Julien Oomen is a Dutch/French, Amsterdam-based musician who draws inspiration from spiritual ceremonies and personal stories with their trapdoor to the universal. Julien is currently working on a long cherished project: For the first time he will be releasing an album with songs in the French language only. The album is a collaboration with his mother Marinette Oomen-Myin, who wrote the lyrics. Most of the songs have a double perspective throughout time, as Julien asked his mother to write new extra parts to poems she wrote when she was 20-22 years old. The album thus encompasses a time span of more than half a century.
Alchemy from a depth-psychology perspective has much to say about personal growth, metaphysics, spiritual transformation, and the individuation process. In this podcast episode, Howard Teich adds dimension and texture to this fascinating topic and touches into the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung; comparing and contrasting their work. Alchemy is a word heard more and more often yet its meaning is mostly lost. Alchemy conjures vague mental pictures of robed men stirring large vats of bubbling water, apprentices cranking spigots to keep the fires burning. Half witch, half wizard, a definitely crazed scientist from sometime in the middle ages is the commonly held understanding. Recently the word is heard more often to indicate some kind of transformational shift that has taken place or is about to take place. The nightly news, for instance, might say casually “what’s needed now is an alchemy of change in the House and Senate.” And, on a personal basis, relates to one finding their path in life toward creating their greatest contribution to the world… their magnum opus.
Howard Teich 00:07
They were projecting their psyche into matter. And it’s that projection. And the fact that the alchemist use nature as a metaphor system, they didn’t make a difference between spirit and matter. I’m like what started happening was science and certainly what the church and all of the philosophical traditions which had God were some something in there, and so the alchemists were looking below the surface and projected so what Jung points out is that they were finding psychological gold
Clay Boykin 00:50
Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. My name is Clay Boykin, I support this podcast through my coaching practice. I help people visualize and harmonize find direction and meaning or simply get unstuck. Contact me at Clay boykin.com for a free consultation. Now here’s the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate male
Dennis Tardan 01:14
hello world it’s me Dennis and Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. I’m done a start on I’m co hosting this episode with the founder of the new compassionate male and in search of clay Boykin. Hey, Clay.
Clay Boykin 01:30
Hi, Dennis, what a great afternoon we have coming back with us. I think now for the third time we’ve been together several times is Howard typisch. My dear friend, thank you.
Dennis Tardan 01:42
Brilliant, brilliant Howard. What a difference you’ve made in my in my life, Howard, how I look at how I look at the world differently. Honor and lunar have come into my life how have actually had a paradigm shift and my perceptions of the world through your work. And when you’re doing honor. And I understand today that we’re you’re getting a chance to to help me especially clay has had much you’ve had a much deeper understanding and work in alchemy than i
Clay Boykin 02:13
Well, yeah. But barely scratching the surface. And thanks to Howard, I’ve got a little bit more appreciation. But yeah, you’re right.
Howard Teich 02:22
Me too. I only have a little appreciation of the depth of this imagery and this architecture that has been around really, maybe from the beginning of carrying the fire. And certainly through Egypt, and particularly in the Middle Ages, which is what young made a big Carl Jung made a big discovery of power and that I think the future of his recognition is going to come from his having discovered alchemy and the collective unconscious mind. All came from his work later on in his life in discovering alchemy.
Clay Boykin 03:04
And was alchemy. I just want to kind of set the stage. So please alchemy is is ancient by name, I mean, going back into the Egyptian times and earlier, is that correct? I mean, they actually use the term
Howard Teich 03:20
I believe so the translation,
Dennis Tardan 03:24
but how and how it came through the ages when I went when I was growing up in this when I heard the word alchemy, they basically said we’re turning lead into gold. And that was it was a process to get rich. That was that was the this was the depth of my understanding, which is only an inch deep. It’s much more complex and much more interesting than that. So could you give from me from from an ignorant perspective to how would you tell me about this so that I could understand it at a deeper level as to exactly what’s going on here?
Howard Teich 04:04
Well, I think that metaphor system came about because the alchemists were really a concept of quantum physicists, of that time trying to figure out what spirit and matter were knowing there was something in matter that they were searching for. And, and because they didn’t understand what was there. As Jung brilliantly points out, they were projecting their psyche into matter. And it’s that projection. And the fact that the alchemists used nature as a metaphor system that didn’t make a difference between spirit and matter, unlike what started happening was science and certainly with the church and all of the philosophical tradition. which had God were some something in there. And so the alchemists were looking below the surface, and projected. So what Jung points out is that they were finding psychological gold. But because they didn’t have the ego development that we now have, they didn’t realize that. And so they actually thought it was matter. And it was the pre chemistry. That is pretty much when alchemy died as a as a as a metaphor system, about 1600s, although Newton was an alchemist, and deeply has a lot of his journals, up and translated, but essentially what Jung pointed out, is that the alchemists were unconscious of their projections in the matter. And so because they didn’t have the modern ego, you get to take a look at the unconscious, the collective unconscious and their imagery.
Dennis Tardan 06:06
So how did you become interested in alchemy? How did that how did that battle fire in you?
Howard Teich 06:14
In my complicated years of when I became a psychologist, and got attracted to dreams, and I thought the the only person I really understood was young. And I had no idea what I was getting myself into. So I began to read Jung was in Jungian analysis with some of the world’s most interesting new hands in the Bay Area when I was living there. And I kept seeing that Jung at some point, I began to talk about alchemy. And I knew there was something hidden there. And, and so I began to do what I could to understand. Particularly his work, I mostly stayed with his work. And began to read the three or four volumes that he produced towards the end of his life. And I knew there was something there and it took me years and years to get the thing that you mentioned, which is the lunar masculine. That came because the alchemists were mostly men. And so most of it was the male psyche, as it turned out, and in Young’s last night, in his last great work called mysterium, can Yun Tian us the mystery of separation, and synthesis, in psychic alchemy? There were some pictures that were I thought weird. They were in his other book on alchemy that was actually from quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli, his dreams, it was just loaded with all the classic alchemical imagery. But in that book, there were only a few. And there was a sequence that had these two men and one body with two heads. And there were three or four of them that were there. And I couldn’t figure out the weirdness of the pictures. And I could figure out the what they might mean. And because in that particular volume, they were printed in black and white. At one point after trying to understand them, I realized that the alchemy plates were in color, because they saw the colors, his transformation, energy transformation. And so I realized that in that volume, the pictures had descriptions and colors. So I took some markers on like me, I began to color them in. And at that point, I had begun to study deeply. What was this unusual part of male mythology that I had read about from Joseph Campbell’s work as original work call where the two came to their father, which was from the Navajo sand paintings, a series of sand paintings, that he read the story and told his commentary on this twin hero mythology. And I had never heard of this twin hero mythology. I’d been pretty much steeped in the hero with 1000 cases in that part of Campbell’s work. And Campbell wrote this major blog major commentary five years before He wrote here with 1000 faces. And he really didn’t return to it. But stayed with the hero myth that we’re all familiar with. But there was this weird these weird stock pictures in that last line was a young that had two men. So I’ve been studying, trying to understand what it meant that what was the difference between what I had grown up with, and most men understood about maleness and what it meant to be a man was the hero’s journey. And I had never heard of the twin arrows. And I found it. Every indigenous culture. And pre Judeo Christian cultures had twin male heroes and their mythic system, as well, as I began to notice in indigenous cultures, they also had dual females. They didn’t call them twins for some reasons. But I began, so I was very intrigued. And when I came across these pictures in that last volume on the stream and young pianists, I realized that one of them was called the hidden to be revealed. And I thought, wow, if there’s something hidden from the alchemists that they had, this must be really significant. And so I began to as I colored them in, I realized that what the change was, was that they were ended up standing on blue feet. The two legs were turned blue and the transformation I knew enough about alchemy and color transformation. I knew that that meant something. And then I had been studying all these different myths about the 20 Girls, particularly the Mayans, at that point that Navajos and I realized wow, child born of the water was a figure of the Navajo method in the Mayan story with a twin heroes who played on the ball court, which many, many of your listeners may have been down to the human hand and seen seeing Chichen Itza in some of the Mayan rooms. The twins were born in every single culture I could find almost every culture I could find as the part of the creation story and it’s only and Roman culture at Romulus kills Rebus and what we’ve lost in Western culture was one of the twins. And so I began to realize that blue now that was water, and and the Mayan story that began to really tell me, because after the twins were called down to the underworld, to meet the Lords and lords of the underworld, because they’re making too much noise, and they were bothering them down there. They went down with the arrogance of the archetypes thinking, well, we’ll just defeat them. Well, they ended up defeating them in the ballgame. But they realize they’re mortal and couldn’t live and they died. And one was born as the son of one was born as the moon. And that was the wake up call for me. Because in Union analysis, and all the most of Jung’s writing, and really not even fleshed out was actually this ancient male moon god. And he was the twin to the Sinad. And so alchemy began to be the piece that changed my life. Because up to that point, and much of the conscious, amazing still, how it’s the feminine side of men, that has talked about to be the compassionate emotional side, rather than the male boom God as that part of masculinity that was separate from the moon, goddess of the feminine. And that began to be the orientation point. So for me, Alchemy, had this extra special transformation and secret for me, so that’s that’s how I came across. Really alchemy and the value personally and emotionally to me and people that I’ve had a chance to share this with. It’s affected some people right away deeply like the two of you, and others and others just don’t relate to it, they keep attached to the, this one’s hero, because you have to let go of the ego identification of what masculinity is to really see the fullness of the organic nature of what it is to be a man that includes both these archetypes
Clay Boykin 14:50
and if I’m, if I’m hearing right, the tradition I remember Karambu talked about this, you know, the man has got develop the female within him and the females got to develop the masculine, the male within her. And that seems so plain. And for me it’s problematic because it’s gender oriented. And, and that gets to be charged because you know, me telling Laurie you need to develop the, the male within you. She’s got to take that too well, right
Howard Teich 15:31
women don’t take it as well as men do. Yeah, developing their feminine side, which is still the dominant myth.
Clay Boykin 15:40
And it’s that language, right? The essence of what you’re talking about. It gets there, but we’ve been using the wrong language and it becomes charged, which cause from my vantage point is an under current of energy that that drives polarity
Howard Teich 15:57
right on. Well, that that is that you really see that polarity, when you see Western culture develop around a solar hero myth where one twin kills the other. I haven’t come across any other culture where one twin killed the other sometimes they didn’t get along sometimes our enemies, oftentimes they were friends. But the murder of that part of the masculine, I think, is what is the big shadow Brinkley of the world right now. And certainly a men.
Clay Boykin 16:32
And so what you’re saying is that the twins, the men that are twins, the traditional or the dominant, the male is killing off the, quote, female aspect of the man. Was that what you’re saying?
Howard Teich 16:49
Only in Western culture in Western culture, right? Yeah, no, no, that that’s what we’ve killed. And that’s what I grew up with. And, you know, we all grew up with that only understanding the single hero story, rather than the twin hero story.
Dennis Tardan 17:06
What amazing and what what, what an amazing experience that is, are we the only culture are we the descendants of this culture? The only major culture that this came from? Would they have this in the, in the, in the pan, Pacific Island and Asian American cultures? Like Chinese or
Howard Teich 17:29
you have you have it there. The one I’m most familiar with is the Chinese culture, the yen and the egg. But you have it there until Confucius about 500 BCE, takes and makes the Yang female and Tao ism which preceded it. It was actually Light and Dark Sun Moon. And so Eve and it is so dominant that most people get attached to this contra gender side because of the Yin and Yang and Western culture, and people won’t let it go it is really they’ve done a great marketing job I’d love to have that marketing company that’s done it because people you know are really it’s very hard to get rid of because we’ve been basically brainwashed with it. And so you know, there’s other cultures that have two spirits but in indigenous color soon as indigenous cultures God dominated by a dominator sure most of that’s what went away because dangerous
Dennis Tardan 18:43
Howard, what is that done to us today? What are we where are we today in in our culture and how can we use alchemy and what how are you using it to where we can actually I have a an opportunity to access this what are what are the roots in?
Howard Teich 19:02
Well, I think the for me the the crossroad right now. Let me bring in one other historical thing. Young had the honor of working with a quantum physicist named Wolfgang Pauli, who was considered Einstein’s, you know, a real pure of Einstein’s and, and his volume. He used Wolfgang pole his dreams to illustrate alchemy. And so as I began to understand this, this twinning and began to scratch just really trying to scratch the surface. I came across the kind of fundamentals of what most people believe is the core of it. I’m in quantum physics, which is the concept of complementarity. Both and rather than either or. And so we are no question in an either or world, and certainly has exploded in the Balkans, again at this whole other level. And so that I’m beginning to understand and as quantum computers come on, and whatever it’s going to be this Metaverse, that is going to have a different kind of conscious experience of engagement. And it is really going to give us a chance to be willing to have the option to surrender the ego, and not use binary thinking, as a black and white way of looking at the world. And nature. Because the radicalness of the cost of binary thinking, is probably the thing that makes it almost impossible for there to be a transformation of almost everything. So my practice is to try to look at trying to look at both and rather than either or. And it’s it’s a conscious habit that one has to develop. And I think that without going into all of the alchemy, about which most people are, it’s kind of the core of quantum consciousness. And all of a sudden, I’m getting all these fires about quantum this and quantum that workshops here and there. And I’m not sure about, you know, I’ve been to some of them and
Dennis Tardan 21:52
buzz word, Howard. We’ve, we’ve adopted it, and we’re and we’re getting into it, and let’s, let’s go ahead and yeah,
Howard Teich 22:02
but they’re kind of this, it’s so simple at one level, to think of both and rather than either when you hear black and white thinking,
Dennis Tardan 22:11
exactly. But you know, I think about it, I think about it in in a in a continuum instead of it by one or zero, it is somewhere along the continuum between one and zero. And as we as I move along to the to the one which is at one meant, or atonement, or being, I am somewhere along this continuum, absolute darkness to absolute light. And as I move along this continuum, I can move a tiny gradient towards one. Or if I get into fear, or lack or that kind of thing. Yeah, I’m a little graduating toward the darker part. But I try to look at it along the continuum. Is that a? Is that a way of framing it?
Howard Teich 22:59
Totally? And I would say, Yeah, because we are a continuum of energy. And we’re in these cellular forms, that are a manifestation of this quantum energy. Yes, for from the cosmos. And if I could say to your listeners, I would say that you two are the two people that my first conversation with you where we got into this, both and I have not had that experience very often. So whatever it is that you two are contributing, and these podcasts and and your other work, I would really highly recommend that people keep understanding what both of you are doing, because you’re carrying it on at a architectural level, not just at an ego level.
