Dr. James Hollis: How to Find Your True Purpose & Create Your Best Life

50:47I've gone through some health issues in recent years and So I'm sort of in a physical recovery stage of life and I walk a mile a day even though it's physically difficult Uh, and I find that Revolatory because that's I'm focused on being present here Rather than all of the distractions there and that's one of the things that I have found a form of meditation if you will and what comes up for me is often surprising I've talked before on the podcast about meditation clinical hypnosis something called the yoga nidra Which is a self directed relaxation? Someone's called non -sleep deep rest etc and without taking us on a tangent um I I raised this because we keep talking about meditation and um I think to a lot of people meditation sounds like something esoteric To me as a neuroscientist meditation is a perceptual exercise It can be done to enhance focus by focusing on a specific location behind the forehead or looking at a light It can be um an open monitoring Meditation where you're intentionally not trying to focus on any one thing But at the end of the day, it's a perceptual ex it's a deliberate perceptual shift Um much in the same way that if I decide to you know listen to an opera with my eyes closed That's a in some sense it's a meditation.

52:10It's a deliberate perceptual shift um So a deliberate perceptual shift that we're calling a meditation which I think is a great label for it That is directly aimed at better understanding the one's own unconscious processing so that one can then lean into The stimulus response parts of life with more intentionality with less opportunity to hit the rumble strips or go into the gutter um With a more authentic response to it You see because it's more likely to be coming out of me rather than simply being reactive I think that's the important thing What's so important about what you're saying is that for years now we've heard about you know meditation being important as a way to intervene in the stimulus response process And people say be responsive not reactive and it all sounds so wonderful just as sounding being gritty and resilient sounds wonderful But one of the things that's many but really important here that you're raising is that there are methods to do this They almost always involve going inward or someone Who can see what we can't see pointing out blind spots in us.

53:20That's right Well, I think again the issue is to still the traffic inside and be present to the moment in whatever way that is that's why I said a person can meditate by a work of the hands Or by walking or something that pulls one out of the the cycles that are running their their little script over and over and over So there are many forms of meditating and you know ancient traditions have revealed that too and there was walking meditation and so forth and You mentioned music. I think that's another example to listen to music. I think takes one out of you know Nietzsche said once without music life some mistake And I think what he was getting at was there is a sense in which Music has no purpose except being itself So when we're really present to the music We were in the midst of being if I'm We're at spring right now as you and I are talking and it's beautiful in the neighborhood And so I've been watching the flowers emerge and so forth And and simply being present to that means some of that other traffic is still And then I returned and the traffic resumes but maybe I have a little more of a sense of who I am and from when I'm responding You see as a result of that recentering process You know the Zen folks talk about being no -minded.

54:45I think there it was their way of talking about being present to this moment But but not consumed by the demands of this moment and that's that's a difficult thing to manage, but it's essential I'd like to take a brief break and acknowledge one of our sponsors waking up Waking up is a meditation app that offers hundreds of guided meditations mindfulness trainings yoga kneader sessions and more I started meditating over three decades ago and what I found in the ensuing years is that sometimes it was very easy for me to do my daily meditation practice I was just really diligent But then as things would get more stressful which of course is exactly when I should have been meditating more My meditation practice would fall off with waking up They make it very easy to find and consistently use a given meditation practice It has very convenient reminders and they come in different durations So even if you just have one minute or five minutes to meditate You can still get your meditation in which research shows is still highly beneficial In addition to the many different meditations on the waking up app They also have yoga kneader sessions which are a form of non -sleep depressed that I personally find is extremely valuable for restoring Mental and physical vigor.

55:53I tend to do a yoga kneader lasting anywhere from 10 to 20 minutes at least once a day And if I ever wake up in the middle of the night and I need to fall back asleep I also find yoga kneader to be extremely useful If you'd like to try the waking up app you can go to waking up .com slash huberman to try a free 30 -day trial Again, that's waking up .com slash huberman Perhaps we can talk about the shadow just a notion of the shadow Um, sounds very ominous um What is the shadow and Are people aware of their shadows and if They're not how can they become aware of them and how can they work with them Well, a shadow was young's metaphor for those parts of our own psyche And or our affiliation with groups for example Whether it's a religious group educational group a national identity That when brought to consciousness we find troubling perhaps contradictory to our values or You know, inimical to our sense of self -worth or something like that for example typical shadow issues include our capacity for jealousy and for envy for aggression for greed etc etc Uh, we don't want to acknowledge those things but since when are we exempt from the human condition The wisest thing I ever said about the shadow came from the Latin playwright Terrence to millennia ago who said Uh, nothing human is alien to me Now, I think that's important to recognize in me.

57:31I carry the entire capacity of human nature to express itself Some of those forms of expressions will be acceptable to the society or to my psychological culture and some will not be um, and that's the shadow material And you know, there's the personal shadow and there are group shadows because nations can be possessed by bloodlust for example or or a fashion is a shadow issue where everybody has to look the same way and dress the same way and so forth You know, the more insecure I am as a person the more likely I'm going to try to look around me for one of the clues So I can fit in be what we like others.

58:10Therefore, I'll be acceptable You see that's not a federal crime. That's a very deep complex that is left over from childhood I'm not here to fit in I'm here to be who I am Which at times we'll fit in and other times it won't but that's okay because I'm at least in good relationships to my myself at that point So typically the shadow manifests as being unconscious therefore it just spills into the world through us A perfect example of shadow issues as I mentioned before is parents expecting their children to grow up and have you know The same kind of values that I have for example same religious views marry somebody that I find acceptable etc etc Well, that's not really loving the otherness of the other is it?

58:55It's not really loving a child for their own journey That's them carrying some piece of their of their own unfinished business Secondly We disown the shadow by projecting on some you know those people across that border there You know, they're the carrier of they're there. What's wrong with this world? You see I disown the shadow in myself By seeing and everybody else around me You know actually said what often we find troubling in another person is because they're they're expressing something within our own unconscious Um, you know as a certain itinerary rabbi said two millennia ago I can see the spec in your eye, but missed the log in my own that's a perfect illustration of what the shadow is Thirdly one can get caught up in it That's at times what rock concerts are massive events people are caught up in a mob mentality Where you lose your sense of individual ego identity and become subsumed into a collective mood And you know that could be a hanging mob for example as has happened in history too many times Um, and it could be a force for good or a force for evil But again the larger the group the lower the level of consciousness of the individuals in that group And then fourthly we recognize it in ourselves in a speech at Yale University in 1937 young Said a person who could look at their own shadow and own it He said now has a large problem because there's no longer to blame others for what goes wrong in their life They they have to acknowledge that within themselves and he said further It's a single best thing you can do for your society.

1:00:36This is not naval gazing This is how you lift your unfinished business off of your partner your children Take it back yourself, which is a loving thing to do and a civic minded thing to do if you look at collectively here So how does one Learn what their shadow or shadows well again if you're married ask your partner Yeah, who will tell you immediately What your unfinished business may be Um or your children or your close friend perhaps Um, it shows up in dreams Um, you know, Freud talked about a young man who's just owned what the content of his dream he says well I don't you know For I said well who's dream do you think that was it was your dream you have to acknowledge that that was embodying something within you So um, there are many ways to recognize the shadow often consequences pile up and then one begins to realize well the only consistent person in all the scenes of this drama I call my life is is moi so I have to acknowledge that that's my stuff and That's a very humbling thing.

1:01:48That's why I say this work is humbling not not in flating in some way it's humbling So um again shadow work is never going to be popular because it means I'm taking responsibility And yet what else would being a human being who's responsible and adult like um do except except responsibility You see it's one of the definitions. I would say of an adult person is I I know I'm accountable for what spills in the world through me Yes, I'm responding to various things that happen around me But sooner or later I'm the one bringing my stories my condition responses And something of my shadow to the mix and responding out of that Now that's a witches brew at times as you could imagine At the same time you recognize all right, but that's my business to address Because if I don't it just continues What I observe in the world and what I've experienced before is that Um, certainly we all have shadow sides Um me everybody.

