Changing Our Narrative Stephen Rowley

[00:00:02] Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Stephen, Stephen Rowley. Looking forward to our conversation today, Stephen.

[00:00:12] Me too. Glad to be here.

[00:00:14] Yeah. So Stephen is an adoptee, he's also an adoptive dad and you're a psychotherapist as well, right?

[00:00:21] I am currently, yes. But I was in education as a teacher, principal, school district superintendent, three college faculties included in that time. So it wasn't until my mid-60s that I made the big leap and went back to school and became a psychotherapist then.

[00:00:40] Yeah. Wow. So I had this thought about healing that I've been chatting to a couple of people about, right? So we think about healing, it presumes a wound, right? And the first person to draw attention to this primal wound was Nancy Verio with a book of that name.

[00:01:02] And it strikes me that's a third party view because as an adoptive parent she's an adoptive parent, not an adoptee. And to what extent do we want to create our own narrative based on our own terminology and topics? So I guess my first question for you is what do you make of all that?

[00:01:32] Yeah, the awareness of a primal wound of course doesn't come until much later life. And frankly even until I went back to school and did a lot more extensive reading could I find a more robust language about psychology and psychotherapy, about the nature of psyche to be able to be more definitive about that.

[00:01:52] But I think you raised the point about a life narrative. I think that narratives, if they serve as well change. So and I've said for families who have adopted children when they're young, the mom and dad ideally will have a narrative for them helps explain what adoption was, why they wanted to do that.

[00:02:14] But then at some point by their teens and later that narrative has to be taken over by the child or the young adult. And I think depending on what we find out in terms if we are looking for our birth parents or more information about our background, or we wrestle with some of the other feelings that may be related to that primal wound as time comes on, then that begins to take a different shape. It has a different narrative.

[00:02:37] But the narrative itself, in writing a memoir as I did, also is its own form of healing. And it doesn't have to be, so if I ask you give me five minutes to tell me your life story and I talk to you tomorrow say give me five minutes of your life story, it'd be a little different.

[00:02:51] Okay, so and I think that's only natural but I think it's that narrative that helps us put the pieces together in some kind of more coherent form. And as I say it changes but even in terms of what the role the wound played about those who have any kind of wound adoption or not, if they stay with it and only with that, they could end up being have a victim mentality and never move past it.

[00:03:16] Others will have a way to incorporate what they've learned around that or maybe how the wound itself has served as a guide or an ally, a teacher if you will, and time and that changes your narrative considerably about faith and what turned out to be the destiny you were supposed to live that you never had a clue about at the beginning of your life.

[00:03:36] Wow.

[00:03:37] Wow. Some big themes there.

[00:03:41] The first one that popped into my head was actually I was talking to a grandma at the swimming pool, whose granddaughter is adopted and she's 12.

[00:03:54] And they went to see a last last week to take her out.

[00:03:59] And she said that something had changed, she could she could sense the change in her granddaughter.

[00:04:06] And it was actually to do with her granddaughter being showed and shown some details about her birth mother and birth father.

[00:04:18] And this had this had lightened the 12 year old girl's emotional load.

[00:04:28] And the grandma, the friend that I know, I've been swimming alongside her for 20 odd years.

[00:04:37] She says she's obviously tuned in and she could she could see and feel the difference in her granddaughter.

[00:04:46] The fact that she was starting to get a little bit more information was being shared with her.

[00:04:54] Well, that age group 12, 13, 14, that's also at the time adoption notwithstanding, we began to get something we consider our identity.

[00:05:03] We become self aware before that.

[00:05:06] We're you know, we're just kids and live life.

[00:05:09] But so it's an interesting juncture for that to happen for that particular time.

[00:05:12] So it's good to that's a good example of one kind of response that people can have when they get information that sheds more light on who they are and where they came from.

[00:05:21] It's not always the same reaction by other people.

[00:05:24] Some people don't want to know or sometimes that information is not always the most pleasant to hear.

[00:05:30] And that can that can do something to throw you off course speak for a while.

[00:05:34] But it's a good I'm glad to hear it's a good story.

[00:05:37] Yeah. So does the word healing resonate with you, Stephen?

[00:05:42] Well, you know, we've you and I have talked about this.

[00:05:45] It does. But I have to say after really thinking a long time about this, it's actually good.

[00:05:50] It made this may my thinking may roll into my next book.

[00:05:54] I come to the conclusion that healing really is an ineffable.

[00:05:57] It's the one word that describes what healing is to me, ineffable.

[00:06:01] There are dozens of pan or more primary different modalities of healing that range from physical to psycho emotional.

[00:06:11] Marvin Gaye had sexual healing.

[00:06:13] But I also realize that most across most of these modalities, they all have certain elements in common.

[00:06:19] Ritual is one of them.

[00:06:21] Often titled those some people can do, quote, self-healing.

[00:06:24] Usually there's a third party, you know, an indigenous tribes.

[00:06:27] It's a medicine man.

[00:06:28] And our day are our times it can be a psychotherapist.

[00:06:31] We can be a good friend who is along to help that healing.

[00:06:35] From a Jungian and depth psychological perspective, what trauma with that primal wound creates is dissociation.

[00:06:44] And we responded dissociation in a couple different ways.

[00:06:48] One is through aggressiveness, anger, fighting the world.

[00:06:52] The other is pulling within being defensive, shutting the door, not letting anybody any either way.

[00:06:58] You don't want anybody else to get close to that wound, even if you're not thinking it that way.

[00:07:02] It's just sort of a defensive reaction.

[00:07:04] But in time, with that scenario, that dynamic, what healing then means is actually a form of reconnection.

[00:07:11] It's the opposite dissociation is reconnection.

[00:07:14] That can be emotionally, it can be psychic.

[00:07:16] They can get into neurophysiology and what reconnection can mean in terms of how the brain works and so forth.

[00:07:23] Or it can be in terms of adoption.

[00:07:25] Sometimes that reconnection, like it's my case, was actual reconnection with my birth mother who I had.

[00:07:33] She gave me up on my 10th day and it wasn't until I was 40 years old that we reunited.

[00:07:40] We were reconnected and we were reconnected in a very powerful way.

[00:07:44] So that's a form of healing.

[00:07:46] So when you say dissociation, you mean disassociation from others or do you mean it?

[00:07:54] I would say it's a good question.

[00:07:57] It's hard to answer exactly.

[00:07:59] Yeah, it's a dissociation from others.

[00:08:01] You're dissociating from life.

[00:08:03] Somebody who's dissociated may seem like they're not connected to others.

[00:08:08] They may be a little bit spacey.

[00:08:10] They may not be very engaged with others or frankly sometimes even within looking within.

[00:08:16] It's just sort of like you had your bell rung and you're kind of...

[00:08:20] It's not unlike having physical trauma of a concussion.

[00:08:24] I mean you're dissociating.

[00:08:25] Your brain, if you've ever had a concussion or even a myelin, you realize that something's not quite right.

[00:08:31] But psychically that creates that separation from others who we know, work with, our loved ones.

[00:08:40] That wound is deep down in there and it's well protected.

