The Hero's Journey: Reclaiming Your Divine Essence

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What happens when the world breaks your heart and everything you thought you knew crumbles around you? In this deeply personal conversation, Dominick Domingo steps away from his hosting role to discuss mythic fiction novel "The Seeker" with his sister, humanities professor René Urbanovich. Their discussion unveils the powerful transformation story at the heart of this ancient myth-inspired tale set in Bronze Age Minoan culture.

Inspired by Dominick's own brush with death during the pandemic, "The Seeker" follows Amitayus, a young man scouring the Greek isles for his missing mother, Dianora. Unbeknownst to him, she is a Goddess, rendering him a demigod unaware of his divine heritage. What begins as a physical journey becomes an internal odyssey of rediscovering one's true essence—a journey we all share. As René and Dominick explore the novel's themes, they reveal how the protagonist’s struggles with despair, disillusionment, futility and self-loathing mirror our own cycles of transformation.

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Transcript

Introduction to The Seeker

Speaker 1 0:45

Hi guys and welcome to Language of the Soul podcast. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm very excited about this week's episode. I know I've said that before, it could start to sound disingenuous, but I'm very excited because A I'm going to get to talk about the Seeker a little more, author to author, in maybe not greater depth than the previous one, but just kind of from a different angle the previous one, but just kind of from a different angle. Our today's guest is a humanities professor but also has a master's in literature. She also happens to be my dear sister, renee Urbanovich. She's been on the podcast twice and her episodes are just gold. So I really value this conversation we were just able to have and her generosity in interviewing me about my book. But really I think what's of value to listeners is the subtext of my novel is just kind of very much in the spirit of this podcast.

Speaker 1 1:40

And, as some of you may know, this podcast is based off of my other pandemic book, language of the Soul. The two were back to back and I call them pandemic books for a reason. They were part of that creative explosion that I think a lot of us experienced in the isolation. But, more importantly, I almost lost my life, and I've anecdotally just called it my brush with death, but it was. It was a lot and fighting for, to regain not just my motor skills and my strength and my immune health, but my agency in the world. So the parable of that journey is called the Seeker, and that's the book that Renee and I are going to talk about. But I thought, before we get into the nitty gritty because again we talk about the thematic content in great depth That'll just mean a lot more if you know the play-by-play. So I'm going to read the book jacket. It's not just what they call a plot summary, which can be very much a play-by-play, but it's a true synopsis in that I sprinkle in just enough thematic content to talk about the meaning behind the superficial plot. Okay, so hopefully this book jacket synopsis or plot summary will give you a little background for the conversation that we're about to share with you. Okay, reading in the dim light from the back of my book Amateus is unaware of his divine heritage.

Speaker 1 2:58

He has but one foggy, time-shrouded memory of his mother. In it, she has lulled him to sleep with her lullaby on the volcanic shores of Melilos. He wakes in time to see her poised on a swell of alabaster sand, gazing back at him. Her eyes are those of one on the brink of freedom, but they are mired with equal regret. She dashes beyond the bone-white hillcrest and is gone. When Amateus is seventeen, dianora's lullaby comes to him on the breeze, overtaking the song of the sea. Amateus fights seventeen. Dianora's lullaby comes to him on the breeze, overtaking the song of the sea.

Speaker 1 3:31

Amateus fights his practical nature. He has no use for gods or goddesses or mortal heroes, but knows he must heed the call he sets out on the Zayton, his father's barge, vowing to sail the seven seas to find her. His route intersects with Icarus's flight path from the palace at Knossos, and it is Amateus who rescues a drowning Icarus from the sea when the boy plunges from glory. The two continue on as a team, scouring the Cyclades for any clue of Dianora's whereabouts. They face great peril, learning the cruel king Minos has put a price on Icarus' head and they are being tailed by Petrus Kyriakou, the most ruthless bounty hunter in the Greek Isles.

The Book Synopsis and Guest Introduction

Speaker 1 4:14

An oracle warns Amateus his desire is misguided and goes against the gods, but faith compels him onward to face the forces of nature that conspire against them Raging tempests, tidal waves, the Mycenaean invasion and the eruption of Thera, which will one day incinerate much of the Cyclades. As it turns out, zeus himself is determined to thwart the boy's mission, but not for the reason Amateus thinks. The truth of his divine heritage, discovered through great fortune and equal defeat ultimately leading him to Mount Olympus itself, is revealed only through peril ultimately triumphing over disillusionment. Amateus's journey toward redemption is one we all share. He learns in the end that the wrath of the gods was but a series of tests that he might prove his heroism and secure his place in Elysium. The thing is, he's not sure that's where he wants to end up. Okay, so that's the synopsis, and I am now going to invite my dear sister into the room. Welcome, renee Urbanovich.