1:02:56I mean, I think that's like I think anyone that doesn't believe that is uh Perhaps not of homo sapiens um, you know Um, maybe other animals have shadows too who knows um, but that when shadows clash it becomes very confusing because Um, given what you're saying very few people address their shadows and these days especially There's no need to make this political. This is just social sure um, we see mobs forming As you said the larger the group The lower the level of consciousness and then it becomes even more Challenging to address one shadow when a There's the perception of an attack Be that attack oftentimes is the reflection of the other group shadow And see people find refuge with people who have similar shadow processes So it um, not to be pessimistic here, but um Perhaps the answer is what you referred to before is to go inward to the self Work with somebody or or somebody close to you that that has your best interest in mind truly best interest in mind And then um, try to resolve that well yes and very few people are willing to do that That's what polarizes societies polarizes groups and and so forth It's it's comforting to find like -minded people, but then they're both caught in the same complex is another way putting that so Ultimately whatever reality is it's going to wear through that and and reveal something that's uh, going to be pretty disconcerting to individuals who who are caught in a collective identification that way You know The shadow comes because our human nature is thrust into various Social situations we can't help but have a shadow You know, I mean we have to socialize a child We learn to use a knife at a fork and not take our siblings food and that sort of thing You learn to look both ways for you across the street.

1:05:07There's socialization. That's important and yet The greater the socialization the more likely there's going to be an interruption. I mean think about those cultures Where people are forced to dress alike for some form of unity or conformity Um, um think think about where a person might have a special gift or talent, but it's not appreciated In family X or Y Well, where does that natural form of expression go? It pathologizes as depression or it It comes out in compensatory dreams or projections on to someone else or where it makes the person ill You know, the only of life can make a person ill.

1:05:47There's a sickness under death is kefir guard talked about it You know, it's it's uh, it's that sickness the bird where the human spirit is being repetitively violated And much in our culture violates our spirits And in spirit is not something you will it's something that that is the quickening of life's energy and service to something and if Your family or your situation imposes itself upon that Uh, to give a quick example my my own family of origin was one in which they were By the circumstances of decades ago unable to attain an education my father worked in a factory my mother was a secretary and um for them life was a series of shaming events And um overwhelming events and the message to me both over it and covert is don't go out there.

1:06:43It's It's too too big it's too much Stay here and we'll take care of each other So one of the first things I did when I was 18 was left I went to college and came back for vacations But what I left psychologically at that point I something in me New that I had to have a larger life than that and I say that with love and respect and compassion for my parents The last conversation I had with my mother before she died of cancer um her ancestor the father she'd never known was from Sweden And I'd had a book translated into Swedish and I told her I thought that would be something that would be nice for her And and she was horrified is like why have you written it What are they saying and I thought she meant reviewers at first and I realized that's the voice.

1:07:34I heard in childhood She was saying you shouldn't be out there now people are going to attack you This will draw attention to you. You see and her intention was protective In her last Days actually before she died. She was more afraid of what people thought Then whether her son was living his journey or not and I say this with grief for her And and that was the message of childhood, you know, it's too much out there And yet Something inside quickened and said well you need to go where those airplanes are going You need to go see the ocean for yourself You need to try to live in a foreign country and see what that's like Um was I was that easy?

1:08:23No, it was doubly hard because of the messages I had But it was just necessary Sooner or later again the appointment with your life. Do you keep it or you're not keep the appointment So that was the first meeting of the appointment was to to leave home and Start the journey, you know in terms of the The archetype of the of the journey it's first is the departure And then you have the initiatory experiences which can knock you down and then the questions do you get up and go to the next one And sooner or later something begins to change inside and you begin to feel that this isn't this is the journey that's right for me It's very moving to hear it because I you know we hear with that we become our parents And yet I've never believed that um, I believe that um for whatever reason Inside us that We either adopt their traits unconsciously or consciously or we resist them 180 degrees in the other direction There doesn't seem to be a 90 degree response as as your example beautifully illustrates That there's something in the brain and in the human psyche that either says Yeah, okay, like that's just the way life is um for better or worse um or says no And you know, I feel I'm 48 years old so I'm still learning to be a full adult um, I like to think there's some neuroplasticity left science tells us there's neuroplasticity throughout the lifespan So I and I do believe that um But I feel like so much of being an adult perhaps just being a human being is about Learning to stand one's ground and say no No, no, no, that's me and this is what's right for me and you're wrong Crazy Or just different and we agree to disagree And then there's the other half of being an adult which is saying oh goodness You might be right You are right Okay, you're right I screwed up or I Need to think at least think about this differently and and the hard work of being a human I think is knowing When you are dealing with incoming messages that are real they Could be from a healthy source or an unhealthy source it's complicated This is why I mentioned this thing about the internet and social media in particular earlier I do believe it's borderline I think if you were to remove the names and the um Faces and you would just put that into a Script you'd say this is a dialogue coming from a borderline person weaving back and forth across the line literally of Healthy and psychotic and so as a human especially nowadays it's complicated um We don't just live in little villages where we go okay that person tends to kind of you know spin off and that person seems very grounded But occasionally makes mistakes too you know um and so I feel like so much of the work of being a I said an adult But I'm gonna replace that with just a human is Trying to know thyself right as the oracle said and own myself and and report that into the world But also to be semi -permeable in a way that's functional is such hard work because in both cases the adoption of what we were Told and what was ingrained in us and is unconscious so that we just live out the script of our parents Or where we say no I'm gonna leave this little town or I'm not gonna live life for relationships that way at all I'm gonna do it this other completely different way maybe unconventional way Both have an element of reactivity in them and certainly both have an element of um kind of uh Um There's like there's a vigor behind it Sure no your your point is very well taken and and and appropriate because it is a paradox first of all In the hidden project a book I wrote on relationship and subtitled the search for the magical leather There is inside of us this infantile and understandable desire to find the right person who's gonna make our life work for us Who's going to take care of us meet our needs read our minds etc etc You see and the other person has that going on in them so they project that on to us You wonder why relationships get so complex you see But the great gift of relationship if you can tolerate it is the otherness of the other produces the Dialectic produces the the enlargement that comes from encountering the other I've learned so much for my wife and I believe she's learned a few things from me Uh are ongoing dialogue because we're both similar and very different at the same time Is one that his at times been conflictual naturally But most the time is a pattern of growth because we we are allowed to bring in that other perspective and see the same reality My my wife has taught me to see some things that I wouldn't have seen before because she's as an artist.

1:13:52I On the other hand there are places where you have to come up as you said against what is central and critical to your own well -being or your own integrity And then you have to stand for that and the wisdom to know which is which at any given time is is not in bread It's is one of those times where we have to find that balancing point Between legitimate dialogue and compromise and sacrifice in a relationship. There's a place for sacrifice But at the same time there's a place where you have to say all right But I also have to separate myself here and and stand for this on the other side of that and You know it takes a solomonic wisdom to know always what's right But over time I think one can get a sense of of what that's about So you know again, that's why we we have to individuate As individuals by definition but also in relationship Because it's the otherness of the others that pulls us out of that self -referential system otherwise we get caught You know in a circular dialogue among our complexes for example as you said it's important to go to the mountaintop to meditate But if you stay up there too long you'll be talking to ghosts You know Your your complexes will be caught in this this looping cycle And you need the other to pull you out of that into the presence of the other and it's out of that the third comes Um Joseph Campbell made an important distinction once he said about Committed relationship.

1:15:23He said if you're constantly sacrificing to the other Um, you'll grow resentful But if you're sacrificing to the project the two of you've Launched to together as a friendship or a marriage or whatever form it takes You can do that in a very constructive way you're fed by that because you're you're you're mutually committed to The project that this relationship represents And that's an important distinction I think Yeah, given that 50 % or more of marriages seem to end and divorce these days. I think that statistics still holds Do you think That can be largely attributed to People not arriving to those relationships with the mindset you just described people not arriving to those relationships having Um, deep enough understanding of themselves prior to that or Something else.

1:16:17I think all of the above First of all young people tend to marry and make babies understandably Um, and then 20 years later in some way they're a different person And it's very hard for the premises that brought them together to still obtain in a developmental and Honest way, you know many years later When you Reach that point then there's a time for re -negotiation or if need be unfortunately the dissolution of that relationship Um, because I had a colleague in New Jersey years ago worked exclusively with the couples and she she talked about starter marriages And she said I've never said that publicly because that sounded too pessimistic But she said if you're lucky your starter marriage will be a good one that will evolve and so forth but for most people That which brought them together was Running from their parents or replicating their parents the relationships or They're they're insecurity about themselves therefore they bonded with someone else who was gonna take care of that for them whatever it was It's been outlived Their their own natural development their life circumstances have changed and then it brings about You know the necessity of some very difficult decisions.

