there's a secularization process

and I wanted to kind of take the spiritual side out, but you know, my own feeling on this was like, yeah, no, this is pushing in a in a very particular way and it has a vision for the person and the person's own sense of self to grow and evolve spiritually into higher truths, higher expressions of those truths. So it's not just, you know, like a creative force in terms of like maybe something artistic and creative just in a more narrow sense or not in the sense of like it's just trying to tell you like what to do with your life on like

a practical level or something like that like where to put your investments and which cryptocurrency or something like that.

It's trying to get you to do something that obviously has a kind of a higher uh objective. It's not just about like success in life in a more shallow sense. And I was listening to people talk about this and I was like, okay, it's almost like they're editing out that spiritual part. They're clipping it, you know, and they kind of gave examples of like someone whose diamond was directing one of the one of their patients who's a woman who's getting more known as an influencer. And I was like, I don't think that's what Filimon was was about. I'm not trying to like you know you know spiritual oneupmanship or something like that but I it was really weird to hear. So my general thought would be yeah if you start talking about a diamond it has an agenda for the person that's something more transcendent.

Does that make sense to you too?

Yeah. Yeah. I think so.

So um so that's one part of this. In the midst of this, like we were talking about though, this may not always be comfortable, right? Like this diamond might be pushing the person in ways that aren't easy for them. And then, you know, then it gets to the question of like what kind of demands would this diamond figure do that would be challenging like in what ways? So as I started brainstorming this for myself and just thinking about you know my life is working with people I thought well normally what seems to happen here is this part of the person will kind of push in a way that is outside of what seems practical or outside of what seems to be you know uh conventional you might say in the Buddhist tantric sense it may conflict of what with what might seem to be the more kind of rational practical demand demands of the world or practical demands of the society. The diamond will be pushing the person out of that because it's trying to get to the person to do something more transcendent which almost sort of naturally involves pushing beyond these things, right?

And that potentially creates tension in people again because it's not stuff that's practical. It's not stuff that necessarily results in like material gains, right? In any obvious sense. It's things where it's pushing you to where the reward is more meaning and purpose rather than you know pragmatic success on some level. So I think that's kind of interesting. That's kind of my main feeling of where the tension comes up with people around this. But interested to hear interested to hear your thoughts too.

Tension in what way? Well, you know, the diamond will want you to do something with your life that's more risky and doesn't seem practical

or to, you know, uh uh pursue a life path that other people don't understand that aren't obvious that's going to come to success. You know, it's like operating in a different way, right? So you're saying like people who might be more artisticleaning, pursuing a life of creativity and art versus going to school and becoming an engineer and doing uh painting on the weekends. you know, having that sort of internal pressure, you know, that that pressure internally as well as some kind of external pressure from parents to perhaps get a secure job so they're not, you know, financially struggling or something like this, right? I'm thinking of I'm thinking of your dad, Eric, who

Yeah, I thought of my dad, too, when I was thinking about this, too.

Who was like loved painting?

Yeah. And it became a big deal. I mean, one of my little personal Yian success stories was like my dad was kind of a very angry, frustrated person working in corporate America.

Mhm.

And at a certain point, I mean, as a teenager, just as kind of an intuitive thing, I'd seen pictures of him painting when he was young, and he looked so happy. And I was like, let me buy him some painting equipment. And it like took off and he just started painting and painting and painting. And I did have that thought. I thought, well, maybe part of my dad's inner diamond was to do that kind of self-expression,

but he kind of repressed it, you know, in order to because he was afraid, to be honest, if I would get to my dad, you know, he was he grew up poor. He grew up in um uh you know, uh CHA housing, Chicago Housing Authority, public housing, you know, what were essentially like projects, right? So, he grew up in that state. He didn't have a dad and he was just frightened. So, I think a lot of his life he sort of suppressed that thing. You know, but I mean I I think there's a lot of moments in someone's life where this happens. Do I do the pragmatic thing? Do I choose like the pragmatic relationship? Do I choose the pragmatic career? You know, and we can all kind of figure that out. It's not hard on some level to go, okay, this is the pragmatic route. But, you know, the you think you gets this this diamond will go, no, you got to go this other way. You know, you know, your ego conscious will say, "That doesn't seem like a good direction to go in."

Yeah.

You know, you can see it. That feels more risky. That feels like

the more risky way to live my my personal life. Jung took risks in his personal life. You know, kind of that's we've had episodes around that, too. or that seems like a more risky way to pursue my professional life or more risky

thing to go into some completely new area of spirituality that feels threatening to my maybe what I was brought up with or whatever you might happen to say.

That's my gut feeling. But maybe you see that different. I'd be curious if you do. But I tend to see this as the main tension in people for me in my looking at people.

