Hints and Guesses

The Earth is Flat

This week is about conspiracy theories, fantasies and our strategies for avoiding impermanence and the abyss. Enjoy!

How Not To Be A Narcissist

Sick of the news?  Let's talk about Echo and Narcissus, a David Whyte poem, flannel shirts, and Gandhi's well know imperative, "be the change you want to see in the world."  Enjoy!     

Stuff that Helps! 5 The Magical Other

"You complete me!" Not really.  As a follow up to the last episode on the Shadow, I'm diving into the image of the Magical Other.  Let's talk about projections and fantasies in intimate, long-term relationships.  And how to grow up.  This episode is in my series Stuff that Helps!, where I popularize stuff I've found helpful.  This week will be about the work of James Hollis, a Jungian Analyst and author who coined the phrase the Magical Other.  According to Hollis the fantasy of the Magical Other is one of the chief sources of suffering in long-term relationships, not to mention a kind of false god in the Western world.  Enjoy!

A Little Podcast on the Shadow

With so much finger pointing and blame right now, let's talk about the shadow and projection.  Ken Wilber calls shadow work the great gift of psychology in the 21st century.  So what is it?  How do we get close to the possibilities and invitations hidden beneath our conscious awareness?  Enjoy! 

We've Lost the Plot 7: It's the End of the World (As We Know it)

We've lost the plot again!  Let's talk about The Apocalypse, which really means "to reveal." With so much anxiety and fear, is there a reason to be hopeful?  What does the destruction and renewal symbol have to teach us right now?  "No one ought ever love their suffering/but no one ever loves without its pain/as we die we come to wondering/if there was something we could not yet see/that winged Thing that merges with Earth's suffering/to make us what we would otherwise never be." (Rilke)

Step Away From the Enneagram Part 2

The last podcast created some controversy, so let's go further.  In this episode, I bring in some other voices on the subject of "know thyself" - I discuss the early adolescent tensions of authenticity and social acceptance from the work of Bill Plotkin, the traps of identification according to Cynthia Bourgeault, radical consciousness from Ken Wilber, and the Cosmic Dance of Thomas Merton.  Enjoy! 

Step Away From the Enneagram Part 1

Know thyself! The gifts and limits of the enneagram, from my experience. Enjoy.

Co-creation and the Feminine Imagination

This week, woman's soccer, Exodus, liberation, co-creating a better world and the gift of the sacred feminine imagination.  Enjoy!

We've Lost the Plot 6: Being Worked by Parables

Through the analogy of dreams and how they work on the ego, I argue that parables, because they're archetypal and symbolic, are meant to disrupt, disrobe and dismantle the ego - who we think we are in the world. This week, in my ongoing series on the Bible, I explore how parables can work on us.  They're not just clever stories with moral lessons that need to be deciphered or interpreted correctly.  Listening on this deeper level does not mean you need to believe the stories, or hold certain views about the Bible, or even believe in God.  It's more like we're being invited to open up to the characters, the emotions, the landscape, and images of a parable (or any mythic story for that matter).  This way of listening helps reveal the hidden contours of our own psyche - where we need to grow, where we're stuck, the leading edge of change for us.  Being worked by parables feels like, "Surprise!  You're not who you say you are, or who you think you are.  Change your life!"  Enjoy! 

I Don't Recall (Memory and Imagination)

Stuff I've been pondering - the soul's code and her aims, raising kids, our post truth culture, the underworld pool of memory, "what to remember when waking" (David Whyte), the un-lived life, "concealment of Being" (Heidegger), and the relationship between the past and a new imagination for the future.  Enjoy!