1:17:36So You know marriage marriage is an institution with the best of intentions That is sorely tested over time And you know sometimes it'll survive the test in I would not automatically applaud if somebody's been married 50 or 60 years I would ask what has happened to the soul of that person in that relationship Has it grown has it developed did did they mutually support each other's growth and development or did something get stuck at that point and um Our early family of origin dynamics still dominating that relationship and from the outside we usually don't know the answer to that question But inside you'd have to say what what has happened to this person?

1:18:25And the same is true with parenting you know parenting is very very difficult because We'd like to think we know what's right for our own child, but then They have to spend a good part of their life trying to get away from us in some way as we did ourselves You see and then you if you remember that then you're a little more likely to say, you know I really don't know what's going on here, but I have to pay more attention to what I think is Wanting expression through my child and and support that rather than Assuming that they're going to grow up and replicate our lives nor values as I've said before Given the number of people who do deep introspective work either By themselves are with a trained professional.

1:19:08It's perhaps should surprise us that 50 % of marriages do survive Yeah, you know in a way yes, and and those that survive are not necessarily good marriages In the sense in which the person is growing and developing and maybe stuck they may be afraid of the alternatives They may be bound by economics for example or cultural forms So again from outside you don't know what's happening inside the soul of that individual And it's very important for us to not judge them for that reason Really are you did you described that the painful work sometimes painful work of Really addressing what one wants and really getting in touch with one's soul psyche And how society or we think society might not approve of that and yet when I think about popular culture um Oftentimes it's the people that seem to be living in their own truth That are most celebrated That's true like there's something about the the crowd I've shifted from mob to crowd here to make it sound more benevolent, but but it's still a mob That cheers on the person who really seems to be in there We say full expression or living in their truth But who just comes out and says like yeah, I don't I don't really Care what they're saying about me or what people think I know me I know my own goodness my own intention my own Mission and the people close to me do hopefully they have people close to them and We say yeah like go it's inspiring yes It's why I said earlier many the people in history that we would admire had difficult lives But we admire them because They stuck to some value that was central to who they were and they lived that maybe at great cost But they lived that through Whatever suffering they had to to trans to experience Um again from outside we don't know do we when we see some cultural figure out there Uh Maybe maybe they're manipulative maybe maybe they're caught in a complex of some kind we don't know from outside You you have to say I mean one of the shadow issues how often people will live through a celebrity or live through a pop figure in some way Maybe imitate that person Uh again for a child that's natural and normal on the other hand Uh sooner or later you have to say but my journey is a different journey Maybe they're living theirs, but am I living mine?

1:21:42And I don't mean this in any grandiose way. I don't mean that they have to go out and become something that's noted in the society But to live in accord with something that is wishing it's uh expression through us. That's why I said The final question in life is is what is Wanting to live in this world through me rather than what do I want or what are my complexes want because they're Noisy chatterers in there, you know had a dear friend from another state right to me just yesterday and He's in semi -retirement now and he's been dealing with some health issues and he said Now that I'm not distracted I have time to work on all the goblins of the past that I left behind and he's an analyst So it's not like we get rid of these things.

1:22:29They're lifelong. This is why Jung said we can't solve these things But we can outgrow them. There's a big difference You know you become larger than what happened to you for example You've become larger than that voice inside of you. So you can do this, but you can't do that Um and over time You know something inside of you is wishing that growth and pushing that and again pathologizes when that's blocked So people can be doing all the right things as defined by their values and their environment And it violates something inside That's why we can be quote successful and achieve things and it still feels empty There's no there there You know you get to the top of the ladder and he realized there's no there there And that happens so often in our culture um, I remember one of the Fiscal figures in the late 20th century who had a personal fortune of 400 million dollars And he was asked what was his philosophy of life and he said Well at the end of life the person with the biggest pile wins And I remember thinking how infantile is that just a smart man And elder statesman in his field ultimately went to prison because of some things um, but That's the philosophy of the sandbox.

1:23:49I have the biggest pile of sand. I've won. No, you have it one your debt And it's a pile of sand. What are you talking about? And yet this is what drove the man's life and obviously drove him across so enough lines That it got him into to legal troubles sooner or later and again, I say that without judgment I'm just saying Here's an example of a very achieved person Who's been living an infantile philosophy and as such something else causes him to pay greatly for that Yeah, well, I certainly can say that um Despite having pursued work with a lot of vigor and career that without question friendships And relationships are the most important thing.

1:24:36There's just no question right the Especially when things get hard. That's right. You know, I actually actually have a list In this very book. I won't flip to it now of the people that I'm just really blessed to call close friends I real friends that you can count on and to me it seems and I've always in my sister I have an older sister and she always said you've always been a pack animal. I've always had Big groups of of big -ish groups of friends and it's only I've invested in heavily sometimes to the expense of other things Including work and other relationships, but But the notion that um, you know the material things Or that the opinions of strangers would somehow fill us That to me is like The most foreign concept sure like that's the the most foreign concept but um, but clearly some people operate on those metrics that's like of course and my guess is that they have a a a reward horizon That is you know tack to whatever it is the Algorithms are they get them that thing and so it must feed some reward mechanism that hasn't distracted enough like locked into this One mode of time perception.

1:25:46You know, just hit the mile mark hit the mile mark Hit the mile mark so that they're not aware But when you take somebody like that who's been doing that for a lifetime and you say wait You know, you're on this track going around and around and accruing trophies But actually that track doesn't go anywhere doesn't lead you into the world That's right. My guess is that they they just they've been doing it so long that they're like an animal That's just been you know, right digging a trench in its zoo confined Sure cage Which is something I'm finding with a lot of the men that I see I'm I'm happy to see right now in my practice several men between 60 and 80 and 182 And of course they've been conditioned to work and then suddenly You know on Monday morning, I've stopped and think who you are you get up and you go to work and you do what you've done all these years And then suddenly you don't do that.

1:26:40What are you gonna do? We say well, I'm gonna go play golf every day. Well, okay go do that But typically within three or four months the depression comes and they'll think about well I need to get back into doing this or get doing that you see So often We find people defined by exactly that kind of mentality. I've finished the first lap So what do I do run another lap and run another lap and he realized you keep coming back to the same starting point That's why I say it's not what you do. It's what it's in service to inside that makes a difference So is that person being successful by external standard?

1:27:17Yes, whatever that means Does that mean that there's psyches going to cooperate and give them that genuine sense of satisfaction and something? No, it won't it's autonomous. It's not going to Get co -opted into that And sooner or later, you know chickens come home to roost and then you have a depression as I experienced and And or you you find your relationships are in tatters all around you so sooner later, I mean No revelation on my part nature will express itself and if If we live long enough and then everything that we pushed underground is going to be coming up You mentioned men in particular, so now it would probably be a good time to Ask about men in particular you wrote under Saturn shadow, which is how I initially learned about your work and then I listen to some of your lectures online.

1:28:12I'm still in the process of reading your other other books, but let's talk about archetypes stereotypes of men and women with the intention of course of better understanding what's real as opposed to what stereotype so in the Let's call it the 30s 40s 50s 60s view of men in the United States and elsewhere. There was this notion of kind of like the stoic and work and duty and And to some extent a fair amount of mystique right like it wasn't really because With fewer words we have less awareness at least of what people are saying who knows what they're thinking Well, they talk a lot or not But there was this idea of the The male as somebody who did stuff Maybe thought about it But didn't really talk about it much Nowadays things have changed This is born out in the statistics on college campuses about how many people seek therapy Um, if they have an issue it's gone from like 15 % to 85 plus percent at least roughly in the statistics I've seen so but in terms of males and their sense of duty and how they're supposed to be in the world Um, I would think just the way I just laid out the little you know By all admittance like just very antiquated now view of maleness um That they would be thinking a lot about what's going on it would meet some of the daily practices that you talked about earlier That there would be reflection that there would be um Consciousness there would be Uh, an understanding of one shadow or if one were to add in the the other stereotype that went with it that they drink a lot right that was very much I'll remember my first I went to graduate school first at Berkeley before I shifted to a different place um And I was told when I got there that it used to be that the faculty and graduate students Of which at that time in the 1970s and 60s was mostly male mostly now that's changed fortunately right That they would meet every day After work to drink and then stagger home to their partners every day and I was shocked like you kidding me I was like no every single day.

