Hey fellow GTeers, those of us that are spirituality with a twist. I had a little something in my throat. Let me clear my throat. Um, okay. So, uh, well, we're in the midst of a one of our little series. That's one of the things we like to do on our podcast. We go to things pretty deep and so it's not like you're going to finish that one episode. And we're doing some things on Carl Jung, again, one of the most fascinating spiritual psychologists you got, which is definitely in our wheelhouse. And we were talking about a few of his ideas related to Tibetan Buddhism, especially archetypes and this idea of a thing called the diamond. D A I M O N, not a demon, a diamond. And this is sort of a continuation of our last episode where we said we were going to continue kind of talking about aspects of Tibetan Buddhism and do a little compare and contrast around some of these Yian psychological ideas especially going deep into this idea of like what a yidam is. And so that's what the project is. We'll see how far we get in this particular episode. uh especially we're going to try talking about elements of empowerment into the yidam uh which is like getting empowered into these Tibetan meditation practices that involve a lot of like this imagery Tibetan Buddhist imagery. Okay, so that's what we're up to. Before we get into the the full episode of it though, if you could do what everyone uh always asks you to do, which is to like subscribe, write a review, send an episode to a friend, that would be greatly appreciated. As we say every episode, our goals are try to like share as much spiritual good times as we can. And if you can give a help out, that would be greatly appreciated. And just thanks for participating in the listening, too. We appreciate that as well. Alrighty. Um, so I I wanted to like I hope this made sense to you, Daniel. We talked about some of the stuff last week, but I just wanted to like kind of clarify it even for myself. So, when I was thinking about my notes for this week, I said, "Okay, let's do like a little pair compare and contrast thing just to make sure that we're what we're trying to say about this, you know, has some clarity to it, right? We had kind of a deep conversation last time. I just wanted to kind of go through it a little bit and then we'll talk a little bit more about this idea of empowerment." Uh, okay. So, to me,

empowerment like like Buddhist empowerment.

Buddhist empowerment. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, initiation or empowerment.

Yeah. Initiation. Yeah. So I think you know if you want to make some comparisons and we tried to do this last week and I was just sort of brainstorming it for myself again certainly you can show that idoms have these psychological features and we talked about that a little bit last episode. So there's like the medicine Buddha and he could be like a healer archetype and you can meditate on that or we talked about last episode especially Tara is sort of a mother figure one of the big Tibetan Buddhist goddesses. She has a sort of maternal healing quality, nurturing quality to her, protective quality. We did things on sort of animal shamanic kind of power aspects with this because there's these Tibetan Buddhist meditation deities that have like animal features to them. We talked a lot about the buffaloheaded Yaman Taka last time. You can do a little search on that if you want to peek that for yourself, fellow listener. Um, there's some where there's horses involved, so you sort of get that horse energy with it. There's some that have like bird-like wing features and that all has like sort of archetypal features of like animal archetypes that can kind of give you power figures. You can see that's kind of being shamanic. Kicked that around last last episode. and Yingian thought he has things of like masculine and feminine which I couldn't remember if we hit super hard last episode or not but he talks about like the enema the inner sense of femininity and the enemus the inner sense of masculinity or archetypes of masculine and feminine and you get that a lot in these tantric things too where you have a lot of this sort of couple imagery where it's an enema and an animist kind of together

and like we talked about last episode you feel yourself as Maybe even both parts of that couple or maybe you feel yourself as being one side but kind of connecting to the enema or the animist through the other couple other part of the couple or like individual figures that are animus and um you know a lot of goddess figures especially you know so a lot of feminine deities that you sort of can feel this connection with that have this kind of archetypal feeling of like animma. So from a point of view, you can see kind of the the power of the arch archetypal part of that. I just wanted to like kind of walk us through again because you can kind of see how you can compare this to things from Yung and it's legit to do it. Do you have anything on that kind of stuff, Daniel, or should I just kind of keep rolling?

Yeah, you keep going.