Yeah. between uh pragmat we'll say practical choices that make sense for right now versus uh inspiration that makes less sense on a practical level

to be to to like step into that mode of uh continual inspiration as your source of food really as your source of growth as your you know as your north star as opposed to the steady growth, the steady kind of uh ascendance towards stability, you know, financial stability, economic stability.

And I think people feel this and this is a subject obviously we talked about on this show a little pod in different ways, right? We did our things that can [...] up your life

episodes that were the Dowist versions of this. I think there's a universal truth around this that Young is tapping into

that there'll be this tension, right? like, okay, that's the road less taken or something like that, right? In the old Robert Frost poem, I got to that po part in the woods,

the path went two directions, and am I willing to do that other thing?

And it does seem like Jung kind of gets like that diamond has a tendency to do that to push you into these places that, you know, I don't think on purpose, but maybe somewhat. So you develop courage, you know,

you develop will. But maybe just, you know, you know, one of my ideas was that, you know, and we'll get to it, but like this idea that, you know, the diamond wants you to develop in ways that aren't always like

in uh obvious parallel to what would be the most pragmatic ways to easily live your life in a in a social setting. It doesn't do that, right? Because it has a different agenda. it probably doesn't care on some level,

you know, like I know this is how you're supposed to do things, but you got to go this way

and I don't care. I think Jung felt that in his own life. Yeah.

So, I was reading I was reading the notes that you had and then I was I have my own as well and and a thought ran across my my mind for a moment. you you tell me what you think, but I just had this I don't know moment of uh genius if you will where it seemed like this sort of this diamond force in one's life helps us to grow

and that if we don't do the things that are required for growth then we will and obviously this is going to fall, you know, against some people's beliefs in general, but that then we will absolutely come back and repeat. And so some of this, I think, is a natural product of our own evolution. It's at least in my interpretation it's it's sort of an embodiment of uh spiritual psychological personal evolution coming to uh the forefront to say hey I need you to do this thing or these things. I need you to be challenged. I need you to challenge yourself in this way because we need a certain kind of growth in this incarnation and you have an opportunity to do something beyond simply the mundane. you know, as difficult as the mundane can be sometimes because uh we're not going to sit here and say, "Oh, yeah, it's super easy." You know, it's very difficult right now for lots of people in this country and around the world for various reasons. Some physical, some financial, some many, many reasons. So, the mundane

Absolutely true. Absolutely true. And that has to be factored in as well. And we'll we'll try to do it. Yeah.

Yeah. Justice.

Yeah. So the mundane is not exactly like you don't just brush it away, wipe it off and move on. But it's also to say that that's not the end all. That's not you're not finished. And that goes for people who are also stable. If you have steady job, insurance, so on and so forth, you could support yourself and your family. Like your job isn't done. You're still a person here and you have soul level inspiration. uh uh you know your embodiment of your own evolution knocking on the door of your mind or your heart and saying, "Hey, don't sit on your hunches now because you know you got the uh pick it white fence and you know whatever else that goes along with it." That's not it. That's part of it, but that's certainly not the end- all beall. And the calling of your soul to move itself towards a a higher place while you're still around is um you know is a whisper for some, is a nagging voice to another, and is a shouting match for yet other people. So yeah.

Yeah. My feeling on that personally has been something like okay yeah I still have to function in a world that doesn't have these spiritual things as its agenda it doesn't right so I'll just acknowledge that right and that means that I'll have to do things that will pragmatically take care of business right but on the other hand I always have to keep in mind that there's another agenda that's also flowing at the same time right and not lose track of that um that idea that there's something more that's push pushing to something again more more deep, more profound, more spiritually enlightening and so on, right?

So, I think that's just how we have to live our life and we try to be honest about that on that on this podcast and people are in easier or tougher situations about this and

I got some thoughts on this even more as we go. But what you were bringing up was also interesting because I did listen to a little bit of our Bernardo Castro talking about this and he framed it in kind of this interesting way. I think especially for people who are driven by success. m

in uh the world the affairs of the world you might say. So he said you know uh I think the way he thinks about it and we can see what we think of his idea but the way he thinks about it is that what may happen to a lot of people who don't follow their diamond is they'll pursue a bunch of other stuff and then either when they get those things they'll realize they're not really satisfying the way they thought they were. So that may happen and he tried to give examples from his own life even like as a teenager pursuing some girl that he thought was super pretty and then realizing he wasn't that into her you know once he was able to kind of get that relationship or something you know kind of recognizing like okay this really wasn't what this was about. So he kind of gave this example of being a young man and doing that. But then he also kind of said, you know, you may get things and not um like them or you may get these things and then realize towards the end of your life like ah [...] that stuff wasn't worth it. And he brought up this thing like this feeling of regret that what may happen is you didn't follow your diamond. Mhm.

You lived your life and in the year of your life you're like, "Oh [...] I didn't do the things I was supposed to do." And there'll be this deep sense of regret.