1:30:48So you know that the idea here is that um that was the old view Now things are very different, but what about the work of Men and boys to try and understand their own psyche better what what is the What are the things that are specific to them that you've talked about and then we'll turn to women and then Uh, we'll do our best to bridge the divide in a conversation not well um Just to go back to our earlier conversation for a moment, you know Why would those men have to drink? Every day and the answer is because there was some deep pain that they had to anesthetize Of which they were by and large unaware or presumably they would have the opportunity to address whatever that was um You know and i'll come back to that in a moment I've been asked often to speak about men by women's groups and by the way Men's groups have never asked me to talk about women right is that right?

1:31:48That's right You know individuals such as yourself, but it's mostly women's groups have asked me to talk about those strange creatures called men And I say imagine these three things First of all that you cut away all your close friends the women that you Share your worries about your marriage with about your children about your body Your love life or lack thereof You know those people are gone forever. There's no one you can share that with Secondly, um, you have to sever your link to whatever your guiding source may be called your instinct or your intuition Whatever it is that's that's cut off.

1:32:24It's not acceptable And thirdly your values the human being will be defined by your meeting abstract standards of productivity as defined by total strangers in your culture And sooner or later no matter how much you win today You'll wind up a loser and then thing as you hold that off as long as you can so keep running all right And women hear that and they think well that's horrible. That's horrible How lonely that would be how isolating that would be and of course it is it's self -extraising You know my my poor father was pulled out of the eighth grade sent to to work in the factory worked All of his life in that factory and and by the standards of his day He was a good man.

1:33:06He supported his family. He didn't run away. He he accepted the responsibility But I also know he didn't live his own soul. I know that and I had clues here and there and I even saw that as a child um and and so When I started reflect on man I I realized I had my own inhibitions about that And I was fortunately enough as a therapist. I would say all right What would you say to someone who expressed these inhibitions? I would say all right there There's some Some fears here that you're defending yourself against what's that about? So I thought and then I had a voice in me that said but these are secret You don't talk about it Then I thought well that's my duty isn't that I have to bring some of those things up And so that's what led to the writing of the book under san and chato and um I suggested a number of those secrets one is men's lives are much as much governed by role expectations as women's lives are Less so today, but in the past they were ironclad right Um, and they they're net effective those roles with self -extranging, you know, you are your function.

1:34:17You are your duties um men's lives are governed by fear -based responses And there's a certain level of competitiveness that is central to to men's culture women learn through the years probably out of necessity To cooperate and support each other um and and they can get through difficult Things by doing that for for men. It's you're always having to demonstrate Your competency in one area or another and the one thing you don't want to do is be a loser You see it's a zero -sum game winners and losers and um Ultimately, there's a deep deep longing for Whether there's a fear of the feminine so called that can include the feminine within Hence men's astranging themselves from themselves at a client many years ago who was sent into therapy by his wife saying You know, either you go to therapy or I'm out of here So he was there very reluctantly and he walked and he saw a box of tissue there a Kleenex box and he just kind of sniffed at that without saying anything And I knew exactly what he was saying But I acted like I didn't and he thought I'd missed the clue and so what he Pointed the box and sniffed again and I said what what's this about and he said well you had a woman in here before Don't you I'm not going to be needing that And I said, you know, every man has a lake of tears inside of himself and a mountain of anger in there and I said sooner or later And he said no, no, we have other better ways of dealing with that And I thought well our prognosis is not very good here He he left after about five sessions because it was just going to ask more than he was capable of So there's a fear of the feminist like I have to be so much in my masculine mode of combativeness or competitiveness or Expression of competency.

1:36:10I can't afford anything that one would undo My my shaky hold on that. Wheresoever you see macho behavior You see fear -based overcompensations what it amounts to right You know saber -ravelling rattling is is always a fear -based response And and underneath there is a very deep longing, you know for the wise father for for the The person you could see some modeling from who would teach you something who would share with you wisdom He's learned along the way and so you know the condition of modern men and things have changed a great deal And I think partly stirred by the Revolution in in the history of women You know and and their courage in addressing these stereotypes about what a woman is and what she's supposed to do with her life Required men to start looking at themselves as well So women have done us a great favor not always recognized by men But you know in both cases you have to say all right the message you have from family of origin and culture May or may not work for you, but you're here to in a certain way Deconstruct, you know those expectations and and find your own path you see Uh, the Spanish analyst Irene de Castillaje long deceased now talked about the difference between focused awareness and Thuse awareness and I think rather than talk about Gender which is a social construct coming out of this culture or this culture or this culture Talk about those are two different modes of orientation to the world and we need both We need focused awareness that's goal directed behavior that is historically associated with the masculine And we also need this awareness of context and of relationship So this focused awareness without relatedness leads to sterility and isolation and on the other hand Too diffuse without a sense of directed and purposeful behavior You know means that one is just sort of fumbling once away through life too.

1:38:22I've always said to women in therapy You know To be a man is in a sense your requirements to know what you want and to do it But you have to do that too and what you don't call the animus that is to say the so -called inner masculine or the inner focus to awareness and That goal directed behavior is what moves your life forward in a purposeful way But for men it's it's about becoming aware of again context and relatedness What happens if I have the biggest pile of sand at the end of my life? Well You know, obviously you can't take it with you, but in the end it's only sand money's only money What was your life about that's the question Women have to ask that men have to ask that and Sometimes the culture is supportive and that process sometimes it's supposed to that and and then that's when you have to engage in a fight Men and women have a A common summons here and they can be very supportive of each other as well as you know celebrate their differences And recognize um, you know as men are beginning to recognize If you don't address what's going on inside of you you're you're going to be Simply a creature of adaptation and you're going to lose your way sooner or later Um, when I came back from my training in Zurich in the 70s Um, I would say my practice was 90 percent women and 10 percent men Today is the reverse 90 percent men.

1:39:55I don't put out a shingle and say I'm see men or women. I see both but I think again, it's the changes in men now they they recognize They're lost in some way the old masculine definitions are no longer applicable You know a lot of this happened with the industrial revolution where fathers and sons work together in the same trade If you were a Tanner you Tanned, you know if if you were Carpenter you you built houses if if you were shepherd you You know worked with a sheep and so forth Um, and you sort of learn who you are from your rubbing shoulders with the father well Today men go away to the factory or go away to the office and sons are at home with their mothers, you know, and their female school teachers and so forth and so There's again this deep hunger for the initiatory father the the the supportive father In traditional cultures where there were rights of passage they recognized the importance of separating the boy at puberty in a simpler culture.

1:41:02Yes, but at puberty It wasn't initiated by the personal father or relatives. It was by the elders in the tribe Often wearing masks or painted faces because they were archetypal forces They were not the neighbor down the street. It was like You're in the hands of the gods now and They require you to leave home and we're going to teach you things, but we're also going to Bring about some forms of isolation and suffering for you To begin to realize that you have within you the resources to undertake this journey What we have now is is a whole culture of uninitiated males who haven't left home psychologically speaking You know in the past they were simply governed by masculine roles and now as those have dissolved for many men Um, there there's very little sense of well, what does it mean to be a man?

1:41:53What am I supposed to do as as a man? And the answer basically is go live your life Find find your path find the courage and resolve and resources to sustain that over time But you know how to do that is there's no model for that It's you have to sort of find that yourself you see And that's what brings people in the therapy at times and it's interesting that I have right now this collection And it's consonant with my own stage of life journey too of of I only have one man under 50 and All of the others are interested in how you deal with aging and mortality for good reason And they're also dealing with how do I define myself other than my work And and that's where the Unlived life often is coming back in a very useful way all right Although there are some things that have left and not coming back In terms of the changes in the body and that sort of thing but basically Now is the time to address this emotional developmental spiritual life That is to say do you have any concept of a story that's larger than the stories of your complexes You see doesn't mean one has to be part of a religious group.

1:43:09It means that you have to question what quickens the spirit in me What stares me inside what touches me Where do I encounter the Numenus and the word Numenus means there's something there that that Causes this reaction within me. So if you and I walk into an art museum would say And you're touched by a particular painting and and frightened by it or moved to tears by Ed or whatever and the other person walks by and is indifferent Which is the right well? It's not right or wrong. It's this here correlates with something in here That's what caused that resonance and that resonance is your engagement with something Numenus for you You don't have to know it or explain it or whatever But you have to value it and ask what is it that was touched in me and if it doesn't speak to me duty or convention or expectations is insufficient to make it happen We can't will these things to be Numenus Numenosity is something that's defined by one soul and not by the collective.