[00:08:45] But it means I'm not going to let anybody close to it because I don't want to feel this.

[00:08:49] I don't want to be hurt this way again.

[00:08:51] And we don't think those thoughts often in those particular terms.

[00:08:54] I'm sort of trying to give a language to what that may mean.

[00:09:00] Of course, psychically we can't...

[00:09:02] We fall short being able to describe what psyche does with our own words.

[00:09:05] But that's sort of an approximation.

[00:09:08] Yeah.

[00:09:09] So what you're saying is that...

[00:09:13] Oh, sorry.

[00:09:14] Is what you're saying that it's subconscious that's happening?

[00:09:21] Often certainly the beginning.

[00:09:23] I also want to mention what I was just saying.

[00:09:26] Stealing anybody's ideas, I can get my hand in.

[00:09:28] It's a marvelous book by Dr. Donald Kalshig called Trauma in the Soul.

[00:09:33] And he outlines in the first chapter, which is a must read for any therapist.

[00:09:38] But it's a...

[00:09:39] I don't think every therapist reads it, but certainly people in my field have or should.

[00:09:43] But it's a recitation of how...

[00:09:47] Yeah, what we do in...

[00:09:53] Let's get this right.

[00:09:55] His argument is not the trauma, it's the response to trauma.

[00:09:59] So the response is either one of hypo-arousal, being closed off,

[00:10:04] shuttering ourselves off from the world or hyper-arousal where we're hyper-vigilant.

[00:10:09] We're pushing people away all the time.

[00:10:11] Either way, there's two sides at the same coin.

[00:10:13] So that is inherently...

[00:10:16] The irony is it's a defensive mechanism.

[00:10:18] It serves its purpose for keeping us consciously or otherwise being hurt again.

[00:10:24] Oftentimes it is unconscious.

[00:10:25] The problem with it, and this is the conundrum of trauma,

[00:10:30] is that although while we're self-protecting not to get hurt again,

[00:10:34] we've put ourselves in sort of a glass cage.

[00:10:37] Now we're kind of trapped.

[00:10:39] Our little safe little room, our safe house, which protected us,

[00:10:43] now becomes more like a prison.

[00:10:45] And so part of the healing process by whatever means

[00:10:48] then begins to lower those barriers or begins to stay with the metaphor,

[00:10:52] to stay with the metaphor, open the door very slowly.

[00:10:55] So it becomes safe again to walk in the world again

[00:10:58] without a fear that something bad is going to come our way.

[00:11:01] Yeah.

[00:11:02] So the trauma then is in some senses, and in some instances,

[00:11:08] it's blocking us from other people.

[00:11:12] Right.

[00:11:14] There's a visual...

[00:11:16] I'm sorry.

[00:11:17] There are a lot of other newer technologies.

[00:11:19] Neuro science tools where you can actually measure

[00:11:22] and see what is going on inside the brain,

[00:11:24] including a traumatized brain.

[00:11:26] So think of it like in the old days when cars had carburetors.

[00:11:30] If your car was not in tune, you had to adjust the carburetor.

[00:11:34] Otherwise it's clunking around.

[00:11:36] It's never hitting all the cylinders.

[00:11:37] It's making a lot of noise and stuff.

[00:11:39] Or if you drop your computer or your phone on the ground

[00:11:42] and it doesn't work, that's dysregulation.

[00:11:44] It's not working.

[00:11:45] It's not working.

[00:11:46] That's dysregulation.

[00:11:47] It's not regulated.

[00:11:49] And so that neural dysregulation is, in fact,

[00:11:54] the antecedent that's underlying.

[00:11:56] It's under the hood of emotional dysregulation.

[00:11:58] So if you find somebody who's emotionally dysregulated,

[00:12:01] for example, if you're stuck in hiding from the world

[00:12:04] for the rest of your life,

[00:12:06] that's a form of emotional dysregulation.

[00:12:08] Or if your moods are going up and down without a control,

[00:12:11] that's a form of emotional dysregulation.

[00:12:14] But the core layer to that, you can actually see and measure

[00:12:17] through different scientific techniques.

[00:12:19] You can actually see that the antecedents are, in fact,

[00:12:22] physical, with brain waves and other parts of the brain

[00:12:26] that are or not in tune with one another,

[00:12:31] either overstimulated or undersimulated or even disconnect.

[00:12:35] I mean, that's neuroscience terminology in a rough sort of way.

[00:12:40] But you get my point, I think.

[00:12:43] That this isn't just strictly...

[00:12:46] The trauma isn't strictly psychological.

[00:12:48] You know what I mean?

[00:12:50] So we examine people like me,

[00:12:52] look at the psychological end of these things,

[00:12:54] or in my own case, examine my own life

[00:12:56] through writing a memoir and so forth.

[00:12:58] But I've gone through this myself,

[00:13:00] but we have to realize that if we're looking for...

[00:13:03] If the cases are severe in terms of the trauma

[00:13:06] and medication is only, for example,

[00:13:09] only helping quell some of the symptoms,

[00:13:14] that will not cure or create actual healing.

[00:13:19] Things like neurofeedback, as an example,

[00:13:22] has a much greater potential to actually heal

[00:13:24] by actually restoring neural regulation in the brain.

[00:13:28] Yeah.

[00:13:29] So, sorry, listeners, I left off the fact

[00:13:33] that Stephen is an author as well as being an adoptee,

[00:13:38] adoptive parent and a psychotherapist.

[00:13:40] He's an author, and that's one of the things

[00:13:43] that we're going to be, I guess, talking about today.

[00:13:46] And there's links in show notes.

[00:13:49] Every time we do an episode,

[00:13:51] there's links in the show notes

[00:13:53] so that people could find more about the guest.

[00:13:56] Check out their website.

[00:13:58] Check out the book if they've got one.

[00:14:00] As Stephen has.

[00:14:01] So I think if I remember something

[00:14:06] from looking at your website,

[00:14:08] our conversation that we had last time,

[00:14:10] is that as well as this kind of hard edge,

[00:14:14] the Jungian stuff, you've also explored

[00:14:19] some Eastern ideas as well.

[00:14:22] Is that right?

[00:14:23] Yeah.

[00:14:24] Yeah, I've been...

[00:14:25] I can't say that I'm a card case,

[00:14:28] I'm not sure most Buddhist carry cards anyway,

[00:14:30] but I've been tremendous influences.

[00:14:32] There's one of the chapters in my book

[00:14:34] is called the Sharon Stone, the Dalai Lama and Me.

[00:14:36] And that came out of a three-day teaching

[00:14:38] I was with the Dalai Lama.

[00:14:39] Then it was in a private reception with him,

[00:14:42] and Sharon Stone happened to be there.

[00:14:44] It's pretty, I think it's a fairly funny chapter

[00:14:47] in the book.

[00:14:48] But then also I've had...

[00:14:50] There's a number of other different Buddhist lamas

[00:14:54] who I've been involved with.

[00:14:55] There's another chapter in the book

[00:14:56] I played golf with a Buddhist Lama

[00:14:57] in Carmel Valley one time.

