This episode has been a long time coming. If you’re a regular listener of MGSW, you know that I’m incredibly interested in exploring power dynamics, shadow, and spirituality, especially when all three become interwoven. I share my reflections about the podcast
During my studies, one of my closest friends was a medical student. I always remember what one of his professors told him one day when they were visiting patients at the university hospital :
“ When you study the symptoms of a disease during class or in a book, you learn a long list of them. Obviously, you have to know them all. But you also have to keep in mind that if a patient has ALL the symptoms of an illness, he or she’s almost dead !”.
It’s super rare and also super critical when all the symptoms are expressed. The body has the amazing ability to heal itself, much to the chagrin of big pharma.
Genetics, emotional state, environment, immune system… There are so many factors that can accelerate or reduce our recovery.
In this ultra-materialistic era, we just see predefined problems and we’re conditioned to fix them with predefined solutions (so… we can go back to work).
The new wave of “spiritual healers “ is not spared by this ridiculous way of thinking and acting. No regulation, no caution, not enough hindsight… Just the attraction of novelty and the holy and indisputable free market.
So thank you for being so brave and genuine about this topic !
One last thing, I felt in my bones your statement about having a caring and loving community as a “birthright” instead of paying therapists. I’ve always been a loner, I love creating alone and having free time by myself but in spite of this natural inclination, I completely agree with you.
Having a tribe/clan/community should be a fundamental right for everyone. It’s just a vital feature of the human condition.
I put Power in the Helping Professions by Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig on my AppleBooks “want to read” list. It sounds interesting.
I listened to Cover Story a couple weeks ago. It was disturbing. I got into it via Team Human, Rushkoff: A thinker I have been reading and listening to for 20 years or so. He had them on talking about it. .
Meanwhile I’m an old man and old school when it comes to psychedelics.
I have used these things for 52 years and still do. I know how powerful they are. And I know they are very dangerous in the wrong hands and I’m concerned about what is coming. Especially some of the right wing sponsors of what is part of the psychedelic renaissance in the medicalization.
And yes I agree with what you said, do it with people you love and your friends that’s all that’s necessary I did two Ayahuasca ceremonies and hated both of them. Particularly the religious Christian one where everyone had to wear white outfits.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Steve! Yes, definitely agree with all of this. Thank you for the recommendation about Team Human. I am also very concerned about where all of this is going. It seems nothing can remain sacred anymore, and perhaps our culture doesn't even know what "sacred" means, or how to tend to the sacred with respect, dignity and humility. A religious Christian Ayahuasca ceremony with white outfits? Sounds like a comedy bit...
It was in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. There were a lot of people there. Maybe 50. People played guitar and sang in Portuguese all night. Theses were some special people from Brazil. This was broken by group shouts of “Viva Maria!” Everyone wore white. Further along people wore different color ties or something. And sat in the front of the circle.
This has been awhile ago. 6 years. Males on one side, females on the other. Everyone long at the center alter.
An old friend took me who is an important figure in the NYC NEO-psychedelic movement. That kind of bothered me too because he’s quite bright and a natural leader. The room was too cold for me and they had two different pitchers of the stuff and kept giving me the one until my friend to him to give me the other. I never did really have much of a trip. I basically felt like I just wanted to smoke pot which I stayed away from prior expecting a profound experience.
Just finished listening to this. I am always so pleasantly surprised at the synchronization of the content you share with my own personal exploration, as I’m sure many others who are apart of this community feel.
I had a very similar revelatory moment (literally this morning) on the topic of grasping for something and therefore actually moving further away from it. I notice this happens especially in my ideas of love and when it comes to becoming a more mindful person. I become the most unaccepting of the present in the wake of grasping to my ideals. It reminds me of the Buddhist teachings of attachment and aversion; from what I understand, attaching to an ideal actually being an expression of being averse to something else, creating imbalance and essentially suffering. We lose out on so much of life’s own pacing and the slow integration of our experiences, we lose out on a well of joy and opportunity to create (be it usually in small, incremental ways) what it is we desire. Even if our conscious intention seems altruistic and “pure” (hate that term but I think you get what I mean).
So a big thank you for capturing a snippet of what our greater collective may be facing in your art! Much love Anya!