Dennis Tardan 23:52
Thank you. lovely thing to hear. Yeah,
Howard Teich 23:55
that’s true.
Clay Boykin 23:57
You know, what comes to mind, I mean, this this whole search, you know, this search for the compassionate male is we’re picking up knowledge and wisdom for everybody that we talked about. And I said, Well, I heard this here, Howard, how does that fit for you? And so it’s a snowball effect of knowledge and information. And I know at times I’m holding it all. I don’t, I don’t understand it. But I feel like there’s something there. There’s an energy there and it keeps keeps growing. Yep. And for me to sit here and say, Well, I can explain it all. There’s no way but I can I can I don’t have the words to express what I’m feeling with the momentum that we’ve got happening here. I appreciate
Howard Teich 24:47
the wisdom of not saying all or nothing. What is the difference? The if you have a chance, you know, just at the most esoteric level, many A lot of the esoteric systems end up with a sun and a moon i. And since they’re connected to the left brain and the right brain, and people are more used to talking about the left brain being a linguistic tool, and the right brain gave me the emotional tool, it takes complementarity to do both. And, and that’s really the to me, the biggest thing that I think I, you know, we’ll get make a breakthrough here and people’s thinking, to get out of the subject object metaphor system. Yeah. And to move into reflective consciousness, not projections.
Clay Boykin 25:47
You know, one of the things I agree with that one of the things that, that I’ve been able to verbalize it is this whole notion of the, the plurality of, you know, absolutes, you know, this or this, and there’s anything in between is compromise. Well, no, this to get from this point to this point, there’s infinite points in between, which to me is now looking like infinite possibilities, right? Not compromise where nobody gets what they really wanted, no, has infinite possibilities of what that space in between is, for me, at least,
Howard Teich 26:25
yeah, no, I think that compromises when the ego is still attached, it’s just going to the other end, and hasn’t really surrendered. It’s black and white point of view is kind of in the back of the brain. So you know, as somebody is trying to expand, but unless you’re going to surrender the ego attachment to binary thinking, you’re gonna be caught in a binary world. And then see in a new way with fresh eyes, since it’s our the information that we’re making up anyway, and to get out of the projection into the energy flow and be informed by the interior life. As a reflection, rather than an object, that’s an art. And as that’s the, to me the modern art of alchemy.
Clay Boykin 27:19
I just saw a visualization, because we’re talking about, you know, this or this. And this, this ego keeps us in into a compromised conversation. And the release of the ego allows us both to lift up higher, and lift our sights higher and aim at something higher than either one
Howard Teich 27:38
and expanded ego. Because ego, that’s a child of the unconscious, but the ego thinks it is the unconscious.
Clay Boykin 27:51
Damn ego
Dennis Tardan 27:52
over identification.
Howard Teich 27:54
It’s really, you know, you can look at indigenous wisdom built around that twins story. Now twins, as a metaphor of complementarity is what you know, I think people are searching for and getting those people who don’t want to think in binary terms. And there’s most you know, plenty of people are never, certainly in our lifetime. I don’t think they’re gonna give up the binary request. But it’s the healthy ego that’s built with its Remember, it’s where it came from, rather than think it is it. That’s what we’re talking about the immune and ego to power the you need a healthy ego, hopefully, and complementarity.
Dennis Tardan 28:40
I love that idea, Howard, because I always thought of that I always thought of that when I would miss read a lot of this the a lot of the text and psychological texts that you know that we that our goal is to kill the ego. The ego is somehow evil in that and I thought, well, now, I have this physical body and I can eat cake and feed it all kinds of empty calories and I will damage leading this body. Alright, well, couldn’t ego be the same thing? would there not be new trick nutritive ways of making healthy ego?
Howard Teich 29:17
Yeah, because the ego is part of the body. It’s an emergent phenomena. Yeah. You know, some people think the modern ego happened, you know, 2000 1500 years ago, as opposed to collective ego, and the transition that was going on at that time, mostly into monotheism. But that came along with it was this thing that I think is now called the ego that if it still remembers that it’s built on nature, not an object is how the subject object might headset
Dennis Tardan 30:00
exactly, you inside view inside yourself. I’m because I’ve only done this. I’ve only had this a few times and sometimes in meditations a couple of times in one night when I was in some kind of a psychedelic experience, to read to understand that my ego and who I really am are two different.
Howard Teich 30:22
I’d say they’re complementary,
Dennis Tardan 30:24
yes, they are complementary, but they are but that but I, when it’s when I over identify with the self, or the self Exactly, right.
Howard Teich 30:35
This was if I could bring in the word self, which, and mandola what I Jung’s major things was trying to figure this out. And I would encourage any listener that really is interested in alchemy to read his auto bio, his biography at the end, memories, dreams, reflections, because he goes to a couple of chapters, he really goes into the importance of alchemy,
Dennis Tardan 31:03
is it understandable to people who do not have the kind of depth and the study that you that you have, would we
Howard Teich 31:10
is it that’s what, that’s where that is his most successful writing. The rest of his writing is almost, you got to really be willing to do the work. But no, that was written when he was 80. And it’s review of his life. And you might not be people might not be interested in all the different parts of it. But to really see, other guys, where this came from was an honest struggle, trying to understand the unconscious, and came across, after he really had this tragedy with Freud, were they couldn’t get along, because they had a different definition of the unconscious. And boy thought it was sexually driven. And you thought it was something in addition to sex, and they had a big breakthrough, and breakout. And I kind of finished by 1913. And your work went into retreat. And he spent five years doing an amazing amount of self discovery. And in that he was quite the artist, and talented. And as it turned out, the poor five years into it, he began to draw, and he began to draw my dollars. And I wanted to bring this in for people that know Clay and clay, his work. Yes, and that’s clays new book, which I have not seen the cover up. And that beautiful color blue, hopefully, is seen as the lunar masculine for men and a lunar feminine for women. And, you know, but that was his big breakthrough. And I want to tie this into alchemy, because he realized in about 1918, that there was a center and he called it the self. And it was an archetype. And at that point, he had withdrawn from the world give up his professorship in Zurich, and, and had pretty much stopped writing and then from then on and till, let me just kind of jump forward to 1927 ish. Were Richard Wilhelm, the man who wrote the chain, or translated it, that a lot of people are familiar with seminal book called The Secret of the golden flower. And it was an ancient Taoist alchemical text. And he saw a mandala in there that made him realize that the mandala was the self and that alchemy was the through line because as a scientist, he didn’t he wanted to find out if there was a new there, if this was going to be accurate that what most of us, many of us now think is the way the world works on the collective unconscious. And many of these amazing discoveries a new him did. It was his discovery of mandalas. That was the beginning of the center of himself. And that was, and he stopped doing mandalas in 1927 28, when that book was published, and that’s when he really went in and collected these books in Europe, about alchemy, which were in Latin and Greek, and many other languages. So the mandala that clay has in place work is really your centering device that that you’ve discovered is the art A type of wholeness, that’s transpersonal. And so deep. And so I wanted to tie the self, and the mandalas in for your listeners. So I’m sure some are familiar with that part of your work.
Clay Boykin 35:17
I so appreciate you saying that Howard. You know, for years, I was drawing this thing. And it had four quadrants to it. And, and I, it was just innate, something was happening. And I was using it in business for 20 years. And I would put this together and what I’ve since learned is the term quaternity. I’d have the pieces. And then I put all this stuff together, trying to put the puzzle together. And once I put it all into context, I had this big sigh, like, Oh, there’s the answer. And that’s what I saw. When somebody showed me the Joseph Campbell, quote, you know, it’s about taking and putting all the scattered aspects of one life, one’s life in in order with the universe. Oh, that’s the big sigh. That’s what I’ve been doing. And so now, oh, now I’m starting to put language to it. And then every time you and I talked our aside for costing me a fortune and great books of whichever one I’ve appreciated, you keep pointing me to new, you’ve put this bread trail out in front of me is helped me really understand more about the essence of what the power of a mandala is. And I’m still feel like I’m just scratching this
Howard Teich 36:33
Yeah, well, I think we all are trying to figure out ourselves, and what that means. And this era.
Dennis Tardan 36:42
It feels applicable because it feels like that what we’re, that what we’re experiencing now is a change in consciousness. I mean, we’re understanding with with with, with, I know that what looks, it appears to me is everything is outside of here. But it all happens in here. I mean, the the light comes into my eyes and all that and it translated to a picture out there. But it’s all happening in here, right? Well as we begin to get into virtual reality, and we begin to to marry the marry what’s going on, inside the brain with, with all the different kinds of inputs, it seems like that we’re going to be we’re going to be shifting the consciousness and what’s going to be what’s going to be looking at in this metaverse.
Howard Teich 37:35
That’s a deeper hope. Along with that is going to be a shift out of binary thinking.
Dennis Tardan 37:44
And that’s where that’s where we’re going.
Howard Teich 37:47
Yep. If I could say just one of the I find interesting thing about alchemy, and I think, you know, all of us, and I’m sure most of your listeners have learned to work on themselves in some way to keep expanding the consciousness. And the alchemist essentially had four colors, because colors were important to them. But they had four basic colors, that can summarize a way to work on yourself. It was black, white, red, and gold. And there were some other colors like blue and other colors were part of it. But their main contribution was black represented our shadow, and in our shadow to admit our shadows, which if in any relationship, it’s easy, if you ask the other. And they’re honest with you, they’ll tell your shadow, whether they want to hear it or not. And then you have to go through the whitening stage, which is the purification of the shadow. And then once you purify out the shadow, and I think this is what your comments made me want to share this that you have to go through a reading stage where you bring back in the energy that was entangled in the shadow to that archetype. And by living that either in a binary, non binary way, in a complementary way, you have a chance to do this deeper alchemy that you’ve discovered almost automatically clay in your mandala work gets you there and you have a way to do it for all of us. And I know you because I know how hard you work on yourselves both of you. It is that holding that space and complementarity around all the opposites that want to reduce us and are not friendly to this other mindset. And when The beauty of what’s going on technologically is that when you get immersed, and some of the new technology, it just happens. You don’t have a choice to if you’re going to experience it, to get past it as whether afterwards you then retain it. And birth it as a conscious part of your mindset. So that the ego and a deeper self are working together in a complimentary way.
Clay Boykin 40:29
That’s not an intellectual event. It this has I’m reading it, I mean, it’s almost a visceral experience that eventually, for me, it becomes conscious and I can say, oh, that’s what was happening. Yeah, I can’t think my way into that space.
Howard Teich 40:53
No, one thing as if thing about consciousness, as much as you want to have the intention. And so Oh, most only after it happens that you become aware that you will become conscious of something before it disappears.
Dennis Tardan 41:10
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, that’s, I find it interesting to know, to imagine all the things that I’m going to be learning that I can keep myself open. So when I do come upon them, I actually experience them rather than walking past right on, right on, you know, and that’s really my prayer, keep me open, keep me open universe, to what lessons are here so that I can both learn them and experience them and share them and share their grace?
Clay Boykin 41:50
Let me take just one piece of the alchemical process. There was this term that I’ve heard, I’ve heard, and I’ve actually embedded it up into my mandala right here over here somewhere called the philosopher’s stone. And for the life of me, I, I knew that it was something but I couldn’t figure out what that something really was, until I began to tell you pointed me into the alchemical process. But even now, I have trouble. It’s nice to well, what’s the Philosopher’s Stone? Can you?
Howard Teich 42:25
Well, I take a minor stab at it, that it’s the elixir. It’s the part of all of us that are seeking health. And that was the main metaphor, one of the main metaphors for the alchemist was searching for the phosphor stone, which oftentimes was imaged. And the last, there’s seven different stages of alchemy, but I’ll just refer to the last one, which is called the sacred marriage. And it’s a sacred marriage oftentimes was imaged as the sun and the moon. And so I keep exploring that complementarity of the sun and the moon, taking the gender labels off, and dealing with the energy. And finding that is the way that I try to image and articulate the elixir, the Philosopher’s Stone, the healing stone, but they were they were after healings, they were trying to end something and discover something and it was that piece that I have seen imaged as the sun and the moon and the complementarity. And in many of the alchemical pictures, because they were immersed in nature, they didn’t have the magnitude of the subject object language, so poor way, and they were trying to figure something out about matter. When we you know, accepted matter as an object and try to accumulate it, rather than see it on the continual evolution that you pointed out it really is. synergy that isn’t fixed unless the ego fixes it. Yeah. made into
Dennis Tardan 44:20
an object. And I find it fascinating when I when I when I read the Financial Times and I you see people with billions of dollars and I go okay, well, what would be enough I realized it’s it must be playing a game It must be playing the game you know, and that there’s always the game to win more. But what to put in to to what when do we ask ourselves that question, to what end? What are we doing here on the planet? What is my what is my my? Why am I here? Are
Howard Teich 45:00
we that’s the, that’s what I have. Spirit of summarizes the plus for stone is his quantum energy of the wave and the particle and trying to keep it alive and minimally make it into matter attitudes. Emotions that gets stuck.
Clay Boykin 45:21
Okay, the shadow. Okay, so let me pick up on that you said shadow. And you’ve taught me the term prima materia. And in some ways does that equate?
Howard Teich 45:39
That’s, that’s what I think, again discovered is that the prima materia that the alchemist were working with was their own shadow. Okay, that into matter. And that the thing about the alchemist said this, then the symbolism, which is fascinating to me, is crucial for hundreds, if not 1000s A years as an evolution of how we see matter. And so now I believe we’re in the quantum level of not make up realizing there’s something invisible, that’s matter as not just visible, and it’s seeing the visible and the invisible, that makes that complementarity rather than getting one sided. So it’s really in our personal shadow in our collective shadow, that keeps the transformation from going in a way that just keeps getting acted out and projection and making the other the object that’s the enemy. Rather than admitting that part of ourselves. And that’s what, you know, unconsciously the alchemists were doing was getting their ego another way. You know, they had to be fairly wealthy to afford all that equipment. They were hated by the church. And so many of you are philosophers and doctors really looking for healings. And I think all of us no matter who we are, at what’s part of that continuum, we are we are looking for healings and having a longer, more vital for life.
Clay Boykin 47:23
I guess they were, I guess, at some point, they were beginning to equate. I guess, that part of healing physically is the mental health healing?
Howard Teich 47:33
Well, I’d say that’s where we’re at in young came in. Okay. And that’s what they were able to do and picking up this thing that’s called the unconscious. Is that that is I call the unconscious the self. Because, you know, and the ego relationship to the unconscious, is what flows and works. When you have too much ego, or too much unconscious, you’re in trouble. And that’s hard to find. The right dance of particular configuration.