[00:14:59] But the Suzuki Roshi, the beginner's mind,

[00:15:04] I think is almost a central precept

[00:15:07] in terms of what I call the Zen approach to therapy

[00:15:10] and how we begin to understand the mind

[00:15:13] and begin to have a self-awareness of the mind.

[00:15:15] So when our thoughts are running away from us,

[00:15:17] we don't just jump on and cling to them.

[00:15:19] We learn how to let go

[00:15:21] and be able to just watch what the mind does.

[00:15:23] So the end of my book,

[00:15:24] the book comes from a Zen koan,

[00:15:27] which is...

[00:15:28] It isn't really, but it's like a puzzle.

[00:15:30] The most common one is

[00:15:32] what's the sound of one hand clapping?

[00:15:34] It's kind of happening right now,

[00:15:36] but it's almost a trope.

[00:15:37] But in my case, I had a...

[00:15:40] Because I was trying to get the ending of the book

[00:15:43] the last three weeks.

[00:15:45] I had one more chapter to go

[00:15:46] and I just couldn't get it.

[00:15:47] I had the Zen koan on my computer.

[00:15:50] The coin lost in the river is found in the river.

[00:15:53] The coin lost in the river is found in the river.

[00:15:56] Now, certain Zen traditions, lineages,

[00:15:59] will take a koan like that

[00:16:01] and give it to the student

[00:16:02] and they have to stay with it for a month.

[00:16:04] And you do that every month for two years.

[00:16:07] So you get 24 major league koans

[00:16:09] you ask to wrestle with.

[00:16:11] You go back to the teacher and say,

[00:16:12] is this the answer?

[00:16:13] They go, no, try again.

[00:16:14] And so at some point,

[00:16:15] you realize that you're not going to be able

[00:16:17] to do that every time.

[00:16:18] So you have to try again.

[00:16:19] And so at some point,

[00:16:20] you realize these are not puzzles to be solved,

[00:16:24] but they're tools by which we begin to examine the mind

[00:16:27] and how the mind works.

[00:16:28] So in this particular case,

[00:16:30] if you take it literally,

[00:16:31] if you drop a koan into a river

[00:16:35] and you look down in the water,

[00:16:37] you go, well, I can see where it is.

[00:16:38] But of course, refraction of light,

[00:16:40] it isn't where you think it is.

[00:16:42] And of course, if you drop a koan into muddy water,

[00:16:45] you don't have a clue where it is.

[00:16:47] So there's that element to me that the koan,

[00:16:50] in terms of my own, my memoir,

[00:16:55] elicits the idea of mystery in life.

[00:16:57] We don't quite know how the things

[00:17:00] in my particular case,

[00:17:01] why was I so lucky in life?

[00:17:04] Was I lost all the time?

[00:17:06] Did I find myself?

[00:17:07] Have I still found myself?

[00:17:09] I'm not so sure.

[00:17:11] Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

[00:17:12] And it's that, that's another,

[00:17:14] using that word again,

[00:17:15] a certain element of mystery.

[00:17:17] So a lot of people's narratives,

[00:17:20] a lot of people's memoirs, as an example,

[00:17:23] race to a kind of a stunning conclusion,

[00:17:27] a resolution to the problem.

[00:17:28] And for me anyway,

[00:17:30] I can only say that I felt that less satisfying

[00:17:33] than to keep the door open

[00:17:35] with some of the mystery of life.

[00:17:38] I mean, why do the things happen to us as they do?

[00:17:41] I mean, we can have some kind of causal explanation,

[00:17:44] but why did I end up with the parents that I had

[00:17:47] when I was adopted?

[00:17:49] Why did I meet my wife when I did?

[00:17:51] Why did our four year little boy

[00:17:55] come to our house on a certain day?

[00:17:57] My wife and I were devoutly,

[00:17:59] because we were both in education,

[00:18:00] surrounded by kids like,

[00:18:01] we don't want kids at home.

[00:18:03] We see them all the time at school.

[00:18:04] Why would we want a kid?

[00:18:05] He walked in the door.

[00:18:07] We fell in love.

[00:18:08] He did with us.

[00:18:09] And why did that happen?

[00:18:11] I can only say that's the hand of faith right there.

[00:18:14] And I take it as that kind of a powerful,

[00:18:17] ineffable and mysterious element that's in our lives

[00:18:20] the more we examine them.

[00:18:22] Yeah.

[00:18:26] The first thought that came to me is the word wonder.

[00:18:31] And we say wonderful,

[00:18:33] but are we wonderful?

[00:18:38] Are we full of wonder?

[00:18:41] Or are we desperate to get the answer?

[00:18:47] Yeah.

[00:18:48] And I'd say it's an acquired taste,

[00:18:50] the way the curiosity is.

[00:18:51] People like me, I think by my nature, I'm curious.

[00:18:55] Maybe even snoopy, but I'm curious for sure.

[00:18:57] That's why I think I went into psychotherapy

[00:18:59] because there's so much to know

[00:19:01] and to try to learn that we can't possibly.

[00:19:03] In fact, here's one of the mysteries.

[00:19:05] The more we learn,

[00:19:07] the more we realize how much we don't know.

[00:19:09] So there's a conundrum right there.

[00:19:11] But I think that the sense of wonder,

[00:19:13] the sense of curiosity,

[00:19:15] that's like I say, an acquired taste.

[00:19:18] And I think it's not for everybody.

[00:19:20] Some people don't, in terms of birth parents,

[00:19:22] some people don't want to know who their parents are.

[00:19:24] They could care less.

[00:19:25] Other people like me spent my life looking for them.

[00:19:28] And so that's just who I am.

[00:19:30] But the more I talk to people at different engagements

[00:19:32] and so forth,

[00:19:34] the more I hear that.

[00:19:36] I mean, I hear that quality of wanting reconnection.

[00:19:39] Sometimes the ecstasy of finding a birth parent.

[00:19:42] Sometimes the enormous disappointment

[00:19:44] of not finding one.

[00:19:46] And in some cases, the utter surprise,

[00:19:49] I've got a client right now who I think is,

[00:19:53] it's quite clear that he's a very close

[00:19:56] relation to the former drug czar

[00:19:58] Pablo Escobar in Colombia, South America.

[00:20:01] Well, there were reasons for his own story.

[00:20:03] That somebody, well, he's not alive anymore.

[00:20:05] You don't want to meet that family

[00:20:07] because they don't want to see you.

[00:20:09] So sometimes it's like,

[00:20:11] sometimes the universe says,

[00:20:14] no, you cannot do this.

[00:20:16] You should not do this.

[00:20:17] That's again a disappointment,

[00:20:18] but we're left going, well, how come?

[00:20:21] Or why don't I get to do that?

[00:20:23] Why did I get to do that?

[00:20:25] So we're all over the map with those big questions.

[00:20:28] But to me, they fuel a deeper,

[00:20:34] a deeper yearning to know more about

[00:20:38] these inevitable qualities of what life is composed.

[00:20:42] And I think in that way,

[00:20:44] that tribal wound we referred to earlier

[00:20:46] and the separation of mother and child,

[00:20:48] that sense of yearning,

[00:20:49] sense of wanting to be connected.