Speaker 2 5:18

Hi everyone. I'm Renee Urbanovich and I'm so excited to host Language of the Soul. I listen to every episode faithfully and it has really been transformative for me, and to be a part of the team makes me feel really good. I'm going to introduce today's guest, who you know as Language of the Soul podcast host. His name is Dominic Domingo. He's a veteran Disney feature animation artist and live-action filmmaker, whose award-winning narrative non-fiction essays and short stories have been included in many anthologies. His young adult fantasy trilogy, the Nameless Prince, launched in 2012 through Twilight Times Books and has been capturing imagination since the Seeker represents Dominic's foray into mythic, visionary fiction. It is a universal parable about transformation that speaks to the journey we all share. Dominic resides in the Franklin Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles and can be seen pecking away on his laptop in coffee shops on any given day. Hello and welcome, dominic.

Speaker 1 6:32

Hello, thanks for having me. Thanks for having me on my own podcast.

Speaker 2 6:38

Isn't it great. I think we should always have some reciprocity in this world.

Speaker 1 6:44

I think and since I am such a fan.

Speaker 2 6:49

I'm a fan of creativity and storytelling, yes, but I am specifically a fan of the Seeker, and I have read it three times and every single time I bawl my eyes out and every single time I am touched by different themes depending on what I'm going through, because obviously, overall, the main theme is transformation and yet within transformation, there's many, many lessons, many themes and many ideas that are definitely worth talking about, and I mean I could talk to a book club about it but, I, think talking to the author is probably the best way to go, because we can get some insights from the artist himself.

Speaker 2 7:34

So is there anything I said or didn't say in the intro that you would like to clarify before we jump into the book?

Speaker 1 7:42

No, beautiful, you got it right. I will say this Thank you. Thank you for being a loyal listener. I think you're the only one that's listening to literally every episode and your feedback just means the world to us. You really hear anyway.

Speaker 1 7:58

For for the listeners that don't know, renee has come back to us with you know, little grains of wisdom she plucks out that meant something to her in that moment and just means the world to us. You know it's so hard to get feedback in your creative efforts, so we don't deserve you. Thank you so much, seriously, and you always and I believe you, renee you regularly assure me you're not just being a good sister, but that it actually speaks to you, and that's what we hope. You know there's a lot of kindred spirits out there and I know I've got I'm not a real devoted podcast listener but I do listen to Oprah, believe it or not, the the soul, what's it called Super soul podcast Michael Beckwith and Marianne Williamson. I've got my my, I guess, um mentors in a way in the podcasting world, but also I have my muses that keep me going. They get me up in the morning. So thank you anyway. Thank you for everything you you've offered us, including just the validation. You're a great cheerleader, thank you.

Speaker 2 8:57

That's what I do for a living. I am a teacher and so I have feedback, naturally. But I'm also a singer, so I'm very expressive and I have to talk about my feelings, I have to get them out. But I'm also a huge fan of Language of the Soul, or I promise you, just because you were my brother, I would not listen to it, just because you're my brother.

Speaker 1 9:16

I listen to it because I— You've said that and I believe you. I believe you. Sorry, go ahead, I cut you off.

Speaker 2 9:21

I look forward to it and I love it. And I also love reading. I'm a literature hound, so getting to read a work where you actually can talk to the author, there's nothing better, so okay.

Speaker 1 9:36

So you deserve a prize. The fact that you've read it so many times and now you've listened to the audio book, like you deserve a prize for that. So, okay, all of that out of the way, thank you so much you know it was well.

Speaker 2 9:48

I'm just going to also say that you know, as a voice teacher, I mean I've been telling you for years and I know that you also come from my family and our grandpa had a really resonant, beautiful voice and it's such a rare voice and to get to hear it when you sing a song or you know just when you leave messages is one thing, but to hear the narration with this voice of yours, I'm so happy you're doing audio books for other people too.

Speaker 2 10:16

It's a voice that needs to be reading these really epic or not I mean it's just so perfect for the dramatic and I'm a sucker for all the drama.

Speaker 1 10:27

I am such a sucker for all the drama.

Speaker 2 10:28

I am such a sucker for all the images and it seems more alive to me when you hear it read to you. So anyway, I love it, but I love both of them.

Speaker 1 10:39

Awesome, yeah, I did. In the interview with Shauna I did say you know, strangely, renee said it landed differently. You know, I think it's the author's voice. It doesn't matter. Of course I tried to make it epic and all that and use my storyteller voice, but I just think, hearing it from the author, it's just gotta land differently, but anyway, thanks for saying that.

Speaker 2 10:59

well, I'm gonna say something really mean right now about my absolute favorite author on the planet, barbara kingshalver. Because Barbara Kingsolver, because she can do no wrong, she's brilliant. If you haven't read David Demon Copperhead, oh my God, send it my way.