Couldn't agree more! I also find myself navigating these concepts in similar ways... and so glad to hear it was synchronistically meaningful. Love when that happens. Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts Kirra!
Anya, thank you for sharing this episode. Your discussion of shadow as an integral component of every concept, every being, every thing - you were able to articulate many of my feelings and thoughts so concisely. I am a young, female engineer working in the mining industry, and in my profession, I am met with paradox and complexity daily. Why do we need and want to extract minerals from the earth? How can we improve on the methods we use? Will these improvements really be improvements or just introduce another set of problems? How can we label extractive industry as 'bad,' yet believe an 'energy transition' and associated extraction is the answer? You have reminded me that being a 'good' engineer is not about success, computing power, money, or status. It is about approaching every problem openly, asking questions, remaining keenly aware of my projections, and learning from what is reflected back. Cheers to a life of questions without answers and never arriving.
Wow, thank you! So glad to hear that this topic is resonated and is applicable to so many different facets of life! Sounds like you're embedded in a pretty fascinating and complex world. All excellent questions.
Really appreciated your perspective on this Anya! Really spoke to a lot of things I've been thinking about for a while but had never really found a way to articulate. Pat on the back for having the courage to speak out about your concerns about the commercialisation of psychedelics at a time when it feels like everyone is pushing for it.
And the other point you brought up that I found to be so resonant was the whole shadow/projection aspect of healers. (I have ordered the book you mentioned - it sounds fascinating). Hearing you talk about this reminded me that I have always wanted to (or wanted YOU to! Haha) further explore the subject of the current cultural infatuation with notions of empathy and narcissism. I have long been fascinated with and sought to learn about these psychological descriptives myself, even falling into the trap of reading books that convinced me I was an empath while the world is crawling with psychopaths. Rather than each being natural, necessary and healthy when in balance. Now I’ve gotten to a point where I find anyone wearing the banner of “Empath” pretty sus because...the lighter the light the darker the shadow? Or, I guess what I’m trying to tie into the concept of problematic healers is this persona of the highly sensitive, highly empathetic, love-and-light, radiating goodness, tortured soul of a healer that carries the weight of the world...I’ve known them and they often wind up revealing themselves to be extremely toxic (or grandiose, or phoney, or dare I say ...narcissistic) people that have not met their shadow in any tangible way.
Yes, totally. I found that concept of the shadow being formed in direct relationship to the ideal pretty revelatory. I mean, of course that makes perfect sense, but I hadn't really thought if it like that before. I thought okay, there's an ideal, and a shadow, but I wasn't totally clear how the latter informs the former. Woah. In reflecting on this in my own life, that's extremely accurate and clear.
I think it's possible I annoy some of you sometimes, haha, especially in the Lunar Circle, because I feel like I am constantly disclaiming my position as a "teacher". It's also why I decided to stop giving astrology readings, and opted to teach instead. I think I'm actually pretty good at being in the "therapist" or "healer" role, but there's also something about it that repulses me on multiple levels. Going back to your earlier comment... a big part of it is how unnatural it is. A while ago I recognized that I had two options. I could either pursue friendships and relationships with people as I wished, outside of the context of "healer/patient" or I could opt into the healer/patient structure, thereby vastly limiting the potential of relationships with the people I met in life, or, abusing my power by not setting strong enough boundaries as I'd experienced with so many in the "healer" role at the time. I decided for me, I didn't want the structure, and that if I wanted to help people, I would need to find another way - through genuine friendships, organic mirroring, etc.
There's also a large section of Power in the Helping Professions where he critiques a lot of analysts for insisting that therapy is the only viable way to achieve wholeness, and that there are so many other potential and even necessary ways by which to do this. So that was nice to read, too. Therapy is great, but it's hardly the end all be all. I think it's important to think creatively about other "ways in" if you will, because this structure has proved to be so wildly ineffective. That's hard to say given that therapy helped me so much, but I also know how rare my experience was.
This was a banger of an episode, Anya, and I feel like I have been unconsciously anticipating it for some time. During previous episodes where you have explored this topic from different angles, I was always left with the feeling there was a bit more to add to the conversation and this seemed to bring it all home. I had so many moments while I was listening that I wanted to comment on, that I’ve now lost track, but I’ll try to touch on a few things that I found particularly thought-provoking.