[00:20:51] There were times I'm sure I felt

[00:20:53] really miserable with it and frustrated,

[00:20:55] but in the long run,

[00:20:56] I realized that has been a primary teacher.

[00:20:59] My life would not be what it is today

[00:21:02] without not only the circumstances

[00:21:05] of my upbringing by my parents,

[00:21:07] but also that other inner psychological dynamic

[00:21:11] that keeps me curious,

[00:21:13] keeps me wanting to know,

[00:21:14] keeps me a little off balance sometimes,

[00:21:17] keeps me, you know,

[00:21:18] I've turned into a polymath in my old rage

[00:21:21] because I'm so interested in so many things.

[00:21:23] And that's why, you know,

[00:21:25] I chose at age, well, I just turned 75.

[00:21:28] And I've got another one in the hopper.

[00:21:30] And that's because that's who I am.

[00:21:33] I mean, other people are like,

[00:21:34] forget it, you're supposed to be retired.

[00:21:36] And so, well, I don't think I would be this way

[00:21:38] if I didn't have that strong emotional dynamic

[00:21:42] of both unconscious much of the time

[00:21:45] and then later came to consciousness more.

[00:21:48] So I can do nothing but say,

[00:21:50] I wouldn't want to have it any other way.

[00:21:52] Yeah.

[00:21:54] I knew this was going to be a fantastic conversation.

[00:21:57] Two things I see from this,

[00:22:05] two things and perhaps ends of the same spectrum.

[00:22:12] On one hand, we've got the mystery of healing.

[00:22:17] And on the other hand,

[00:22:19] at the other end of the spectrum,

[00:22:20] we've got the frustration.

[00:22:23] I just want to heal.

[00:22:25] Right.

[00:22:27] So that's how I see it.

[00:22:29] And that's just literally just popped into my head.

[00:22:33] So how do you see those two things

[00:22:35] like the mystery and frustration?

[00:22:40] Or do you see mystery and impatience?

[00:22:43] Or do you see, you know,

[00:22:45] how do you have a go at that?

[00:22:48] Yeah, I'm going to pull up a quote

[00:22:55] that I think is a marvelous quote by James Hillman

[00:22:57] who succeeded Carl Jung at the Institute in Zurich.

[00:23:01] Now this isn't quite the same.

[00:23:02] He's using the word depression.

[00:23:05] But depression, let's say the depression out of the frustration

[00:23:08] or not knowing of running into the across.

[00:23:10] So here's his quote.

[00:23:11] This is from his famous book, Revisioning Psychology.

[00:23:16] Depression is essential to the tragic sense of life

[00:23:19] that moistens the dry soul and drives the wet.

[00:23:22] It brings refuge, limitation, focus, gravity, weight

[00:23:27] and humble powerlessness.

[00:23:29] It reminds of death.

[00:23:31] The true revolution begins the individual

[00:23:33] who could be true to his or her depression,

[00:23:36] neither jerking oneself out of it,

[00:23:39] caught in cycles of hope and despair

[00:23:41] or suffering through it till it turns,

[00:23:43] nor theologizing it,

[00:23:45] but discovering the consciousness

[00:23:47] and depth it wants,

[00:23:49] discovering the consciousness and depth it wants.

[00:23:51] So begins the revolution on behalf of the soul.

[00:23:54] So you see how he takes what I have class

[00:23:57] talking about depression could be related to adoption or not.

[00:24:00] There's something in the depths of that despair

[00:24:04] that Hillman is directing our awareness to say

[00:24:07] that awareness brings,

[00:24:09] it's not that what we're bringing to it,

[00:24:11] it's what it's bringing to us.

[00:24:12] So sometimes like we say in these cases of mystery

[00:24:15] or maybe when we do or do not find our birth parents,

[00:24:18] it's bringing something to us.

[00:24:19] Sometimes we can't think that we're masters of our lives

[00:24:24] and we're going to go out and conquer

[00:24:25] and find all everything we do.

[00:24:26] We're going to heal ourselves.

[00:24:28] Sometimes they come to us in very mysterious ways,

[00:24:30] very odd times.

[00:24:32] Sometimes the ways they come to us can be painful

[00:24:36] and tragic and we wonder, well, I didn't deserve that.

[00:24:41] Bush says that in a quote in my book by a Zen priest,

[00:24:45] everybody gets what they deserve,

[00:24:47] whether they deserve it or not.

[00:24:48] I love that.

[00:24:49] I mean, that happens to us all.

[00:24:51] We're going to get it where we come.

[00:24:53] But his thing is that with depression,

[00:24:55] so begins the revolution on behalf of the soul.

[00:24:59] What's the revolution of the soul?

[00:25:01] On behalf of the soul,

[00:25:03] what purpose does a depression serve?

[00:25:05] So that's in therapy,

[00:25:07] but in my own life and by writing this book,

[00:25:09] it takes some time to dig down into where is this coming from?

[00:25:13] What are the themes?

[00:25:14] What are the people?

[00:25:16] What are the incidents that I'm depressed about?

[00:25:18] Plenty of people I know who have searched for birth parents

[00:25:22] in the better part of their lives and had no success

[00:25:25] or ever frustrated and they're depressed.

[00:25:27] All I want to know is who I am.

[00:25:29] Who are my mom?

[00:25:30] Who's my dad?

[00:25:31] Where do I get my birth certificate?

[00:25:33] And I've been there and done that,

[00:25:34] so I know what that feels like.

[00:25:36] But the impetus behind that depression is coming,

[00:25:39] I think, from some other deeper spark down.

[00:25:42] This is where depth psychology and other kinds of philosophy come in.

[00:25:45] If we're patient enough with ourselves to allow this revolution,

[00:25:51] this revelation as well,

[00:25:54] come to us,

[00:25:55] this waiting for an answer or waiting for life to come to in its own way,

[00:26:01] I think, is a form of spiritual maturity.

[00:26:04] That patience, because I have a short attention span anyway.

[00:26:10] Let's get the answer.

[00:26:11] Let's get something done.

[00:26:12] I want an answer.

[00:26:13] Let's go do things.

[00:26:14] And when life says, no, that's not happening,

[00:26:17] that's not happening.

[00:26:18] So as your young friend at 12 years old,

[00:26:23] she finds out something at 12.

[00:26:25] I've thought, what if I would have found out

[00:26:28] when I started looking at all of the records

[00:26:30] for my birth parents were handed to me?

[00:26:32] What would I have done?

[00:26:33] What would have happened to them?

[00:26:34] They were both alive at that time.

[00:26:36] I can't imagine what a train wreck that probably would have been for everybody.

[00:26:40] Instead, I had to wait till I was 40

[00:26:42] and my birth mother a little over 60 to find each other,

[00:26:45] which was exactly the right time.

[00:26:47] And then I never did mean my birth father.

[00:26:49] The book ends with that.

[00:26:51] It was just about two years ago that I got contacted by 23 and Me.

[00:26:55] He'd been dead since 1985.

[00:26:58] And one of my new half sisters said,

[00:27:01] it's a good thing you never met him.

[00:27:03] You would have never gotten along.