So to me, I think then when you get to this diamond thing that we've been talking about with different episodes when we've been doing our Yung stuff lately, this is the idea that everyone has sort of like an inner guiding spirit or something, a spirit guide. And uh I guess I think the yidum has a lot of that kind of thing too where you tap into this idea of your own sort of inner spirit guide kind of thing. The diamond and uh Jung did it as an element of creative imagination which is certainly a meditative activity. So you can see it's an internal thing. You can find your sort of internal spirit guide. Um, and then it's also Yung, and we'll get more on this later when we talk about synchronicity, but he definitely thought that that spirit guide also acted in the world around you. So, it wasn't just something inside of you. It was something also in the external world that would sort of uh be involved in like you know, sort of the features of your life and working with you through what was happening in the life around you. And that has certainly connections to the idea of a yinum which can be the thing that you feel inside of yourself or as yourself but also a sort of a spiritual force in the world around you too. So yung seems to be on top of all this stuff.

Just a little bit just again because you know we have new audience every episode. So yidum

yeah ydam is um this idea of the Tibetan Buddhist meditation figures. Uh you can do a little search on these kinds of things you know. you've just put in like yidam Tibetan Buddhism, you'll see lots of this imagery pop up and it functions as a thing that you can kind of use as a meditative technique where you can either tap into the energy of this yidam by visualizing and meditating on it as something external to yourself and uh you know a typical thing might be like a healing practice where you would see the figure like Tara this maternal figure in front of you and she'll kind of bathe you in healing energy and it's a meditative thing right tapping into the healing energies of the world around you. Or what we'll emphasize a lot today in this episode will be like you can identify as Tara yourself and this becomes a meditative technique to try to transform your sense of your own identity from maybe like the everyday version that you think about with yourself to the more and more enlightened version you see yourself as being. But these kind of yam this imagery becomes a real powerful part of like uh Tibetan Buddhist meditation. You got more on that, Daniel?

Uh, there's so much to say about it.

Yeah, there's that's a problem is like there there's so much to say about it, but yeah, I I don't even know where to begin. So, we'll just continue.

Well, keep going and like things will hit us as we go.

I just Yeah, there's like it

it's a deep thing, right?

Yeah.

And this is like I think, you know, I was thinking about this as we were going in this one. There's like deep things we've talked about obviously over the years we've been doing this and I think we've done a lot of really what I would feel be important episodes on important subjects right and I was like this is a really important one too I know where it goes on the list of important things but this is obviously a really deep and important thing

to my mind

yeah I mean that's kind of like you know we've mentioned this before but like the the idea of like guardian angels or genius right this the guiding

the guiding spirits or you know spirit spirit guides or however you want to however you're looking to describe these kinds of influences on your life that these figures that you meditate on not only are a source of attention capture in order to pull you in to that uh that tantric world. But then they are also um beings in a sense that you develop a relationship with them and with that practice. And so they then whether they do or they don't this is you know we could debate anything but we this is the debate debatable part whether they exist outside of your attention or not. when you start to develop a relationship, they I don't want to say they come alive, but that's the best way I could say it is they come alive. It's sort of like reading a a really good book or like a a you know, a fiction story, you know, a sci-fi, right? We'll use maybe the Lord of the Rings. You read Lord of the Rings and for those people who read or you listen maybe better say you listen to Lord of the Rings on audiobook and the world gets created in your mind. You create the characters. They don't always describe how they look specifically, but usually they'll give you some description. And then they they kind of talk to them talk to the reader about their personality traits and how they react in this situation and in that situation. And you eventually develop the look of this person, the feel of this person, the sound of their voice, the world they live in, and how they act. And then even in some cases you might put yourself in you might see it as a in a firsterson perspective as opposed to just a third person perspective. And this is actually a very good way of describing a yidam and a a meditative practice for you know Buddhist tantra practice really. And so in and you know in along this same vein as you develop a practice and you begin to work with these images with these yidams with these deities with however you want to describe them they become a part of your life they become a part of your life just like how Jesus would be a part of you know a Christian person's life or you know whatever it doesn't matter uh it they become real and they start to influence you as you carry them around and do the practice and so But it brings up changes with you, you know, just like if you're, you know, again, reading the Lord of the Rings, uh, you might see somebody acting really stingy and you you might be like, "Goll, golem, you know, Smeaggle, yeah, it's my my precious, you know, so they the the the story starts to feed into your life a little bit." And I think the same thing goes for the the iconographic iconographic meditative practice is much in the same way. Well, you know, like in Jung, he uses this idea of active imagination that you purposely let your mind use its imaginative faculty, right,