Clay Boykin 48:18
Wow, the hard ego driving the unconscious. There’s a formula for disaster, right?
Dennis Tardan 48:25
It’s been in my life. Yeah.
Clay Boykin 48:27
For all of us. Yeah. Oh, not me.
Dennis Tardan 48:30
All right. All right. plays on that. Car. No, I wrote. How are you? And I will, you and I will sit down together? We’ll have a beer together. And then you can you’re going to send on your
Clay Boykin 48:46
right, till the wax melts off my wings.
Dennis Tardan 48:52
Oh, Howard, I want to thank you so much for today, because I love the opportunity to learn more in this discuss, what are what are the, because I love the idea of that radio waves existed before the invention of the radio. You know, it wasn’t just we began to use them. And we begin to sensitize myself to the power of intuition to be able to see I’m you know, that’s where, where Einstein and so many of the fine men and so many they use their intuition on on a regular basis that this is where the this is part of what we’re doing. And as we’re building that muscle, and you’re such a proponent and a practitioner, in developing the intuition and using it that you have used it so much in your life and it’s one of the reasons why I’m so inspired every time I get around to do that, because that’s something I’m working to develop into practice more in my life.
49:56
I feel honored to know both of you
Dennis Tardan 50:00
CLAY thank you for this opportunity today to be on in search of the new compassionate male and Howard, thank you. Thank you again for this, this chance to have another journey and may we continue these conversations if we learn, learn more I want to I want to explore in the next time we talk the, the concept of the collapsing of the future as it collapses as we observe it. And so one of the reasons why it’s so careful, I need to be careful to what I observe because what I observe will actually be part of my reality and so I want to talk about that more and with you and with you clay and anything closing clay that you want to share.
Clay Boykin 50:45
As always, I come away with a bit more knowledge when Howard and I talk
Dennis Tardan 50:52
and more questions than when I walked in. I have always have more questions on the other side of a conversation with our tastes than
Clay Boykin 51:01
in my my Amazon book bill continues to get a little bit bigger.
Dennis Tardan 51:09
If Jeff Bezos goes oh
Clay Boykin 51:19
I just love it when Howard is with us. It always expands my thinking and I come away on oh boy so much more to study and so much not
Dennis Tardan 51:28
just my thinking too. It’s my heart. Yeah. Because Because Howard You’re such you’re such a deeply heartful man and have have brought in your love and your love consciousness and that has that for me that my the way I interpret the word is is so strong and and your intellect of course, but but the combination of those that you bring to us is is extraordinary. Thank you. Thank you for the above. All right, thank you, Clay. And thank you everyone who has been here for this podcast and we look forward to seeing you on future podcast in search of the new compassionate. Well done, Howard. Did you hold that right there? Hold it
Clay Boykin 52:25
thanks. Thank you. Check out the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate mail on your favorite podcast Station.
Riane Eisler is a social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, and attorney whose research, writing, and speaking has transformed the lives of people worldwide. Her newest work,Nurturing Our Humanity: How Domination and Partnership Shape OurBrains, Lives, and Future, co-authored with anthropologist Douglas Fry, shows how to construct a more equitable, sustainable, and less violent world based on Partnership rather than Domination.
Dr. Eisler is president of the Center for Partnership Systems (CPS), dedicated to research and education, Editor-in-Chief of the Interdisciplinary Journal of Partnership Studies, an online peer-reviewed journal at the University of Minnesota that was inspired by her work, keynotes conferences nationally and internationally, has addressed the United Nations General Assembly, the U.S. Department of State, and Congressional briefings, has spoken at corporations and universities worldwide on applications of the partnership model introduced in her work, and is Distinguished Professor at Meridian University, which offers PhDs and Master’s degrees based on Eisler’s Partnership-Domination social scale.
David Loye, Riane Eisler’s beloved husband and partner, died of Covid during the night of January 24, 2022. This was two days after they celebrated their 45th Anniversary. We invite you to join Riane Eisler in honoring and remembering David.
Transcript:
Dr. Eisler 00:07
No ordinary Soviets had to stand in line for toothbrushes. I mean for so we were served caviar. And we were in a very fancy hotel in the four years of our suite was a grand piano. And it was like what is following the same domination economic is the connection between what happens in childhood between gender between family and what happens in the state or tribe. So that he, a couple of years ago, radically reduce the penalties for family violence.
Clay 00:53
Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. My name is Clay Boykin, I support this podcast through my coaching practice. I help people visualize and harmonize find direction and meaning or simply get unstuck. Contact me at Clay Boykin calm for a free consultation. Now here’s the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate male. Hello
Dennis 01:17
World. It’s me Dennis and Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. I’m the co host of this particular podcast and I’m here with the founder clay Boykin. Hello clay.
Clay 01:28
Hi, Dennis. I’m thrilled today to have with us Dr. Riane Eisler. Dr. Islur is a cultural historian, attorney, a futurist, a social system scientist and author of I forgot how many books but some of the ones that you may recognize off the top is the chalice in the blade sacred pleasures, the real wealth of nations and the book that came out in 2019, nurturing our humanity, how domination and partnership shaped our brains lives in future. So Dr. Islur welcome.
Dr. Eisler 02:05
Thank you. And thank you Clay for starters, for the wonderful article that is actually on our website, Center for partnership.org. And for all the work that those of you are doing to really help men be human in the full sense of the word because it’s not only women who are challenging the old stereotypes, but men and that is such an important part of what I call the movement from nomination to partnership. So thank you.
Dennis 02:53
You’re You’re You’re so welcome. Because this is what whatever I know that that we’re going to be able to work our way through this. This has to be a partnership, it has to be a collaboration. It has to be synergistic. One plus one is greater than two, and we’ve lived for so long in this zero sum. economic reality and that’s not how economics works as far as I understand it. And you’re talking about the new economy, how we’re going to create this and work in your work in economics and your your thoughts systems about the partnerships. Could you talk a little about this and what’s on your mind and heart?
Dr. Eisler 03:34
Let me start have Seaford may start with, on a more personal note, please. Because I have a great deal of passion for this work. And that passion is actually rooted deeply in my own early life as a child refugee with my parents, Nazi Europe, from Vietnam, where I was born, and very early in my life. And this is really directly now related to your question. I began to ask questions that I think most of us have asked at some point in our lives, does it have to be this way? When we humans have such a tremendous capacity, both women and men or consciousness for caring for creativity? Why has there been so much insensitivity, so much cruelty so much destructive test and start to do my multidisciplinary cross cultural trends historical study? To answer that question until much later, but I as you mentioned, Clay, I’m an assistive person and I’m interested in what kind of society will support our end No, I’m assuming capacity, as I said, we’re carrying the consciousness for creativity, rather than because we obviously also have laws, then we’re insensitivity, cruelty destructive. And in the course of this work, I, of course, look at our past that are present, and most importantly, at the possibilities for our future, including our economic possibilities with this book that came out of this study was the chalice in the blade. And then came sacred pleasure. And then a number of other books. And then I realized that I could not answer the questions of my childhood, by looking through the conventional lenses of capitalist versus socialist, west, north versus south, religious versus secular, etc. And I kept seeing these two configurations, the domination system and the partnerships this. And I then applied the, these two systems configurations, to the study of economics, which goes right to your question was the book called The Real wealth of nations. And something that really struck me is that the mindset that we have inherited, is so strange. It’s really our heritage from earlier more rigid domination times. And it is to the values of most important human work, which is the work of caring, what people are curious, and caring for our natural life support systems. And if you look at those, the work of Smith and Marx, you see that for them, this work was to be done for free by a woman in a male controlled household. Yes. And, you know, when we were supposed to take care of children of the sick, keep a clean and healthy, warm environment, which of course then translates into keeping a clean and healthy planetary environment.
Dr. Eisler 07:41
There is nothing in either capitalist or socialist theory about caring for nature, nature, as far as closeness and marks were concerned, is simply there to be exploited. That’s it. And as I said, the work of caring for people starting in first, that’s women’s work, be done in a male controlled for free, the male controlled household, and they call it reproductive rather than productive. So if you fast forward to GNP, that is what it reflects. It’s an economic ground, that simply excludes the three life sustaining sectors, without which we would not be here, without which there would be no economy, the natural economy, the volunteer community, economy, and the household. So when you’re asked me this question, it’s impossible to add to answer it in terms of the old debate that so many people are still engaged in capitalism versus socialism or communism. Frankly, a colleague of mine calls these old categories weapons of mass destruction. Our consciousness,
Dennis 09:10
yes, and one of the things that I love about what you talked about duck price for was about how the, we measure GDP, and we do not take into account so much that the measurements are way off how and I love that if we were to take if we were to rearrange our rearrange what we measure that would account for taking care of our humanity and raising our children taking care of our planet, doing the volunteerism and have that, that that would very quickly give us an entirely different measure,
Dr. Eisler 09:51
completely studies a recent Australian study of the economic value now And then, you know, let’s talk in those terms of the work done for free, the household of caring for people, including children. But if that were included, it would constitute 50% 50% reported by Australian GDP. But as I said, GDP follows the same very limited approach of both Marx and Smith, even though both actually challenged some elements of what I call domination, economics, because it goes way back, it isn’t just neoliberalism, which is really a replay or trickle down economics, you know, it’s sort of a replay of this futile idea that goes on bottom, should content themselves with the scraps, right, dropping from the opulent tables of clothes on top, to Chinese emperors, into passions and to sheiks and to it really. Yes, I mean, it’s deeply rooted. And it is domination, economics, that we really are addressing this idea of top down, trickle down. Exactly, because
Dennis 11:27
we’re seeing that we’re seeing that so much aren’t we try?
Clay 11:31
Yes. Gosh, I was just watching the news before we got onto this podcast. And they were talking about the huge palace that has been built off the books for Putin, hundreds of some odd 1000 square feet, just incredible place and underground, hockey, you know, field and, and so forth. And it’s speaks to exactly what you’re talking about. Dr. Islur?
Dr. Eisler 12:04
Oh, absolutely. Then, of course, I mean, I remember when I was invited to by Nordic women for peace, to miss them on a march to unlearning God. And they had previously done a peace march on Washington, DC. And the class structure was so clear, you know, ordinary Soviets had to stand in line for toothbrushes, I mean, for soap. But we were served caviar. And we were in a very fancy hotel. In the four years of our suite was a grand piano. It was like what is following the same domination, economic. But it’s interesting. And that really takes me to the configuration of the partnership of domination system. We recognize something that is inherent to the analysis of the systems, or systems analysis of the partnership, domination, social scale, because it’s always a better a good way. Nice the connection between what happens in childhood, between gender between family, and what happens in the state or tribe, so that he, a couple of years ago, radically reduce the penalties for family violence. Oh, I always recognize it. If you look at the Taliban, which is religious, and Eastern, or if you look at ISIS, the same thing or for men is Iran. Or if you look at Hitler’s backseat Germany, work for that matter Salus, former Soviet Union, they were always into strengthening or maintaining the kind of family but it is one of the real foundations are a highly punitive, rigidly male dominated authoritarian. It’s simple once you start looking for it, but we have, especially those of us who aren’t good educated in higher education, right. We’ve been taught, I mean, how I remember one day, sort of waking up, is it from, from what I today call the domination trends, and realizing that in all my years of so called Higher Education, there has hardly been anything by about or for people like me, women, such as for children, where we’ve been somewhere buried in so Domestic course or some family relations course is beginning to change the little bit. But not that much we were taught that the majority of humanity and anything pertaining to it to women and children, is not really important enough to be included in what we are taught is important knowledge and tools.
Dennis 15:27
Were very, this, this is part of our mission. Because we believe we, we understand that we cannot, that this is not sustainable. We know that and so as we are in search for the new compassionate male, we are in search of that within ourselves, then both of us are in a journey of our own awakening through our own conscious and unconscious biases. Because from from our standpoint, from a we know that this is not working clay, you talked about that, that we men, the roles that we are assigned are very, all very often completely at odds with who we think we are, yet we we have to fit into some stereotype to be able to do it. You were talking so much about about trusting men clay, yes, as a Marine, Dr. Islur he was a Marine and went through all of the all of the the high, high concept male archetypes that that you would you would consider coming through this process.
Clay 16:37
You know, thanks, Dennis. There are many things that I learned. You know, one was that leadership is about servant leadership, even on the core. And there’s an undercurrent of compassion. And I didn’t have a name for it until out after I was out of the core, and began to look back and realize how even in situations like that, even in harm’s way that men taking care of men range taking care of Marines. John 1513, Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friend. That’s all compassion. And what genocide are the past couple of years? We believe that there’s an undercurrent, it’s men, compassionate man out there. And I would like to believe that that that momentum is growing, is rising. And I don’t see it out there on the news or anything, but when I’m talking with men and white men circle and so forth. It’s there. And, you know, my hope is that it’s able to really surface.
Dr. Eisler 18:07
and this can only surface if enough of us including men, like you and Dennis, that help men to give up the sport domination. Yes, real masculinity of not being like a woman. Because as long as we have the stereotype, that being like a woman is to be compassionate to be caring to be really gone violent. When you have this this problem that men face, I think that we are at a time when this very rigidly binary stereotype stereotypical which is necessary for domination systems because yes, later, but if you don’t have these rigid stereotypes, how can you rank code masculinity? Over femininity? Yes, men over women. But this said, Men, Judo here we’re talking about with thinks nothing of sending his, you know, his his soldiers to be killed. I mean, for millenia. Men in Domination systems that had to give nothing less than their lives because some guy on top like Putin wanted more in real estate.
Clay 19:39
Yes. Young men fighting old men’s wars. Yeah. You know, the one thing that came up on a podcast just last year, we were talking about in terms of solar and lunar energy, and it was Howard Tyson. He said, you know, play Think about it this way, you know, we all have this energy, we all have the solar and the lunar, we all have the male and the female aspects to ourselves. Think about it like this. The lunar leads in the solar executes. And I thought to myself, no, wait a second. But then I thought back and back to the core. This is where leadership comes from. And so if we men are out there, thinking we can leave just from the head, cut off it and not acknowledge the essence of who we totally are, then we’re really making a big mistake. And so to me, it’s this integration of head and art, it’s not one or the other. It’s the integration that that is a must.
