3,682 views • Oct 27, 2022Who was Freud’s Secret Mystic Friend? Exploring Freud’s relationship with a mystic and the chapter in Freud’s best-selling Civilization and Its Discontents, in which he attempts to answer this mysterious mystic. Part 1: The Most Dangerous Mind of the 20th Century https://youtu.be/4sge_4KfCrM Part 3: Coming soon… In collaboration with Dr. Justin Sledge @ESOTERICA Watch his episode here: https://youtu.be/zuHwws5aXBE Check out our convo with Justin: Is Mysticism Rational? LOGIC and MYSTICISM with Esoterica’s Justin Sledge https://youtu.be/CaLDtvUJI_A00:00 Freud and the Mystic 01:20 Freud and Rolland, fanboying 04:56 Freud and Rolland, the beef 13:20 Civilization and Its Discontents 20:51 Psychoanalytic Explanation 31:25 Objections to Unity 32:34 Longing for Oneness 36:42 Science/Sex vs Mysticism/Religion
ThinkingAllowedTV May 25, 2021 For the full video and more than 350 other Thinking Allowed titles, please visit our streaming channel, http://thinkingallowed.vhx.tv/ Patricia Garfield is author of Creative Dreaming, Pathway to Ecstasy, Your Child’s Dreams, Women’s Bodies – Women’s Dreams and The Healing Power of Dreams. Here she discusses sleep temples of the ancient world in which dreams were incubated for their healing potentials. Using examples from her own life, she points out that dreams can serve to forewarn us of potential illness, can diagnose actual disease conditions, and can facilitate the healing process.
In this rich collection, bestselling author Adam Hochschild has selected and updated over two dozen essays and pieces of reporting from his long career. Threaded through them all is his concern for social justice and the people who have fought for it. The articles here range from a California gun show to a Finnish prison, from a Congolese center for rape victims to the ruins of gulag camps in the Soviet Arctic, from a stroll through construction sites with an ecologically pioneering architect in India to a day on the campaign trail with Nelson Mandela. Hochschild also talks about the writers he loves, from Mark Twain to John McPhee, and explores such far-reaching topics as why so much history is badly written, what bookshelves tell us about their owners, and his front-row seat for the shocking revelation in the 1960s that the CIA had been secretly controlling dozens of supposedly independent organizations.
With the skills of a journalist, the knowledge of a historian, and the heart of an activist, Hochschild shares the stories of people who took a stand against despotism, spoke out against unjust wars and government surveillance, and dared to dream of a better and more just world.
On October 31st, 2022 Mars goes retrograde in Gemini. This is one of the most important transits of the year.
Mars doesn’t go retrograde often… but when it does, you can bet it comes with important changes and developments.
Mars spends 6 weeks in a sign on average. Not this time though. Because of its retrograde motion, Mars will spend a record of 7 months in Gemini. That’s roughly 5 times longer than usual!
This means that the area of your chart where you have Gemini will come into focus.
If Gemini is your 2nd house, your finances will come into focus. If Gemini is your 4th house, your family life will come with focus. If Gemini is your 7th house, your relationships, and so on.
Mars Retrograde In Gemini 2022-2023 Timeline
To understand the Mars Retrograde in Gemini transit, let’s take a look at the transit’s timeline – when Mars goes retrograde, when it goes direct, when it goes out of shadow, and what aspects it makes with other planets:
August 20th, 2022: Mars enters Gemini
September 3rd, 2022: Mars enters shadow at 8° Gemini
October 31st, 2022: Mars goes retrograde at 25° Gemini
November 19th, 2022: Mars square Neptune at 22° Pisces
December 8th, 2022: Mars opposite Sun at 16° Sagittarius
January 13th, 2023: Mars goes direct at 8° Gemini
March 16th, 2023: Mars (at 25° Gemini) out of shadow
March 25th, 2023: Mars leaves Gemini
Pay attention to these dates and note any feelings, thoughts, events, or breakthroughs you may have.
