Between Two Worlds with Dr. Michael Daine | 110

(upbeat music)

I think our job on earth is to evolve the gods.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity.

This is synchronicity. (upbeat music)

Welcome to synchronicity. My guest this week is Dr. Michael Dane, Yoni and psychologist, and just a really fucking cool dude. You'll hear in our conversation, we touch on a lot of things, probably the most interesting thing to me is, how do we live in two worlds at once? Or the ability to live in multiple worlds at once? And what I mean by this is, we live in the imaginal realm, right? Things that we project into the future, are things that we imagine can happen, and then we act on those, and sometimes manifest those things happening. But we also live in this nuts and bolts, Newtonian, logical.

This happens, you jump off a building, you fall because of gravity. But there's also the quantum world, right? This very 1/1000th of an inch or smaller realm, that functions completely differently, than the realm we live in. Paradoxically, that 1/1000th of an inch, is the gap between our synapses and our brain. It falls into the quantum world. This stuff starts to get really, really, really interesting and weird, but also has some practical impact on our life, right? So, that's what this conversation primarily revolves around. A bit of housekeeping. Also, we're gonna get to the episode really quickly.

As I mentioned last week, I am now my son, Eli's primary caretaker, most days of the week as Alexis got a job. I still have my job. I have two other jobs on top of that, plus this podcast. So, I'm busting my ass to try to make sure there's no hitches in synchronicity as this goes on. But if there are, bear with me. If you wanna show some support, please review, rating, subscribing, donating, Patreon, all that stuff is greatly appreciated, by no means necessary, but it definitely doesn't hurt. Let's put it like that. So, that's all I got this week. I'm sorry for this short intro. This episode is fucking awesome.

I have another one I'm recording, right after I'm doing this intro. I'm also a little bit sick and under the weather. It's been a fun time here. And oh, thanks for daylight savings. That's a terrible fucking thing. 'Cause right when you get your kid on the perfect sleeping schedule, they gotta go and fuck it all up. So, whoever came up with that idea, you're an asshole and I don't like you. So, how about that for a cheery warm episode of synchronicity? I do not want a short change. Dr. Michael Dane, really check out this episode. You're gonna love it. I know I did anything related to Jung, especially someone who's been steeped in that for the majority of their lives.

There's this sense of optimism that seems to emerge. We even speak about it in the episode, but people who really do a lot of inner work, they're rarely like bitter, angry people. And it's not that they're coming to different conclusions about what the world is. Like, oh, they can see that Trump is president and all these other fucked up things are happening, but there's this inner flame that persists for people who really deep, do the deep digging within their own psyches and our collective psyches. And I think that's important. There's a lot of other stuff we touch on here, archetypal stuff, it's cool.

That's it. All right, let's just get to the episode. Without further ado, here is Dr. Michael Dane. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) Thanks for coming on.

I really appreciate it. I'm really excited about today's talk.

Yeah, and it occurred to me, so Michael Phillip introduced us via email, but it occurred to me that I had heard your name before because Hardy and Paul from E-Dream B, mentioned you a very long time ago, and I remember they had you on their podcast. So I actually have been a little bit more aware of you than I previously thought, and I'm excited that there's multiple connections there.

Yeah, I think it's a really great overlap. I'm really excited about everything sort of secretistically coming together.

So, I mean, I actually don't usually do this, but why don't you provide a little bit of background on kind of who you are and what you do?

Okay, well, I'm a licensed psychologist. I have worked in a variety of settings as a psychologist, been a faculty member in psychology, directed psychology programs, and my training is in both research, but also in sort of more psychodynamic, depth psychology views around the psyche, and right now I function predominantly as in private practice doing some writing. I've had, for a number of years, an ongoing radio show here in Northern Colorado related to consciousness development, and the application of sort of depth psychology, psychodynamic stuff to mental health problems for the community, so that's fun.

So, I've been doing a lot of more public kind of outreach things for a very, very long time, and really enjoy it, I think it's kind of fun. Right now, my interests are really about these new levels of consciousness that seem to be developing globally. And also interestingly, so how they melt with things like artificial intelligence, quantum physics, those kind of ideas. Oh, so like we have nothing to speak about based on this. (laughs) Yeah, well, I mean, just to start with the psychology and the psychological aspects, I mean, we can go any direction, and I definitely want to pursue the artificial intelligence one, because I always find myself being kind of counterintuitive.

I'm not really someone who believes in the singularity per se, just because I don't really, and I say this not to be facetious. I don't believe time exists how we perceive it. So to imagine that there is going to be this cumulative temporal event that happens, and we experience it, I think maybe just a little to simplistic, but who knows? Anyway, what I want to get into though is like, how does this practically impact your life, maybe not as a therapist or a psychologist, but how has this impacted your life? When did you get into Jung? Well, many years ago, I was like 21 years old, and was just finished my undergraduate program, and stumbled upon the CG Jung Center in Houston.

And within two weeks was hired on, and became the assistant director of programming for the Jung Center in Houston, which is one of the largest Jung Centers in the world. And so I got very early on exposed to how to deal with the unconscious, and what was really going on with the surface. And for me, that's been my life experience since I was a little kid. Dreams, the unconscious. This whole life, I grew up in a family where we sat around the breakfast table every morning and told each other our dreams. And so it was always sort of in the atmosphere. It was always around, and the zeitgeist for me.