Speaker 1 11:17

You know you're my lifeline to decent literature. I told you I've been reading again. This is the meanest thing I'll say in this interview. I've OD'd on manuscripts, you know. I read a lot of them just to audition on Audible. Then I read them when I get a gig. I've got to read the manuscript and I go above and beyond on this podcast and read entire books in preparation to have a guest on.

Speaker 1 11:38

I am real, I'm like Lucy in the candy shop is how I put it. I cannot. I need a shower after and it's not. I've never. I'm like you. I've never. I'm like you. I'm a cheerleader. I never say good, bad, right or wrong in my teaching. I don't believe you know. There's just cause and effect. I'm that guy. But Virginia and I decided we're going to start a podcast called not tell your story but shut the fuck up. Like not everybody's a writer, you know, and I just I've OD'd on it. So you when you send. By the way, I found a paperback version of Ocean Vuong On Earth. We Are, briefly Gorgeous. So I can give you back your hardcover or I can give you the little paperback that I found. I found it in a free library in my neighborhood.

Speaker 2 12:21

You know the little free library yeah, best book in the world On Earth. We Are Briefly Gorgeous. Give it to the next person you meet that loves literature, because I definitely have a hard copy. I have all his work in one corner of the bookshelf. But I was going to say that Barbara Kingsolver can do no wrong other than one thing reading her own book. She needs to not. She needs to not, she ruins it, she needs to not read her own books.

Speaker 1 12:49

Yeah, it's a separate skill set. It's a separate. You know. We've had enough guests read excerpts on our show that I feel the same way, like, yeah, just let people use their imaginations and the deliveries, and you know, people go. You have a great voice and it's like that's kind of insulting. It's about the interpretation, isn't it? You know? It's about your iteration of it. You're kind of acting in a way, you know. So I just feel like, whatever the technical qualities of my voice are, neither here nor there, isn't it about the way you're interpreting the content?

Speaker 2 13:26

Oh, you are absolutely right, especially as a singer and a singing teacher. One oh, you are absolutely right, um, especially as a singer and a singing teacher. One of the best things I've ever read um was in a book about how to teach singers and um, the writer said, you take a snow globe and you hold it up in the room with everybody watching and you shake it and then everyone watches the snowfall and they love it and it's magic and it's beautiful and they can't take their eyes off of it. But they didn't come up to you afterwards and say we love the way your hand shook that snow globe.

Speaker 1 13:55

It's not about that it's about the moment, right that everybody's connected to.

Speaker 2 14:00

So when you say my voice should be neither here nor there, I agree with you, but some people really shouldn't be reading their own books and your voice. If it's taking away, and the technical aspects are taking away from the story, then yeah, that's a bad thing. That's no good.

Speaker 1 14:17

You want to see for sure your voice adds Well, thank you, thank you, I will own that. I'm just saying it's kind of the seeing through the medium to the message thing. Right, you shouldn't really be aware, but I, I just, I'm just going to be real frank here. Like, it's like somebody, if you go see a film in the theater and the actors there in the lobby and you go oh my God, you were so good looking. You know I loved watching you, for I loved watching you for two hours, it's like. But I was acting too. Like can you give me a little credit for the acting? So people go oh my God, you've got a podcast.

Speaker 2 14:52

It's perfect for you, you have that voice and I'm like, okay, but we put a lot of thought into the content.

Speaker 1 14:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, it's demeaning, it's reductive, it's reductive, okay.

Speaker 2 14:57

Yeah, it is, it is. I could say more examples, but we can move on. Okay, so let's I had a little Venn diagram. You know my master's degrees in literature. So for anyone that doesn't know that or doesn't, that cares. So, of course, when I read something that is rich and layered with metaphor and themes and motifs and you know deep characterization, that's not quote unquote, just like I don't know.

Speaker 2 15:28

not commercial per se, because certain pieces of literature can be commercial, but you know, the ones that are just to pass the time, but something that's going to stick with you and that's meaningful and that's transformative. So I made a little Zen Zen. How about? Venn diagram I'm with you. Venn diagram.

Speaker 2 15:49

I'm with you. Ooh, okay, a Venn diagram of this big circle, and in the middle was transformations. Because I thought to myself, if I had to pick one theme to talk to Dominic about, what would it be? I thought transformation, for sure. And then I put all the things you know, like a spider that go around it. Is that a Venn diagram?

Speaker 1 16:08

Well, venn diagrams are like when the three things intersect, but maybe no, I think that's there's another word for what you're talking about, with all the yeah circles around it. Anyway, yeah, yeah, I get the idea.

Speaker 2 16:20

Yeah that's the one. I yeah. All the things around it were um everything that was in amateus's life. So we've got this guy and his name is Amateus, and the most exciting thing is that the story is on the coattails of.