as a spiritual thing. And then I think in terms of like, is this just a figure of my own inner psychic world or does this have an identity beyond my own inner psychic world? Jung wrestles like hell with this obviously. And you know, as we talked about in a couple of these other episodes, he was afraid to talk about the to the extent that he began to feel like, no, these are forces of the actual world around me. This isn't just an internal thing. This is like something that transcends just my own individual psyche. Well, that's an uncomfortable subject matter, right? For someone who's a psychologist. And you know he wrote this in much more private writings and shared it with people more privately before he felt ever

he probably never felt comfortable really fully doing this publicly. Right.

Right.

Hence this whole famous thing of the red book Libra novice that was published after his death where he really talks about this.

But as far as it goes uh yeah great kind of stuff around this and you know the more ways you can kind of like look at this whether it's like okay I can enter into a fictive world very strongly and it can be just transformative to me. Right. And maybe in moments I feel like I want to identify identify with the qualities of like I don't know the names of the characters in Lord of the Rings. Gandalf. There's a guy.

Yeah, there's a guy.

I want to identify as Gandalf. I want to embody the quality of a Gandalf. The magician.

Frodo.

Frodo. Perseverance. Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Perseverance and strength of will.

A Aragon. And uh

he's a paladin, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. Um well for young he had this character that you know he had multiple of these things that he found within himself and we talked about this character Filyon who has you know a diamond and archetypal figure sort of like a wisdom figure like a Gandalf but for Jung he was like a gnostic philosopher and he would like tap into this feeling and I didn't say it last time but it was kind of interesting because some of this had a little of that tantric feeling because he also saw like a female figure sometimes she It appears like kind of like a red lady. We can talk about that more a little bit later, you know, but that's kind of like a figure. Well, I do it now. A red lady has this feeling of like the inner feminine and like passion and energy and transformation, right? All those things you can get with this color red, passion and fire and transformation of heat and all this kind of stuff. Alchemy, right? But even with like Filimon, he would see I think uh him as sometimes like um he would identify him with like these um uh consort couples. There's a biblical figure named Simon Magus who people say he's like maybe the first Gnostic philosopher. He shows up actually in the Bible and he has a partner named Helen and they're a couple. And I was like thinking, you know, that's like has that kind of uh uh tantric quality of the couple, the yin and the yang. And Jung seems to feel that way about them. You know, the male and the couple is the represents the masculine energies and the female that he saw inside represented the feminine and the anonymous, right? And he had spirit guides that had those qualities. So, Simon Magus Magus and his partner Helen or sometimes he would talk about Elijah and Solom, which is kind of a weird biblical pairing, but anyways, he had these images of these male female couples that he felt inside of himself. they were kind of all spirit guides for him and that has a real tantric resonance you know because there's a lot of these things where you kind of meditate on like we said the couple the yabyum right and you identify with those things as being spirit guides inside you so I know to me that like you know has a lot of this you know quality of the yam and then we can also talk about c sort of like what we mentioned a little bit last time which is the symbology around this if you do do a search for these uh Buddhist tantric images they have like lots of arms and They carry lots of things and they have all these symbolic aspects to how they look and Jung seems to have that too in his archetypes and in his diamonds. Uh so Filimon, this gnostic philosopher guy has these wings of a kingisher which means he can kind of transcend the norms. We talked about that. or again the red lady you know this idea of seeing this red figure inside who's this you know passionate electric you know transformative figure those colors and those images are sort of have symbolic meaning so anyways I think those are a lot of like when you want to see this tantric stuff this tantric bit of stuff through a yian lens you could do it that's the point so I just wanted to like talk about some of those similarities and we kind of did it and I think even what you're talking about Daniel when you talk about something like the lord of the rings well that's like archet aretype everywhere. That's why people relate to it so strong, right?