And then I did a very traditional graduate program, undergraduate in psychology, and both of my graduate degrees. But I always tried to balance out sort of like the practical side of becoming a psychologist and doing this work, but also the depth, psycho spiritual stuff. That was always a part of my life.

Right, I mean, and that to me is where all this stuff kind of really shines. And I mean, I think our good friend Jung would agree. And I also got into Jung at a pretty young age. I think I was like 15 or 16 when I stumbled upon man and his symbols. And I again started reading more and more young when I was like 18, and it just, it radically, honestly I put two major modalities in experience. I hold them up as changing my consciousness or at least facilitating a change in consciousness. One of them is psychedelics, which is pretty easy to understand for a lot of people. The other is Jung, and I bring that up a lot.

And most people, as you know, they know Freud. Jung is typically, you know, he's more popular now because some of the collective unconscious stuff that he kind of conceptualized and evoked. But, you know, his stuff is dense. It's hard to read. Most people don't want to invest in it. And, you know, however, the reason I always bring him up is it was a catalyst. I had intuited these things as a child. I also came from a family where my dad would ask us, you know, what our dreams are and we'd discuss them. But I intuited these things, but when I saw these ideas that he was talking about written down and then people like Marou Louise von Franz, like, you know, taking it farther in her alchemy book, especially.

Yeah. I think for me right now. Okay, so let's just segue there. I'll wrap up the thought and then let's go to alchemy. One of my favorite books is "Alchemy" by Marie Louise von Franz. And that is a pivotal book that, again, I'm bringing this up because just by reading Jung, I started to come in contact with my own personal symbols and archetypes and that blew my mind. And to this day, you know, I still really cherish is that there's a direct relationship between these internal shifts that we have and the external world, psyche and matter. So that's the alchemy that I think, you know, the alchemists actually were onto something.

So that's why I bring it up because it really is the unconscious and the collective unconscious isn't, aren't just concepts. They aren't just these things that we intellectualize and, you know, oh, yes, that's what it is, of course, and makes us feel better or feel worse. They actually have practical impacts on our life. So let's talk about alchemy, my friend. What are you, what are you into with alchemy? Well, the whole idea of alchemy, I think is an incredibly descriptive of this psychological spiritual process of individuation that Jung described so very, very well. This whole transition from going from this in the grado, this premium material state, you know, that beginning place and burning off so much of what we believe to be true, so much of the illusions that we all hold about, the reality and what matter is.

And that's where I, for me, the linkage between alchemy, quantum thought, artificial intelligence, all of those things seem to link up really, really well because they challenge this basic idea that we believe this chronic illusion about reality, right? Yes. And so for me, at a personal level, that makes a lot of sense. And it's incredibly free. But this is basically what I do day in and day out. As I help to challenge the perceptions they have about who they are, what the world is, and then move them into a place where they are way freer in their perceptions and break down these illusions, sort of the zeitgeist of reality that they believe to be true because it's so impinges on who they really could be and the potential that they have.

So that's sort of, you know, how does alchemy, how does quantum thought play into my practice? I do whatever you want to be out. Right, right. And I mean, what you just described to me sounds like the actions of a Bodhisattva right there. What you're doing is you've got a glimpse of, I'm not calling you enlightened, so don't let it get to your ego, but, you know, you've got a glimpse of kind of a truer reality or something that maybe creates what we experience every day and you're saying, hey guys, check it out. Here's a way that you can also be aware of this and have it integrate and you can individuate in your lives because what we're talking about here, at least for me, I mean, I wasn't, I wouldn't say fortunate or not fortunate, but I didn't have a clinical setting or a therapist's therapeutic setting when I experienced a lot of these things related to young or related to, you know, development or whatever it is.

And being able to kind of put your trust in someone in that type of setting is so, it's again akin to the psychedelic experience of set and setting. Like it really does have an impact on people's lives and it is a benevolent thing to do to kind of ferry people across, to kind of say like, hey, here is what's going on and here's some ways that you can actually, you know, and again, another thing you use, and I'm not surprised given your interest, is that you refer to it as burning away, right? And I think this is a very important distinction here that a lot of times what we like to do is add things to us, add things to our persona.

Oh, look at this exotic teaching over there. Another reason I love young is he was super wary of that. He said, you can't escape your own personal psychology. So to go exoticize something else is a misstep. So I, okay, explain to me the link and I think I get, you know, the stripping down of the barriers, but where's the artificial intelligence kind of fit into the quantum physics and the kind of psychospiritual development that you're so interested in?

Well, let me just, okay. So I'll give you an idea about Newton's psychology and the way we sexualize the psyche, right? So the way I tell people, this is a very simplistic vision of this, but this idea is that our ego lives in Newtonian physics, right? We wake up every day in a Newtonian world and we believe it to be true. Where, you know, there are this duality, even young growth, a lot in his collective works about, the psyche is based on duality, right? Right, up and down, zero and one, right? Very Newtonian cause and effect. We sort of perceive the world in that way. As we get deeper and deeper into the psyche, we move to the self, which is what we think of as the organizing principle of the psyche.