1:44:15That's for sure And women and men in time I think we'll find that they have Very similar goals in their life and that's how to balance My journey with the legitimate commitments of relationship on the other side and That's why we have that wonderful word sacrifice, you know Not surrender sacrifices for cherry to sacred Sock for cherry to make sacred If you're sacrificing on behalf of a value that you is right for you and for your project together Then you're both served by that on the other hand You don't sacrifice the journey of the individual spirit too And again, it's about balancing that as best one can And there's very little in our culture that rewards that But then the price is again the symptomatology that comes from to the surface And from a psychodynamic standpoint we don't say well how quickly we'll get rid of the symptoms We say why if they come What are they asking of me?

1:45:19That's why as I said my first question in therapy was how quickly did I get rid of this depression get back on the road You know the career is them road right and and I came in time to realize it was my psyche saying you're on the wrong path fellow You don't know it's not so much that it's wrong. It's just not right for you. There was a big difference here And you're gonna have to find a different kind of conversation in your life and so forth And during my training I was obliged to you know do my Clinical experience. I was working in a psychiatric hospital in New Jersey And sometimes I was shuttling back and forth the same day between the psychiatric hospital a locked word in the and the University campus and I came to realize the conversation in the hospital was more real somehow was more more about things that mattered And that's what began to to you know further my resolve to move from academia to Being a therapist or you know a working therapist and and so forth so yet The point is I need to add this my way of responding to The family of origin and social context stuff Was to retreat into the life of the mind I didn't realize that's what I was doing at the time That's why the psyche had to reach up and pull me under and um Then I came to realize that the fears that I had in childhood were the ones I had to face that met life the difference being I was bringing the adult's capacity To the table that was not present to the child so Quick example in my first week working in the psychiatric hospital I was signed to a kind of grizzled old ex -military guy who was the my mentor Without asking me took me into an autopsy it was his you know, let's initiate the new kid kind of thing you know Well, I realize it was a test.

1:47:24So I stayed cool and so forth all the while I'm seeing this human body you know cut up and so forth in a radical way and and I realized all that I had fled in childhood was right there on the table before me and it continued to perseverate in my dreams and so forth and I was back in Zurich in my own analysis and I talked about this and my analyst said quite rightly He said when you've dealt with your fears the fears of others will not be so threatening to you Because the closed ward I was in was a times violent and so forth and was not a pleasant situation But I could feel my own sense of Purpose and gravitas in that situation after that.

1:48:08So it's like we can run but you can't hide or later What you've avoided will show up in your behaviors or your blockage in your behaviors So it doesn't go away it goes somewhere I'd like to just hover a bit on this idea that um, you know On the one hand our work is to understand ourselves and what really feeds our soul Um and to try and live that forward as much as possible in a benevolent way one would hope and on the other hand anytime we Are in the relational aspects of life in particular romantic relationship as we sort of framed it here um because I think with friendships And work relationships oftentimes it can align with the self in a different way um And it's our work to try and as you said sacrifice to sacrifice one for the other one for the other in a way that over time allows both to Not just persist but grow And I'm also thinking about what you said earlier, which was you know, we should be cautious about immediately applauding the 50 year marriage Because oftentimes there's a soul death in one or both people Um, and that we don't want to celebrate that and yet There's something pretty impressive about a 50 year marriage as as a um If for no other reason as an endurance event But we have to be cautious about rewarding endurance events like that because in as much as they sound to be about love I mean, there's also the endurance event of the person that was a stockbroker for 50 years and got to the end and then walked out of the Stock exchange or stepped out from behind the computer monitor and went oh Wow, I missed a lot.

1:49:56That's right. So um There's no Handbook for this of you know, you spent 15 minutes here in the 30 minutes there ratio of two to one children absorb energy and When their health or other issues in a relationship then The nut you know energy goes you know as well um so What's the you know What's how does one guide the rudder? I mean, uh, does it require third party support? I mean, I mean, I've often thought this that because we evolved presumably in small villages where there was support that at closer proximity than perhaps we have now Um, people that know both individuals and have the best uh In mind for both Um and for the collective.

1:50:47I mean is there the idea that like every Romantic couple should have a third party train counselor to guide them seems like a not a bad idea Although I think people are pretty resistant to that and of course it takes resources, which is always an issue Well, there's nothing wrong with having the third party conversation from time to time That's for sure. We have to remember that What we call therapy is a relatively modern invention How was that addressed before you're right at the village level when people were living in Vitalized mythological systems That a sense of relatedness to the cosmos first of all who are the gods Whether whether do we go when we die what's this life about you know there's every tribe had its story Secondly, what is our relationship to nature and to live in harmony with that nature as opposed to violating it repeatedly for our own purposes Thirdly Who to whom do I belong?

1:51:50Who is my tribe? Who are my people and is that a Life -serving or life -suppressing experience and fourthly is the mystery of individual journey By what lights do I conduct my journey and so forth and of course Those mythological systems were not particularly interested in the development of the individual But they're certainly about the individual being subsumed into the the tribal experience at least you have a sense of belonging erode that and people fall out of that into the abyss of the self as it were You know put it this way said you know people walked off the medieval cathedral into the abyss of the self in one of his letters you see and It became a cultural contrivance with the best of intention To help people find their path And deal with whatever their psyche's reaction to you know again Typically not always but typically what brings people to therapy is that their belief system or their conventional practices are no longer working for them I had a client from Houston once who said in his AA group their slogan was this isn't working for me, but I do it very well That pretty much summarizes the first step of going into 12 step is that recognition That's right You know 12 step of course provides so much more but applicable to all of us that you know our our our practices sooner later We'll often because they're driven by these Stories that we carry interpsychically They don't work for us, but we've learned to do them with certain facility and so forth And that's when the discrepancy becomes so difficult then one has to to face the you know the the fire so to speak Then what matters is how am I to conduct my life in the face of these circumstances which I'm not able to solve in the old way and That's the adventure and that's the challenge and at the same time it's intimidating to to many people understandably So sooner or later again one has to say is this your life or is it someone else's Most people are not living their life sadly.

1:54:06They're living reactively. They're living whatever the stories were And I put stories not in the sense that they're not so conscious as such as they are Representing whatever message we internalized and produced a splinter narrative Again, when triggered it has the power to to govern our behaviors So I again you start with your own patterns and say where did this come from I wasn't born with it Pattern is something that is replicating itself as a result of this story spelling into the world So you know what what I learned in my own life was I had put so much of my emotional distress Up in the world of the life of the mind which was rich and valuable I don't repudiate that but it was two one sided And what I had to do was come back and face what was on the operating table in that psychiatric hospital The world of repressed emotion fears etc etc It's like both are true now See if you can honor both of them and when you do something grows and develops within you to respond to that in a new way So we've been covering a lot of human universals and things that everybody Should think about and address We talked a bit about things more less specific to men um What about women what what are some of the um unique psychic challenges That um that they face and need to address in specific ways sure Well First of all each woman has to examine what was the message given her by her family by her mother Her family extended family expectations and role models And cultural setting and so forth and say is is this something that supports my personal growth and development or not I mean, that's a kind of inventory men have to ask that same question as well um We we have to acknowledge that biological differences suggest if you're a woman you're the one who's going to be carrying that baby And still in our culture the major responsibility for it while shared by father and mother hopefully Still is something you have to attend And many women are trying to have it both ways as we know the the career development and and being a parent at the same time I saw a survey some years ago that um a large number of women executives all at MBAs and at all have achieved you know like vice president status or something in their corporation When asked around age 50 would you do this all again Almost a hundred percent said no It cost too much for me it cost me too much They felt something else was missing they they felt friendship was missing They felt intimacy was missing in many cases they felt parenting was missing or it had gotten short shrift you see Um as as men often face when they look at retirement they you know as they old saying you On your deathbed you don't say yeah, I wish I spent more time with the office You know, it's like I wish I'd done this or that I know a few scientists who to this day say that they plan to die in their office It's always a sad thing for me to hear this yeah, I also know their children in many cases and that's uh Mm -hmm about Mm -hmm four fifths of the time is not a good picture.