Speaker 2 16:38

Icarus and even people who do not study myth, who have no idea. You know Zeus from Helios, from Persephone, from Demeter. Everybody knows Icarus. He flew too close to the sun. So I would like the very first question to be what made you choose that guy from that myth and build a story around that surrounds with so much you know? Obviously thought and work and research, but why did you pick Icarus?

Speaker 1 17:13

Wow. Well, you do know the I almost said it the protagonist is Amateus. He's the one with the real arc, right, and you did kind of say that, but it does hinge on Icarus and his relationship with Icarus. So you may or not, may not even know this, but in the early nineties I you you're going to remember that I started a little children's book about Icarus and I took the sabbatical to actually finally sit down and illustrate it and um never saw the light of day for a variety of reasons, but at that time I would have said it really spoke to me. You know, again, it hadn't really been overdone.

Why Icarus: Mythology as Personal Journey

Speaker 1 17:50

Icarus has been used in video games and it's very much on the pop culture radar the past maybe 20 years, but in the early nineties it really wasn't. I don't think that video game had come out yet. I just know, whenever I read and I'm not an expert in Greek mythology or any kind of mythology, but I had read it for whatever reason, and I immediately just related to it I think we can all pick a myth that is the story of our life, or many. I think I do a fascinating exercise in a workshop that I want to do more often, about writing the myth of your life. But I start by saying which one do you identify with? One person could say, oh, the ugly duckling, because I didn't come into my own agency or power until later in life. But for whatever reason, icarus spoke to me and I thought, oh, wow. Well, the academic interpretation is kind of I think you hinted at this moderation, don't fly too high, don't fly too low. Know your place in the universe. And there's a micro and a macro to that right, the hubris of mankind. And in all of our endeavors trying to kind of yeah, hubris is the best way I can put it but that it really took that on, I think, during the dark ages, before we re-embraced our humanity, during the renaissance right, we were kind of seen as faulted creatures and a lot of fire and brimstone, so it was kind of perfect to view it as mankind should know his place in the universe. Don't get any ideas, you know, don't get any lofty ideas. But I read it and I immediately appreciated the projections that myths are lend themselves to, right, you really lend themselves to personal projections. But also I thought, wow, if you read it in context in elementary school, you read them in isolation.

Speaker 1 19:35

But I read Icarus and then I found out more and more about Daedalus and frankly I thought, wow, all the fucked up shit his father did His whole career was trying to cover up for past mistakes. You know, he pushed his competitor off the cliff. Then he had to skip town because, although he wasn't persecuted for it, you know he, he wasn't very popular. So he had to skip town. You know, then he gets under the wing of Minos and starts embedding pretty perverse things for the kingship and then, oops, she fucked the bull. Now there's, there's a minotaur. Better, better, confine him. So he built the labyrinth to confine the minotaur.

Speaker 1 20:12

Everything was rather than redeeming himself, right, just trying to cover things up and fix his former mistakes. So I won't say too much. But I really related to the idea of and I wouldn't have said this back in the day but just intergenerational trauma, and we're all tasked with the baggage of our ancestry or forefathers and we're all tasked with the baggage of our right ancestry or forefathers and we're all meant to redeem our ancestors in some way. So I'll leave it at that because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus, but I felt the weight of redeeming those that came before. And interesting. Renee right that I've crashed and burned just like Icarus the past few years. Took many decades, but it wasn't sustainable. The idea of redeeming was not sustainable and I literally crashed and burned. That was a very recent observation, by the way, anyway. Does that help a little bit? It started with Icarus.

Speaker 2 21:00

Yeah, well, I think that when you say I myself crashed and burned, even after 20 years ago, thinking that I had, you know, didn't want any of this generational trauma or the mistakes of my father, and in the book he calls it the sins of the father, and so the fact that later on many times in the book, but especially the end, the gods, both the, I think maybe Hades and his mother, dianora, and one other god, zeus, and.

Speaker 2 21:33

Zeus, yeah, three people, or three gods, goddesses, three powers, said just that much that the world is going to break your heart. So, like you might think when you're 20, oh, none of that, shit's going to happen to me. And the boys said it too. Cyril and Nico said that too. Like, yeah, shit's going to happen to me. And the boys said it too. Cyril and Nico said that too. Like, yeah, life is going to break your heart, whatever made you think it wouldn't, basically right Once you've been around long enough. But when you're young, you know, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, and you're looking at all the mistakes maybe your dad made. Or you know this guy, icarus, is looking at all the shit his dad was. You know just buried under.

Speaker 2 22:12

He couldn't get out, so at least he wanted his son to get out. It's a beautiful thought, when you look at it that way, that you know that maybe it was about icarus having that, that hubris of youth maybe he was the jerk. But his father was trying to redeem his son at least right.