Dr. Eisler 20:52
Well, I think that this is a good starting point. Because you are of course, still talking about domination archetypes here. The veil is equated with reason, I think of how reasonable our leaders Thank you for saying that. I so appreciate you saying that, please. It’s no young does this use was a mess when it came to gender stereotypes. I mean, his UNIMIN analysts? Yes. I’m the mus is active is Bula, you know, protagonist, and what is the Anima? It’s either man’s inspiration or nemesis. Right? Completely relational. And the truth is that we’re all relational to each other. And then one of the problems that men in Domination systems have had is that their models for masculinity have been that you have to excel you have to accomplish, you have to, and really, you know, I hear people talking about the problem is ego ism. And I have to laugh because women weren’t supposed to have an ego.
Dennis 22:16
Oh, not the women. I know. I know, some pretty powerful women that goodness.
Dr. Eisler 22:23
Now you do. But you know, the old stereotype women were not protagonist.
Dennis 22:31
How did you how did you as a young teen, as powerful as you are doctor as I mean, I because I feel it your your, your intellect, and your heart and your drive and is so strong? How did you as a as a teenager, and how did you react to the world? How did that? How did that what was that experience like?
Dr. Eisler 23:00
This night? No transformation is possible because I have, I have experienced, okay, I was kind of a mess as a teen. I mean, I wanted desperately to belong, because I’ve, I’ve been an outsider all my life. And, you know, I was obviously cast out from as an outsider. Before I was born, I was an outsider growing up in the industrial slums of nirvana. I was an outsider here in the United States. When I came, I even pledged a sorority, which I then disaffiliated from, but I had no gender consciousness. I mean, I, I have to tell you, and that lasted into my 30s. Okay. I when I graduated UCLA law school, I was looking for a part time job with a entertainment law firm. That’s where my head was. It wasn’t, by the way. I mean, what it’s about is massaging people’s egos and counting, helping them count their money, or increase their money, but the head of the firm called me in one day to compliment me on some work I had done. And you know what he said to me, and he meant it as a compliment. But what’s much worse is I took it as a compliment. You don’t even great job to don’t think like a woman. And I took it as a compliment. But this is the kind of thinking of being socialized, you bet. And so it wasn’t really until I sort of woke up. List domination trends My 30s that went along with 1000s of other women.
Dennis 25:07
Yes, yeah. And What years were these?
Dr. Eisler 25:10
What years were about the 60s, the 60. So this was during Exactly. So this, this was when we first began in the Women’s Liberation Movement here in the United States when it wouldn’t when it was, I mean, it had begun. And of course, it was earlier than that. But when we began to get some momentum and going toward that, and getting the era started to started to be passed,
Dr. Eisler 25:34
well, and I wrote the only last paper where on the proposed Equal Rights Amendment, it’s called the equal rights handbook was published by A, but it’s still available online. And unfortunately, it’s still relevant. But I really want to return now to the the intimate partnership aspects of my life, please, my second word for the love of my life. My husband, David Loy. We’re together for 45 years, and who recently died, and I will be left without him. But he was a caring man that he worked with me on the equal rights handled this way to Africa, to the Robie conference UN Conference on Women in writing a deep dive. And caring is not a human characteristic for goodness sake. And the fact that it’s been so, so suppressed in our culture, especially in men, but also in some women, we all know that no caring men and we know women who are not caring. And we know that people who are stuck in these gender stereotypes. And by the way, the study that I cite, in nurturing our humanity is very interesting. People who voted for Trump, the US election, one thing they had in common was not economic hardship. I mean, that was okay. But two things were the very interesting around which fit was the configuration, which I really have to tell you about at this summit. was one thing was a horror of women who stepped outside the domination stereotype of femininity. In other words, people like Hillary Clinton, people, you know, women who were assertive. Yes. But the other thing, which is fascinating, and it’s so much with the configuration of the combination of partnership systems, is that in times in terms of what they were trying to teach their children and help their children realize, wasn’t curiosity wasn’t empathy. It was really more obedience, conformity. And of course, it makes sense, doesn’t it? And women have become many women. I mean, look at 70 million people voted for Mr. Trump. Yes, many of them were female. They have internalized this, which takes me to the configuration which I do want to share at some point, because
Dennis 28:53
I want to I know that it broke my heart, Doctor eyes or when because I, I had I believed that Hillary Clinton was going to be that every every woman would secretly who was who was outwardly Republican would secretly go into the, into the ballot box and, and it was the it was the 20th anniversary of my what my wife and I that night, November the eighth, and we and we had our celebration all set, and my heart was broken. I mean, I couldn’t believe that women would not stand up. And then I said, I must, I must not have this right. There must be there. There’s something I’m missing.
Dr. Eisler 29:40
Well, I think that it just shows that what we’re talking about is not an issue of women against men or men against women. It really is an issue of changing the underlying worldview. And was it our economic system Family Systems, you know, I’ve mentioned already, I mean, the trend towards for example, authoritative, non violent rather than authoritarian and violent parent thing is very important partnership trends. The trend towards non binary, flexible, fluid gender roles. That’s the trend. We have to recognize this. And it’s very hard for people because if you look at the modern social movements, they’ve altered actually, the progressive social movements have all challenged the same thing, a tradition of domination, you know, whether it is a movement against the so called divinely ordained, right of kings to or of men, divinely ordained, right? Again, men to rule over women and children are of a quote superior divinely ordained that your your superior is to rule over inferior was all the way to the environmental movement. Challenging are ones hallowed conquest, and domination of nature. But they focus on trying to dismantle the top of the combination of politics and economics is conventional. And pretty much a secondary to women’s movements with children’s rights, movement, spirituality, movement, etc. All of which are there, you know, the foundations, and they were domination systems that kept rebuilding themselves, like in Russia, that authoritarian, punitive, rigidly male dominated family is still the ideal No. Really change
Dennis 31:59
where you are going to talk doctor about the configuration in the reconfiguration? Could you bring that to us?
Dr. Eisler 32:05
I’d like to do that. Because as Einstein said, we cannot solve problems with the same consciousness that created Thank you. And language is a very, very important that linguistic psychologists have long told us that the categories provided by a language. And this is particularly true of social categories. They channel our thinking. So it’s almost impossible to see a culture. So if you look at the conventional categories, for one thing, is kind of silly, that people don’t seem to notice when they start arguing about religious versus secular, Eastern versus Western or capitalist versus socialist, that there have been repressive violence regressive cultures in all these categories, and continue to be and they also don’t notice that these categories either marginalize or ignore or say they should be subservient, nothing less than the majority of humanity, women and children. Yes, now, we cannot have whole systems change, without taking into account these foundational relations, which Neuroscience tells us that what children observe or experience in their early years, shapes, nothing less than the architecture of art. So I’m proposing that we need to change our language about societies and start talking about shifting our cultures not from capitalism to socialism or from socialism to capitalism or not left to right or from right to left or whatever. But of shifting from domination to partnership, and there are four core components of these systems of figuration. One is a top down also rich area, structure in both the family and the state or tribe, the economics, etc. Okay. The second part of the figuration is something that is marginalized or ignored gender relations, and this is where you both come in, because we domination oriented societies invariably rank one form of humanity. male form over the female. Yes, and that is a template for you. equating difference beginning with this fundamental difference in form in our species with either superiority or inferiority, dominating or being dominated, being served or serving. So it’s a template for indoor versus outdoor thinking and you move to the partnership side, and you can see it in much of our prehistory. I wrote extensively about that in many of my blocks, because the evidence is overwhelming that for most of our human cultural evolution for 1000s of years, we oriented more to the partnership side and that the domination system shift occurred in the mainstream of culture will be about 5000 years ago,
Dennis 35:58
yes, with the with the creation of private property with a concept.
Dr. Eisler 36:04
Not necessarily there are many, many theories about certainly technology, including agriculture. So, they turn towards the domination side, at a certain point, but the early agrarian societies, like shfm, Jolla, for example, in Turkey, in the plains of Turkey, which is the largest Neolithic site ever excavated, was more egalitarian, by the size of the houses by the types of grave was more gender balance. Ian Hodder with the archaeologists, who excavated most recently there has an article in Scientific American about really being born male or female, did not affect your status in life. And of course, there are no signs of distractions through warfare, or over a spy was yours.
Clay 37:16
Help me Dr. Eisler. What What was the timeframe that he was excavating? What what timeframe in the history was
Dr. Eisler 37:26
about? From about? I think about 6000. Before the Common Era, okay. Onward. But these were very early farming settlements. This was a huge town in the back exactly.
Dennis 37:44
The way it was. It was a it was an amazing economy, wasn’t it? I mean, it was very.
Dr. Eisler 37:51
It was an amazing economy. I mean, we’ve been told so many false stories, stories that work, this notion that there are only two possibilities for us, we either dominate or were dominated. Think of the categories that are gender specific. matriarchy, patriarchy. I mean, yeah. Either women rule or men rule. The fathers or mothers. There is no partnership alternative.
Dennis 38:21
Is there any word for it? Well,
Dr. Eisler 38:24
I coined the word guy, let me say it again. Di Lundy, Dinah, for a woman under a strong man and L in English for linking. wonder, why don’t you go back to me reading the chalice and the blade let me continue with the configuration because the amount of abuse and violence is very, very different in the Domination and the partnership system and to actually see the art changing radically. I mean, art is a symbolic language, you know? And if you It’s fascinating but if you really leave behind you know the conventional thinking of the linear evolution No. Evolution like everything else wasn’t even there. But anyway, domination systems require a high degree of abuse and violence all the way the wife and child breeding grounds, lynchings warfare, to maintain themselves because how else you maintain these rankings with men over man man or woman, race, civil race, religion, religion, etc. Partnership side yeah, there is some violence people lose it sometimes. But it isn’t built into this. And that makes a huge difference and of course, the forest part store Are we are we I mean, we’ve inherited the story that well, whether it’s selfish genes or original sin, the same story is that, yes, they fight each other. But with simply the same story, we’re bad, we have to be controlled.
Clay 40:26
So I’m just testing my understanding, you’re talking about the four being the family in childhood relations,
Dr. Eisler 40:34
then I’m talking about structure, structure. And I’m making the, the connection immediately between the structure in the family and the structure in this later drive. And I can give you a contemporary example, the countries that today ranked highest in the happiness reports, as well as very high in the world. Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness reports, etc, are nations that have moved more to the partnership side are the European nations like Norway, Finland, Sweden. And they have, I mean, let’s look at the partnership structure here for a moment, because it’s not only in the family, but also in the Slater tribe. That is where democratic, they’re not socialists, they have more caring policies, because of the second component, because the status of women has risen, so that half approximately, of their national legislature is female. And as the Status of Women rises, men will no longer feel that this is an integral connection between changing male masculine stereotypes, and the devaluation, the hidden system of gendered values that we’ve been living with, and are trying to leave behind. Because as the Status of Women rises, men no longer feel it’s such a threat to their identities, to their status to their masculinity, to also embrace caring policies. So these nations at universal health care, very good quality, childcare, accessible, well paid, government supported. They have very generous paid parental leave for both mothers and fathers. And that’s precisely why we have such a successful business sector. You know, I, it makes me wonder, where, where’s the what flips the switch? What would cause them to begin to make this change? There’s many theories about it. One is the agriculture theory. And private property, which I certainly in some places, maybe it happened that way. But in Europe, in the area surrounding the Mediterranean, there is mounting evidence, including DNA studies showing that it was through armed invasion from the fringe areas of our globe, where as a matter of fact, the shift from gathering hunting was not to agriculture with to birdie. And herding, as we know from problem with cattle today is not a sustainable way of really, technologically speaking, it’s a lousy technology, because it depletes without giving back. But in these societies, for a number of reasons, and I deal with that in some detail, in my book sake with pleasure, which is kind of a heresies with it, there’s a message behind that. Well, you have it, of course I have it. Like you remember, I mean, like the bonobos, which are one, you know, one, one chapter in there. Yes. Our closest primate relatives, in difference is the common Chimp, but they’re much more partnership oriented and they share leisure. Yes, food, they share sex. I mean, it’s a completely different social organization. And we have that capacity As shown by these millennia. So we have to change our stories
Dennis 45:09
are when you look at your grandchildren, Dr. Eisler for do you have? Does this bring you hope? Do you see a difference in their consciousness? And and what is going on with them? What what is your sense about what’s going on in the, in the race mind consciousness of humanity as you look out through the eyes of your grandchildren?
Dr. Eisler 45:33
Well, I think my grandchildren are very aware of them, that we need new thinking. I mean, they’re looking for it. But it’s really interesting because, you know, I used to be even I still occasionally still do, or give a lot of keynotes to major conferences. Yes. And people buy into this, when they hear me, pulled back by the culture. So it’s our job. And really, we owe it to our children and generations to come to start using the terms, partnership system domination. Because if we don’t, people will say, Well, what do you mean by that? Or what do you mean by a caring economics of partners? People will ask, but it’s up to the, to those of us who are agents of cultural change like you to, to start using different tools, and to start helping people to see connections that are made invisible by the domination chance.
Dennis 46:52
I’m so glad to hear you say that because one of my quests in this life is to ask people and to really understand what is enough? Have you set that number by will ask a person have you set a number that you would know at least when you hit it when some economic or or or other marker would be hit you ago? Okay. Yeah, I’ve got it I’ve got because I don’t hear it being asked, and I don’t. And that’s just the mindset.
Dr. Eisler 47:24
Well, you know, in nurturing our humanity, there are studies showing that in societies where there is a lot of accumulation of the top, which by the way, domination economics creates artificial scarcity. I siphoning resources to top five cleaning services into Parliament’s weapons wars, and also by failing to invest in caring for people starting at service. I mean, children, especially for our post industrial knowledge, service economy, our most important assets for goodness sakes,
Dennis 48:06
I love that doctor because when, when we talk, when I talk to friends of mine who describe themselves as conservative, I go, What a great word to conserve you, you don’t drive your car and never take it into the into the mechanic and put oil and take care of it. We take care. What is this wonderful word conservative? Why don’t what our what are we going to conserve and nurture and support?
Dr. Eisler 48:35
Well, but for the, quote, conservative mind, and there are studies in virtually our humanity showing that actually are very structure of our brains. People who consider themselves very conservative, have very rigid brains based on denial. And it’s related to the development of part of the brain that is not as well developed, as in people who are less quote, conservative, conservative and liberal, are pointless words for me. Just make us fight each other. Dr. Islur. While you’re talking about the brain, you made the point in a recent podcast that the pleasure centers light up in our brain when we care and share more than more than when we dominate. So so when I go win the football game, and I’m spiking, the football app feels great. But test not as great as feeling that I would my pleasure centers would light up when I’m caring and sharing is that that is EPS salutely True. And you know, many studies have shown that people are happier when they give. That’s what makes us feel good. But, but this empathy, this hearing has to be either suppressed or compartmentalized. So it only applies to the in group. In Domination systems, whether that in group, right, it’s the in group of code mankind, female, other or divided states, whether it’s whites versus blacks in the Middle East, whether it’s Shia versus Sunni, or Sunni versus Shia, it doesn’t really matter. And other rising, right. Yeah. Other right. And that’s really with that very basic model. Yeah. It’s not coincidental what I spoke about earlier, the correlation between wanting to either maintain or impose this is the punitive widget vo dominated authoritarian family, and what kind of regime?