Healers in the context of modern civilization: meaning, the patient or analysand has no personal or social relationship with the healer (therapist). This has always been a sore point for me although I completely understand boundaries and professionalism and all that. But you’re right, it’s an effed up premise that we need to pay someone to listen to us, to guide us, to connect us with our humanity. The capitalist framework that compartmentalizes this into product and monetary compensation not only corrodes the sanctity of the work, but creates opportunity for this to be turned into an industry rather than organic human interaction. It is a “specialization”, a keystone feature of civilization, in which hierarchy and authority and commodification are inherent. My understanding is that healers in truly egalitarian societies were not considered so specialized and deified that they held power over the rest of the group. Anyone could be a healer, in some form. Specialized healing roles came either as a reaction to or a symptom of civilization.
First of all, that book looks fantastic. Thank you. Going to get it now!
And yes... couldn't have said any of this better myself. There is so much we are trying to do in the context and scale of civilization, capitalism and modernity, and I just don't see how it works that way. I know we can't "go backwards" and I am extremely curious to reimagine and recreate stories that may allow us to build on where we are, but it's complex, and disheartening. We don't think enough, we're not patient enough, and we lack so much respect and understanding.
Thomas, thank you so much for this. It's a strange experience to get to the age that I'm at - where I no longer feel like a child, but simultaneously still don't feel worthy of "adulthood". When it comes to sharing ideas, or theories, it often feels presumptuous of me to claim I know what I'm talking about, or to construct a way of looking at something that I'm not simply copying from someone else. That said, it means a lot to hear you say you appreciate what I said, and how I said it. I hope to always approach things as an apprentice of sorts, but still, it's nice to feel validated in my ideas by people older and far more experienced. So again, thank you.
And yes, the paradox paralysis is so real. It's pretty incredible, in fact. There is almost nothing that isn't complex, and endlessly nuanced.
Another wonderful solo episode, Anya !
During my studies, one of my closest friends was a medical student. I always remember what one of his professors told him one day when they were visiting patients at the university hospital :
“ When you study the symptoms of a disease during class or in a book, you learn a long list of them. Obviously, you have to know them all. But you also have to keep in mind that if a patient has ALL the symptoms of an illness, he or she’s almost dead !”.
It’s super rare and also super critical when all the symptoms are expressed. The body has the amazing ability to heal itself, much to the chagrin of big pharma.
Genetics, emotional state, environment, immune system… There are so many factors that can accelerate or reduce our recovery.
In this ultra-materialistic era, we just see predefined problems and we’re conditioned to fix them with predefined solutions (so… we can go back to work).
The new wave of “spiritual healers “ is not spared by this ridiculous way of thinking and acting. No regulation, no caution, not enough hindsight… Just the attraction of novelty and the holy and indisputable free market.
So thank you for being so brave and genuine about this topic !
One last thing, I felt in my bones your statement about having a caring and loving community as a “birthright” instead of paying therapists. I’ve always been a loner, I love creating alone and having free time by myself but in spite of this natural inclination, I completely agree with you.
Having a tribe/clan/community should be a fundamental right for everyone. It’s just a vital feature of the human condition.
I put Power in the Helping Professions by Adolf Guggenbühl-Craig on my AppleBooks “want to read” list. It sounds interesting.
I listened to Cover Story a couple weeks ago. It was disturbing. I got into it via Team Human, Rushkoff: A thinker I have been reading and listening to for 20 years or so. He had them on talking about it. .
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/team-human/id1140331811?i=1000559572198
Meanwhile I’m an old man and old school when it comes to psychedelics.
I have used these things for 52 years and still do. I know how powerful they are. And I know they are very dangerous in the wrong hands and I’m concerned about what is coming. Especially some of the right wing sponsors of what is part of the psychedelic renaissance in the medicalization.
And yes I agree with what you said, do it with people you love and your friends that’s all that’s necessary I did two Ayahuasca ceremonies and hated both of them. Particularly the religious Christian one where everyone had to wear white outfits.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Steve! Yes, definitely agree with all of this. Thank you for the recommendation about Team Human. I am also very concerned about where all of this is going. It seems nothing can remain sacred anymore, and perhaps our culture doesn't even know what "sacred" means, or how to tend to the sacred with respect, dignity and humility. A religious Christian Ayahuasca ceremony with white outfits? Sounds like a comedy bit...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santo_Daime
Wow, fascinating. I'd never heard of this.