Things may not make sense at first… but by the 2nd half of the Mars retrograde cycle (December 8th) you should have a pretty good idea about what this transit is all about.
Mars Retrograde In Gemini – Witches On Broomsticks
To understand how Mars retrograde in Gemini will influence us, let’s quickly recap what Mars and Gemini represent.
Gemini is the 3rd sign of the zodiac. Aries lights the spark of consciousness, and Taurus creates the fertile soil for the seed to grow into a plant. In Gemini, it’s time for pollination – for sharing information from plant to plant. Gemini is not only a pollinator, it is a messenger, and its role is to connect one thing to another.
That’s why Gemini is primarily associated with movement (Gemini is literally “Mutable” “Air”). Without movement, things get stale and eventually die. If you don’t open the windows, the house gets that stale smell. For things to stay alive, we need Gemini.
Mars is synonymous with “action”. Mars is the speed train. Or the witch on a broomstick.
When Mars goes retrograde we take action as usual – we go back, we ponder, we revisit, we strategise. We see what works and what doesn’t. Mars retrograde has almost a magical quality about it. It gives us the opportunity to undo what we have done, to go back in time and change things.
Can we really change our reality? There’s another reason why this particular Mars retrograde has an almost magical quality about it. That reason is Neptune.
Mars Retrograde In Gemini Square Neptune In Pisces
Mars retrograde in Gemini is marked by the Mars-Neptune square. When Mars goes retrograde, Mars is literally squaring Neptune… and the square will be in effect for at least a few more weeks.
The key word for any Neptune hard aspect is “confusion”.
If Neptune soft aspects (trines, sextiles) bring wholeness and deep spiritual meaning, when we have hard aspects like the square, we’re still motivated about finding that Neptunian wholeness, that superior state where life has a deep meaning.
BUT at first we will struggle. We don’t know where to start. We feel that there are too many hurdles and obstacles. We feel discouraged.
Mars square Neptune will firstly make us doubt our direction and purpose in life.
Things we used to believe in, things that used to fulfill us, will no longer make sense, will no longer inspire us. We may no longer find meaning in our actions, in our activities, in our daily life.
When 2 planets square each other, they are in different elements. Mars in Gemini is Air, and Neptune in Pisces is water. When Mars in Gemini squares Neptune in Pisces, Mars will try to fight water with wind. One thing is certain: Mars square Neptune will make some waves.
Neptune’s ocean is the ocean of the unconscious. The ocean moves things around, carrying treasures and debris from one shore to the next, from one corner of the world to the other.
When we have a Neptune transit, we surrender and wait for our ‘karmic payout’. On our walks on the shore, we may find a beautiful seashell, or, dead fish entangled in a fishing net.
Mars is the planet of free will. When Mars squares Neptune, Mars doesn’t want to “leave it to the Universe”. Mars wants to have a say in the process.
We can keep doing the same things – and get the same results -, OR we can do something about it.
If we’re really honest, everything that happens in our life is the result of our previous actions.
Mars Retrograde In Gemini – Winds Of Change
Ready or not, the wind of change is coming.
Things WILL change, so at least we want to be active participants. Not to prevent the inevitable, not to ‘control’ the situation, but to be conscious about what’s happening.
We no longer have to do things the same way. We no longer have to repeat the same mistakes. We can undo things. We can change things. We can have a say. We can consciously co-create with the Universe a life of meaning and purpose.
But first we have to be ready to let go of false or outdated beliefs and ways of doing things.
Life is constant change. We are no longer the person we were 1 year, 10 years, 30 years ago. We no longer have the same goals. As life changes, our priorities change too. If you feel confused, or “lost at sea”, that’s a sign that it’s time for a change.
Don’t fight the confusion. Stay with it. Mars retrograde takes its time. Stay there as long as needed.
At some point, when you least expect it, the fog will lift for you to see the enchanting new possibilities that lay ahead of you.
Pay attention to your dreams and to things, events, and people that seem to come out of nowhere with a message for you.