Clay 51:16
Dennis, remember when we talked with Dr. Doty the other week, and one of the key points that was made was that compassion, empathy and compassion is, is innate, it’s part of our DNA, and it’s got to be nurtured. It has to be nurtured. And that’s, of course, the whole point of I mean, if there is a central point, and there are many points in nurturing our humanity, it is that it isn’t a question of genes. This is a question of gene expression. And that happens to action with our environment, especially in the first years, we can change. I mean, people can do did
Dennis 52:02
a good doctor, I mean, you look at your evolution.
Dr. Eisler 52:06
I had a whole evolution. And David was really part of that evolution. And part of my journey. I can I can honestly say that, on a personal level partnership is just so wonderful is so pleasure.
Dennis 52:27
Doctor, thank you for sharing David with us and bring him along in this. It’s very, he’s very palpable to me just in how you how you have shared how he is part of you today. And as as strong as as he is sitting right, sitting right within you.
Dr. Eisler 52:49
Well, they did some very important work. Because he wrote me tons of poetry, which I think is very good. I published a book called 100 days of love, this 100 days that we were together for a day. Oh, that’s another story. But he wrote he thought it was a pioneer in retelling the story of Darwin’s evolution, because at Davis word, Darwin has been used by the domination system is this 800 pound gorilla, to say, hey, what matters is, you know, the survival of the fittest was the fittest defined as the meanest right? And in his book on human evolution, Descent of Man, Darwin explicitly said, at the level of human evolution, random selection, and all these other mechanisms may fade in importance. What is important now is culture and love. He wrote so many times about love, and he actually apologized that for using the term survival of the fittest, which wasn’t history, it was a term. But anyway, so I highly recommend David’s book, Darwin’s last theory,
Dennis 54:20
Doctor, thank you so much for giving us this opportunity just to spend some time with you. And to know the I guess, before I want to go if you if you could just tell me some of the VISTAs some of the things that curiosities that you’re going to be exploring in the near future,
Dr. Eisler 54:39
and I will continue to do my teaching. And by the way, on a center for partnership.org you can find a way to really take a self paced course called Changing our story, changing our lives and up Do it for groups and then you get to own the for videos and to use them yourself in your presentations as well as all of the resources on my list that I am now working on giving background to David’s extensive poetry in a book that I calling tentatively called for what was the title of one of his times, which is yet love remains.
Dennis 55:31
God is how precious thank you for giving us this time today for spending your time here on this planet with us what we do, clay has Shepard this over 100 podcasts and when he said that we were going to have you it was like this was the ice this was the cherry on the ice cream sundae of our of our time to be able to be able to spend time with you and the grace that you brought to us and that you brought to the planet Dr. Eyes for thank you so much for your time.
Dr. Eisler 56:04
Thank you goes with a very very good for being you.
Dennis 56:13
Thank you world and thank you everyone and we will see you next time on in search of the new compassionate mayor.
56:21
Check out the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate mail on your favorite podcast Station.
EP110: Don Frick – Silence & Servant Leadership (Part 2)
On the day when he first read Greenleaf’s essay The Servant as Leader in 1986, Don Frick decided to dedicate the rest of his career to understanding and teaching Greenleaf’s ideas about servant leadership. Since then, he has written books and essays about servant leadership—including Greenleaf’s biography—made presentations, conducted workshops, taught graduate seminars, and consulted with corporations on the principles of servant leadership. He is currently working on another book that offers details about how various organizations have implemented servant leadership. Before encountering Greenleaf’s work, Don engaged in multiple careers, including: managing departments at a university and museum of art; university teaching; television, radio, and film writing, production, and performance; trainer; specialist in advertising and marketing for Fortune 500 companies, plus an entrepreneur. His formal education includes a B.S. in Education, Master of Divinity, and PhD in Leadership and Organizational Studies.
EP109: Don Frick – Zelensky & Servant Leadership (Part 1)
On the day when he first read Greenleaf’s essay The Servant as Leader in 1986, Don Frick decided to dedicate the rest of his career to understanding and teaching Greenleaf’s ideas about servant leadership. Since then, he has written books and essays about servant leadership—including Greenleaf’s biography—made presentations, conducted workshops, taught graduate seminars, and consulted with corporations on the principles of servant leadership. He is currently working on another book that offers details about how various organizations have implemented servant leadership. Before encountering Greenleaf’s work, Don engaged in multiple careers, including: managing departments at a university and museum of art; university teaching; television, radio, and film writing, production, and performance; trainer; specialist in advertising and marketing for Fortune 500 companies, plus an entrepreneur. His formal education includes a B.S. in Education, Master of Divinity, and PhD in Leadership and Organizational Studies.
Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. My name is Clay Boykin, I support this podcast through my coaching practice. I help people visualize and harmonize find direction and meaning or simply get unstuck. Contact me at Clay Boykin calm for a free consultation. Now here’s the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate male. Don. Ty you doing?
Don 00:33
Well, it’s been interesting. I had a first meeting of my implementing servant leadership class. And that was last Friday. And it’s this time I just in the first the first meeting, I’ve learned to do this. So we just want to hear how you got here. To serve in leadership, tell me this, tell us about your journey in a person was kind of like a resume. And then I read some poems. And after that, the floodgates were open. And I this struck me I never struck me before when someone is especially a lot of people, when that field takes over with a group of people, you know, you’re all participating in the same field of intention and sharing. I’m not gonna say it’s mystical. I think it’s real. I think it’s, there’s a real measurable field probably we just don’t measure yet. But when that’s happening, then everybody is growing together. And it’s a feeling that can’t be manufactured. Facts are necessary. conceptual ideas are necessary. But they are not the only things that make up the full rich expression of what it means to be human, but also what it means to be a compassionate male. Also, there’s a man who named Dr. Tarr T AR, his mother, I met him recently. His mother was announcements. And she was one of the one of the one of the twins part of one of the twins that Dr. Mengele experimented on. Oh my. So she became an advocate. Later, she moved to Terre Haute, Indiana married and became an advocate for forgiveness. So I gave him the biography of Greenleaf because it has an awful lot to do with Terre Haute. And I really appreciate it. I’m going to see him tomorrow night. The State Museum now has an exhibit about her and her message. And they’ve done a documentary on her for public television. So I’m going to see that tomorrow night too. But she stood, she stood in the gates of Alice Fitch and read a letter about forgiveness. And until that moment, she could not get over the terrible effects of what had happened. And she was short with people and she realized that she was screwing herself an uprising
Clay 03:45
that really, it’s really sobering because last Friday, I interviewed Dr. Riane Eisler and her story is that when she was six years old, in Austria, her parents it was the crystal night and you know, these people were being raided and they were being taken away. And her father was taken away. And luckily, the mother was able to do something but get the to get the Gestapo to release the Father. And they evacuated and got to Cuba and survive there until they came over to the US. You know it’s something now, the right people show up at the right time. Especially in these these podcasts. I was talking about Dr. Rian, icecool earlier and per book, nurturing our humanity is a pretty incredible read. I skimmed it. I’ve gone back to take it to heart, read the preface in the first chapter that erased to the back to get to the conclusion. And then I’m going to read the rest of the book. And what is I think, showing me is that? Well, I don’t know what it’s showing me. I don’t know if I can put it into words yet. But I know that leadership for me servant leadership is, is in the present with the people that I’m with. With the network that I connect with. And this whole other side of leadership, the leadership that she’s demonstrated, taking from childhood, the atrocities that she witnessed and persevering through, and a brilliant woman taking all these different aspects and in this macro view of things, to present another way to, for us to live. And that’s another form of leadership. So it is to share, to take the difficulties and the challenges, terrific challenges, and then turn that in to something for the greater good. And she told us early on in the, in our conversation, actually, before we started taping, she she said that she had lost her husband six weeks ago. Yeah, that both of them well up into yours. And yeah, the obituary, said that he died of COVID. They’ve been married for 45 years. And she shared that. In their first 100 days of marriage, he wrote a poem a day to her. And she’s publishing that now. But you know, that’s a generation that’s, that’s fading away. Unfortunately, I think the lessons are also fading away.
Don 07:58
Look at us now. Yeah. I am so struck by Zelinsky in Ukraine. Here’s a guy who grew up Jewish in southern Ukraine. His father moved to Mongolia for four years. And they came back and live in Kiev. He surprised me. He was, of course a good student. He’s always interested in theater though. And he made it he got a law degree. In six years. He got a law degree and a bachelor’s degree and was licensed to practice law, but went back to theater and was highly successful there. He made his name in a feature film, which you can see in Russian on Netflix right now called servant of the people. Really? Yeah. And it was a take kind of a spoof of the current leadership of Ukraine, because he was anything but a servant of the people whose crooked he stole things. Nobody believed in. The film features Zelinski as a young man who’s still living at home. And he just for the heck of it, jumped into I pick his friends in the film put him in this presidential race. And one day in the morning, there is a knock on the door and he’d won the race and they come to take him down to his office. He was shocked. So anyway, the whole thing was so successful. I went into a series for several years when he then became genuinely interested in politics, He named his party servant of the people. So it took this spoof, and turn it into the world’s most serious name, I think. Wow. And by the way, he also had his own production company. And he was the lead producer, he produced everything on Ukrainian television, he was ultimately responsible for it. So he had also dealt with a lot of people with big budgets for over there. And he had prepared himself without knowing what he was preparing for a president, a wartime President at that. And I really strikes me because you don’t play the I mean, you’re kind of like me, you know, you’ve your Motorola for a long time. But you did a lot of other things to sense created new things. You weren’t preparing for this, when you were 17 years old. by name. You didn’t have a straight line drawn from them to hear. And yet you repair you prepared for it all along the way. Because I suspect, I’d like to hear you talk about this. I suspect you followed what lured you nuts, LVR, Id L U R, E, D, and kind of went with that. And it tended to resolve itself out in an unprepared unexpected ways.
Clay 11:48
Gosh, you’re so right. And I have to say that. And this is not unique to me. And all the the men that I’ve come in contact with and all people interviewed. It’s like, you know, it’s the hero’s journey. For the guys, you know, it’s the we grew up and we leave our heart behind, and we go do what we’re supposed to do. We go climb this ladder, and whatever form it takes. And we know how to be happy. And so many times, there’s just emptiness that guys have. They don’t know what it is, but they know that they’re supposed to climb the ladder. You know, that’s how you achieve happiness. That’s how you provide and so forth. But at some point, it all falls apart. And that’s my story. And my health got me and I fell. And it wasn’t until I came back and found out what was here what what what was this burn it is a keenness that felt empty. That I recognized that that was that was my heart speaking to me, even speaking to me all these years, and I can go back and look at pictures and photographs and things that I did, that were all about heart. But I was pushing that down and going after the career growth. And, you know, I guess that’s okay for a time to get oneself established, if needed. But but it brought me down eventually. And it was only in the 2018, I guess, maybe some leading up to that, that I really decided to follow my heart. I had had a couple of health scares. And finally the last one was this lit. Someone’s calling me to do something different. As soon as I did. The fall of 2018. Everything changed, everything was aligned. And everything took off. And it’s like, well, I don’t know where this is going. But it feels right. It was the first time in my life that I ever really listened to my feelings. This was not intellectual. This was a feelings thing. And the more I did it, the better I felt the more the energy changed around me and hearing
Don 14:43
thank you for that. It resonates with me. i i There are a lot of medical facts I could spew out and say oh, the males have a lot of cholesterol and we all ate grease In fact, I was blocking my heart. And I did quite well with concepts and ideas. But my heart was blocked. Yeah, till it literally was 90% 99% blocked. And they had to put stents in him. After that, I’d already run across certain leadership. But after that, I said, Look, I, I gotta quit what I’m doing here, and only do what I’m told to do. Right? By my heart. It’s got to be cleaned out. The Pathways to it, have to be cleaned out. It’s the Native Americans, you know, the talking stick, and yeah, all that. The fact is that if you don’t stand up and speak from the heart, I’ve been in some men’s groups where we do this kind of exercise. People will kindly nod. But they don’t, they don’t get excited. They don’t have to go pee, because they’re so excited. Because you’re just saying stuff. That means to be human, but also what it means to be a compassionate male. Now, I suspect that Solinsky has, you could probably check off all the boxes for compassionate bail for him. But doesn’t mean he’s not out there in his army fatigues. Doing want to ask to do to pray to protect his people. I’m compassionate. I’m not gonna fight back. No, no, that’s not. That’s not what it means.
Clay 16:58
So true. Ah,
Don 17:03
it’s a hard lesson for some people to learn is like servant leadership. A lot of people think it means being a martyr. And not attending to your own needs. Nothing could be further from the truth. If you don’t attend to your own needs, go in and go down. You’re going to be a poor leader
Clay 17:29
why so many things are running through my mind right now. Our experiences health wise are very close to one another. And yeah, heart being blocked. Call it metaphoric, or call it physical. Know, the blockage. Wow.
Don 17:54
And it’s what’s so ironic is that I blocked my heart to handle my feelings by not facing them directly. I suspect. I say suspect because I know at some level is true. And that very blockage almost gave me a Widowmaker what they call the widow-maker. And the hard docks talk about it about killed me. Yep. So by blocking it. I just about killed myself.
Clay 18:34
Yes. i So get that. And that happened in oh seven. I ended up under the knife, you know. quintuple bypass. And later on. I ended up having to stem because of that very thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. And that’s what I asked myself. You know, I was, I was commuting to New York at the time back and forth in my offices on parking 32nd Street. And I’d sit my office and I look up at the Empire State Building, you know, never been up there. And when I went back after, like, Come bless for my bypass surgery. I thought I’ve never been up there. So I went up. This was a fall of December 22,020 17. No, this was the fall of 2007. I went up there. And I said, you know, metaphorically, I’ve made it to the top. I’m at the top of the Empire State Building. You know, it’s almost killed me. And of course, you know, what came next? Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? You know, I looked at my little office window down there. And I thought what’s is all about. And that’s when the market crashed. And I was let go and wasn’t for two years. For I got my next job. And it was, it was for $9 An hour part time at OfficeMax. You know, so I went from the top, basically the bottom and started over again. And that’s where it was that evolution that really woke me up.