It was in Bed-Stuy Brooklyn. There were a lot of people there. Maybe 50. People played guitar and sang in Portuguese all night. Theses were some special people from Brazil. This was broken by group shouts of “Viva Maria!” Everyone wore white. Further along people wore different color ties or something. And sat in the front of the circle.
This has been awhile ago. 6 years. Males on one side, females on the other. Everyone long at the center alter.
An old friend took me who is an important figure in the NYC NEO-psychedelic movement. That kind of bothered me too because he’s quite bright and a natural leader. The room was too cold for me and they had two different pitchers of the stuff and kept giving me the one until my friend to him to give me the other. I never did really have much of a trip. I basically felt like I just wanted to smoke pot which I stayed away from prior expecting a profound experience.
Just finished listening to this. I am always so pleasantly surprised at the synchronization of the content you share with my own personal exploration, as I’m sure many others who are apart of this community feel.
I had a very similar revelatory moment (literally this morning) on the topic of grasping for something and therefore actually moving further away from it. I notice this happens especially in my ideas of love and when it comes to becoming a more mindful person. I become the most unaccepting of the present in the wake of grasping to my ideals. It reminds me of the Buddhist teachings of attachment and aversion; from what I understand, attaching to an ideal actually being an expression of being averse to something else, creating imbalance and essentially suffering. We lose out on so much of life’s own pacing and the slow integration of our experiences, we lose out on a well of joy and opportunity to create (be it usually in small, incremental ways) what it is we desire. Even if our conscious intention seems altruistic and “pure” (hate that term but I think you get what I mean).
So a big thank you for capturing a snippet of what our greater collective may be facing in your art! Much love Anya!
Couldn't agree more! I also find myself navigating these concepts in similar ways... and so glad to hear it was synchronistically meaningful. Love when that happens. Thanks for listening and sharing your thoughts Kirra!
Anya, thank you for sharing this episode. Your discussion of shadow as an integral component of every concept, every being, every thing - you were able to articulate many of my feelings and thoughts so concisely. I am a young, female engineer working in the mining industry, and in my profession, I am met with paradox and complexity daily. Why do we need and want to extract minerals from the earth? How can we improve on the methods we use? Will these improvements really be improvements or just introduce another set of problems? How can we label extractive industry as 'bad,' yet believe an 'energy transition' and associated extraction is the answer? You have reminded me that being a 'good' engineer is not about success, computing power, money, or status. It is about approaching every problem openly, asking questions, remaining keenly aware of my projections, and learning from what is reflected back. Cheers to a life of questions without answers and never arriving.
Wow, thank you! So glad to hear that this topic is resonated and is applicable to so many different facets of life! Sounds like you're embedded in a pretty fascinating and complex world. All excellent questions.
Really appreciated your perspective on this Anya! Really spoke to a lot of things I've been thinking about for a while but had never really found a way to articulate. Pat on the back for having the courage to speak out about your concerns about the commercialisation of psychedelics at a time when it feels like everyone is pushing for it.
Thank you!! Yes, a strange time to say these things, but also the most important time I think.
And the other point you brought up that I found to be so resonant was the whole shadow/projection aspect of healers. (I have ordered the book you mentioned - it sounds fascinating). Hearing you talk about this reminded me that I have always wanted to (or wanted YOU to! Haha) further explore the subject of the current cultural infatuation with notions of empathy and narcissism. I have long been fascinated with and sought to learn about these psychological descriptives myself, even falling into the trap of reading books that convinced me I was an empath while the world is crawling with psychopaths. Rather than each being natural, necessary and healthy when in balance. Now I’ve gotten to a point where I find anyone wearing the banner of “Empath” pretty sus because...the lighter the light the darker the shadow? Or, I guess what I’m trying to tie into the concept of problematic healers is this persona of the highly sensitive, highly empathetic, love-and-light, radiating goodness, tortured soul of a healer that carries the weight of the world...I’ve known them and they often wind up revealing themselves to be extremely toxic (or grandiose, or phoney, or dare I say ...narcissistic) people that have not met their shadow in any tangible way.