This is this way more liminal space where we exist in a timeless form. And what makes that quantum, and Newton wrote about this 110 years ago, he basically said, "At the self, there is no duality." Zero and one exists simultaneously. Light and dark exist simultaneously. He didn't know it, but he was already describing quantum physics. And this idea of holding together both possibilities simultaneously. So that to me is the direct link between what Jung wrote about so long ago, and the way that we conceptualized the psyche. The other piece of this has to do with time, right? So our ego, as we started out talking, is immersed in this conception of Newtonian time, progression of this.

But our psyche at the deepest level doesn't give a damn about time. Time does not even exist, right? It's sort of, and that's what's so cool about it. We have this joke that if you really work with your unconscious, you sort of become ageless, because you're more and more in touch with the part of your psyche that is beyond matter, that is beyond this realm. And it does something to you, it changes people. I don't know, you probably have an chance to go to a conference of analytical psychologists.

I haven't.

You go there, and some of them, you look at them, they're 85, 90 years old, and they're like function like they're in their 40s. It's amazing, it's very, very interesting. And so, but, and they talk about that this is this idea of this practice of religiously going inside and having contact with the self. And the more we do that, the more we have that relationship, the more we move out of being confined by matter.

Right, and just again, to talk about some of the potential practical benefits of what you're addressing here is, you are less likely to be impacted by temporal events, and I'm not suggesting that if a loved one dies, you're like, oh well, that doesn't matter, it's not really real, and time doesn't exist. But, I've found, I can hear in your voice, and there's a quality, I've spoken to a lot of people for this show, and a lot of people in life, and not everyone is optimistic, or has kind of that inner flame, as Marie Louise von Franz would call it. I just put out a quote today, let me read you this, just 'cause you'll certainly appreciate it, I'm sure you are someone who knows what the quote is.

Again, Marie Louise von Franz, for anyone listening, check out her stuff, psyche and matter, one of my favorite books, but here's her quote, it's easy to be a naive idealist, it's easy to be a cynical realist, it's quite another thing to have no illusions and still hold the inner flame. And that, to me, is something I notice in you, so the reason I bring that up is we live in a world where externally, right now, shit is going paywire, right? Even if we don't wanna engage in the news and all of those things, I mean, it seems pretty clear, you kind of intimated that our collective consciousness is going through some changes here.

Yeah, so could you talk about maybe what your, how do you approach all everything that you're seeing? You have a little bit more life experience than me in this temporary, in this temporal time, but there is a practical benefit and it's not just, I really wanna elucidate that as much as possible and you do it, you do this as work and you do it for people, but a lot of times these things can get intellectualized very quickly and lose all practical meaning. So talk about what you found in your life, some of the benefits for kind of being able to disengage from some of the more temporal based things or Newtonian based binary thinking.

Right, well, first of all, the first step is to realize that there are these alternative worlds that is possible to live in, a lot of people don't even begin to have that sense of insight. Yes. But the other thing is true, like this interflamed, I'm gonna go back to the Merida News on Brown's quote 'cause I really love that quote. And a part of that is it's because of the burning away that you discover yourself, right? It is, it is this, and it's almost paradoxical and almost an as-extential psychoanalytic way, is this idea that once we lose the illusion about life, that it actually allows us to invest more in it.

I have found that as in my own personal work, in my own personal life, as I methodically developed this relationship with the unconscious and cut off my ego, neurotic, right? It just really is true, and I begin to willow away, and that is what happens in the individuation. I get more hopeful about this. I get more excited about this. I actually love the world more in so many ways. I get more engaged, I don't have that cynical feeling about the world. I mean, we can sit back now and look at all the collective stuff that's falling apart, and yes, we are in an era of huge archetypal forces that are impacting so much.

And in many ways, I think necessarily we're in an area, era, in a crisis, because so much of the illusions are burning away. I do really believe we're getting to the place, and it's holding on, you know, archetypes struggle to have control over man. You know, we can talk about James Stillman version of the gods and the demons, and how they want nothing more than they have power over us. And this is one of those, I think collectively, what we're experiencing now. I think there is a number, a focal number of people who are becoming conscious, and I actually think at a larger collective way, it's a threat.

And we're seeing a backlash around that in an attempt to hold on. You know, it's sort of the Hindu idea of guardians of the gate. You know that idea? I don't, please explain it.

So this is an idea that every time an individual goes through a potential evolution and consciousness, the demons come to beat you up to stop you from going through the gate. To give up, to become hopeless, to that. I had this interesting dream. I'll share this a few months ago, where I actually, I was in somebody else's office, it was sort of interesting, another psychologist in the dream. Someone I didn't know. But my job was to go into this office, and there were all the spirits around in the office from past clients who were trapped there in this person's office. And my job was to help them cross over to the other reality, to move their soul from this state to the next.

And as I was doing it, it was really very powerful dream. Right as I was getting the soul's transitioning from one state to the next, a series of demons came out and started to beat me up, right? To prevent me from doing this. To prevent me from doing the work that I believe so much in. And so that was a real sign for me about, oh, I'm evolving to another level. And I'm helping other people evolve to another level. There is some sort of collective threat of that. And then I see that happening outside in the out of the book, which is one of the politically associated in so many ways. I think there's archetypal threat.