“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt,” poet and philosopher David Whyte wrote in his reckoning with the depths of life. “Forgiving,” Hannah Arendt offered a generation earlier in her splendid antidote to the irreversibility of life, “is the only reaction which does not merely re-act but acts anew and unexpectedly, unconditioned by the act which provoked it and therefore freeing from its consequences both the one who forgives and the one who is forgiven.”
And yet our culture holds up forgiveness as a moral virtue in too binary a way, placing the brunt of repair on the wounded, making little demand of the wounder. We need more nuance than this, and such nuance is what rabbi Danya Ruttenberg offers in On Repentance And Repair: Making Amends in an Unapologetic World (public library) — a field guide to the rewards and nuances of forgiveness, drawing on the medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides’s classic Laws of Repentance, using their ancient wisdom to calibrate our cultural reflexes and modernizing their teachings to account for our hard-earned evolution as a species conscious of its own blind spots.
She writes:
The word “forgive,” in English, comes the Old English forgyfan, which translates primarily as “to give, grant, or bestow.” One Old English dictionary connects it to the Hebrew word for “gift.” It’s a present that is offered, something that is granted to someone freely, without, necessarily, a conversation about whether or not they have earned it. It’s an offering, of sorts.
And yet, Ruttenberg observes, such a conception of forgiveness makes repair a wholly one-sided process, tasking the person wounded with the whole of it. The Hebrew language itself offers a vital remedy of greater subtlety:
In Hebrew, two different words, each with its own shade of meaning and weight, are used in the context of forgiveness. The first is mechila, which might be better translated as “pardon.” It has the connotation of relinquishing a claim against an offender; it’s transactional. It’s not a warm, fuzzy embrace but rather the victim’s acknowledgment that the perpetrator no longer owes them, that they have done the repair work necessary to settle the situation. You stole from me? OK, you acknowledged that you did so in a self-aware way, you’re in therapy to work on why you stole, you paid me back, and you apologized in a way that I felt reflected an understanding of the impact your actions had on me — it seems that you’re not going to do this to anyone else. Fine. It doesn’t mean that we pretend that the theft never happened, and it doesn’t (necessarily) mean that our relationship will return to how it was before or even that we return to any kind of ongoing relationship. With mechila, whatever else I may feel or not feel about you, I can consider this chapter closed. Those pages are still written upon, but we’re done here.
Slicha, on the other hand, may be better translated as “forgiveness”; it includes more emotion. It looks with a compassionate eye at the penitent perpetrator and sees their humanity and vulnerability, recognizes that, even if they have caused great harm, they are worthy of empathy and mercy. Like mechila, it does not denote a restored relationship between the perpetrator and the victim (neither does the English word, actually; “reconciliation” carries that meaning), nor does slicha include a requirement that the victim act like nothing happened. But it has more of the softness, that letting-go quality associated with “forgiveness” in English.
At the core of this ancient distinction is a central concern with what is needed for closure. (Here, we must remember that closure itself is largely a myth.) Maimonides offers a fascinating and very precise prescription: The wounder should make three earnest attempts at apology, showing both repentance and transformation — evidence that they are no longer the type of person who, in the same situation, would err in the same way; if after the third attempt they are still rebuffed by the wounded, then — and this is Maimonides’s brutal twist — the sin now belongs to the wounded for withholding forgiveness. The intimation is that a person who, in the face of genuine remorse and evidence of change, remains embittered is too small of spirit and too cut off from their own noblest nature. Mic-drop.
Maimonides wrote:
It is forbidden for a person to be cruel and not appeased; instead, a person should be satisfied easily and get angry slowly. And at the moment when the sinner asks for pardon — pardon with a whole heart and a desirous soul. And even if they caused them suffering and sinned against them greatly, [the victim] should not take revenge or hold a grudge.