Speaker 1 22:27

Yeah, so you know you're taking it into new territory and it's fascinating. I'm going to keep thinking about all of that, but I'll just clarify the intention on that front. I think that that's what the journey is. You know, I've kind of packaged it in my mind as oh, it's universal, it's the spiritual journey we all share, it's the hero's journey. I've actually reduced it in my mind to just that, but I started going back into my initial notes and just realizing all the layers that have become anecdotal to me now, if that makes sense and I will say that it is about, I mean, the main, without any spoilers I think the main parable is reconnecting.

Speaker 1 23:08

The journey is the odyssey, call it what you want, but the seeking, the seeker, is to reconnect with our divinity. And so I've reduced it to this idea that we all have a source and our pure consciousness is divine. We all have divinity within us. But then life experience, your ego builds up defense mechanisms just call it mind and ego takes the front seat for survival. But then there is a point where you want to reconnect with that divinity. So I do think youth it's called the hubris of youth for a reason. In our early twenties we do have the agency to self-create. We have the fucking world by the balls in our twenties, right? We think we know the answers, we have all the answers, and so maybe it's as simple as that. And we do relearn lessons over and over again, right? But I think the journey is that he I don't want to say too much, but there is that moment where I did have a lot of alchemy.

Speaker 1 24:08

I self-created in the early 90s or my 20s, and I liken it to the alchemist as well. He calls it beginner's luck. Yeah, when you have, he calls it your personal legend. When you pursue your personal legend, the universe conspires in your favor. I got a little older and I thought no, it's just people want to give you things. When you're young, we help young people out, and half the people want to get in your path, so they throw things at you. You don't realize the world is set up to support youth, you know. So I think there's a million ways of looking at it, but then you lose that alchemy. I for sure hit a point where I thought what the hell happened to the alchemy of youth and I wasn't able to manifest the way I used to. So then it's about recapturing that agency.

Speaker 2 24:59

That's what the journey is about. Well, and that's where the transformation comes in, because even like on any journey, like a physical journey let's just say you're walking a hundred miles, those shoes are going to wear out right so the things that serve you.

Speaker 2 25:13

At one point then you got to go out and get new shoes and in this tale, in this story, it's a lot of. It is about the lens through which you're seeing the world. And so things happen to amateus. Things in his life happened to him and it started to shape or color the lens that he saw the world through. And so, in order to get back to the main theme, for me anyway, because I want to be as linear as I can the idea of transformation can't happen if you don't change your shoes.

Speaker 2 25:45

Let's say Right, right or change the lens you're looking at, because then you have to stop. And he also said Amateus says this, I don't know, chapter 16, 17, 18, 19. He said something like how many times have I been in that dark?

Speaker 2 25:59

cave and had to be reborn. And then the gods tell him that too, like it keeps happening. And I'll tell you a quick story. And the gods tell them that too, like it keeps happening. And I'll tell you a quick story. I was standing up in church and I was 28 years old and I was giving the tale, I was giving my testimony, right. So I'm telling everybody about how I just was. So I lost my faith and I didn't have any. I couldn't even hear the Lord and it was so dark and blah, blah, blah, and I was bawling my eyes out and I was so happy I was in the light again and I was so happy that I felt the Lord again. And all that. And this girl, lauren, this woman, lauren, who was at least 10 years older than me I swear I kid you not comes up to me after the church service and takes me by the wrists and says I loved your testimony, but don't you dare think it's not going to happen again and again, and again and.

Speaker 2 26:47

I looked at her like because I thought I knew everything right at that moment and I also had no. I thought it was over.

Speaker 1 26:54

I thought well, that was good, you thought you arrived right.

Speaker 2 27:00

Yes, yes. So to read it in this book was just like amen, uh-huh, Yep, that's right. And it? And then I was thinking this Nick, what if it stops? What is it then? So now I'm 60. And what if my transformation, or my darkness and light, darkness and light, darkness and light? What if that cycle stops? What does that mean? My life is right, what does?

Speaker 1 27:23

that mean to all of us mean my life is right.

Speaker 2 27:29

What does that mean? What's your conclusion? Well, I'm asking what would that? Mean that I'm just not growing or transforming I guess, well, that's the idea, right?

Speaker 1 27:34

I mean, it sounds really cliche, but uh, you know, crises are opportunities in disguise and the catalyst for change is always discomfort, at the very least right, or some kind of major challenge. And um, sometimes you know, this is said in the book sometimes the universe speaks louder and louder to get your attention on a certain front. If you're repeating your cycles, right, right and uh, if you don't listen, right, then the stakes get really high and I well, and amate amateus he's.