And so all of the gods are trying to hold on, the demons are trying to keep people from becoming conscious, which is another reason why I do these radio shows and bot gas and things. I feel like it's sort of, I have to be even a small voice in helping this to happen. No, without a doubt. And like, I couldn't agree more. I, you know, I haven't actually heard, you know, I've had very interesting experiences with personal and seemingly impersonal archetypes. And we know Jung dealt with his own in the red book and thought he was going totally insane. And I've had those moments. I haven't, I guess, I see how a misidentification of an archetype can wreak havoc on your internal and external worlds.

I guess I haven't heard that archetypes, I haven't really conceptualized them as these things that relish power or, you know, struggle to maintain control over. It makes sense. It totally makes sense. I've just never even thought about that.

Right. It's an interesting way to think about it. You know, you, you, you said something, you're kind of like personal or collective archetypes.

Yeah.

There are no personal archetypes.

Right, right, right, right, right. That's a good point.

It's incredibly impersonal. These are powerful, powerful entities that influence our psyche. There is, and if you're identified with an archetype, that's a horrible situation.

Oh, it's happened, my friend.

I'm sorry.

It is, it is, no, and I know what you're a pod. I know why you're saying sorry, not a pod type, but sympathizing because when an arc, and the truth is, is there are people listening right now most likely, and there are people all around us who are living that reality and have no idea. And I guess, you know, to clarify what I meant about personal archetypes, when I personally identified, unfortunately, with those archetypes, you know, they dominate your life. That is your operating system. It becomes that protocol. It's a truly, and I guess let's also, let's kind of not dumb it down, but let's talk about what do you mean when you say archetype?

Archetypes are timelessly existing patterns of human behavior. They are potentials of behavior, meaning they're sort of these patterns, these schemas, paradigms, are embedded in the human psyche at a level that goes beyond the individual. And when constellated, they fill with the material that is of the current culture. So again, we can talk about there's mother archetypes and father archetypes and warrior archetypes and all of these kind of things and they exist, but the way they look, the character of them, is different depending upon the cultural expectation and the cultural material that gets embedded in the archetype.

Hmm. So, I mean, I'm relishing this opportunity to ask you questions that I don't know related to this stuff. Do you think that cultural, does it create the reaction or the relationship between the archetype? Is there a way to kind of have it? It's a tough thing when we're talking about culture, right? Because I always quote sticks out in my mind and I have to believe it and have to believe it like a lot of things Terrence McKenna said, which is, you know, culture is a cudgel that beats down these kinds of more mystical or esoteric urges in us. And it certainly does feel like that in our day and age, but I'm also, and maybe you could speak about this a little bit too, I'm seeing such a resurgence in people's interest in the mystical and the imaginal in the transcendent that it's seeping into almost in comical ways, popular culture.

And I don't even think people are aware of what, you know, how art reflects that. But I mean, it seems like our culture is kind of moving towards this on one level. No?

Oh yeah, most definitely. So even the cultural archetype, science is an archetypal form. This belief in objectivity, in measuring, that's a form of an archetype and always in history that archetypal energy plus and the other, the more mystical, the more quantum energy have always been in conflict. So again, this isn't anything new. We're just playing now, you know, that's the hard part. I'm gonna say this is actually very sobering. When you really understand archetypes, you realize in some ways how little ego choice you have.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We are sort of like puppets in some ways. Not totally, but some ways, particularly if we're unconscious around these archetypal forms, they have their way with us. They move us around and just utilize us. You know, I think a lot of public figures we see right now are sort of caught in archetypal energies and are being used as personas for the archetypes. They're not really even conscious or aware of what they're really, they believe it's them in some ways.

Of course.

Right. But the ego is gone. The sense of choice is really gone. They're being driven by these deeper, more powerful tsunamis of energy in the collective psyche.

Yeah, I mean, it does, like I said, I mean, it seems comical sometimes. Like if just to use him because he's such a good archetype and I do think that like, you know, this presents us a tremendous opportunity here. But Donald Trump, I mean, this is just, it's almost laughable for those of us who look at someone like that and can see kind of the machinations that are driving some of this stuff, whether archetypal or not, it's insane. And you can see how this creates this kind of energy in our world that people can latch onto, that it can be so divisive. That's the word that just continuously comes up for me where we are now.

And I don't mean just from any one side, right? And I'm not taking the Trumpian Charlottesville stance here. I just mean that I have very liberal progressive friends who I think are wonderful, compassionate people, but you find the right issue for them and they will turn into monsters and just start screaming and losing it and can't see the other side. And that seems to kind of be a hallmark of something that's happening. I mean, to me, you can tell me what you think of this. I don't think it's that crazy at this point, but right when he got elected, I said, this is a good thing. This is going to now decelerate.

And I don't mean like, oh, yeah, I like Trump, great. I voted for him, no, I didn't. But I mean, this gives us a really clear opportunity to look at some of the shadow side of what is going on in our culture, in our lives, in our country, not just on a collective level, but on a personal level, you know, I'm in this kind of oscillating period where I'm also a very optimistic person. And I think this stage is only one stage of many. But, you know, I think a lot of people are shying away from dealing with shadow material, which as you know, is a missed opportunity and can be devastating too.