[00:27:05] You're the complete opposite, except for the athletic ability.

[00:27:08] You're like, you would have been at loggerheads.

[00:27:11] So I dodged a bullet in that one.

[00:27:14] Yeah.

[00:27:15] Of course, but I think that's coming back

[00:27:18] into why we take life circumstances,

[00:27:21] the good, the bad, and the ugly,

[00:27:23] and begin to make, if we want to,

[00:27:26] make them into something in terms of raising our consciousness.

[00:27:30] And we do so by curiosity, by persistence,

[00:27:33] by looking for other sides of the world that are telling us something.

[00:27:37] That's, I think, what Hillman refers to,

[00:27:39] that revolution on behalf of the soul.

[00:27:41] That's where we, I think that's for some people,

[00:27:44] maybe many people,

[00:27:46] what does it mean to be in touch with soul?

[00:27:48] What is soul? It's another word like healing.

[00:27:50] It's ineffable.

[00:27:51] But still, there's that something we understand about our nature,

[00:27:56] I think, if we are mature enough and patient enough to really understand,

[00:28:02] to be in touch with those higher powers that are both,

[00:28:06] whether they're inside, outside, or both, take your pick.

[00:28:11] So the thing that's popping into my head is,

[00:28:14] I think you used the word diving in,

[00:28:16] in the depression when you were reading the quote.

[00:28:20] So in that instance, we're talking about diving into the depression.

[00:28:28] In our case as adoptees,

[00:28:30] perhaps we're talking about diving into the wound or exploring,

[00:28:36] exploring the work, exploring the wound.

[00:28:40] And obviously the exploration is fueled by our curiosity.

[00:28:47] So the curiosity is, so we're exploring the wound

[00:28:52] rather than trying to push it away.

[00:28:55] Right?

[00:28:56] Right.

[00:28:57] So we talk about, we hear so much about the number of adoptees in addiction.

[00:29:04] And I've had Pamela Caranova on the show talking about her,

[00:29:10] the end of her 27 year old relationship with alcohol was when she,

[00:29:22] the pivotal moment was when she realized that facing her feelings

[00:29:32] or exploring her wound was,

[00:29:37] it was time to do that rather than numbing out through the booze.

[00:29:44] So exploration and numbing out or suppressing or stuffing

[00:29:51] or anything like that seems to, it's kind of,

[00:29:56] is it about us going through the barrier rather than being stopped by it?

[00:30:04] I don't know.

[00:30:06] Right.

[00:30:07] Yeah, it's coming out of the,

[00:30:10] I can use a telomere for it,

[00:30:12] how some people can persevere and come out of the dark night of assault.

[00:30:16] Because when you're in there with addiction as an example,

[00:30:20] or other kinds of trauma, you're in no man's land.

[00:30:25] You know where you left,

[00:30:27] you think you're headed in a direction that you want to be,

[00:30:30] like if you thought I left this piece of the mainland,

[00:30:34] I want to get to another continent or another island and be safe.

[00:30:38] You don't know whether you're five feet away or 500 yards away or 500 miles.

[00:30:43] That's why guides either in terms of psychotherapists,

[00:30:47] although sometimes you can do it solo like the woman you mentioned,

[00:30:51] or as I mentioned in my book,

[00:30:53] shamanism is particularly suited to this.

[00:30:57] There's a book in this country named Sander Ingramann called Soul Retrieval.

[00:31:02] It's a certain kind of shamanism.

[00:31:04] I'm seeing this same woman today actually.

[00:31:06] Now they have a way of literally,

[00:31:08] you don't have to do much of anything as a recipient of it.

[00:31:11] Basically, they go down into you after some different ritual exercises and so forth.

[00:31:16] But they can go down and find those places where those wounds exist,

[00:31:20] where those shattered pieces are.

[00:31:22] And as I mentioned in my book,

[00:31:24] it was a source of healing, if you will,

[00:31:28] since we're using that word today,

[00:31:30] of a rift that I had from my mother from the time that she yelled at me when I was 13

[00:31:33] and said I wanted to know more about my adoption.

[00:31:35] And she said, what's the matter with you?

[00:31:37] What's wrong? Don't you think we love you enough?

[00:31:39] Then I ran out of the room, slammed into her,

[00:31:41] and swore I would never talk to her about my adoption again.

[00:31:43] And I didn't, much to my embarrassment today,

[00:31:46] but I never did until I had the session,

[00:31:49] until I was able to go down and find those wounds again.

[00:31:52] And also I have my shaman friend, Shamanistic Healer,

[00:31:57] tell me more about my own mother, my mom I grew up with.

[00:32:01] Totally changed my life, totally set my head completely differently.

[00:32:05] She was 100 years old at the time this event happened.

[00:32:08] A year later she died.

[00:32:10] I saw her before she died, and she burst into tears when she saw me.

[00:32:16] This is two months after the session.

[00:32:18] I'd never seen her cry.

[00:32:20] Bursts into tears, grabs my hand, and just shakes.

[00:32:25] And I knew what was going on.

[00:32:27] It was as though I had gone down with my friend, the shaman,

[00:32:31] into this form of healing.

[00:32:33] I had completely found her as she really was,

[00:32:36] more as the student with me as the teacher in this life.

[00:32:40] And I think she got it.

[00:32:41] Somehow that got to her in some ways that I can't possibly rationally defend or explain,

[00:32:47] but I'm quite sure it was true.

[00:32:49] But that going down deep, there's lots of ways to go down deep.

[00:32:53] By definition, depth psychology, you go down deep.

[00:32:56] Dreams are a marvelous way to learn how to go down deep.

[00:32:59] We're getting dreams all the time. They're coming from down there.

[00:33:02] What they mean and what images come with them,

[00:33:05] that's a podcast for another show.

[00:33:09] But surely, as Freud said, it's the dreams of the royal road to the unconscious.

[00:33:14] So all those things, whether it's the creative impulse,

[00:33:18] where our wounds are restored, where our talents are restored in some ways,

[00:33:22] where we have what Gilman would call the butt of the acorn,

[00:33:26] our predestined self in its way of expanding and exploring its own destiny as we get older,

[00:33:36] that's coming from someplace.

[00:33:38] We look at the oak tree and go, you might have been an acorn one day,

[00:33:43] you don't look like an acorn today.

[00:33:45] You're programming this from a long time ago and you're just tying it like this.

[00:33:49] We see that.

[00:33:51] So I think those are all those marvelous ways we can look at how we become who we are

[00:33:54] and what role that certainly our parents, of course, but also the wounds we acquire,

[00:34:00] particularly when they're young, not only just adoption of that type of problem.

[00:34:07] I use the word, it comes from Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst, primitive agonies.

[00:34:16] Primitive agony to me is like something even deeper.

[00:34:19] Primitive agony, I think is what something that's so deep within our individual and collective psyches

[00:34:25] that it defies description, that they have to do with terror, fear.

[00:34:31] Fear of abandonment as an example would be a primitive agony left alone.

[00:34:38] I had introduced students who want to go to Stanford, I got my PhD there.