Speaker 2 28:05

He didn't mean to not listen, he thought he was listening, but he was so distracted first by, I guess, uh, romance, right, he was absolutely distracted from his mission, or his, his, his mission, his, his life's goal, his, what he thought was his purpose. And of course, that's the beauty of literature, as the audience might know, the reader might know that what he doesn't know.

Speaker 2 28:28

But he thought his life's purpose was to reconnect with his mom, um, and to to either rescue her or whatever. But, um, deep inside, obviously, he had other lessons to learn that he didn't even plan on. He didn't plan it. And here's example you can sit in Bible study and you can sit and learn. You know, love is patient, love is kind, love does not boast and go oh, now I know what love is Hell. No, you don't.

Speaker 1 28:54

Because it's theoretical right you can't study about love.

Speaker 2 28:56

You've got to feel it right, you've got to live it. So he doesn't know what his journey is supposed to look like, but he thinks he does, and so he gets completely distracted. He gets derailed by romance, by riches, what else?

Speaker 1 29:14

Well, I think that's you hit the nail on the head, because I actually don't want to diminish his purpose or his calling or his mission. I think it was the real deal. We're being called upon to reconnect with our divinity. But absolutely, I kind of intentionally created this parallel where he amasses riches. I wrote a version of Sinbad once where it's symbolic, going out into the world on an odyssey, you can amass riches, and it's just symbolic for spiritual character or emotional maturation really.

Speaker 1 29:46

But I actually, in researching for today's conversation, I looked back at my initial notes. As I said, I have a, a map of this, not just the Cyclades but the entire Aegean, and there's a lot of islands, by the way, and anyway it was an ancient map with all the old names, like Antolia instead of Turkey and Attica instead of Athens, and anyway, an old map. And then I, I I drew on it and I drew the route. They're going to visit this Island but they're going to bypass that one. I wanted the sexy ones, like roads, and you know Crete. You got to have Crete because that's where he's going to intersect with Icarus. So anyway, mapped out the whole journey, but then I did a whole chart with two columns and I put here's the clues right To finding Dianora and here's the riches on every given Island there are certain riches and of course I researched what kind of alloys were being traded at the time and what goods were being traded and anyway, and I just really worked out like he masses riches here and then he gains a clue here and they were kind of neck and neck.

Speaker 1 30:51

But yes, the idea was when we go, simply put at home, amateus was disappointed with right gossip and I called the worst you know that, I guess the um, most unsavory aspect of the human condition. So so that was his deal, we all have our deal right. But he developed a pretty negative view of humanity just because of the pettiness on that small island. So that was his thing. Then he goes out into the world and actually he sees through the pettiness of everybody back home and that's empowering. But then, yes, life has its disillusionments and disappointments. So I intentionally made him kind of diverted enough by material manifestation, right that he forgets about his mission. And how do you say no to love he actually says? Why would I say no to something that literally dropped from heaven into my path?

Speaker 2 31:42

right on. Yeah, I remember that and so yes, and so, yeah, so he.

Transformation Through Life's Challenges

Speaker 2 31:48

He doesn't mean to be derailed, but he does get distracted. But you know, just having that roadmap. It reminds me of like a treasure map, like the scavenger hunt you have to figure out where to go and then they give you the next clue. You know, right, right, and so that's what it reminds me of. But even if the reader doesn't know that treasure map or that scavenger hunt instructions or whatever, those are the things that completely layer the story and undergird the journey, so that it's not just an external journey. And then you throw in some internal things. Your internal and your external are intertwined from day one.

Speaker 1 32:29

Yeah. I'm glad you appreciated all that about it and that you understand the milestones, because I do think they're universal. But I could, you know I don't want to throw anyone under the bus by being specific, but yeah, it's absolutely the story of my life, but through the lens of oh, this universal spiritual journey.

Speaker 2 32:48

so yeah, well, I could say this because I've raised four kids and they're all getting up there. Now I've got a, I think jordan's 38, 37, yeah, 37, I don't know. Um, but the idea that, um, you try and teach your kids, like the, there's this triangle that I guess I got from somewhere, a myth, or Andrea, I don't know. And so there's a triangle and there's a spiritual side, one side, you know, and then there's the physical and then there's relational, and in the physical it's financial. Right, you got to get your shit together and you got to make enough money to survive.

Speaker 2 33:25

And so what happens with all four of my kids is one of them will work really hard on the spiritual and like be able to, you know, astral project or whatever, and yet they don't make a penny to rub together and pay their own way, let's just say. Or one of them is really financially successful but they forgot to work on the deep spiritual. And so, you know, they reached the top of the mountain and they're rich, and yet they have nothing on the inside. I'm really exaggerating, to make a point. So, as we develop, we're, all you know, going back and forth between what, to me, in the book was talking about. We struggle with our divinity. So we have to work on the physical, because we have to eat.