You can feel all of that energy.

I'm watching like I didn't finish Stranger Things before. Did you ever watch that, Daniel?

I watched the first season.

Yeah. So, anyways, it has that feeling. You can kind of It's emotional because you can feel some of those archetypal things and they play it, right? The band of comrades out on a mission together and they all have their relationships and they all take their different roles and all this stuff. It's archetypal. Okay. The different part that we wanted to get to and we can start it now and maybe we won't finish it time allowing. But um whatever we don't finish, we'll get to next time. We kind of promised we were going to do this. So I wanted to, you know, we both wanted to make sure we wanted to follow up on this, which is like when you get introduced to a yidam in the Tibetan Buddhist world and the tantric Buddhist world, uh it's not just Tibet, but you know, Bhutan, Nepal, these countries that are tantric, these practices that are tantric, you tend to do kind of an initiation where you first get introduced to the practice by someone who will work as the teacher kind of initiating you into the practice. So we want to talk a little bit about how that works and they really have like different stages. So it's um it really gives you a feeling of like what a yidim really is as you kind of understand the different parts of this sort of empowerment initiation thing. You get a better feeling of what a yidam really fully represents. And then you can see the contrasts and the and the comparisons to some of the yian things you know that we've been talking about. So um the initiation itself is a little bit like sort of a ritual magic thing. came up a few episodes. We were talking about whether or not we talk about ritual magic. And I was thinking, well, a lot of ritual magic pops up and what we're doing because a lot of this Tibetan stuff is infused with this kind of ritual magic feeling. So, when you're doing these initiations, it's almost like there's kind of a uh the ritual introduction to the practice that sort of primes your mind and your energy and your body to connect to the practice. The word for this thing is really uh actually I don't it's interesting to look at what it is. So in Tibetan they call it a wong w a n g and the meaning of that is belongs to me which I thought that's an interesting thing. I usually just think when I see that word empowerment or initiation but the literal meaning means belongs to me where you're going to go through and you're going to take this practice and you're going to personalize it for yourself. now belongs to you and that can be personalizing the yidam in the sense of multiple multiple ways of thinking about that certainly idea like I'm not going to attach to this as sort of my diamond I'm inviting you into my life as my diamond I'm going to connect with you in that way either as an external thing like you're talking about Daniel or in your own imagination whatever that means to you but you're trying to connect to that feeling you know that energy and that quality of that and then also if we're getting to what we're going to talk about which is going to be this thing called highest yoga tantra. There's different levels of the tantras. We're going to talk about the ones that are most common if you like look at like the school of like the Daly Lama or something. This is like the most common ones you're going to get and they're actually kind of advanced on some level and they're very interesting to walk your walk their way through but as a point of like selfidentification. So it's not just like you tap into this as an external force in your life. That's healing or nourishing, but you identify as that healing, nourishing, enlightened, and enlightening thing. You identify with it. So that's the belongs to me. You know, I think that's phrase is kind of amazing. Um, you know, that the word they have for this is belongs to me. I think that's kind of awesome. We've had some interesting linguistic stuff, genius in some of our episodes, you know,

but it shows the the personalization of all of this.

Totally agree. Yeah.

And I think that's the one of the main differences in tantric practice in general. It doesn't necessarily even have to be Buddhist tantra. you know the any of these practices that get you know given to people really because they are given to you um that you take them and they become yours. So again we'll go I'll go back to the Lord of the Rings example. You and I are going to read the same book. But how people if you and I were to draw exactly what we were uh imagining in our minds based on how the characters look they would probably look very different. They would probably look very different. They probably sound very different. I mean, I'm sure that, oh, his long white beard. Okay, so but what what does a long white beard on a old wizard look like to you versus look like to me? Now, many of these practices are accompanied by pictures, but they weren't always. They were not always. And sometimes as time goes on, the different artists have different renditions of the same image. and different artist renditions may look more in line with how you view those images within yourself or you can even create your own. There's not a steadfast rule. They said if someone has