Right, right. Now, I think it's really interesting 'cause I, you know, first of all, what you describe is this divisiveness, this energy that we're all feeling at a personal level, that's the sign of an archetypal move. It moves us out of rationality. We become very irrational. We become very reactive. When you said it, it doesn't matter which side. And that's this idea though, that I think we're more likely to get caught because we don't have the archetypal view. We don't have this idea about what these other energies are. So much of our society is built in this neuro-rotic ego focus, that at the illusion that we actually have control of these things, right?

And so if everything becomes super personal, we don't see the impersonal nature of this. We can't separate our psyche out from that. So we get caught and we get used, just like Donald Trump is, or other people might be in this. We become a pawn in this archetypal energy.

Yes, yes, yes. I mean, the susceptibility just increases so much when you're not aware of what's going on. That's a basic mindfulness tenant, yeah.

Exactly. This is why the consciousness and awareness is so very, very, very critical. You may not know this, but in some of Jung's writings towards the end of his life, he predicted that early 21st century time period is gonna be the most critical in human time.

Yes, he was very concerned about this time. You know, this, he was interesting in his relationship to things like astrology and those things. He was not such a big fan of personal astrology. He was more interested in astrology as an archetypal man.

Yes, yes.

And we're transiting right now. And he felt like this era, the Paisian era was going to die, was burning away.

Yes.

And he was very, very concerned about whether mankind would survive. And he actually predicted, he said early 21st century is when this was gonna happen, there were gonna be a lot of political and natural upheavals and that this was a very, very important time in the evolution of mankind.

It does. And I also, I have, I couldn't agree more. And I couldn't agree more with Jung feeling that way. And I also think there's some importance that we're alive during this time. I also have the same thought and I wanna qualify it just so people don't think I'm just getting off on a limb here that I imagine most people in some way when World War II was happening, they also felt like that I think everyone is born in a place where they're supposed to be to fulfill whatever it is this is. But I also, I think, I mean, look around. I mean, we can look at exponential growth since the Industrial Revolution, of course, but I mean, just in the past 10 years, I grew up when I remember a dial tone, right?

The internet wasn't the thing until I was 12 or whatever it was. I was really early on it, but like, I remember that. My kid who's one and a half, he's gonna, when he's my age, I can only, insane. Who knows? It's just the rate of progression technologically, consciously it seems, this awareness that's growing is astounding. And it's, it is, it is a kind of a critical juncture. Now I temper that with this fundamental belief that this reality we experience isn't as life and death stakes as it seems. You know what I mean? Like it is, we're gonna live and we're gonna die and our species is gonna live and gonna die, but there also could be some other function of what we're doing here.

I'm curious, like, this is kind of a highfalutin question, but like, what do you think we're doing here on Earth?

Oh, you mean like sort of what our purpose is?

Yeah.

That is a highfalutin question.

I know, I don't, you know, that's--

Speculate, I'm not holding you to it.

So I think our job, this is gonna sound a little strange, probably not though for you, but I think our job on Earth is to evolve the gods.

I think our function is in some way worth a link between these larger universal forces and the narrative that's being played out here. And I think it won't happen if we're not here. You know, again, this is very yummy and I won't even go out and live with this, but he felt that in some way the self, and we can call it the gods or whatever we wanna call it, needed us to become conscious of themselves, that without us, without our living in matter, there was no creation, that we're the key to all of that. And so without us, I don't know what we're creating and how that's been changed and what the, I mean, I don't have any hubris to have the guess about that, but I do know that we all play a very important role in it.

And my job as a therapist, as a psychologist, is to help people individually own their part of that.

Right.

To begin more and more to understand their individual purpose, because I can't tell you how it all fits in the greater creation of stuff, but it must. I believe that it does. And you know, I tell people this all the time, you know, there are easier ways to make a living than what I do. And I can probably make more money in other ways too, right? If that's what my life is about, but I've come to the realization after doing a lot of my own inner work and understanding what my dreams and what the unconscious is driving me and is that I don't think I have much of a choice.

Yeah, welcome to the club, my friend. (both laughing) And there's something really interesting about that. I don't feel like I've chosen this funny. I think from the very beginning, the motifs, the archetypal influences, the sort of the wave of my life, from the day I was born, there was, when I was very, very young, went through some significant traumas, some issues that occurred. I think that was all this much larger narrative to get me to do this work, to play this role at this time. It's a small role, it's not huge, it's okay, it's great. But for some, but I don't feel like I have, and my ego doesn't choose this, it doesn't mean.

It makes more sense than you could possibly know, and I think a lot of people will resonate with that too, because sometimes I just take a step back and I pause, and I'm like, I didn't do any of this. Like, of course, I worked or did something here or there, you know, was in this, but like so much of my life is, this kind of just like, oh, I thank you, grace, whatever it is, synchronicities, you know. And you know, I have come to identify with the concept of synchronicity. I used to be like, a lot of people like awed by it, when you'd have this weird unexplainable, inexplicable occurrences, and I, you know, so you're on the same page as most of my listeners who listen, I had a psychedelic experience in 2003, where I took LSD, I'd taken it plenty of times before.