Mhm.

Now, in the Buddhist world, they talk about that too. In our tandre Buddhism, they say, "Preciousness of human life, certainty of dath. Make sure that you're going to live your life in a way where you have some part of it thinking when I'm at the end of it, I'm going to be happy with what I did and I won't walk away with regret." And there's a psychological piece in that in like the great psychologist Eric Ericson too talks about this this idea that you know you when you're older person the thing that could really get you is if you don't feel good about the things that you did and you walk away with this feeling of bitterness or regret.

Cast went and I think you'll like this Daniel you can tell me what you think. He went a little bit further with it and he said that's useful too for the spirit in a collective sense because it dispels that illusion, right? that those things have a value that they don't really have or that if you don't follow your diamond and you sort of know that there's a push going the other direction and you reject it and then you do feel that regret that regret allows spirit in the big sense to learn from that experience or something. So he was almost saying like

consciousness or spirit in the grandest sense learns even when those kinds of things happen. So it doesn't make that mistake again.

So he was talking about this on an individual level but he was also talking about it kind of on like

this collective level like

you know uh like an Indian philosophy mind is trying to learn consciousness or spirit is trying to learn through its experiences and that's an experience it has to learn from.

So he said that person's doing a service to to the collective by doing that.

It's interesting take

two two pieces two statements. One, this is embodied in a statement very commonly said, "The youth is wasted on the young." And the song, I don't know if it's Springsteen or who is it, uh, the boss man as they call him, uh, the the lyrics of the chorus go, I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger.

I think that's um Rod Stewart was like one of the original singers.

Oh, yeah. Maybe Rod. Yeah.

group. It's like Denny Lane. It's an old like British group.

Yeah.

We played that talking about my dad. We put that at My dad liked that song.

Yeah.

We were playing it at my dad's wake. Yeah.

Poor old granddad. I laughed at all his words. Yeah.

Uhhuh.

Yep. I wish that I knew what I know now when I was stronger.

Yeah. So that but but that it it's embodied in that and I think and I really do like that uh that it's consciousness reminding itself hey do the things do the things that we need to do for our own evolution as a collective as a collective hive as an as a being because we often look at societies as one large being you know so if we look at this collective of all life as one large being learning from the itself you know essentially which is what the you know many uh East Indian East Asian East East Indian traditions believe um that this is a way for it to remind continually pass down the lessons of missed opportunities such that it doesn't repeat those same mistakes over and over again. So

too that you learn from

that like there's an uber mind or something that learns from the mistakes of each of us or something right as it goes.

Right.

So I mean that's positive attitude. I still have to say like you know it's better not to experience that.

Sure.

Right. It's an easier road though he was framing it like those are some of the biggest sacrifices that people make in the wake. they don't pay attention to their diamond

and maybe they fumble it a little bit in some way, but you know, then you learn that you're supposed to pay attention to your diamond

and the collective learns that on some level.

The one that hit me about this and then maybe we'll like pick up on this next time because there's a couple more things to talk about with this, but um uh I thought about the follow your bliss thing from Joseph Campbell, one of our other kind of favorite people. We haven't brought him up in a bit, but one of his lines was that you have to follow your bliss. And I what I couldn't help thinking that ultimately what the diamond is trying to do is push you in the direction of your bliss, right?

And that bliss will be not like the bliss of like a weekend in Vegas or something.

No, you can't compare to that.

Which could be a little blissful,

but you know, like the actual deep fulfilling bliss of those things that are deep and meaningful and purposeful.

Yeah.

You know, the real joy that comes from that, right? when you really feel like, man, I'm doing something that has real meaning to me and has maybe has real meaning just overall and I'm I'm proud of that and I feel it and I'm learning and I'm growing. That's a kind of a special kind of bliss.

So, I mean, the way I would think about that in the Joseph Campbell sense was his advice was you you might as well follow your bliss because that's where you get your most joy ultimately. M

and Campbell I think recognized too what Jung is recognizing which that might not always seem like the most pragmatically obvious path or something you know but it's the thing that ultimately will have the most reward and maybe that's what the diamond is trying to like whisper in your ear or something to get you to do that right

yeah I love it

it's good

yeah so maybe a little bit next week again we'll do one other little diamond episode but I think it's a really introduction to the idea. Thanks everybody.

I think so. Yeah, Eric, as always, thank you so much. Audience, thank you for tuning in. Uh like, comment, subscribe, hit us up, jinantra@gmail.com, jin and tantra podcast on the gram. Uh you know, we do this out of love, right? That's what this is. This is a passion project. This is, you know, areas that we find interesting and ways in which that we want to contribute to the larger zeitgeist of conversation, connection, introspection, and perhaps even inspiration. So, uh, from our mouths to your ears, follow your inner diamond. We'll catch you guys in the next one. Peace.