[00:34:45] And this young lady who's absolutely gorgeous, she was Chinese in terms of her nationality,

[00:34:52] but she was left in a box at six months old at a train station in remote Mongolia.

[00:35:02] Left.

[00:35:04] Now talk about a primitive agony.

[00:35:06] Of course, then she got adopted and then she, by her parents here,

[00:35:10] and she turned out to be, she said, well, I want to either be a brain surgeon or major in fashion or both,

[00:35:16] so she had that kind of level of talent.

[00:35:18] But talk about the hands of faith that delivered you from that obscure, wretched beginning into,

[00:35:24] I think she went to, she didn't go to Stanford, she went to Dartmouth, but anyway,

[00:35:29] that leaves your mouth hanging open like by the grace of God, by the grace of some power, look where you ended up.

[00:35:36] Yeah, just it's beyond the word luck.

[00:35:39] That's the use of my book.

[00:35:41] I use the word both faith adoption and destiny.

[00:35:45] There's something about destiny in this, something about how these events,

[00:35:50] our traumas play a role in taking us to our ultimate destiny.

[00:35:56] If we're lucky, if we have support, because if we don't, oftentimes those traumas can leave us severely damaged.

[00:36:04] We have a president of this country who's a horrible father.

[00:36:08] That guy was traumatized from the day he was born.

[00:36:10] Look what happened.

[00:36:12] You see those pictures of putting these two together.

[00:36:15] Let's just let that stand anyway.

[00:36:17] You look at what happened to Adolf Hitler when he was young and how he turned out.

[00:36:22] I mean, you're talking about impact to children who are, are you going to say, I think we don't say, are born innocent, so to speak.

[00:36:29] They're not born evil.

[00:36:31] And yet by that kind of trauma can really distort at their extremes, horrible people.

[00:36:38] And what's that also is the hand of fate.

[00:36:40] How did that happen?

[00:36:41] I mean, not everybody who had horrible prance turned into Hitler or Trump, but it does happen to some.

[00:36:48] And why some and why others?

[00:36:51] We don't know.

[00:36:53] So do you think we take a too narrow approach to to healing, healing modalities?

[00:37:02] That's a good question.

[00:37:06] I don't.

[00:37:07] I think those who have expertise in some of those areas we mentioned, I mentioned before traditional alternative medicine, bodywork,

[00:37:18] nutritional stuff, herbal stuff, other things called holistic plant medicine.

[00:37:25] I mean, what my problem, I call it my problem.

[00:37:29] What maybe that is a little too strong.

[00:37:31] But what I get a little frustrated with is the kind of myopia for people who are only in that lane.

[00:37:39] Only in that, you know, I can only see the see the world or in terms of my particular specialty rather than having a much broader perspective where you can see your own talents, especially lying out.

[00:37:52] There's that old joke to boost joke about the pickpocket meets the balala.

[00:37:56] And when he does, all I can see is his pockets.

[00:38:00] So you've got you've got you've got that that element that sometimes we only see what we are looking for.

[00:38:07] So when you do run into people who have much more broader curiosity, a multifaceted sort of sense of what they are now, I may I may have to stay in my own lane with what I know I can do.

[00:38:18] But it doesn't mean I can't really appreciate, for example, what acupuncture does.

[00:38:22] I've had it, but I couldn't do it.

[00:38:24] But I know what its capacity is as an example.

[00:38:27] And I also know that if I have a broken arm, I probably don't want to go see the I don't as a Western guy.

[00:38:33] I don't want to probably go see the acupuncturist.

[00:38:36] I want to go see a regular orthopedic guy set my broken arm.

[00:38:39] You know what I mean? So it's sometimes located to to fall back on orthodox methodologies where they work and stay with it.

[00:38:49] So but yeah, I think so.

[00:38:52] Those are but you know, it seems as though there's always for commercial reasons and other reasons these fields seem to like they expand all the time.

[00:39:01] There's a new variation of this or that.

[00:39:03] I mean, I'm sure you have since it's an interest to you.

[00:39:06] But all the things journals I get books I read things that come online listeners.

[00:39:13] I'm on book lists about the newest newest.

[00:39:16] What would I get the other way to the other room?

[00:39:19] The 30 steps just to 30 30 steps to becoming more authentic.

[00:39:27] I don't think I'm going to sit down and read the book and become even though there's exercise and stuff.

[00:39:34] And some people it's probably really right for but it just seemed like this is this is such low hanging fruit that it doesn't really for I think more mature adults.

[00:39:41] It doesn't really something that's in my world.

[00:39:44] I think for others in their areas have to grab you.

[00:39:47] You do become a true believer and that's OK.

[00:39:50] I mean, I have things I don't want to give up in terms of what I believe and what I know works.

[00:39:54] And I don't I don't feel I need to go looking at some other stuff actually.

[00:40:01] But like I say, in time, I've dabbled a lot in different kinds of therapies and different body bodywork kind of things.

[00:40:08] And my friend Michelle, who does show Mr. Keeling, I you know, I've seen her seven or eight times every time it's a marvel what happens.

[00:40:18] And I'm just sitting there. She does all the work comes back up and tells me what she's seen and what she's done while she's down there.

[00:40:25] And I it's not like I feel radically different.

[00:40:29] But, you know, a few weeks later, month later, it's like something shifted.

[00:40:33] Or like the word you use with the 12 year old, something lightened up, something as though it either got left behind or rehealed itself.

[00:40:42] There was some other kind of integration.

[00:40:45] I mean, that's what we're all thing is a body type of work or structural integration reintegrates a twisted body.

[00:40:53] It takes there's a methodology to that.

[00:40:56] I think that's why another word word for what happened with psychotherapy, where this idea of of reconnection is in fact is a form of integration.

[00:41:08] It doesn't mean perfectly symmetrical shape.

[00:41:12] It just means that that whatever shape you were meant to be.

[00:41:15] I mean, so you might end up your perfectly symmetrical self might look like a like a Picasso, you know, Cuba's painting with three eyes and arms coming out of your head.

[00:41:28] And I mean, it's like, for some people, that's the way they are.

[00:41:31] And that's, you know, they've self actualized using as those things.

[00:41:35] They are so may not make my cup of tea, but it doesn't really matter what I think.

[00:41:39] I mean, that's that kind of how we find ourselves glued together.

[00:41:42] And for some people who have endured endured enormous amount of psychological stress and trauma and terror in their lives.

[00:41:50] You know, they're probably just happy to have the glue holding together.

[00:41:54] You know what I mean?

[00:41:56] I'm living. I'm living a life people say who struggle with schizophrenia live a life where people are living on methadone and living a life.

[00:42:06] It may not be the ideal life that you're but you're you're living in you something you've pulled together enough to to make it work.

[00:42:15] You you said a phrase a couple of minutes ago that really struck me and I scrolled it down.

[00:42:21] You said setting, setting your head differently.

[00:42:26] Use this word, this phrase setting, setting your head differently.

[00:42:32] Stuck away.

[00:42:33] No, setting, setting, setting.

[00:42:36] So you said something like something happened and it and it and it set my head differently.

[00:42:45] So to me, it was like an insight.