Speaker 2 34:03

Right right, because we have to eat right right and then we get lonesome for our deep inner soul and we have to work on the spiritual. But you can't just work on one without the other. You're gonna sink or you're you're gonna, you're gonna lose it yep, yeah, and I think there's a lot of models.

Speaker 1 34:17

It's not just mind, body and spirit right, there's a lot of ways where you can look at. You've got to nurture them all equally and keep that balance right. And um, yeah, I think too, you know maslow talks about your hierarchy of needs. Sometimes, if your base needs aren't met, you don't have the luxury of doing your inner spiritual work right. So, anyway, but I will say this, I will say this the, looking back at my original original notes, and I was kind of surprised at what was there straight out the gate from the get-go and what evolved over time.

Speaker 2 34:50

But you surely saw a theme of the interplay between flesh and spirit absolutely, that's exactly what I was point trying to point out that you're fighting for your divinity, but it's the flesh and the spirit and even the gods at the end, cyril and nico were trying to tell him. Look this God did this, like Andrea always says that my friend Andrea is a mythologist and she always says even goddesses suffer. Like suffering is just, you know, part of our growth. But as far as the luxury thing goes, that makes me want to kind of jump on this topic and ask you the luxury of. Basically, you said something like, um, you know, if your base needs aren't met, then it's really hard to pay attention to whatever the internal world. But when he lost everything, you know, um, and he's like god, I've lost everything. And then he's like, wow, there's some kind of freedom in this.

Speaker 1 35:42

This is kind of cool yeah right, yeah well, that is the other side of that coin. You know, sometimes, when we have our needs met or we have privilege, let's put it that way we get complacent, and so it's been said. I, some people I think it was the some natural disaster maybe it was haiti and the impoverished people were more alive, and so I, I want to backpedal a little bit and say you can be more spiritual. You know I think that's what I used to joke like, yoga is finding your center while in excruciating pain. If you can find your breath while right in extreme discomfort, it's metaphorical for finding your inner stillness despite, you know, the circumstances and conditions around you. So there's a reason. People that go to prison can you know what I mean? Find their redemption, because if you can find your core despite suffering, that seems to be the ideal. I don't know if we're talking about the same thing.

Speaker 2 36:43

Right, yeah, it's the same thing. It is the same thing and just the idea that he but I love him because he went through just about all of it and he analyzed it. You know, afterwards he didn't analyze it, but he reflected. He reflected on it afterwards Like huh, there was a time when I blank and I learned this, and there was a time when I blank and I learned this. So he is very much in tune. But when he wasn't listening, when he was a little distracted or just really despairing or whatever, I mean, that's when the gods quote unquote conspired against him and they sent horrendous storms.

Speaker 1 37:21

To get his attention, to get his attention, and that's what they said.

Speaker 2 37:24

That's what she said. Anyway, we had to get your attention thank you for catching all those. Thank you you gotta love it. But then life is kind of like that, like we just keep moseying along and then we think everything is going the way we think it should go.

Speaker 1 37:41

Oh, yeah, and I I think maybe most people can relate to. Not that I'm championing hedonism, right, but a lot of people talk about you know what? I'm not trying to get a crown in heaven. I mean it's very fashionable right now to say, but life is here and now. Do you know what I mean? Don't live for that Life. You're not even sure exists. And so I wanted it to be a very real. He couldn't say no to what fell on his path. And then you know the fingertip motif of touching fingertips. For amateus, life is here and now. It's a central tactile sensation of fingertips touching. Yeah. So he's like, yeah, okay, I know, I know I'm a, I'm a demigod and I have divinity within me and I'm destined for elysium, but I'm not that interested, I'm kind of enjoying actual connection, right, right, yeah.

Speaker 2 38:28

Well, because he didn't have any faith before Icarus either. The love tank was on E, and so he didn't have a reference point, he didn't have a category, and so of course it took him away and he didn't want to have to believe in like Icarus believed in all of it. He had faith in all the gods and goddesses and, you're right, like Amateus, which is like, like you said, the fingertip thing, the here and now, the here and now. So there's the battle even between the two guys, two ideas, you know two ideas One person who believes in all the gods and goddesses, and heaven and all that and hell, and then someone who just wants the gods and goddesses and and heaven and all that and hell, and then someone who, um, just wants to hear now, wants to hear now, um, and yet he, he was called, he did have a calling for something greater and something more. He felt it.

Speaker 1 39:16

Yep, yeah, I could say, oh, I'm tempted to say something about everything, but um, I'll wait until you ask.

Speaker 2 39:24

Well, no, no say it.

Speaker 1 39:26

I love how you express that. Yeah, I don't know that Amateus was always about the here and now, but he was disappointed in humanity clearly. So that was symbolic of just not believing in our divinity. He was disappointed in mankind. So how are we divine creatures? But he did settle in pretty nicely, nicely right to materialism once he had it.