1:57:41That's right. Yeah, that's right us again Not all right those four fifths, but um because other colleagues are spectacular parents, but I grew up with the children of a lot of academics and A lot of times it ain't a pretty picture. That's right So I think that Another thing that men in our time really need to learn is If you're in a relationship Part of your role is supporting the growth and development of your partner And the more insecure the man the more threatened he will be by that because she might go off in some other direction you see Um, and that it means sharing household duties and sharing child care and so forth which you do to the best of your ability Having a child and having two careers requires an enormous amount of juggling as we as we all know But you can do it in good faith with the best of intentions if not resentment builds And one -sidedness builds so I I think For for women they still need a partner That will buy into the notion of genuine reciprocity in our responsibility to each other and to our our work together Which includes child rearing Without which women are unduly burdened you see unfairly burdened And I don't think we've solved that one yet I think that's still open and in the in the culture at at this point On the other hand, it's it's stunning to see Women grab hold of the opportunities available now I'm living in a retirement community as of a year ago and so many of the women that I've had dinner with my My wife and I have dinner with various people have said well when I was at this stage women were not allowed to do this One woman was a scientist and she said I just wasn't recognized in the physics world until like late in my life And you forget how recently that was the case.

1:59:39I mean that was that was a deep violation of the human spirit What it was routine and so many of the women that I see there who are going to be over 70 most of them are over 80 They lived in a world that was not unlike a segregated world You know just as you know I grew up where segregation was Practice by half of this country. It's not so long ago somewhat hard to fathom um How much things have changed and yet also how much things persist that's right. That's right Well, and you know the 60s happen and what this what happened to the 60s is a A kind of Resurgence from below in both men and women some men and some women To overthrow the sort of oppressive nature of role definitions and so forth, you know I mean you couldn't think of marrying a person In another religion for example, but you couldn't think of marrying someone of a different race I mean it was the price of that meant you had to go live in Anonymously in the city somewhere or you couldn't be gay for example The love that they're not speak its name as it was called um All of that's been radically challenged and rightly so And yet what that does is bring about a world of great freedom greater freedom But also ambiguity, you know if this isn't right well, but what's this and what's that and people are troubled by ambiguity And so therefore there is there's always a reactive nature in in some individuals who are fighting that you see So again, it shows up in various issues of racism whether we have abortion or not or whatever the social issue may be A lot of what's playing out there is the traditional role definitions versus a sense of the autonomy of the individual to live his or her journey you say I'd like to shift a bit to discussions of pathology or um asserted pathology nowadays I think thanks again to social media um or no thanks to social media um There's a lot of use of psychological terms um narcissism projection Gaslighting uh Clinical diagnoses.

2:02:09I mean I admittedly took the liberty of saying that I as a non -clinician view the The landscape of a lot of social media as as borderline and I have no credential to be able to diagnose an individual Let alone the internet, but so I'll be clear about my limitations whenever possible but There are real pathologies of the of the psyche of the mind I'd be curious about your view of the ones that tend to capture people's Attention the most you know, I mean I think we now understand some of the neurochemical basis of certain child psychiatric challenges Schizophrenia bipolar in particular OCD particular sometimes by way of which medications they respond to or don't um But that alone doesn't allow us to understand their underlying mechanisms I think a lot of that is still mysterious but I'd love um to get a different perspective on these things which is the psychological perspective which um of course embraces biology But looks at it a little bit differently.

2:03:17So um Yeah, what what are your thoughts about the way that these days um these words are slung and um And And what's your view about our actual treatment for these uh for these conditions both for the people suffering from them and The people that suffer because others suffer from them. Yeah Well, you're asking me to speak both as a therapist and as a citizen, I think and I'll address the first one first um Part of the therapist role is to differential diagnosis in other words If a person comes in with a depression we have to try to define what kind of depression we're talking but they're different kinds of depression Is this a reactive depression?

2:04:02It's only pathological if it lasts too long or lasts Interfeers with their normal functioning too much and that's a judgment call If a person's grieving the loss of something important in their life the loss of a marriage would say It's appropriate to feel a depressed for a certain length of time until life's Challenges move one forward and so forth there is um biologically driven depression Which can be approached with medication although many of the antidepressants are very limited in their success long -term therapy tends to be more effective as various studies have recognized albeit there's a you know an economic cost of that And then thirdly there's what you can call an intraceiking depression which is what I experienced Was that you know There were certain parts of my life that had been walled off and and you know that was crying out pathology comes from the Greek word pathos which means suffering And logos which means expression of so pathology means the expression of the suffering Psychopathology's expression of the suffering of the soul So what is it in terms of this person's natural desire to live in a meaningful way that's interfering with her life Is it biologically driven?

2:05:21Is it a function of the social context in which they live or is it some Personal task that they have to address and that kind of differential diagnosis is essential and as you said There are certain conditions. They're predominantly Biologically driven such as schizophrenia bipolar etc So secondly then speaking as as a citizen You know The internet and I don't want to get lost in the internet again But it's like it's a vast open stage in which whatever is unaddressed in people can can be put out there without censorship Without reflection without the other being represented and you know it it allows people to To reveal whatever is going on within them With without genuine dialogue And of course you can have opposition but what has to happen typically is again associating with like -minded people I must be right because these other people agree with me you see So you know any of these terms can be misappropriated and and will be sooner or later So what one has to say is we can only make diagnoses with you know observation over time It's very hard Initially to to know what's really going on as I mentioned What we do or what someone does is logical what we don't know is what it's in service to inside of them And you will not get much sense of that by the internet because it's too superficial That's why it takes repeated observation and conversation For that to emerge The reason I keep coming back to the internet is I think it's where most people get their information now Uh -huh Unless they're listening to this as a podcast.

2:07:11That's where they're going to get this information um I think what you said about um the lack of dialogue being really key I mean, I think we see this now also at the level of media. We have a very polarized media. Yes This is an independent media channel. We don't have a political stance Despite what some people might assert we don't right it's about signs and health information to the for everyone who is interested Zero cost that's that's that's the the mission understood um When we read and see things now um about politics but also about business about sport about celebrity about Kids about culture All too often that the labels of psychology are placed on those kids are depressed They're you know, they're not just lonely.

2:08:02They're depressed and they may very well be Of experiencing high levels of clinical diagnosis of depression that that could be true. So You know my concern. It's a it's a real concern, which is why I keep bringing this up is that In doing that that we both um diminish the suffering of those who are really suffering from those Pathologies and we also perhaps Create a little bit of catastrophizing about you know feeling low for an afternoon Might be a great source of stimulus to go like you know right or think or nap or insight and You know I load to think that in people learning terms That somehow they're getting further away from what they need.

2:08:51No, I agree You know, let me pasture from which from whom we got pasteurization of course reportedly put over the entrance to his office Tell me not your politics or your religion tell me only your suffering And I always think about that in the context of therapy because Everybody's a suffering soul because you know life is difficult and then you die. So have a nice day, right? Um, life is suffering and that's not that's not pessimistic. That's just you know descriptive The question is what is that suffering make you do what does it keep you from doing? That's the central question There is where the person is called into some accountability You know if you're depressed or what's the task that that depression's asking of you Uh, if you're anxious Where's that anxiety coming from how much of that is archaic how much of that it was inherited from family How much of that is what you know unique to your life And what is the task that is to be addressed there?

2:09:58I also wrote a book called swamplans of the soul that deals with anxiety depression loss betrayal etc etc And sooner later life is going to take us to swamplans where you find yourself really mired in the And one will feel very much victimized in that way, but that's that's the passive experience The summons is always what is the task that this Visitation to the swamplans is asking of you What do you need to address if if you feel that your partner betrayed you and left the marriage for example All right, and took your self -esteem with that all right Well your task is the recovery of self -worth because without that no other choice you make is going to be very good Um, and maybe that's a hard project, but that's nonetheless the work you have to do So always the question what does this make you do what does it keep you from doing And to bring responsibility back to the individual and of course some people are willing to accept that responsibility Some are not and that makes the difference.