your imagination isn't like an absolute camera or something, right? You're through and you're going to make what you're talking about. You're going to make it personal to you. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's really one of the one of the many lovely parts is that it is the it is intentionally the opposite of dogma. And and now maybe there could be some people here and you're more than welcome to leave a comment or disagree with us at jyntantra@gmail.com based on your own you know experiences with with tantric practice or Buddhism in general. You know of course there is some you know the steps to empowerment there are steps there is a is an order and you know we could debate how that order should be done and and what is this thing certain mean and is there a kind of a religiosity to it. Yeah, of course. Of course. But we are I think taking the approach of the experience and the teachings and the practice less the pomp and circumstance of, you know, some of the, you know, religious practice that goes along with it. I believe that some of the ritualistic stuff is important for sure. as you talked about is a there's an element of ritual magic that's there, but some people have a harder time connecting with that sort of thing based really primarily out of like western logic. I think it it inhibits the uh sensation of awe in many occurrences. And so these things tend to feel a little bit more mechanical than magical. Um, but even if you take those things away, the actual practice is designed to be integrated into your life, not just a life. It's yours in particular. And then as you go through and you begin to become more familiar with these things as you do anything else, when you get instruction from qualified people who have been practicing for a long time and are, you know, able to teach, you will get instruction that is for you. not just for everybody and you and and it's part and you know Eric you could pop in but like there are you know Eric and I work with you know a couple of the same teachers and they make it exp they make themselves explicitly available when you go and work with them for longer periods to say hey I'm going to be setting up times to talk they don't say about what but it's generally about practice could be about life too though sometimes it's a little bit of both but they'll say what are some sticking points Hey Eric, what are I'm going to give time to talk. Let's tell me what's going on in your practice. You know, amongst everything else, you will definitely talk about practice. You might talk about your boyfriend, girlfriend, you know, all the things. But for sure, you're going to talk about practice and say, you know, I'm I'm working on this thing. What do you think? And it's just about your specific practice. And I have never been told really by anybody by you or by anybody else that's wrong. It's usually that's interesting. Have you thought about it this way? You know, and I think it's out of a deep reverence for the vast array of experiences that are possible and not wanting to tell somebody that that thing that you've been doing for hours and hours and hours for weeks and months and what, yeah, that's wrong. Throw it out. You know, you know, but like more steering the ship like guiding a river. You just sort of like gently say, okay, did you think about this? So I just find all of this to be uh very helpful because it's it's personal and and not you know

I think we agree with the idea that no matter what it has to be personal on some level right otherwise it's not yeah

otherwise it doesn't belong to you per the word it has to become personalized

there's a zen thing about this and again we like to draw on like our different experiences around this I spent years studying zen too and sometimes they'll say these things like it's a narrow gate but it's 10,000 miles wide.

What do you mean by saying that? Well, it means like on the one hand, you're gonna you're aiming for something that you want to understand and you know, you'll have to work towards it. But on the other hand, there's might be 10,000 different approaches to go through that gate because there's going to be all kinds of different people with all kinds of different starting points to get through the gate, right? So you know in some level it has to be personal and that could be like in different parts of all of the ranges of the experiences like how you think about it how exactly the nuances of the visualizations and the different meditative energetic experiences feel to you and I my general experience has been there's a there's a certain amount of flexibility with this for sure

where people are like okay that's what you need to do to make this work okay

you know that was true or with llama Glenn Mullen

you know kind of people I had maybe the most conversations with. But you I read a lot of the Daly Lama, you know, he's a teacher of mine, too. I've had initiations in these Wongs with him as well. And you know, there's there's a flexibility to it because there's an acknowledgement that it has to become meaningful to you personally. As far as the Jung goes, I think he understands that too very much so, right? You know, for the our little compare and contrast, I think he gets it. I think on some level all this stuff has to have subjective meaning to you, otherwise it can't be transformative. Right. If you can't relate to it, it's not going to transform you.

Correct.

Yeah. I don't know how much time we have left. Let's at least say that there's we we'll promise to finish this in the other episode because this is a spot for us. I know when you have to hop, Daniel,

it's probably a good point to pause here. We'll finish this.