While Ruttenberg acknowledges that no one is obligated to grant forgiveness at all costs, she considers how withholding forgiveness harms not only the repentant but the withholder:
Maimonides’ concern about the victim being unforgiving was likely at least in part a concern for their own emotional and spiritual development. I suspect that he thought holding on to grudges was bad for the victim and their wholeness. That is, even if we’re hurt, we must work on our own natural tendencies toward vengefulness, toward turning our woundedness into a power play that we can lord over the penitent, or toward wanting to stay forever in the narrative of our own hurt, for whatever reason. And perhaps he believed that the granting of mechila can be profoundly liberating in ways we don’t always recognize before it happens.
[…]
If you are still so resolutely attached to the narrative that you were forever wronged, you are harming yourself and putting a kind of harm into the world. Try to respond to those who approach you sincerely — and who are sincerely doing the work — with a whole heart, not with cruelty.
Still, at the heart of the book is not the responsibility of the forgiver but the responsibility of the repentant, and the complex question of what repentance even looks like in order to be effective toward repair, doubly complicated by the fact that, in many situations, one can be both wrongdoer and wronged.
With an eye to the myriad causes that might drive even the best-intentioned people to do harm — our blind spots, our unexamined beliefs, our own tender places and past traumas, our despair — Ruttenberg considers the necessity of letting go of our attachment to a particular self-image as a person who means well and therefore could not possibly have caused harm:
Addressing harm is possible only when we bravely face the gap between the story we tell about ourselves — the one in which we’re the hero, fighting the good fight, doing our best, behaving responsibly and appropriately in every context — and the reality of our actions. We need to summon the courage to cross the bridge over that cognitively dissonant gulf and face who we are, who we have been — even if it threatens our story of ourselves. It’s the only way we can even begin to undertake any possible repair of the harm we’ve done and become the kind of person who might do better next time. (And that, in my opinion, is what’s truly heroic.)
[…]
This work is challenging enough when facing the smaller failings in our lives — how much more difficult is it when our closest relationships or our professional reputation is at stake, or even the possibility of facing significant consequences? And yet this is the brave work we have to do. All of us. We are each, in a thousand different ways, both harmdoer and victim. Sometimes we are hurt. Sometimes we hurt others, whether intentionally or not. The path of repentance is one that can help us not only to repair what we have broken, to the fullest extent possible, but to grow in the process of doing so.
“Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one’s hand.”
EZRA POUND
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (October 30, 1885 – November 1, 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works include Ripostes, Hugh Selwyn Mauberley, and his 800-page epic poem, The Cantos. Wikipedia
“Anything difficult to say should be shouted from the rooftops.”
NATALIE CLIFFORD BARNEY
Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other authors through her salon and also with her poetry, plays, and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism. Wikipedia
When engaging with friends and relatives with strongly conservative views about politics, spirituality, and religion, I find it quite difficult to maintain the conversation because there seems to be no common ground upon which to build consensus. I find it hard to maintain an open mind with any kind of integrity because their beliefs often seem so far from reality. A part of me thinks it’s better to keep things more superficial, but that seems like a cop-out. What would your advice be on how to engage the very conservative people I encounter from the perspective of the evolutionary impulse?
Answer:
This is a great question, and one that I think a lot of us can relate to right now. I know I can.
There are several really interesting dimensions to the question that are connected to letting go of the position of “already knowing,” which is one of the most important orientations of cultivating a more enlightened relationship to life and to the mind.
First off, it sounds like the approach you’re taking is probably a good way to go. When you encounter fundamentalist thinking, it’s generally a good idea to listen and then gently challenge ideas that don’t seem in alignment with reality. But that’s about as far as you can take it if the other person is unwilling to budge at all from their view point. You can’t really have a conversation without some common ground upon which to build a shared understanding.
But I want to push this a little deeper, and explore the nature of fundamentalist thinking. It sounds as though you are a progressive, liberal person and those you’re having trouble speaking with are more conservative. Those of us on the liberal side of the spectrum tend to view fundamentalism as a uniquely conservative issue. And there’s some validity to that. When we think of the most extreme and dangerous forms of fundamentalism in our world, we tend to think of those with deeply held traditional conservative religious views.