2:11:03I had a colleague many moons ago who said She could tell in the first hour whether the person she was seeing was a big kid or a little kid Because everybody's recovering child and the big kids could do the work The little kids wanted someone to tell him what to do Or tell them that there's an easy fix to this Um, and in the long run uh those persons gonna stay stuck pretty much Until something else happens in their life perhaps Well to me it seems that the the litmus test is the extent to which somebody is pointing fingers at others Or yeah directing the work towards themselves Regardless of who was wrong sure one individual both individual like regardless Ultimately, I think what you're saying and forgive me for interrupting is that if one is asking what is the task Develop what you know to control one's anxiety to develop stronger sense of self to To better understand What one really wants and assert that um to Set better boundaries so that um people's projections are not as permeable to us whatever it is ultimately There's no business of Looking at what others are doing wrong in that it's all introspective and self -directed thing Well, and you gave a good example of the kind of tasks that rise out of a person's experience Now for example if a person has been subject to serious abuse and childhood physical or emotional or sexual or whatever Um, it's affected their entire life.

2:12:40Well, what is the task? You know, it's it's it's to rest From that experience a sense of self And that one is still here to live one's journey as why I said it uh the beginning of our conversation I'm not what happened to me I'm what is wanting to be expressed in my life through me To get a person to that place take some time and repetition frankly You know the two hardest things I ever learned as a therapist I still don't like either one of them is patience you have to sit with it over time You have to sort and sift and sort and sift and hold this over time till something else emerges and secondly powerlessness I can't Fix anybody right?

2:13:27But we can try to promote the attitudes and behaviors that will allow that person to find what is right from within them Because something in each of us always knows what is right for us If we pay attention and if we are willing to honor what emerges and have enough courage to address that Then we can live in a different way and it's very tough in the face of Substantial abuse for example Because it was so intrusive and so devastating. It's cleared out a space in which the self seems to find no room But that's that's the task then is the recovery of a sense of self and purpose that's independent of what happened to oneself It's almost as if one needs to really understand their own story, but then Be able to Depart from that story.

2:14:18Yeah, that's why I said one has to have a larger story than what happened to you right One has to have a larger story than the story the one's culture gives you or your family of origin gives you What is that story? That's why I said My instructions and my models were to stay home and stay safe Something in me Hunger and I honor my teachers to this day. I honor a local librarian who showed me any book She said she recognized this kids a reader So she said to me you don't have to stay in the children section you can go anywhere you want in the library Which I thought was like having a lot of candy.

2:14:59I enjoyed that And as a child I devoured the biographies of famous people because I think I was looking for clues about how do you live a larger life I couldn't have language that it was just some deep urge within How do you live this life in a way that's more satisfying and? And I was privileged to have some people there notably teachers in the librarian Who gave permission to that and and supported that and I'm and I'm grateful to them. So um, you know, I I think It probably would have happened anyway, but much later in life But I I look back and I realized there was something there that wanted to go as I said to see where the airplanes went What the ocean looked like what it meant to live in a foreign country What it meant to learn a foreign language You know all of those things were unimaginable to my family and I you know rest their souls um Because I I grieve the life they were not allowed to live, you know, I I've never forget that and then it You know causes me to resolve again to stop and say all right now where are you being blocked today by Convention or your old fears or or your inhibitions or or whatever because there's there's always a summons to show up In fact, I'm one of the books.

2:16:26I said my motto which I think about every morning is very simple Shut up suit up show up now. I'm speaking to myself when I say this shut up means stop whining You know, there are people who don't have food today. There are people whose children are being killed today There are people don't have a roof or you have tons of things Shut up don't mind speaking to myself suit up Means prepared do you or homework don't expect life just to present it to you have to go out and work hard at something Show up meaning not show off, but just do the best you can Step into life, you know sooner or later life knocks us down Death is the great democracy But you're here to live it as best you can By lights that matter within instead of what people around you're saying, you know And as simplistic as that slogan is I know a lot of people have copied it and put it on their refrigerator because It's a reminder of this is your life You're accountable.

2:17:33What are you going to do about that? Well, that's in kin for everybody. I think um shut up suit up show up is uh is essential I love that I Love Erick's stages of developmental maturation Um for those not familiar Erickson I think another dain right said dain yeah Um psychologist, you know it said about to Um kind of explain neurobiology without knowing any neuro biology and asserted that there were specific Core conflicts that infants and children young adults and adults go through um And the age it the age ranges are more uh variable now Based on life expectancy and other factors than they were originally But one reason I like um Erickson stages development so much is that Um as a developmental neurobiologist first that's where I started out more or less Um it makes perfect sense to me that the brain circuitry would be resolving certain things about Interactions with physical objects and relational objects and it just makes perfect sense and what what genius it was to um to superimpose on that um Some ideas about what infants are doing from zero to one then from three to five etc Rarely if ever do we hear about the maturation stages of adulthood and the core conflicts that we all Have to go through um, you know perhaps not exactly from age 45 To 50 or 50 to 55 or 75 to 80 and so forth but that life as it were might be a series of um trying to make it through specific milestones and when we don't make it through a milestone um problems arise sure You described the first half of life as one in which we're kind of foraging more or less for most people unconscious of how our parental influences or family influences um Said about certain patterns that may or may not be healthy for us and then at some point some event comes Oftentimes a painful event But that but it could be a joyous event like the birth of a child or something like that and all of a sudden we get hit square in the face With the work that we need to do Would you say that the second half of life is one in which we Be Because of our life experience and because of some awareness and yet because also our Brainness yes still plastic, but it takes more work than when we're kids to to modify our brains or cutry That we you know that we have to set about this juggling act of Still trying to understand the self while still bringing the self that we have into the world right we don't we don't really get to pause go to the shop And um come out a year later in most cases um so Regardless of whether or not somebody is 10 15 20 50 or 80 years old How do we know what our work is Then like how do we best know like what to focus on because it can be be a bit overwhelming To think about like tackling all of this sure Well, let me say first of all many years ago I was when I was still teaching at university I taught a course on life stages and For one of the papers I asked the students to imagine two stages ahead of them So if they were typically 18 to 22 let's say To imagine themselves in their 40s and try to write about their life in their 40s And the assignment completely failed Although it it was made useful For the classroom discussion Because all of them imagine in their 40s They would have this perfect marriage Their adolescent children will would adore them and they would be in these satisfying careers despite everything we'd read Everything we talked about as a time of turbulence and disappointment and and so forth And it was a complete failure So it's hard for us to imagine that we too will go through these similar kinds of things, but usually we do And some of this is triggered by roles in one's life a lot of us determined by our own aging of the body and so forth So for example the last stage in Eric's and some discussion In so -called old age is the conflict between despair and integrity And I remember reading that when I was young and wondering what did he really mean by that now?

2:22:22I know that in a very personal way Despair is one sees friends die One sees avenues in your life closed that you can't possibly do that You're confronted with the unlived life or the mistakes you made You're dealing with loss of functions of the body you're facing your mortality and so forth and so on And how could you not despair in the face of that? Well at the same time there's again the summons to accountability What now is life asking of you? How are you to show up today in in this changed environment? you see So you know the the stages of life You know and Shakespeare wrote about the seven stages of life I think ericson had age stages and again underneath this These things happen right And often one doesn't realize it and one reads about it somehow sort of like when you're young Yes more time I understand I'm mortal But you know that happens to people out there, you know, it's not part of my DNA You see Well, it is and sooner or later life is going to unfold unless it's cut off in some way, you know And I remember reading when I was in graduate school A saying in ancient Greece that I saw in several different environments And it said best of all is not to have been born Second best is to have died young and I thought she how awful that is right Well, I think I've understood why they were saying that if you if you You're born into the veil of tears so to speak You're born into suffering.

2:24:03You're you're you're born into mortality. You're born into loss and so forth If you're going to live you're going to go through some of those if you live long enough you'll go through the loss of people you love and care about You may outlive your children as I've had an experience and Sooner or later, you know, life will take you to these difficult places and What are you going to do then who are you then and how are you going to address that and that's where the issue of integrity came Man, and I think Erickson was was right on then to in to be a person of integrity means to integrate something to pull back one's Stuff and and since this is who I am and and this is where I stand vis -a -vis this dilemma So I said the practical question is how now I might to live my life in the face of this situation That's a task that comes to each of us at some place in our life and that never goes away Let's talk about death.

2:25:01Okay I've often wondered whether or not the human brain's ability to Adjust the aperture of our time perception is an adaptive thing because Where we to not be able to do that We would probably always focus on the fact that at some point we are going to die this to me is analogous to Situation in space not outer space, but let's just frame it this way We can orient in time and in particular under conditions of stress. There are time horizon tends to shrink We have to solve for now. We get the troubling text message somebody's that we care about is intro We need to solve for now. So the time horizon has shrunk We're on vacation.