[00:42:47] You had you had an oh, yeah.

[00:42:50] Yeah. Like I mean, what's my my my that with my mother, it just it did totally totally change my head.

[00:43:00] And that's a dramatic way, very emotional way.

[00:43:04] But there are other things I mentioned in the book that are more studied and more subtle.

[00:43:09] But it's still the same thing.

[00:43:10] I at Stanford, I work with took a couple courses with Jim March, who anybody who's gone to Stanford that year will in the 80s and will know exactly who he is.

[00:43:20] He taught a course on leadership by teaching Don Quixote.

[00:43:26] And he actually made a film of it, went to Spain, where so far he's living, so we think, wait, that's crazy.

[00:43:31] Like he was a delusional fool.

[00:43:33] He was like this, you know, this dusty old night who didn't know, you know,

[00:43:39] Dulce Neve was the most beautiful woman in the world and, you know, body saw armies and just sheep and so forth.

[00:43:44] But what changed my mind in Jim's class, among other things, was that he that the way he taught it was that is that in Spanish is you always say can soy.

[00:43:54] I know who I am.

[00:43:55] So despite all the humiliation and degradation that came from other society for being this old gas bag, you know, out in the countryside in San Chipanza, he knew who he was.

[00:44:07] And what we in today's terminology, we would call it a champion for social justice.

[00:44:12] That was his romantic ideal.

[00:44:14] That was chivalry in its part.

[00:44:16] So he knew who he was.

[00:44:17] He was not going to be budge.

[00:44:19] And I think that's why it was a mind changer for me because you take a counter to an example of a leader.

[00:44:27] Most of the thing, heroics and all this stuff, you know, enormous mental and physical powers and so forth.

[00:44:34] And here you've got a guy who just defies description.

[00:44:37] And yet he becomes in his heart.

[00:44:39] I know who I am.

[00:44:40] And so that's a that is a that I think is one of those challenging kind of ideas that should spur us on to say, do we know who we are?

[00:44:52] Well, in some ways, yes.

[00:44:55] Do I know myself today?

[00:44:58] They did 10 years ago.

[00:44:59] I don't think so.

[00:45:03] Or worse, I don't have a different but there's something that it resonates with me as a core self understanding.

[00:45:11] I know who I am.

[00:45:13] So it could be one place in the world.

[00:45:17] What what I do for a living or what I do when I'm not making a living or how I conduct myself or what causes I believe in and so forth that I know who I am.

[00:45:27] That's where it's a it's a powerful love.

[00:45:30] So those those that's an example of more of a subtle.

[00:45:33] But I like those those are that's the kind of a Jungian concept, synchronously with suddenly the your idea of what you thought was was changed in the book I talk about meeting friends of mine were camping in western Colorado.

[00:45:47] We picked up a hitchhiker guy our age and when he left us the next day, he gave me some yarrow sticks and said, you know what these are.

[00:45:54] I said, No, he goes, Well, you've never heard of the E Ching.

[00:45:57] And I go, Oh yeah, he goes, he says, you take these sticks are yours as a thank you for the evening.

[00:46:04] Go to the bookstore in Boulder, Colorado by the book, the Book of Changes E Ching, by Wilhelm and take these enroll what it's what happened.

[00:46:15] So I did.

[00:46:16] Ironically, I put in a book I was my friends I was staying at the home, the former home of Robert Oppenheimer.

[00:46:23] So I did.

[00:46:24] I did.

[00:46:25] I did this thing.

[00:46:26] What you do with the sticks and I came up with a number 50 to cauldron, which really, really spoke to me about what had happened the evening before and help really change my mind where I was going in life.

[00:46:37] And I was soon after I came back to Seattle with being stoned all the time in Colorado came back and became a teacher eventually.

[00:46:44] But but what was more uncanny was that as I was thumbing through the book, marvelling at it just what I had learned.

[00:46:51] I noticed there was an introduction to the book.

[00:46:53] It was by Carl Jung, which was like I knew something about Jung.

[00:46:57] I was in part of a thesis I wrote for my undergrad years in psychology.

[00:47:02] But then then as I was reading it, he talked about his first time with the R sticks.

[00:47:08] And what do you think he got?

[00:47:10] Same as me or I get the same into number 50 to call her.

[00:47:13] Yeah, I mean it was like it was like still it was just fine tingling.

[00:47:17] It was like, holy cow.

[00:47:18] So that's that's a good example of synchronicity.

[00:47:21] That's not a book reading.

[00:47:22] That's a lived experience and kind of like what does that reveal?

[00:47:25] What synchronicity means?

[00:47:27] It's as though you're part of the veil on our own rationality, our explanations for the world, how it works.

[00:47:34] And then we get a glimpse of what's going on.

[00:47:36] It's a circus.

[00:47:37] It's another.

[00:47:38] You know, we have to we could only understand through intuition, not through our own thinking.

[00:47:42] And that was at the time was a revelation.

[00:47:45] I think today still I find myself even as I'm writing again right now, I really have to sleep on some things to wake up and kind of wait for the deeper from the dream world, the unconscious something I wake up to go.

[00:48:02] Oh yeah, that's what I was looking for.

[00:48:05] I can't I can't make it happen.

[00:48:07] I can't like think my way through it after rely on something coming from below to shed a little light and kind of give you those.

[00:48:14] I was like, oh yeah.

[00:48:17] So interesting talk about making it happen.

[00:48:24] I thought I have to tell you with so I'll go, you know, like we can't make healing happen.

[00:48:29] We but we can hang out.

[00:48:31] We can hang out at the bus stop.

[00:48:34] So what I used to it inside you used a changing in your head.

[00:48:39] You also said, you know, change my mind.

[00:48:43] Like to me, healing moments are those moments when our mind changes, but we don't make that happen.

[00:48:50] Something else does right.

[00:48:52] Right.

[00:48:55] I'm trying to pull this quote up as in my on my website.

[00:49:00] Hold on.

[00:49:01] Yeah, I think sometimes we I hate I hate using the word because it has all kinds of political connotations with anymore to be woke or to wake up.

[00:49:14] But what that means is that we we begin to pay attention.

[00:49:17] That's not a very fancy word that is now a lot of, you know, esoteric, you know, Christmas bulbs flying up.

[00:49:26] So this is on my website from a Jashada.

[00:49:28] He was a spiritual teacher here known throughout the world and his quote that I have.

[00:49:33] I think it really says a lot about for time.

[00:49:35] It says, Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you.

[00:49:39] Say yes to its fierce, ruthless and loving grace.

[00:49:43] Just itself.

[00:49:44] Pay attention to what life is trying to reveal to you.

[00:49:48] I mean, that's a big question.

[00:49:50] What's it trying to reveal to me?

[00:49:51] What is it trying to reveal today?

[00:49:53] And then the topper is say yes to its fierce, ruthless and loving grace.

[00:49:58] Well, loving grace is a great deal.

[00:50:00] It's like the big birthday package.

[00:50:02] Oh, yeah.

[00:50:03] Love and grace.

[00:50:04] Grace from God.

[00:50:05] How cool. Great.

[00:50:06] Wonderful.