I took LSD and didn't stop tripping for three months, and obviously the LSD had left my system after 24 hours or so, but I got launched into an imaginal realm that played out in front of my eyes every day, and the reason this podcast is called synchronicity is because my life was one giant synchronicity, and I don't mean that in some conceptual vague way. I mean, like, I would think of something within two seconds, it would be on a bus, you know. I would think of a person, have a dream with them, guaranteed I would see them in the next day, even if I hadn't seen them in five years. So those types of experience coalesced and were so concurrent that I had to have a different approach to how I viewed synchronicity, and it took me 10 plus years since then to kind of unpack what had happened.

One of the ways I've identified with this concept of synchronicity is that it's a validator. It's something that appears and kind of happens as you are doing the things that, whatever it is, you're supposed to do, and I think for your specific thing that you brought up, it's fascinating. I mean, I think that's the blueprint. We like to think that maybe Jesus will pop from the ground and, you know, grace us, and everyone's gonna be good, and it's gonna be this top-down, hierarchical, you know, enlightenment, but the reality of the situation as I see it, and my direct experience has been that the only thing we can really dictate here is our own consciousness, our own engagement with the world, and anything, any modality that helps allow people take that responsibility on to themselves, that's how we change the planet.

That's how we change mass, and mass. And so I think, yeah, I totally know what you're talking about, and it sounds like you're totally on point, too, so. (laughs) Yeah.

I hope so.

It's funny, when I was in my twenties and thirties and early in my career, I was really, really invested in sort of a social-political change month. I was very much at the forefront of developing social systems around healthcare and economic systems to try to get healthcare available for everybody and all kinds of stuff. And I was on every committee and every national organization, and I'm very proud of the work that I do. It hasn't done much, and (laughs) but what I realized, what really clicked with me is, Yoon also talked about this a bit. He said, "You know, you can't change the psyche politically.

"The only thing that you can change "is the world one person at a time, "and that if we can just sit and help people become "more aware of their psyche and more aware "of their consciousness and their purpose, "that will change the world in a much more profound way. "If you can help people integrate their shadow material, "understand their wounds and begin to really have that, "we call it the ego self-access, "the relationship between the ego to the self. "If you can really firm up that, "get rid of the complexes, move that around, "and a person starts to have this connection "to the thing inside of them "that really is way bigger than their ego ever imagined.

"That changes the world. "Without that, the world will never change. "It's all, we maintain unconsciousness, "we get ruled by the archetypes, right?"

Right, that's the way to do it. You know, Jung was very, he was ambivalent about using psychedelics and drugs to help people become more conscious.

Yes.

He actually, he was also not a big fan of hypnosis as a way of doing that. 'Cause anything he felt that diminished the ego's relationship to the unconscious was dangerous. He even called it the rape of the unconscious.

Oh, and it's not the worst term.

I mean, it really can't be, right?

It really can, I mean, it's true.

Yeah, there is, I mean, it's the speed of which the psychedelics impact consciousness that I think and the undeniably of them. You know, I think that the relationship that a lot of people have with maybe like the modality of meditation, it's a slow burn. And you may get those immediate impact of, you know, engaging with your mind and the thoughts that are there, but in terms of like, you know, not even the practical benefits, I don't even want to say there are for meditation, but you know, you could trick yourself into thinking you're not doing anything for 20 years. It's really hard to take some mushrooms or, you know, LSD and be like, nothing happened.

I've seen people, I've seen that actually, but it's more rare and that is a much more jarring experience. One of the reasons I've never smoked DMT to date is because the reports I get back from people who do it, it's such a condensed experience. 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes that when I asked them, which the reason I enjoy psychedelics or have in the past is because I want the integrative functions. I want that relationship between, even if my ego is dampened, there's still an awareness of how this relationship to the unconscious functions. What I don't like about certain drugs or psychedelics is that that seems to be lost.

Even though there seems to be a functionality there, you know, I do think we have this one foot in both worlds, you know, and I think to diminish that and that's certainly happened to me in my life where I've lost the groundedness. I've gone too much into the imaginal worlds. I've ceased to integrate and, you know, interface with reality as we experience it. And I think that's not the goal. The goal is to maintain this balance or harmony between these things. So we can actually, you know, evoke change in ourselves and individuals outside of our personal ability. Yeah, it's fascinating to me. Let's talk about, have you ever seen a documentary called "The Way of Dream" with Marie Louise von Franz?

Oh, of course, yeah, of course.

God, I love that. It's just one of my favorite things. I actually have a link to it. If anyone listening wants to hear that email me, I know it's in podcast because it's like a 10-hour documentary where they just, it's an incredible, one of my favorite things. Let's talk about dreams a little bit too though, because I think this is often a part of our lives that, you know, my wife will wake up and tell me some dreams, you know, classic ones, but Jung and Jungian analysts have a very different way of looking at dreams than a lot of other people. So could you maybe talk a little bit about your approach to dreams?

Yeah, yeah, well, you know, dreams are amazing. But I mean, really, and, you know, since I was a kid, I would, like I said, we would talk about our dreams all the time and to this day, I probably, I have to get up an hour early every morning 'cause I have to write four or five of my dreams down.

Good for you.