Don 20:34
I’ve wondered, well, I had, oh, probably 10 or 12 careers. I don’t mean jobs, I mean careers. But in several of them, I was in the public, I posted a television show for the museum apart and did the radio series. But I had to start wondering what part hubris was playing. In that because there’s this thing out there, that persona that you can build, you know, just do it in media. I found a lot of wounded people in radio and television, who probably like me, had a hard time uniting their vocation in their application. And who they were and who they wanted to be seen as to another deadly thing, but there’s a kind of hubris there. And boy, just hate to have to admit stuff like that. I’m gonna go, I’ll drive around the block or something before I really get into that. It’s called the shadows. Yeah. And I think that’s where a lot of courage comes in for people. Yeah. Between able to turn and face them.
Clay 22:00
Yeah. What was it that that you really got rolling? With servant leadership. I mean, you. You’re the official biographer, for the late Robert Greenleaf. And you told in a previous podcast, kind of all the evolution of that. But there was a point when all those careers, which you really took off and dedicated yourself to the advancement of servant leadership. Can you talk about that? So?
Don 22:38
Yes, I got green leaves. Original essay, the servant as leader, when they in 1986. And it came in a padded envelopes from my mentor who lived in Dallas and McGee Cooper. So I opened it up, eventually, through blade around a couple of days, and read it and was riveted. And decided after I closed the last page, that I would devote the rest of my career to trying to understand and share these ideas. And that was it. Now, that was not my style, necessarily, to say, oh, okay, I see this, I’ll just change my life. It wasn’t unprecedented. One night in graduate school. I worked late at a radio station came back and there was one light on in the dorm. And the guy was an entry. I was in seminary, first year of seminary, and there was a guy there who I like, he was kind of a draft dodger, I think he was waiting till he turned 26. But he just said, you really need to go to England or Scotland. Next year, for your second year of seminary. I said, why? And he said, Well, I went to England, blah, blah, blah. So I walked out and called my sister and said, I’m going to Scotland next year. Boom, just like that. It sounds foolish. It sounds foolish to change my career, just like that. But I was saying, Yes, I didn’t initiate the request. The request came from somewhere else. And there was a solid rightness about it. You know what, thank God I did. Thank God that I take no responsibility for creating that. Except that I had the doors of perceptions open perception open long enough for it to sneak in and make itself No. And that’s for a lot.
Clay 24:56
I’m sorry. Yeah. Why Scotland?
Don 25:01
I’m one quarter Scottish. Aha. I always wanted to go there. And I wanted to learn a little bit more about my grandmother. And where she came from near Glasgow, but also Scotland. In theology. It’s a pretty big deal place. The University of Scotland had some high end theologians through the years. And I wanted to test myself there too. So I bought a motorcycle and ran around Europe after that, and you know, that all that kind of stuff? I’m glad I did. But how often? Have I been open to all? I’ve asked myself that since that was an awful, a W E, a full moment when this thing crashed into my consciousness. And I wonder if there had been time since that. insights of similar import. Haven’t tried to get in there. And I was too busy.
Clay 26:16
Oh, that’s a real. That’s really something to reflect on. How many times it just right below the surface? Yep. And there’s just enough resistance? No, I can’t do that. Just enough resistance to keep it is just an inch or two below the waterline? And yeah, really, it really is. It really gives me pause, as you’re saying that because that time when I said yes, when I quit my work, you know, I’d had another heart scare, I was okay. I came home. When I said to Laurie, I said, you know, I was in Jamaica in 2007 in the woods, knowing I was going to have a heart attack. And just finding peace. It’s hard to describe, but I knew I was leaning against the veil. I knew I was going to die. And I wasn’t going to go to the hospital air. But I felt got so at peace with all that. How that happened? I don’t know. And when I got back, sure enough. I went in. But I said to her after this latest heart scare in 2018, I said, you know, I was in the woods in Jamaica, doing what was in my heart to do do my little crafts and so forth. And knowing I was going to die. So I would do it was my heart there. And who’s to say, today is not my last day? And am I doing what’s on my heart right now. That’s right. If not now, when am I going to do it? And that’s what sparked me to believe and start this path.
Don 28:16
I think if something odd and irresistible comes to us because it’s on the fringes of not of consensual reality. I mean, it’s a kind of non consensual reality. I think that is a high alert that we should pay attention. And I’m almost glad here the I am glad I’m 75 years old. I don’t have the same passions of making it I making it now is to try to make a difference for other people as much as I can. knowing now that that’s not all out to me. That it is it’s it’s in communion with other people who care I’m supposed to be working with in certain ways, and I’m doing that. So it is mysterious, but it’s real. That’s it something can be mysterious. And still it will be real as dirt it’s holding those two things in our mind simultaneously. That Einstein called genius that we are but it’s very difficult to do especially in this culture.
Clay 29:45
Yeah. Yeah. So binary. Check out the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate male on your favorite podcast Station.
Connie Baxter Marlow & Andrew Cameron Bailey are original thinkers, writers, photographers, filmmakers, futurists, climate “solutionaries” and inspirational public speakers. Their explorations into the essence of Reality have led to a unique articulation of the conscious, loving, abundant nature of the Universe. In their book The Trust Frequency:Ten Assumptions for a New Paradigm.Connie and Andrew present a system of cosmological axioms, informed by indigenous cosmology, quantum science and Eastern and Western mysticism, which resolve key paradoxes that have kept humanity from walking in balance with Universal Law and with an open heart. They offer straightforward, practical tools for accessing The Trust Frequency, an alternative reality where the soul’s destiny awaits, the laws are expanded, and there is more balance, beauty, joy and abundance than we can fathom.
They have presented their work at IONS, SAND, COSM, ISSSEEM, Unity Village Chapel, New Dimensions Radio, Eagle Quetzal Condor Global Convergence, Consciousness of Immortality Conference, The Thoreau Society, Parliament of the World’s Religions, World Unity Week 2020/2021 and numerous other venues.
Welcome to In Search of the new compassionate male. My name is Clay Boykin, I support this podcast through my coaching practice. I help people visualize and harmonize find direction and meaning or simply get unstuck. Contact me at Clay Boykin calm for a free consultation. Now here’s the latest episode of In Search of the new compassionate male.
Dennis Tardan 00:31
Hello world it’s me Dennis and here we are again on the search out the new compassionate male. I’m the co host of this particular podcast I’m here with the founder and host clay Boykin Hello clay.
Clay 00:45
Hi Dennis, we have Connie Baxter Marlow and Andrew Cameron Bailey for round two. Now, last episode 106. We talked about trust frequency to trust me. And today, one thing I learned was that Andrew has done quite a bit of work, men’s work in years past. And then there’s quite a bit of work that Connie has done related to men’s work specifically. And since we’re here, raising compassion consciousness for men. I’m really excited about our conversation. So I want to start off and let’s get to it, Andrew. Yeah, once upon a time you started doing men’s work, take it back as far as you want, I’d love to hear about it.
Clay 01:34
Let’s go back to Oh, the 1990. I actually just started doing my personal men’s work by joining the women’s movement in 1973. I think it was in Manhattan, really. And I didn’t know that I didn’t know there was going to be relevant. I was one of the few males admitted into sort of fairly inner circles in in the downtown Manhattan radical feminist movement, because my girlfriend was a leader in that field. So as the decades went on, so that really taught me a lot taught me a lot about dealing with a woman which is different from the subject of the compassionate male, but I think it’s relevant. Very well, when the men’s movement his John Lee is melodrama. So may His Robert Bly. Here are these extraordinary men coming out with these books and then leading these workshops. And I was busy raising five kids at the time throughout the 80s. And I was really in the midst in the year 1990. And there was a call I was living in the Hamptons, in quad or East quad in the Hamptons, which is close to Southampton. And there was a call for a meeting in Sag Harbor. Now I don’t know if you know these towns that talk Sag Harbor Absolutely. This little towns in the world, really an American particular. And there was a meeting and I sit down, I’m gonna I’m gonna go check this out. This is this is interesting, not men, the men are coming up the men are emerging. Let’s see what we can do here. So I attended this meeting. And are you aware of the Sterling group?
Clay 03:21
I’m not.
Clay 03:24
Thank God for that. Because this meeting was called by a group of men who call themselves the Sterling group. And there’s a person named Sterling. I never heard of these people either. watches this meeting, about 40 men showed up and I knew most of them. I was part of this community out there, right? I was in the construction business. I was in that consciousness realm. I was in creative arts, I had a band and stuff like that. So I knew I knew at least half if not two thirds of these men. And it was a hard sell. There was I called them five mustaches. There were a row of these five mustaches on this page. They all they look like they came out of a queen musically. And they sell sell, sell, sell, sell. So this is my this is my introduction to the men’s movement. So very weird way. And finally, it’s like, okay, who’s signing up for the weekend? $500 the weekend? And well, this
Dennis Tardan 04:28
is $500. When?
Dennis Tardan 04:29
$500 in 1994 is a is a is about $2,500 today.
Clay 04:44
So purchasing power is a guy raising five kids working really hard. didn’t have that kind of money, but also I’m very resistant to hard sell. So the question there’s a silence in the room and one guy puts up the sound. He said I’m going really good friend of mine. Actually the lead guitarist in my band, puts his hand up and said, I’m going, and then it’s like, never really tried to get. I’m realizing I’m at a sales pitch. So, okay, nobody answered. So I put my hand up and I said, you know, I’m sorry, but I won’t be going, a I don’t have the money fee. This is not quite the angle I’m interested in. But as there are 40, or 50 men in this room, I’d like you guys around here to know that if you’re interested in forming a men’s group, I’m up for that. And one of their mustaches said, I don’t like what you’re doing. Since Okay, I’m leaving. I’m out of here in a second I wanting to say. And I’ve said, you know, my number. Give me a call. If this is interesting to you, I’d like to form start something that doesn’t cost money is not part of a movement. It’s simply a group of men getting together to see where it takes us. And the guys yelling at me. And I said, okay, good night, thank you. And I left and I drove my 40 miles home, and got home, and my phone started ringing and didn’t stop ringing. So that’s how it started. So we had an X meeting with about six or seven men. So this is a this question of our man’s movement, a men’s meeting a men’s group? What the hell does that mean? What could it mean? It could mean a whole lot of different things. So we had a meeting with about six or seven men who called me and we within a week or 10 days, we sitting together in a room and going like, Okay, this is interesting. Let’s get some parameters here. Question number one, how many men and we tossed around we agreed upon 10. Let’s have a group of 10 should be handleable was 10. Too much smaller, it won’t be that relevant, too much bigger, kind of hard to handle. That 10 Min. Those 10 slots were filled within another three or four days of that meeting. For sorry, that my phone didn’t stop ringing. And I’m like, sorry, we’re full. What do you mean, you fall? Sorry. So guess what this poor guy ends up having to do? Start another one. So on every Monday night, we had a men’s meeting of the one group and the other group, because another 10 men immediately came into focus. And I was sort of the commonplace because it was my phone. It was so so and then the question is, okay, now what are we going to do with these meetings, and we came up with, okay, we’re going to have to hours, we’re going to have there for a very short amount of time each, someone’s going to have to be a timekeeper. Let’s get really disciplined and careful with us. And let’s have some real rules. No chitchat, Make it serious. No. Crosstalk talking stick while you’re on your own? And what are we gonna talk about? Whatever’s uppermost in your mind? Okay, so that I like that. It could be the fight, I just have as my wife, or it could be a painting that I’m struggling with, or it could be trouble at work. Or it could be, damn, I saw this girl on the street, you know, wow, whatever it turned out to be right. So we did that all of the 1990s.
Clay 08:21
When I let me ask you something. Why did they not go to that first group that was courting you to join for 500 bucks for the weekend? Why did they not do that? And why what attracted him to what you are offering?
Clay 08:37
You know, we never even discussed that. Really, the only man I know who joined that group is my son. That group meaning the first group, we’re just starting group, my son, decades later, my son at that time was probably seven years old. Eight years old. He later was trying to get me to join this exciting thing he had discovered and I said, Tell me about it. I said, it’s not called Sterling. And he said, Yes, it is. I’m like, okay, so it’s a big success. It’s a big deal. It’s millions of dollars. And it’s very pushy. And if we three men, were doing this together, we’d be getting really much with each other. We’d be pushing it shoving each other physically around, just show how masculine and male we are. That’s not what we did.
Clay 09:27
Let me ask you this. Because this is what I’ve run into. That there’s a whole number of men’s groups out there. And for, for guys to be in a men’s group. First of all, I think it’s great. They’re different levels of their consciousness. So different forms of men’s group work for different guys. So but what I have learned is that some of those men’s groups are trying to break into the guy to get him into his heart. But there’s a whole population of men out there who already in their heart and they need to learn how to connect with another man, I need a safe place to go. Go to. And I’m just curious was that? Does that kind of relate to your experience on what you were doing?
Clay 10:16
Um, yes. Without getting too specific. Okay.
Clay 10:19
Okay.
Clay 10:20
Let me ask you a clear, quick question. Do you ever go to the Mentone? Meeting?
Clay 10:25
The mankind project? No, the Mentone in Alabama? No.