[00:50:07] And then the next question, ruthless.

[00:50:09] Where are you going to get your ass kicked?

[00:50:11] It's going to be like it's going to run.

[00:50:13] It's going to waterboard you emotionally where you don't know where the next breath is going to come from.

[00:50:17] Or you are a dark place and people go, that's not a place of grace.

[00:50:23] Well, if you're not paying attention to what it's trying to reveal to you, you're right.

[00:50:26] Then you're really trapped.

[00:50:27] You're trapped in the water.

[00:50:28] You're going to drown.

[00:50:29] But if you're paying attention, it's like the Hillman quote.

[00:50:32] If you're paying attention to what it's trying to tell you when things get rough.

[00:50:36] Yeah.

[00:50:37] This ultimately is a moment of grace in terms of my own understanding what this taught me, what this brought to me that I was otherwise removed from.

[00:50:49] So that kind of paying attention to the world is what life is trying to reveal.

[00:50:55] It's much more of a prosaic way of talking about enlightenment and higher levels of consciousness, all that stuff, which I all have its place.

[00:51:06] But I'm a little bit more drawn to stuff that are relatable to every person.

[00:51:11] Pay attention when life is trying to reveal to you.

[00:51:14] When your car breaks down on the road at the side of the highway, you're just wearing like, oh god, I'm stuck.

[00:51:21] It's like, well, what's life trying to reveal to you?

[00:51:23] Well, life's trying to reveal to you that you're a knucklehead and you didn't take care of your car in the first place is what it's trying to tell you.

[00:51:30] Or that it will reveal to you by the end of the night, you're actually much more resilient than everybody you meet.

[00:51:35] You'll find a way to light somebody down or get some gas or whatever you need on your way.

[00:51:40] So those are little moments, but sometimes they can be a little unpleasant, but reminders, nevertheless, ones we need to have in mind.

[00:51:50] And so often it takes a challenge to change our mind.

[00:51:58] Yeah, I think it does.

[00:52:00] That's that again, back to your thing about the Dalai Lama thing is that adversity is our greatest teacher.

[00:52:07] How else would we learn?

[00:52:10] If we don't fail, we're just not going to learn or some other form of frustration with it, whatever.

[00:52:19] So yeah, a challenge for sure.

[00:52:22] Yeah, I was going to ask a question, but that that feels like a really good spot to just to bring this one in.

[00:52:33] And I'm sure we can dive into another one sometime soon.

[00:52:40] Be happy to do that. It's fun talking with you.

[00:52:43] Yeah, you have a good question. I appreciate it.

[00:52:46] I appreciate you. I knew it's going to be a fascinating conversation.

[00:52:50] Anybody that's into the Dalai Lama and Jung is going to be, you know, I mean, I use the word polymath.

[00:53:00] And I as you said that and you talked about medicine, I heard something recently about it in in physical medicine,

[00:53:13] that there's a massive drive for specialization.

[00:53:19] And that will, you know, so polymath thing is multiskilling and specialization.

[00:53:26] And the further people people are driven by this need to specialize further and further.

[00:53:32] But they get they go deeper and deeper in just in just one area.

[00:53:38] And they don't they lose touch with the rest of what's going on.

[00:53:44] Well, you know, educational systems are major culprits and all that.

[00:53:50] You know, I was I said, I interviewed high schoolers who were going to apply to Stanford.

[00:53:54] And most of them are really bright kids.

[00:53:56] By definition, I wouldn't be applied to go to Stanford if they didn't.

[00:53:59] So already in that in that look, Washington Post called it that they're being branded by the time they're in middle school.

[00:54:06] You know, you want to be a doctor? OK, decide now.

[00:54:09] And then we're going to build everything else around your resume around that one thing instead of saying, you know what?

[00:54:14] And I had one kid who got into Stanford said, I asked him, what do you think you want to major?

[00:54:18] He goes, I have no idea. That's why I'm going, which I thought was a great answer.

[00:54:22] So we need to be more disciplined about not exacting fielding to certain disciplines, if you know what I mean.

[00:54:31] So yeah. And I think there's a loop back to the breadth of our the breadth of our healing approach.

[00:54:43] So for me, I think that just Nancy Vario wrote The Primal Wound and I read the following book as well.

[00:54:51] And it seems like in the first book, right, she talks about I said I was going to bring this in.

[00:54:56] But anyway, we're off here in the first book.

[00:55:00] She talks about the the the Primal Wound being a wound to us, you know, like psychology spirits when she it's really broad.

[00:55:10] And yet her healing book seemed to me to be totally about psychology.

[00:55:17] So she she identified a broad problem.

[00:55:21] And then the book that she wrote to ostensibly to to fix a broad problem was itself very narrow.

[00:55:33] That's just that's just my opinion.

[00:55:36] And yet I think that in the same way as you talked about the education system setting up a specialization, we our our healing,

[00:55:47] our healing strategies are aren't as diverse as they could be.

[00:55:54] It's kind of like therapists that do or specialists in cognitive behavioral therapy.

[00:55:59] They're the hammer and everybody comes in is the nail.

[00:56:03] This is what you need because it's what I've got.

[00:56:06] Or, you know, because the old joke about surgery.

[00:56:08] That's that's what they do. They cut people.

[00:56:10] I mean, if you've got a good one, they'll say you don't need it.

[00:56:12] That's good. But, you know, that's what they do.

[00:56:14] So but that narrowness can be well, if I need to have a brain tumor removed, I want to have a surgeon who's damn good at it.

[00:56:22] So I want to polymath for a brain surgeon or a airline pilot.

[00:56:27] I want somebody who's really schooled that particular discipline.

[00:56:29] But in terms of becoming a learner in this life and having the aptitude and energy and curiosity to expand,

[00:56:39] it's nothing but an invitation to expand our our interests and let them take us where they where they will.

[00:56:46] I have a whole I listen to most of my books.

[00:56:50] Books I read are actually listen to on audible.com.

[00:56:56] And so when I look back at the ones that they're all over the place, I just got through with the David Sedaris book.

[00:57:03] And now I'm listening back to the short stories of Rose Hemingway.

[00:57:06] It's like, yeah, it's fun. Yeah.

[00:57:08] And I another one I recently listened to was Black Elves Speaks, which is a marvelous book.

[00:57:12] So anyway, thanks a lot, Stephen.

[00:57:16] And I'm I'm going on holiday in in next month and I'm going to be downloading you.

[00:57:23] I'm all right thinking you haven't got an audible of your book.

[00:57:28] Is that right? Have you done it again?

[00:57:30] Have you done an audio version of your book yet?

[00:57:33] No, not yet.

[00:57:35] So I'm going to be downloading the Kindle version.

[00:57:38] And I'm interested in especially in the Sharon Stone bit.

[00:57:42] And I was asking a rude question around that, but that's for a different.

[00:57:46] I never laid a hand on it.

[00:57:49] I never laid a hand on it.

[00:57:52] But when you're with this tape or whatever this stuff, you send that to PJ and appreciate it.

[00:57:57] Yeah, we'll do. Take care. Great.

[00:57:59] That's a lot. OK. Bye.