It just is an integrated spiritual practice. And my dreams have been so incredibly helpful personally. They really have, like I said, this is the part, my unconscious through my dreams predominantly. I use other techniques and imaginal techniques like active imagination things. But for me, I've had this gift of always having the availability of my dreams. They've always been really, really alive in my life. And, well, actually it's so funny because they did go through a two-year period where I decided to ignore my dreams.

How'd that work out?

And I have to tell you, my life got really screwed up. (laughing) It was so bad. It was like, oh, I was like, I will never do that. I mean, it was really hubris. It was arrogant. I was like, nah, I don't eat my dreams anymore. (laughing) It was, anyway, but. So it put me in my life. So for me, at a personal level, dreams have been the language of the psyche for me. It has been the connection to the bigger self. It has been the guiding light in my life. And so in my work with others, dreams are really, really important. And for most unions, probably more than any other theoretical perspective, dreams are critically important.

I tell people when I work with them clinically that dreams are my version of an MRI. You tell me one dream and I will understand, first of all, what's going on in the unconscious. And I will understand the unconscious will give me information about what we need to do and how we need to work together. So, you know, psychoanalytic work, particularly you mean work is incredibly individual.

Right.

You are constantly working with the language of the unconscious as is expressed through the individual.

Right.

So I tell people, sort of like, yeah, there's a general language out there. You know, archetypal symbols and stuff like that. Dream books really don't work. 'Cause what we have to understand is we have to understand your unique, very specific dialectical form, the language or the dialect that your unconscious uses, not just the archetype of imagery. And that's what makes it incredibly, incredibly personal. So you move beyond the sort of collective interpretation about what a dream is to a very specific understanding what that dream means for you in your individuation journey, why is that dream coming up at this time?

What are these symbols? How do we integrate this into your psyche?

Right. And one of the things, and you can correct me if I'm wrong here, that I've never gone to a Jungian psychologist or analyst. I've read a lot of Jung and I've read a lot of ways it's done is that it's not, it's not gonna be the same for any one person. Like you're really are identifying symbols. And the other thing is, is you have to, as an analyst, have some awareness of the collective symbols to be able to parse through them for that individual. Because sometimes, like you said with dream books, a snake can mean this, a snake can mean that, a snake can mean this. There's so many different interpretations, but until you figure out what their kind of map of those symbols are, it's gonna be hard to figure out.

It's one of the reasons, I mean, I've gone to therapists, I'm in therapy right now and it's fucking awesome. And I've avoided it like the plague since I was a kid. But I like kind of getting to these areas that we know are right below the surface. Maybe we can get a reflection of them or an impression of them, but they're there nevertheless. Let me ask you, 'cause we're gonna be wrapping up in a second, but let me ask you this. Let's say there's someone listening, who's like, I love what these guys are talking about, but they don't really understand how to get into this. Jung is a dense person.

I always recommend man and his symbols, but for someone who's interested in the unconscious, something like the collective unconscious or archetypes, what do you think is a good entry point for someone kind of investigating these? If there is that inner flame that's maybe getting kindled here.

Yeah, you know, I always tell people, like if you're gonna read, don't read, you know.

Yeah, me too.

I'm serious, only if you're in the field and it's really, you know, it's incredibly dense. The other thing that people don't know about Jung is he wrote in a way, this is very interesting, his writing, particularly in his collective works, which is 28 volumes. And actually, they've discovered about 28 more that have never been read out. The family has just released them and they're supposed to be published in the next couple of years.

Oh, cool.

But sort of, you know, the family released the Red Book, which was his inner dream and the powerful change, really. It's now the most popular book in the world, the Red Book. It's very interesting, right?

Yes.

So that says a lot about what's happening with the collective psyche. But the other thing is is that, you know, Jung wrote, he wrote in a way that he felt was sort of the analytical way of understanding. So it's not the way that our 21st century mind was, it's not linear, it's not, here's the problem, and here's the solution sort of way. It's very abstract, very obtusely, very circular. And he was very enthralled with anthropology and mythology and ancient spirituality. It was very, I mean, I'm amazed. And he was incredibly diverse in his intellectual ability. And so he was, in his writing, he's able to associate these very broad areas that as an analyst, as a psychologist, I can't really do as well as you guys.

I just don't. But, so I always tell people, you know, read about you. Don't read you. So, you know, Marie Louise Monfranz is a great star.

Yes.

He's sort of like the anti-Yoon, you know, because she's very clear. She says exactly what she means. There's not a lot of abstract association. So she's really good. There's a lot of really great current Yooning. I mean, Marie Louise Monfranz was, you know, a student of Yooning. And so she was an analyst, and it is. But, you know, there's a lot of really exciting, modern Yooning and work being done. Marie Stein, fabulous guy, anything that he writes, I would say read. It's very clear and very approachable for people who are not immersed in it.

Awesome.

So he's a, he's somebody I really recommend. Jeffrey Rath is another person I really recommend. He's a great writer. So kind of go to the modern Yoonings first.

Yes.

Because they're going to speak in a language of certain current sensibility, Yooning.

Yooning was barely palatable in his generation. So like it's not like, that's a really good point.

It's definitely not yet.