Andrew 10:29
Okay. I don’t know if it’s still going. It was an annual meeting of the I only went once. It was Robert Bly. Okay. My team, tell me him. John Lee, it was spectacular about 130 men, and it was great. So somehow, the group of men who came together to that meeting was sort of compatible with what we were working on. I have to say, that was not the most satisfying man’s experience I’ve ever had. In fact, within a few years, I was just thinking like, oh, man, you know, I don’t want to listen to these guys talking about how many times they screwed their wife last night, or how many times they’ve had an affair, how many times they’ve been unfaithful this year? I don’t care about how many times they dropped off. I really don’t care. And that kind of stuff was discussed, to move to, you know, no, thank you. And secondly, I really wanted it to be spiritual and challenging. And the best thing we did together was go on trips, go on camping trips, and we’d go camping, I had some land in upstate New York and Woodstock. And we go camp on my land, for example, did a bunch of different things, and would sit there. And one of the interesting things I had, by that time, two of the men in the group were really good musicians. And we ended up forming a band, we had this band all through the 1990s, as well as this men’s group. And so they were sort of integrated. We’re on the land, and I said something and I can’t remember what it was. But one of the men, communism, in my band, jumped up across this clearing and came at me almost got physical. I see got completely outrageously pissed off physical with me. For no known I honestly, I don’t know, I offended these guys. So there are a couple of them there. That bisexual ones, strangely enough, I somehow managed to offend them, but not because of anything to do with sexuality. It was more to do with the things in my life that have been exciting. And I that I want to talk about, sometimes have to do with people whose name you would know. And it was assumed that I was making the shit out that I was lying that I was puffing myself up. And sorry, these are actually people I’ve worked with, and they’re my friends. You know, so it was not that good. And eventually what happened, there was a, there was a coup within this group, about seven or eight or nine years in, and one of the members of my band broke up the band and the men’s group in the same evening. Kicked out, they kicked out four of us. The guy who poured from, you know, Ford for the sweats. This muscular, tattooed, amazing, the man of our men, greatest poets, like the poet laureate of New York, kicked him out. Another guy who is a very significant therapist. I mean, the four of us, they said, We’re terminating the group, goodbye. And then a week later, it turned out that the other five went to dropped out. So there were another five, those five had some waiting guys. And they reformed the group and without a hiccup. They went, and my phone started ringing again. And it was like, wait a minute, this was supposed to be for life. The poet said, this was meant to be our insurance policy for the rest of our lives was meant to be our support system. So we have this group of men we could totally trust for life. Noblesville, and what’s going on? I said, Can you come over to my place? I’ve got my little pedal. We’re recording studio. Let’s sit there. So the four of us sat down and we said guess what, guys, we other rejects. We’re out. And I’m personally really relieved. Really glad. Okay, so about that wasn’t just in other words, it wasn’t personal wasn’t right. Yeah, it was something about the dynamic nature of the group. So yeah.
Clay 14:49
What I’m going to guess here you wanted to go deeper, spiritually or metaphysically. and they were afraid to go that deep to really go into their heart. Is that what was going on?
Andrew 15:10
I think they would. In other words, they were serving a group now to beat me for just got kicked out. A group would totally disagree with you. They there was sort of a status thing or something like that, or whatever it was, I probably by 95 or so 96. I was going like, Okay, I’ve just to myself, I never really brought it, I don’t think I am, I did my woman’s work back in the 70s. I did my men’s work in the 90s. Now, I want to do the men’s and women’s work, I would like to see a group, let’s have 12 people, six women, six men, knock couples. And to really, really get deep, never did it haven’t done it yet, not saying it won’t happen. And I’ll say one more thing about the second group, which was a lot more peaceful and less contentious. And I’m actually closer to more people in that second group than I am in the first group. That group also continues to this day. And when I met Connie, I said to the men, I said, you know, knew about my divorce and all that stuff. And I said, would you even consider having me bring this woman to one of our meetings, I think she has something to say to us. And I invited Connie to the meeting. It’s the only time we did it. But man, that was the most wonderful men’s group I meant meeting I’ve ever had, where we had cry when talking about that.
Connie 16:49
Well, do you guys have any thoughts you want to talk to Andrewabout not?
Dennis 16:52
Well, we want to talk with you about because you’re here with three men who are really working to both to get to their hearts and to expand compassion. And so you can give us some perspective and give us some, some some of your thoughts please call me.
Connie 17:13
Well, I’d be happy to. Because I’ve been waiting for decades for this very moment.
Connie 17:24
Thank you for inviting me on you’re seeking the compassionate new male, because I have an incredible resonance for the tender male heart. And I would say that perhaps I’m more balanced to my masculine, Anders more balanced to his feminine. He’s way more intuitive than I may more in touch with his body. So this whole dichotomy of what meat suit wearing just just makes no sense to me what’s going on right now that the women are going to lead us the men have all screwed it all up and the women get out of the way, then. I mean, that’s a travesty.
Clay 18:09
It’s a pendulum swing.
Connie 18:12
It’s a travesty. And we’re, you know, we’re not doing pendulums anymore. We’re at the fulcrum. Now we’re going up into unit of consciousness into the open heart, how are we going to open the heart of the male, when we’re telling him to get out of the way that he’s just messed everything up? It makes no sense. Look at the men who’ve done incredible and continue to do incredible work in the Open Heart arena of compassion and kindness. And I mean, they’re leaders. I’m sorry.
Dennis Tardan 18:44
But that is Connie. That’s the that’s the difference between binary thinking and being able to to hold two thoughts at the same time, we can all we can see the the extraordinary gifts that men have brought to the table, and it’s same time to also see the limitations, we can bring them both to the table, we don’t have to reject one in order to reject the other. We don’t have to reject the men in order to accept the women. This is an all in.
Connie 19:14
Exactly, exactly. And I feel that we’ve been responding to a lower frequency on the planet. Everyone has the women as well as the men. So we’ve all been doing nasty stuff to each other. We’ve it’s, as my son said, it’s been a mutual wounding, because I feel the male heart is so tender, that it’s been wounded by our childbearing practices, and by the women in its life. Okay, in their lives. Okay, so that’s my thesis is that we just don’t know the true male. We have the armored heart of the male that steps out. After a couple of years by two or three. He’s learned that he’s not supposed to cry. He’s not supposed to play with dolls is not supposed to play house. You know, he’s he’s supposed to play with trucks and, and guns and all that, you know, it’s it’s crazy for me and so when I had a boy I had my third child was boy, I was thrilled to be having a boy and I did everything in my effort in my realm to raise a compassionate male, a true male. And so when he said at age seven mom my feelings tell me I don’t belong in school. I because of the trust frequency, absolute walking in the trust frequency for me, I didn’t have the word risk in my vocabulary. You can’t when you have your son’s life in your hands, and I said, Okay, honey, Obi Wan Kenobi says trust your feelings, Luke. I guess you don’t have to go to school anymore.
Clay 21:00
And he was how old? Oh my gosh, yes.
Andrew 21:07
You are with the mother of a first grade dropout. Right here in Wichita, you hear about this first grade dropout. What he’s doing right now at this moment? Oh,
Connie 21:15
Yeah. But let me say that see, I had been spending time with visionary native elders. So for for many years, and I saw through them that we each came with a gift. And that it’s a loving universe. This is what our trust frequency book is all about to give people the tools to be able to walk in absolute trust. I knew that the universe was going to chase Johnny Marlowe around with a silver platter, with every experience he needed to become the gift he promised to bring to the world. So I didn’t have the word word risk in my vocabulary. I couldn’t with my son’s life in my hands. But I set him free. I didn’t pull him out of school because of my beliefs. I didn’t didn’t interfere with my children’s Destiny pas in any way. We we swooped indicted and did extraordinary stuff, but I followed their lead. I didn’t lead them because their soul knows what their souls destiny is. People will say How can you let a little boy like that make that kind of decision. I said, I don’t live in there. It’s not my destiny path. It’s his. And so I set him free. And my husband just I was kind of the leader in the child rearing scene, and he didn’t understand me anyway, from the time I had my spiritual awakening. And so we I set Johnny free, I let him go. And he didn’t resonate to learning to read, he didn’t resonate to any of the academic stuff. So I just let him go. And I know that we have an x ability to access information much faster than reading. Okay, so I didn’t care if you learn how to read or not. And his father had been turned off to learning to read by his father, who had demanded that he learned to read, we are so neurotic about teaching our kids how to read. And if we understand the human spirit, that we actually have to do the opposite of what we’re told to do. Or at least, that’s my spirit. If anybody tried to tell me what to do, I make sure I do the opposite. So I set him free. And ultimately, because it’s a loving universe, man showed up on our doorstep to teach Johnny how to read. So I said, Okay, universe. So he came and he was Johnny’s tutor, Johnny’s a voracious reader and amazing writer. And, and as Andrew pointed out, he’s now a flourishing photographer. In Los Angeles. He’s 36 years old.
Clay 23:56
And I’ve known him since he was 17. Man, and he’s, he’s my hero. He really has found out differently than his peers. His college buddies are in depression or drug addiction, and God knows what and he is not very interesting. What’s the difference? There’s a difference somehow
Connie 24:16
there’s a difference because we have an educational system that does not honor the human heart and the human spirit. So I went to bat for the human heart and human spirit in Aspen, Colorado to change the educational system and bring the heart and bring native american thinking into our ponderings about, okay, how are we going to what sort of educational system are we going to have? That’s going to take the human race to our actualizing our true potential as loving beings in balance with all of creation? So that’s been my experience since the exact same time that Andrew speaking of this was 1994 My son his son, My son of the same age. And so Johnny was seven. What happened though? It was January of his first grade year, when the teacher called everybody together all the kids together. And she said, Well, this is Johnny Marlowe’s last day in school. And a little girl raised her hand. And she said, But Johnny, how are you gonna get a job?
Clay 25:22
First grade,
Connie 25:24
first grade little girl, no less. She knew what she was in school for, didn’t tell the teacher what the teacher wants to hear, or you’re not going to survive. This is called survival. You know, get a job to support your family survive, get have food on the table at seven years old, this little girl, no less. So this is the arena of the trust frequency, to teach us to give us tools for walking and trust going into a higher frequency where the laws are expanded, it’s a completely different ballgame. Because I will tell you, what happened for Johnny’s life was magical. The people who showed up in Johnny’s life, Johnny becoming he was just flown out to New York with a with a team of 30 people to do this shoot in New York City from Los Angeles. He’s just turned 36, like last week. And so he’s flourishing. He just bought his own home with his earnings as a photographer, oh, help from parents or anybody and has had the, he got the girl in Aspen, and stuff like that. And so when Johnny decided that he wanted to go to school, we swapped indicted the system, actually, somebody from an alternative school said, well, Johnny, anytime you want to come, come by the school, just feel free because his sister had transferred to that school. So Johnny had the freedom to go and be a part of a system without being a part of it. Right. And so he had, he was able to be socialized and stuff like that. And so when he decided he wanted to go to school, when the student is ready, the teacher will come. That’s absolute, it’s a loving universe. Okay. That’s what the trust frequency book is all about. Johnny is the trust frequency poster child, because he said, I want to go to school. So a companion tutor showed up for him, and came and brought him up to speed academically, so he could go to school. And this, this guy was from outside of the paradigm as well. So I just want to say that when you tell the universe, what it’s up for you, the universe must comply. It loves you. Okay, but you’ve got to do it with bold, committed action. And that’s where this trust frequency set of assumptions about the nature of the universe helps us understand how loved we are, that it gives us everything we asked for, what are our requests, where we put our attention, what our assumptions are our seven A’s of, of our consciousness. So in the end, mainly, that’s bold, committed action.
Dennis Tardan 28:22
It is. I find that when I’m getting, getting to that trust place, to be able to trust to be able to step out that to be able to step out and trust. The are there little steps to doing that? Or is it just all or nothing? That’s a great question.
Connie 28:45
Oh, guess what, Dennis? Oh, I mean, yeah,
Andrew 28:53
you can’t do it in a half assed way I think gives the answer, right.
Connie 28:57
Yeah, doubt. You can’t do it because it’s by its frequency. Its vibration, is physics. There’s no judgment. It’s not.
Dennis Tardan 29:07
All I’m saying is this is that if I am tuning in, to a frequency on, let’s say, an FM radio dial, remember those old dials where you earn it, and you would start to get and you and you begin to get some of the signal, and you get some of the signal. And then you get clearer and clearer on that.
Clay 29:30
So it is a it is a practice. It’s, I’d say it’s the rare human who’s able to just grok this gray, get it in one microsecond and say, Oops, that was then this is now now I’m enlightened down here, right in the state of total trust. I doubt that. That happens very often. But it’s about testing, testing these assumptions. For example, if you take those 10 assumptions that we proposed that week You just try it on, that you have to try it on really have to be brave enough to it’s like trying on a singleton brave enough to you know, go to go to work and wearing that suit or going to the opera or whatever it is. You have to try it on 100% It’s almost like, I think there’s a relationship to let’s say you decide to become a Buddhist. You went to a new sort of Buddhist teacher and just some of your friends really got into it and you went, You can’t do that in a half assed way. You really have to take that plunge to if you’re constantly hedging your bets. My son, my rockstar, son, when he was about 12. He said, Dad, I’m going to be a rock star. I’m going to be a musician. I said, you assurance and yeah, said good do that. He said, What about college said if you feel it, do it, but if you don’t, that’s okay. You could have a plan B. But if you have a plan B if you have a fallback position, you’ll probably fall back. So that kid right now, last I heard of was in Miami recording with a whalers about Molly’s whalers. He made that commitment. He now he, he’s trapped. That’s a term we used to use in South Africa. He thrashed school, he took the price when he graduated from high school in languages, mostly in French and Spanish. He was like the languages guy. And then he went to offensives he didn’t go to college. Now his older sister did go to college. So that was her path. She did that she’s a big deal. Lawyer right now. That was her path. She did that. And all it Yeah, I have five kids. And they’re each radically different each from the other. Now we’re all raised for the same basic principles. And I thought, Connie story of raising her kids in this really alternative way. I really thought that was what I was going to do. When I came to this country. It was at the time it was in the 60s that student rebellions. Kids were not happy with what colleges and schools were doing to them. And they were rebelling, and I was very interested in that field. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Summerhill. It was an experimental school in England. It was the time of those experimental schools. How can we completely can the Waldorf system, all these different ways of alternative ways of teaching our kids? I thought, I’m absolutely going to raise my kids, I’m gonna have a whole bunch of kids and I’m going to raise them in it’s completely alternative manner. I was wrong. Because when it came to do it, we were living in the Hamptons, there were alternative schools that were really expensive. There was no way we could do five kids. And the kids were thriving in the system. Yeah, his kids again, right. They really thrived within the system and then emerge, and we were hippies, and not even Americans. So the kids got a lot of flack at the beginning. By the beginning of high school, those kids were each being challenged by their schoolmates, and put down and your parents are just stupid hippies and organic vegetarians. What the hell’s that? etc. And by halfway alone, things began to change. And by the end of school, everybody else wanted to be like them. They honestly were like the leaders, each of them in their own way. Who were the were leaders. Now in my music musician, son shows up those kids from school artists biggest fans, in front of their stage.