But fundamentalist thinking isn’t unique to conservatives. It’s a rigid orientation that anyone can take to their perspectives and opinions and beliefs, regardless of their political orientation. It’s just more obvious in those we don’t agree with. There are plenty of examples of people who adhere to their “progressive” or “liberal” worldview in a way that’s also rigid and fundamentalist.
What makes these kinds of partisan political conversations so difficult isn’t that we’re encountering a different set of beliefs. These conversations become difficult when one or both parties have a rigid, unquestioned adherence to their beliefs. It’s an unwillingness to question one’s fundamental assumptions. It’s a dogmatic acceptance of everything that comes along with your worldview, regardless of any information that might poke holes in it or suggest valid criticisms or gaps. It’s a position of “this is the truth, it’s the only truth; everybody else is wrong.”
Again, none of us are exempt from that orientation. We can all be fundamentalist in our own worldview, no matter how progressive it is. Just take a look at your own political beliefs and you’ll find at least some pockets of fundamentalism. I’m sure there are issues where you simply “take the party line.” We can’t all be perfectly informed on every issue, so sometimes it’s just easier to take the general view that your political party does.
So this, I think, is the first step in being able to navigate these kinds of conversations. You need to understand the nature of fundamentalist thinking, and realize that when you feel like you can’t get anywhere with people, it’s not necessarily because they hold a different point of view. It’s more the result of how strongly they’re holding their view.
And in making this distinction, you want to be aware of any fundamentalist shades in your own view. Are there any ways in which you are unwilling to question your own conclusions? Are you open and willing to take on their opposing viewpoint in order to find some common ground?
You want to come into any situation like this focused primarily on wanting to know the truth. You don’t want to rigidly hold onto your ideas because any rigidity in your belief structure will get in the way of you knowing the truth. You can have your opinions and stand for what you’ve discovered in your life, but we need to always be interested in learning more.
But what happens if we take this open position and are still met with rigid fundamentalism? What if, in spite of our genuine willingness to entertain the views of others, they’re still unable to do the same for us?
At this point, there’s not much more you can do honestly. When you’ve done your best to make it clear that you’re willing to listen to them and they still just keep spouting the same talking points, you’re not really going to get anywhere with them. There’s just no shared basis for a deepened inquiry. They don’t really want to engage with you. They only want to convince you of their point of view.
So, at that point, you might consider changing the subject to something less polarizing. That’s probably what I would do if I wanted to continue to have a positive, friendly relationship with this person..
But, there are a couple of other things you can try. First off, you can play the long game. Let’s say, for example, that you have this fundamentalist relative and you talk every so often at family gatherings or holidays, and your conversations generally follow a similar, frustrating pattern. You can think of each of these little encounters as like chipping away at a rock wall. Each time you talk, you test the waters just to see if they’ve opened up at all. You can see if they’ve moved at all from their rigid position. They’re human after all, and all of us are in a kind of developmental process, however slowly we might be moving at any particular time.
So you can just poke them gently each time you see them and just see if there’s any new flexibility. If you hit that same rigid wall, no problem. Just move on. There’s no point in wasting your precious life energy. You can check in with them again in a year or two and see if anything’s moved.
There’s a second approach you can use to find a way to connect with people who hold this fundamental kind of worldview. And this is a good option for the people in your life that you want to make sure you maintain strong relationships with, even if you can’t see eye-to-eye politically. You can find some area of life where you do share common ground and focus on that. Then you can use this shared interest to open up trust between you.
We’re all human after all, and it’s usually possible to find some dimension of our life experience where we are aligned. If it’s someone from your family, maybe you can talk about your shared family history. You can talk about your genealogy or ancestry and how important that is to both of you.
Try to find something that is important to both of you. Keep it simple and friendly and see how that grows. You might find that your connection with that person begins to grow. You both start to see each other not as members of opposing political or cultural factions, and more as fellow human beings. There’s a kind of simple humanity beneath all the rigid ideas that you can connect on.