Yes, totally. I found that concept of the shadow being formed in direct relationship to the ideal pretty revelatory. I mean, of course that makes perfect sense, but I hadn't really thought if it like that before. I thought okay, there's an ideal, and a shadow, but I wasn't totally clear how the latter informs the former. Woah. In reflecting on this in my own life, that's extremely accurate and clear.
I think it's possible I annoy some of you sometimes, haha, especially in the Lunar Circle, because I feel like I am constantly disclaiming my position as a "teacher". It's also why I decided to stop giving astrology readings, and opted to teach instead. I think I'm actually pretty good at being in the "therapist" or "healer" role, but there's also something about it that repulses me on multiple levels. Going back to your earlier comment... a big part of it is how unnatural it is. A while ago I recognized that I had two options. I could either pursue friendships and relationships with people as I wished, outside of the context of "healer/patient" or I could opt into the healer/patient structure, thereby vastly limiting the potential of relationships with the people I met in life, or, abusing my power by not setting strong enough boundaries as I'd experienced with so many in the "healer" role at the time. I decided for me, I didn't want the structure, and that if I wanted to help people, I would need to find another way - through genuine friendships, organic mirroring, etc.
There's also a large section of Power in the Helping Professions where he critiques a lot of analysts for insisting that therapy is the only viable way to achieve wholeness, and that there are so many other potential and even necessary ways by which to do this. So that was nice to read, too. Therapy is great, but it's hardly the end all be all. I think it's important to think creatively about other "ways in" if you will, because this structure has proved to be so wildly ineffective. That's hard to say given that therapy helped me so much, but I also know how rare my experience was.
This was a banger of an episode, Anya, and I feel like I have been unconsciously anticipating it for some time. During previous episodes where you have explored this topic from different angles, I was always left with the feeling there was a bit more to add to the conversation and this seemed to bring it all home. I had so many moments while I was listening that I wanted to comment on, that I’ve now lost track, but I’ll try to touch on a few things that I found particularly thought-provoking.
Healers in the context of modern civilization: meaning, the patient or analysand has no personal or social relationship with the healer (therapist). This has always been a sore point for me although I completely understand boundaries and professionalism and all that. But you’re right, it’s an effed up premise that we need to pay someone to listen to us, to guide us, to connect us with our humanity. The capitalist framework that compartmentalizes this into product and monetary compensation not only corrodes the sanctity of the work, but creates opportunity for this to be turned into an industry rather than organic human interaction. It is a “specialization”, a keystone feature of civilization, in which hierarchy and authority and commodification are inherent. My understanding is that healers in truly egalitarian societies were not considered so specialized and deified that they held power over the rest of the group. Anyone could be a healer, in some form. Specialized healing roles came either as a reaction to or a symptom of civilization.
https://www.kevintucker.org/cull-of-personality
First of all, that book looks fantastic. Thank you. Going to get it now!
And yes... couldn't have said any of this better myself. There is so much we are trying to do in the context and scale of civilization, capitalism and modernity, and I just don't see how it works that way. I know we can't "go backwards" and I am extremely curious to reimagine and recreate stories that may allow us to build on where we are, but it's complex, and disheartening. We don't think enough, we're not patient enough, and we lack so much respect and understanding.
Hell to the yes. I am SO excited to listen to this!
Also, yeah....
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6400256
Yup. Watched that after listening to the podcast. So much rage.
Thomas, thank you so much for this. It's a strange experience to get to the age that I'm at - where I no longer feel like a child, but simultaneously still don't feel worthy of "adulthood". When it comes to sharing ideas, or theories, it often feels presumptuous of me to claim I know what I'm talking about, or to construct a way of looking at something that I'm not simply copying from someone else. That said, it means a lot to hear you say you appreciate what I said, and how I said it. I hope to always approach things as an apprentice of sorts, but still, it's nice to feel validated in my ideas by people older and far more experienced. So again, thank you.
And yes, the paradox paralysis is so real. It's pretty incredible, in fact. There is almost nothing that isn't complex, and endlessly nuanced.