Let me just say there's four parts of this thing that we'll talk to is our main thing for the next episode because we've been promising to do this. This will be one of our again

I think all of these episodes we've been doing

to me feel important and deep right and you know we have all these different episodes with different things and they all have their own depth but you know to walk through these four stages of what an empowerment is is helpful just on the practical level of understanding what it is but also will give us a deeper sense of like what a yumm is.

Yeah.

Because each of these different stages tells you something about what you're supposed to feel about this yam. Sorry about that. Yeah. No. And I think in from a even just a larger perspective, you know, there are some major religions in the world. And I think people would probably put Buddhism, you know, you have like, you know, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, kind of like the big three, you know,

Hinduism. Yeah. Yeah. But then and then you'll have like Buddhism, Hinduism, and you know, maybe Janism and all, you know, all these other all these other ones, you know, but most people generally don't know dick about anything else other than their own

outside of poratives,

right? Just like negative stereotypes. And this is a way in which I think people who may have never heard some of this stuff before can be sort of initiated into these practices from people who practice them a and come from a western mind and we're talking about them in sort of like an educated conversation for people to do with as they please. But probably you're not going to really find this in this manner on the internet. And I could say that with a pretty strong sense of authority because I don't know how many even Western llamas even like Westerners who became Buddhist monks, they they because they're in the the monastery and they're representing a certain school of Buddhism, which there are several schools of Buddhism. We're not going to do that right now, but they have to represent their schools. are going to present the thing in a certain way and they're going to talk about it in this way. We are taking this far more as a from a practitioner's perspective, from an artist's perspective, from a teacher's perspective. And if you're going to be a teacher, you have to be a student. And so we are doing both at the same time. And I think that this is a really nice way to learn, you know, kind of like world religion essentially in a very informal kind of way. So, for those who never took a world religion course and you never got to hear much about this, which you even which you wouldn't have even even if you took a hear about this anyways. Yeah.

No, no, no. You're getting a really deep dive into probably the entrance into this practice. So, if this is calling to you and and you want to learn more, then to continue to turn in tune in to the next, you know, probably one to two episodes. Um, and if you have any questions, feel free to email us or comments or talking all the above. Leave a comment below. I'll respond to it. Uh, feel free to hit us up on Instagram at the Jin and Tantra podcast. Uh, you can hit us up at on the email at the Jin and Tantra. What is it? No, Jyn Antantragmail.com. So, that's that's it. You're welcome in advance. you know, Eric, anything else or

No, it makes total sense what you're saying and like we will try to go through this and I think

part of what we're trying to get to, you know, we practice seriously, but we're trying to get to like accessibility too hopefully.

Yeah.

Right. Where you get to learn some things. This is deep. So, there's always going to be something a little challenging about it because it's deep materials.

You know, you're not going to have a podcast on like niche and it's going to be shallow like that ain't happening.

No.

Right. It's going to be deep. But you know part of our idea is like to present these tantric spiritual zen all our the stuff that we love and present it in a way that

can resonate with you know people who come from the backgrounds that we come from too right

come from the head space we're coming from and I think

you know Jung in this sense is sort of like a vehicle to help us talk about these things too because he's fascinated by these things as well so

maybe it taps into the psychology part

that appeal appeals to a lot of like 21st century people too

he's our gateway drug

he is it's true. It's not a lie.

It's not a lie.

Start messing with Jung. You don't know where it's going to go. So, be careful.

You don't know where it's going to go. That's right. Well, you know, this is this is

Don't be careful. Jump in. What the Go for it.

That's right. Naked. Uh but you know, this is this is Jin and Tantra. And this is definitely the tantra part of Jyn and Tantra. So, you know, we're uh we're happy to be doing it. So, Eric, gracias mucho audience. Gracias mucho. I gave you all the stuff that I always give you at the end of the at the end of the episode. But, uh, like, comment, subscribe, share, whatever. Do the things. You know, we're doing this cuz we enjoy doing it. So, we appreciate everybody tuning in. If you made it to this far in the episode, your attention span is vastly outpacing the rest of the world. Congratulations. Uh, may you have a good rest of your day, Eric. Thank you so much, audience. Thank you so much. Bye-bye.