Connie 33:33
Yeah, and it’s interesting because I wasn’t a hippie. Okay. I was private school, New England, old family, Mayflower descendant life, my ancestors started colleges, Bowdoin College, etc. And, yeah, but I had I, I say, I was sitting on top of the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? You know, the triangle. You’re on top. And I have a responsibility. And that’s one thing these schools, New England’s women’s schools teach you is, of course, with privilege responsibility. Okay, I was sitting up here waving, hey, how do you do, I had the power to let my son drop out of school freedom, the freedom to do that, even though my parents disagreed and my sister was gonna report me to social services, whatever it was, I didn’t care, because I came with a job to do that is raised humans that are going to contribute to society. Well, number one, number two is shift the consciousness of humanity. I mean, we’re big picture thinkers, right. So we’ve got a big job to do. And so I could listen to my children’s hearts, listen to their spirits and follow those impulses for them open the doors. That was my job to open the door for their destiny path. So one daughter, instead of going to college, went off to China was smuggled into Tibet, and etc, she ultimately put herself through college and she’s now in Amsterdam. Now, yeah, for a fortune 500 company that she because she got a, an MBA and all that. And my other daughter, she had her destiny path as a writer and as a this horseback rider, and she’s now supporting our family in Aspen, Colorado, with my granddaughter, and her husband, but each one has their own destiny path, we can’t be channeling them into this educational system that says, you know, if you get this on this test, you’re okay. And if you don’t on that test, you’re not and you know, your trajectory, etc, you have to have the courage and the trust, to walk in freedom, because we can do that individually. It doesn’t matter what the rest of the culture is doing. If your vibration is up, you can you do anything. Because the rules that apply to you like Henry David Thoreau said, the laws that apply to you will be expanded, or new laws will be made in your favor, and you will live with the license of a higher order of beings. That’s in his conclusion to Walden, I quoted that last time. But that’s when you walk confidently in the direction of your dreams. So it’s just up to us to give people the courage to go there. And, and as Andrew said, it is a process. For me, it’s like, absolute. So I’m not really one to speak, because I it hasn’t been a process for me fear was never one of my things. And, you know, I just came in for a different ride. And, but it is a process, like Andrew says,
Clay 36:49
what I’m hearing is that each of you have created an environment for a young person to, to develop, I call it, let’s call it solar energy and their lunar energy. You know, traditionally the solar, you know, leads, you know, that’s the, traditionally the male energy and the, the lunar, the, the, the woman the female energy, but we have all have both, and what what I’m getting from this conversation is that you allowed whatever that was, wherever they were to find, find its own space, its own space to not be forced your your guys so you got to follow this path, you’re a woman, you got to go this way. But to find themselves along here, and I know y’all gave guidance along the way, but you were kind of tapping this side tab on the side, and letting them find and develop their heart as well as their head and then integrating in finding their own equilibrium within that integration. If I could turn the clock back boy,
Dennis Tardan 38:09
I understand that. But one, one of the things that that I miss that I feel like I missed when I was growing up, was that I, I went very much I looked up at in in the 50s I looked up at adults as a child and when they really don’t know what they’re doing, they really don’t know what’s going on. So I’m going to take this myself, I’m not going to really listen to what they said I’m just going to end and the only the end the challenge with that is that I never learned as a child what value there could be in hard work, how what value there could be in delayed gratification, I didn’t get that I didn’t get the chance you know really defeat to you know, like fight when you do that that beautiful mandola behind you to be able to have that sense of being able to do a piece and work on it and build it if I didn’t get that that instantaneous gratification so therefore it took me a while before I got until I was in my 30s that I began to see that experience of being able to now was felt that if I could have had someone that could have sat with me and helped and modeled for me and helped me to go to what the value of that delayed gratification so that’s the learning that I’m getting that I’m getting now that I did not get as a child that I just went I just dismissed dismissed
Connie 39:40
Guess what? It’s your souls journey. Everything has been perfect. I agree. I souls journey I know what if and if only. Okay, here I am world and I’ve got this work to do and get that work done because the earth is moving into to a higher frequency, we got to get that shadow work done that less than that. Okay? And if only and what if, etc.
Dennis Tardan 40:10
I don’t go I don’t go there, Connie. I really don’t. I am so appreciative of everything that got me here today.
Connie 40:17
Yeah. Sweet, sweet, that’s important.
Andrew 40:20
So Dennis, you’re, you’re bringing up for me the idea of the mentor of the wise elder in the village, you know, where a young woman or a young man has an elder to go and, and just sit with and learn from, maybe I’m gonna trade or learn a technique or talk about spiritual matters or talk about leadership or talk about marriage or childbirth, whatever the subject might be. Right. And it’s something that I think I think we lack that we’ve lost as sort of white Westerners in particular, I think the Native Americans have more of that still, to this day, despite everything that they have struggled through, they’ve kept certain things, Connie, and I believe she’d agreed we we get a lot of inspiration from our indigenous friends. There’s something there in the non white non western world that has real value that we tend to do we, the white Westerners, and to denigrate that to like, you don’t have a religion, you’re not, you know, you’re not very bright, you’re primitive, and all of those things. And I’m so delighted that we now live in a time when we are have woken up, I think it started back in the 60s, and maybe started earlier. But in the 60s, where we suddenly started paying attention to the Native Americans in this country, for example, going and sitting at a peyote ceremony in a teepee, those kinds of extraordinary experiences that are missing. So if my kids, I know one complaint my kids had about me, or at least my middle boy. And that said, I didn’t give him enough and holding support. I trusted him too much. I gave them a very clear, they had a strong one who was great. And what I gave them was the instruction that you are free. However, with freedom comes self discipline. Think about that, to my boys. Think about that. You are responsible for your for the results of your actions. So if you go get go down a path, and my youngest boy nearly did. He actually is one of his best friends just died just a month ago, over here on heroin overdose. I mean, there was heroin in that Hamptons community. And in those getting into drugs, kids were getting into breaking into places to get money to buy drugs, and with those kinds of things going on. And of all my kids, only my one son went to the edge of that. And we saw that we had an idea. And when your local cop, a policeman, and we called him and we said, look, I think our son’s maybe getting to hang out with the wrong people. And long story short, a week later, son comes home from school walks into the living room, there’s a uniformed officer there. And we just introduced him and left. That did the job.
Clay 43:29
Interesting. I want to ask a question. Because you’re touching around a subject that that keeps coming up in my mind. And first of all, I I think that we’ve got a population, the Western civilization, that we have a population of a lot of adult children. They’ve they’ve not gone through the ritual change from childhood to adulthood. I would say it’s initiation. Now, initiation is a loaded term, because it brings up a lot of misplaced activity that just gotten a bad rap. And so initiation when I ask people about it, or initiation or rite of passage, well, what was it? Oh, when I got my driver’s license? No. Yesterday you were a boy. And today you’re a man and you take on the mantle of a man. You can still live what’s in your heart to live. But there’s never been that that not never. I can’t say that. But less and less there is that that demarcation Point. And I wanted to get your thoughts on that.
Clay 45:04
So let me just say this. I grew up in Africa. At the age of three, I was transplanted from England where I was born to South Africa and grew up in the midst of a culture, specifically the Zulu people who have very strong age groups. Yes, they have these initiations at different ages, and the boys and the girls, but no more about the boys. And the boys will have a circumcision. Yep. At puberty, for example, which is a painful, dangerous thing. Yes. And they would go through this together as a group, Nelson Mandela went through this, he spoke about that. I ended up getting a degree in social anthropology because I realized I was more than a science guy. But I realized I was actually more interested in human beings and our potential than I necessarily was in physics, or math, or chemistry, which were my fields before that. So those cultures have very specific systems of mentorship. Absolutely rigid Age, Group initiations, when you reach a certain age, such and such happens when you’re a little boy, you’re looking after the chickens later on, you’re looking after the goats later on you with the cows. Right. And later on, you’re out hunting the lion, and then you’re allowed to marry. And none of those things can happen before a certain time. And before you’ve passed the test as its as,
Clay 46:29
right. Right. And, yeah,
46:31
and so much that’s so radically different from our culture,
Clay 46:34
right. And so, and I witnessed this in, in Kenya, when I was there, I saw it on the news, a woman newscasters. And this season, we will have initiation ceremonies, for 20,000, young boys, and all the hospitals and all those support systems are in place for this. And what I learned was that, yeah, they’re publicly circumcised. And if they flinch, they bring shame on their parents. Now, in that culture, for that time, in that tradition, you know, I don’t judge it. But there’s something between that extreme and nothing, right. And unfortunately, we’re swinging towards this nothing. And so we’ve got a bunch of adult children running around. And unfortunately, they’re in politics, they’re leading corporations, etc, etc.
Clay 47:39
And they were raised by women, by the way, because most of us men in this culture have to go to work. And so I was, right. If you spoke to my, the mother of my children, she would probably say you were an absentee father. And I said, Yes. Because I had to go to the city and work and bring home the bacon and bring home the money. And mom was very responsible for how other kids, including the boys were raised. Sure, yeah.
Connie 48:07
Yeah, I just like to say something. Because I always bemoaned the fact that I wasn’t part of a culture that had tradition. Okay, so what you’re saying, and then this grandmother, in native grandmother came into my life. And she said, Yeah, traditions over, I was told not, she said, I was told not to bring my all my ceremonial implements out here to Colorado, with me, because it’s over. It’s a prison. And his, you know, you have to do this at a certain time, you have to do that. Blah, blah, blah. You know, so she and this was in the 90s. And so, I think it’s just important to one thing, recognize that each culture, each color of man has a role to play in the evolution of consciousness, and the evolution of the cosmos, because everything we do affects the cosmos. Moving this in science now that the human heart and our emotions and everything actually were the same energy is all the cosmos. So we are in process and this is from the egos perspective, from Native perspective, the high visionary elder perspective, that every race has had a job to do in this process.
Clay 49:36
Well, and that’s a whole that’s a whole nother nother realm to get into and, and it’s a it’s a tough one to talk about. Especially, I mean, Dennis, you know, you and I, of course, have been in that’s been on the show before, and so I get that, but I’ll tell you what, Here’s what I think I’m, well, I’ve learned it with, with willing, Cynthia, at the gender equity and reconciliation that we’re all wounded.
Andrew 50:12
Yeah, you got mutual wounding
Clay 50:15
that regardless if every one of us is wounded, or wounded, through patriarchy through however it is. And that’s our common ground. And if I can look at you, Connie, and say, Here, a wounded soul, you know, I have people look at me, so we’ll play, you’ve got everything going for you, you’re privileged, white western male. Well, I wanted to, you know, and here’s this not comparing loads, but that’s our, that’s our common ground. And if we can look at each other beyond the surface, and recognize it, that suffering, we both share, and maybe there’s hope at this higher level of consciousness. Dennis,
Dennis Tardan 51:07
I completely agree, because that’s what I, I get into that comparison mode. And that’s where I want to, because I’m a, I believe that we can this, this is where where the the whole piece of, of that comes in. Connie about about white shaming, and how this all this work, I don’t believe that that’s that’s the process at all, we each have to carry our own responsibility for who we are and how we behave to day and behave like that. But you know, and I cannot know what it’s like to be a woman, I cannot know what it’s like to just say to a child, but I can be your ally, I can be your ally, and make sure that your rights are protected, and make sure that your rights are protected, and do the best that I can to be able to do that. I can’t know another person’s, but I can be your ally, I can be your ally. And I can also walk in my own perspective, in my own truth, to be able to uplevel my consciousness on each and every day, whether I’m sitting in a meditative chair, or whether or not I’m going and helping someone across the street. I have both of those things to do. That is my work to do.
Clay 52:25
I’m going to pick up on that, Dennis, because I want to go back to Connie, something that she said early on, about how you grew up in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. And it’s incredible to me, yeah, you say I was at the top. And that’s how your your family was? And look at what your family brought. for the greater good.
Connie 52:52
Absolutely, you know, they gave away the family fortune to the people of Maine, parks and mountains. And that’s right giveaway was huge for them. That’s right,
Dennis Tardan 53:04
That’s part of the deal of really understanding what is enough. And also, I love what you said about the about returning those who have those to whom have a lot has been given a lot of expected. And they returned back to the process. And that that’s one of my great quest is to ask people, What is enough? What would be enough? And it doesn’t matter what your number is, would you know it when you got there? Does Jeff Bezos know when he gets there? When he you know, okay, I have enough. That’s all I need. And all me do we actually ask ourselves that question in the Western world. What is enough?
Connie 53:57
Our whole system is based on the problem of scarcity, our whole economic system, okay, so when the scarcity does fear, will there be enough to morrow? So then we start hoarding, okay, so in the trust frequency and a native way, the giveaway is huge. And in my family, that giveaway, okay?
Dennis Tardan 54:20
That’s circulation that things circulate in our body. What things circulate in the universe, why would they not circulate here? Why would that one place no longer be a law?
Connie 54:33
Yeah, and and it’s a it’s a, again, it’s vibration, its frequency. So when you’re in that higher frequency, there’s more abundance and you can fathom Jesus with the loaves and the fishes, etc. John Lennon with imagine, you know, they’re telling us they’re showing us something, there’s another ballgame. And we were in a lower frequency of scarcity and separation. And so that fear is So that’s what created these systems that we’ve responded to and played ball with. Right in order to survive, right? A little girl and 77 year old girl, how are you going to get a job Johnny, if you don’t go to first grade,
Andrew 55:14
Loaves and fishes has a problem, and that is what are you going to do with 40 bushels of leftovers? I mean, that’s the problem. The problem is so much abundance that you can’t believe it.
Clay 55:26
Well, you’re so so right. And I mean, we’ve just, we barely even scratched the surface of this whole topic. Oh, yeah. In the men’s work. You know, I mean, we touched into that. There’s so much, much more in such a dynamic time for men, for young men. And for the second half of lifers. Absolutely. It’s just it’s an incredible time of change. And I’m heartened because I hear more and more and more of men’s work that’s being done. That is heart centered, knowing what you’re doing really healing in. And I feel like it’s so wonderful. So Dennis, back to you.
Dennis Tardan 56:15
Well, I am just so grateful. I’m just I’m so grateful that we get an opportunity, Andrew and Connie to be able to continue the conversations about all of our vibrant our vibrations and how we are bringing more compassion onto the planet because compassion has to be part of this vibrational frequency to I mean, it has to be part of who we are. And that’s what we are in search of. And that’s what we’re in search of, without and within, as we said on the other broadcast, and I’m so grateful that you would give us with another hour of your time another hour the graceful all the links for everyone who’s watching or listening will be on the on the webpage and and we look forward to continuing conversations and also we might even be able to meet some of your family and bring out have a little bit of this intergenerational conversation along the way.
Clay 57:06
I’d be willing to ask my boys if they come on.
Dennis Tardan 57:10
Good. Hi, I’d love to be able to do anyway thank you for thank you clay for inviting me along the journey of in search of the new compassionate male and Connie and Andrew, thank you so much for giving us this time today. And we will it will not be long before we will see everyone again and thank you so much for joining us in search of the new compassionate male. We’ll see you next time.
Clay 57:36
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Riane Eisler is a social systems scientist, cultural historian, futurist, and attorney whose research, writing, and speaking has transformed the lives of people worldwide. Her newest work, 