Believe it or not, you might even find that sometimes you can establish a spiritual connection with them. Perhaps they hold very strong spiritual values, even if they’re resting on a very rigid traditional belief structure, and you can find common ground with them on that front. There’s a way to talk about your spiritual convictions without getting into the belief structure itself. For example, you might both value things like having a moral compass or the importance of self-sacrifice for a greater good. If you’re able to be patient and curious, you can find your way down into the healthy values that they hold behind the rigid worldview.
If you can do this, they might begin to trust you more. Maybe they’ll stop thinking of you as a left-wing nutjob and see that you’re actually a very ethical and sincere person. And you might discover the same about them. As this trust grows, their defensiveness about political views might start to soften a little bit. You will be an example to them of a good person who holds views that they usually demonize; and vice versa. They’ll see that you’re a moral person who really cares about truth and doing the right thing. And even though they don’t agree with your politics, at least they’ll start to respect you and your intentions.
A friend of mine, Michael Dowd, has a very powerful story about how this happened to him. Michael is a fundamentalist preacher turned “evolutionary evangelist” who wrote a great book called Thank God for Evolution. Early in his life, he was a hardcore Christian fundamentalist who saw the world in very black-and-white, heaven-and-hell terms. But at some point along the way he was introduced to a Buddhist person who was so impressive that it began to crack open his rigid worldview. This person was such a great example of all the positive qualities that he strived to embody in his own life that he began to see them as a more authentic expression of Christ’s teachings than any of the Christian fundamentalist role models in his life. This caused him to question his own assumptions about his way being the only way that had been such a big part of his fundamentalist upbringing.
This is something all of us can be for the people in our lives. If we’re shining examples of the good and the true and the beautiful, then we might show others who share some of those essential values but don’t agree politically that there might be more to the picture. Through our example, we can help to undermine assumptions and loosen up rigid worldviews.
Of course, this won’t happen at every contentious Thanksgiving dinner with every fundamentalist cousin, but it’s a much more wholesome approach than just getting into a political argument.
TheAce of Disks marks, on the everyday level, the start of a new project, which is likely to be successful. So it will come up to show a new job, or a new business venture. Usually this will be the sort of project that seems to continuously keep on growing, with each level of attainment producing – almost of itself – the next step in the journey.
Sometimes the Ace will come up to indicate a sudden change of material fortune, or a windfall – though either of these would have to be quite substantial to invoke the Ace. Aces are always big influences, marking the beginning of something new and important. So if we see the card coming up to represent a sudden input of funds, expect this to cause major changes in the querent’s life.
On a more spiritual level, this card relates to the Earth, and to the appreciation of Nature. It might mark a period where we draw closer to environmental issues, or where we engage in a period of study, contemplation and alignment with Earth forces.
One thing that we often miss, when considering spiritual development, is the way that each development grows out of the last. Anyone who has been involved in the search for spiritual truth will already have experienced the weirdly coincidental manner in which spiritual opportunities and teachers present themselves at the relevant stage in our growth.
There’s a saying – ‘The right teacher only appears when the student is ready’. It is as though we grow spiritually from the inside, the same way that trees do. And in so doing, maybe we develop inner rings – just like a tree’s trunk. The outer ring, just under the bark could not exist without all of the others it encircles.
We’re basically the same. The topic that we are exploring today has grown from all of the earlier topics we have looked into. Our experience is formed in layers, each of which is inter-dependent with the earlier ones. The Ace of Disks relates very closely with this method of human development – it shows us the way we grow. And warns us against trying to skip any of the stages!
The word “forgive,” in English, comes the Old English forgyfan, which translates primarily as “to give, grant, or bestow.” One Old English dictionary connects it to the Hebrew word for “gift.” It’s a present that is offered, something that is granted to someone freely, without, necessarily, a conversation about whether or not they have earned it. It’s an offering, of sorts.