Yeah. So incredibly deep. The other thing I want to talk about is psychotherapy itself. And that kind of stuff. Again, you know, a lot of people have this idea that if you go to see an analyst, or a man who will be trained psychologist, that it's going to be in this very weird, sort of distorted Freudian sort of way, where you're going to go in and you're just going to lay on the couch and pre-associate. You know, that was one of the reasons why Jung and Freud had their big conflict, is that Yoon did not believe that that was the technique. So if you work with somebody who's sort of union focused, they're going to be way more collaborative.

It's going to be much more like, we're on this together, we're going to figure this out together. He was really much more about this egalitarian sort of relationship between the psychologist and the client. Wasn't this sort of impersonalness that happened so much? I have to tell you, I like Freud's ideas a lot. I don't think he went as far as Jung did. I don't think he, but he was brilliant and really started this modern perspective around the psyche and unconscious. And, you know, I just think it was brilliant. But Jung went way beyond that. And it's interesting now, as I deal with more and more people, a large part of my practice is actually the other mental health professionals, psychiatrists and psychologists who come in and they want to do deeper work, because they haven't really been trained in it, in sort of typical graduate programs.

And for them, they don't feel like the more traditional models are really helpful in that. It's sort of like, there's been recent research around cognitive behavioral therapies and things like that, that actually don't support that they're very effectively long run.

Yeah.

It's sort of like, even in the psychology profession, we're going like, okay, well, maybe we gotta go deeper. Maybe we actually have to go into the unconscious in a much more direct way to get people, not just to get healthier, to get rid of symptoms, but to instigate this growth that seems to occur when we work directly with the unconscious.

Yeah, I mean, it's, I think paramount just to be clear. I do. It's also next time, I mean, if you want to do this again, I'd love to talk about the connection between mental health, mental illness, and a lot of the Jungian concepts and things that are going on, because I have direct experience, personal experience, and just thoughts on that as well. And I think it's a really rich vein, and I think we do need some additional, either interfacing of modalities or some new ones to kind of address some of the things we're seeing in terms of mental issues that people are having.

Okay, so here's how the end of the show works. I asked three quick questions, and then one more open-ended question. Okay, what is your favorite color?

Black.

What's your favorite number?

Seven.

What's your favorite animal?

Dog.

What's a practical tip that's helped you in your life that you could share with people listening?

Practical, that's interesting. Write your dreams down, even if you don't know what the hell they mean. I'm serious.

I know, I know you.

Write 'em down, write 'em down, write 'em down. Just paying attention to your dreams. I don't care if you interpret them or work with a therapist to do anything else. Just take the time to honor your dreams and those symbols. James Hillman wrote, his entire career was based on this idea that you do not have to analyze your dreams, that the imagery of the dream is the healing part of the psyche itself. So, you know, go out there, write 'em down, spend the time to do that, tell your dreams to somebody else. That in and of itself will be really, really healing. I will say this, that's actually an important piece too.

Writing them down is one way, but I do think there's something interesting when we move this into language in words, verbal, because most of the time I work with people with their dreams a lot and they will have a dream and they won't know what it means and they will research it and do all this stuff. And then they'll come in here and the minute they tell me the dream, the meaning becomes cool again. There's something about the verbalization of it.

I think, yeah, I think there's also something about the kind of, if we are one consciousness kind of being refracted through many different things, the ability to kind of reflect something back upon ourselves through the gaze of someone else is also a critical tool we have. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on. This has been amazing. I'd love to do it again.

Yeah, let's do it sometime, it's gonna be great.

Cool, thanks so much.

All right, cool.

I'll see ya. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)

Thanks for listening to that episode. Really, Dr. Michael Dane, go check him out. There are links on this podcast page. Go check out the episode he did with Michael Phillip on third eye drops to another really interesting conversation, again, any of the Jungian people who really are steeped in it. Just they're, they exude wisdom. So thank you, again, big thanks to Patrick Nemchek for getting this episode out. Thank you to all the new patrons from Patreon who are helping keep the show going. You are now covering the cost of podcast hosting, website and email list, that's awesome. That's really cool, that is some validation for me.

Sometimes, especially on weeks like this, where I have seemingly no time to get this stuff done, but yet still find time to do it. It really keeps me going, so know that, and I appreciate it. Also, I got a very interesting email today. I don't wanna forget your name, but I am. You sent me an email and it said, hey, I've heard you talk about your LSD experience that ended in one three months of a giant synchronicity for you, little bits and dribs and drabs and pieces of it, but we'd like to hear a little bit more. I hear you on that. I've actually been planning on doing that. Now, one of the things I'll point out is my memory from about 2002 to 2006 or '07 is a little fragmented.

It didn't follow a linear trajectory, so sometimes I have to be prompted and reminded of what actually happened, so I'm trying to figure out the way to authentically relay what happened, but also make sure I'm making stuff up, so I may bring in some friends to kind of eat this out. Stay tuned for that. I know I'm not trying to be egotistical here, but I know several people, really, almost 10 people have written in saying, like, hey, we want to hear the origin story. What's going on there? Either they've gone through something similar or they just feel there's something valid, and I think there is something valid there, so I will be sharing that.

So, that's it. Next week, I will see you. Said that weird. How about, I'll see you next week. Bye-bye.