2:25:54We're relaxed. Everything's taken care of we're fed we're rested our loved ones are safe We're safe and all of a sudden we can daydream and so um In the space domain The brain can learn to navigate a small environment like this room Um and in conversation we're present to this room, but We can also imagine that we're just two people among billions of other people floating on a planet in the galaxies and we can expand our notion of space the space time dimensionality of perception Of the human brain is vast And it can be consciously controlled or unconsciously controlled So that's great. It allows us to be functional in a number of different space time dimensions um It also can allow us to avoid the reality which is that at some point our time here is finite.

2:26:44Yes And the example you gave earlier of somebody who was just trying to pile up as much money to get to the end was an example I think of a short and time horizon Other compulsive behaviors maybe even addictive behaviors I would argue have some component often of Being a way to avoid the reality of death It's a way of packing away the fear of death because if you can create these reward based Which eventually become punishment based in the case of addiction um Milestones and and algorithms that the brain is running solve for this now solve for this now solve then you stave off the reality which is Death is coming Are we as humans meaning is it our work If we wish to be the most conscious healthy version of ourselves To Understand and acknowledge our sense of mortality I think of the um what I consider the great commencement speech of Steve jobs at Stanford in 2015 where he talks about the the knowledge of one's mortality is actually in his words more or less One of the most important features of our self -recognition as humans um So that's the question and then the um the challenge becomes how often to think about it um, you know, I think about too much and it can uh Because it can be paralyzing it can lead I mean if we just think that we're if we acknowledge that we are indeed It's a fact just two people among billions floating around on a planet in the middle then then nothing really matters Right our one can get the sense that our impact is zero but if we over Emphasize our impact thinking that everything we do like the movement of this book is going to impact molecules That then will impact so you go you go crazy you become dysfunctional in a real way So those are the two extremes and I'll just kind of set that about and and let um for Reflection but it in terms of our Our sense of our own mortality and what that means about our sense of life Seems like a pretty big topic And I know you're writing a book about this and I'm very excited to read it when it comes out Well, I've actually written about it before um The paradox here is it's mortality that makes this life meaningful If we were immortal We would simply do this for a century and we'd get bored and then we do something else for a century and they get bored and it's something else for a century Life is short as as Jung said that short pause between two great mysteries from once we come we know not whether we go we don't know The problem is the identification of the ego one of the things that's occurred Is in many traditional cultures that ego was subsumed as I said into a larger story Take away that story and what's going to fill that space the ego, you know my my own importance my self -propeptuation The fact that people have frozen their brains and wanting to be revived in some future You know era is a good example of denial.

2:29:50It seems to me It's it's Life means something because your choices are finite. You don't live here forever Now when the more you identify with the ego the more threatened you're going to be by that Um, and then you begin to realize all right the center of my personality is not the ego There are several things to say about this none of which is proof of anything simply observations Uh, and Jung pointed this out in a essay once called the soul and death um psyche doesn't seem to recognize Uh, its own termination people who are overtly dying and they know they're dying and I one of my patients right now is a glioblastoma Client who's who's not going to be here in a few months Um, who's securely aware of of mortality But the dreams have to do with the journeys and crossings and things of that sort You know, in other words is if the human psyche is not bound by time and space per se but the ego is So if there's another life it's another life You know if there's a life after this is another life.

2:31:01This is the only one we know about for sure And I would say in terms of the fear of death which most people don't want to talk about but sooner later it comes up in therapy No matter what stage of life one is involved in You know is either There is another life of some kind which is larger than my imagination can conjure up Or there's an annihilation of this ego identity either case my Theories about it and my anxieties about it are rendered moot So again the more identified with the ego consciousness the more I'm tied into its perpetuation the less I'm identified with that the less it matters I would say to you at this moment.

2:31:49I'm trying to be as honest as I can about it The chief thing I worry about is I approach my mortality Uh, is I don't want my wife to be alone I care for her and I know there are areas where she needs my help and I want to be here for her as long as I can And my existence a little over a year ago was sort of problematic coming out of the all those surgeries So that's one reason we move to retirement community so there'd be some structure there for her Secondly, I don't you know want to suffer obviously But that's outside of my control And and thirdly I'm still curious as a human being there's so much to learn and when we're talking about the internet and its Parals it's also an enormous learning tool.

2:32:32I love to google up things and find out about things that used to be so difficult to learn about So I still heavily invested in the adventure of life, but I'm less and less um attach to it in some peculiar way Um, it's the ego attachment, you know um The German word galoson height mean is the word for serenity. It's it's the condition of having let go And the only solution so to speak for our fear of mortality is accepting it paradoxically Of letting go of the fantasy of the sovereignty of the ego that it's immune somehow to the natural order of things the natural progression of things Now I'm not saying that makes me Holy unoff rate of death that would be delusional and it's in another way But I can say that I'm not defined by it in any way and I think you're right a lot of people what what it usually produces is either depression and And torpor of some kind or frenetic activity So the inability of a person to relativize the ego in the context of the idea of the soul And does that so perpetuate?

2:33:48I don't know if I knew I would tell you I I wouldn't want to keep that a secret. I don't know. It's a mystery Maybe I'll be a conscious enough to experience it. Maybe I'll just be annihilated either way as I said My present speculations are just that speculations and ultimately irrelevant And again the thing we have to recognize it's mortality that makes this life mean something Because your choices matter You're here a short time What are you going to do with that precious gift you call your life? What are you going to do with it? Well, I can't think of a more appropriate place to and and yet I have still so many more questions But I think Because of today's conversation I realized that those questions are Questions to ask of self As I think everyone listening and watching this surely is stimulated to ask many important questions of self I must say I'm both a bit awestruck frankly because I You know again, I'm familiar with your teachings and work in the form of books And it was a great wish of mine in my life journey to sit down with you face to face and have a conversation so That's why I'm Speaking more slowly today than I normally do my audience perhaps will notice that And if they send some emotion it's that I feel like there's just so much richness here to take in For myself and for everyone listening to take in I'm certainly going to listen to this again and take careful notes We likely will put some notes and some highlights we always timestamp everything so that people can navigate back But I think there are just so many Essential prompts of the self of the soul that people are going to be motivated to take as a consequence of hearing your words today so I just really want to say Thank you so much for the work that you've done and that you're doing and continuing to do And for taking the time to share this This information with us because it's it really is It really is that The guts like the core stuff of of being a human being So thank you so much.

2:36:13Thank you Andrew man. Just ask and add as a footnote here. There's a wonderful letter of Poet Rilka to a young man in which he said You want the answers The key is to find the right questions and live the questions You're not yet ready to live the answers But you you ask the right questions in time if you live them honestly with as much integrity as you can manage Someday you'll live your way into their answers for you and that's what I would say Ask large questions as children we did What was this about why am I here? What's what's the story what's going on here We get so enured to those questions by our adaptive necessities And we have to come back to those questions.

2:37:01I'm still asking those questions. I've do it consciously now Ask large questions you'll live a large and interesting journey ask small questions and it gets diminished somehow another Thing I say to a lot of patients when you reach a Sisyp point in your life. We have to make a decision on one way or the other Ask does this path enlarge me Cycle spiritually or does it diminish me and you usually know to the answer to that If you choose the larger path you're going to grow and develop it. It's going to take something out of you But it'll give something to you If you don't your life gets narrower narrower narrower and narrower and something inside of you knows the difference and sooner or later the psyche is going to show up with its point of view and The more we fled from that kind of question that kind of conversation the more pathology is going to you erupt When we've avoided the big question.

2:37:56So thank you for Asking big questions and thank you for inviting me to be part of this conversation today. It's been a privilege and a pleasure Thank you so much Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. James Hollis I hope you found it to be as insightful and practical as I did If you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel That's a terrific zero cost way to support us In addition, please subscribe to the podcast on both Spotify and Apple and on both Spotify and Apple You can leave us up to a five star review Please also check out the sponsors at the beginning and throughout today's episode That's the best way to support this podcast If you have questions for me or comments about the podcast or topics or guests that you'd like me to consider for the Hubertman Lab podcast Please put those in the comment section on YouTube.

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2:39:38James Hollis And last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science