Speaker 2 39:50

Sorry no, as a reader you get excited like, oh, everything might just be okay. I I do wonder if he's ever going to go back there to find his mom though like well, yeah, he had very clear, icarus actually musters.

Speaker 1 40:02

He says musters, the. He doesn't say balls, what musters the? He says musters, the. He doesn't say balls, but musters the gumption or something to finally address it and go dude, have you forgot, have you forgotten about her call altogether? And he says I am content, you know, here and now with you. So I just, I want the reader to really feel like, yeah, how could you say no to that?

Speaker 2 40:23

Yeah, Well, the reader does. We were with him like. I'm never arguing with him. I am rooting for him too and I'm not sure why the gods are doing all this shit to him. And it's just a lot. It's just a lot.

Speaker 1 40:36

He's like roadkill, like more than once, but also that's why part of that is the idea that you have to die to yourself to be reborn. And it is my journey. Again, I'm not trying to draw parallels, but every step of the way it's, I lost everything about my life. I lost everything but my life and I had to dig. And we haven't gotten to the fate thing yet, right, but I had to absolutely dig my heels in and go. You know what my life is, the one thing I'm not willing to give up and I'm not done here, and I've got more to do.

Speaker 1 41:05

So that's when I learned oh, you get to co-create with the gods, you're not subject to fate, right. So that's why he, you know he didn't go to head to head with Zeus at one point and I thought well, the protagonist because you think the protagonist is Minos, I mean sorry, the antagonist is Minos, right. Then you realize it's much, much bigger than that And's zeus trying to thwart his mission every step of the way. So I intentionally had zeus thrust through the clouds in that one scene and they have a standoff. And I wanted him to not shake his fist at the gods but say why do you have it in for me? You know, and I think a lot of people do get to the point where they feel like I love the word maligned. I just heard that someone that came on the podcast said aligned or maligned.

Speaker 2 41:49

And so, and misaligned, or just maligned.

Speaker 1 41:52

Well, that's, that's what I did. I didn't correct her, but I go. Actually, the opposite would be misaligned in my head. I thought that, but I just liked the word play. But you can be maligned to the point where, on an energetic level, you're meant to be cold, you know, and so I had a deadly disease. I should be dead were it not for Western medicine. So that's where it gets really personal. I think maybe everybody hits a point where they have to go. You know what? I am reclaiming my agency and I'm going to co-create with the universe because I've got more to do here. I'm not in the ground yet.

Speaker 2 42:23

Mm-hmm. Well, and if the illnesses that plagued you were from the gods then and you told them hey, why are you doing this to me? Then they would turn around to you like they did to amateus and say, dude, it was to make you stronger it was so that you could develop these eyes, and without these eyes you wouldn't even know how to transform without all this shit happening to you. So it's beautiful.

Speaker 1 42:50

And maybe tell me what you think. But lately I've had the thought some people can kind of skate through life, right, things are sustainable enough. And then I've always joked like maybe on your deathbed you get good with God because it's final curtain, right. But then I you know, different times in my life, I've life I said no, we're all learning the same lesson lessons. They just look different on different people and nobody's really um, I don't know skating along. We all kind of are learning the same lessons at different times in different orders. It just looks different on different people. So I go back and forth on this one.

Speaker 1 43:23

But I did have the thought people that experience big challenges might be destined for greatness right Like there's something much, so much more potential there, but you don't discover it until you shed those onion skins or whatever it is die to the self in order to be reborn.

Speaker 2 43:40

That is a great kind of one of the only ways we can frame it without getting bitter right Is that, if that, if somebody has? You know, it's like when I had a toddler and they were strong-willed and people go well the strong, because they're hard right, they just want to twist their little head off all the time, but then people in the supermarket would go that's okay, that the strong-willed kids are the movers and the shakers, meaning you know that the the hard times that you have to go through make you have a better life, or you're destined for great things, and there's a Bible verse for that.

Speaker 2 44:12

To whom much has been given, much is expected right.

Speaker 1 44:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think it has new relevance right now too with all the neurodivergence. Again, without getting too personal, my godson is struggling, you know he's got ADHD and and I don't know has kind of been a handful in school and they're thinking about medicating them, and so I never want to be offering unsolicited advice, because that's always criticism. But I gently said you know I again I'm making this way too personal, but I kind of wish somebody saw my rebel without a cause, nature or my defiance, or they did call me stubborn. I don't remember that. Right, like a rooster is going to come and land on your lip. They would say I remember that. Yeah, grandma would say stubborn and the biggest trouble I ever got in. Our sweet grandma. She said, uh.

The Battle Between Flesh and Spirit

Speaker 1 45:05

Somebody said well, I wonder where he gets that stubbornness from. And they said they looked at Emerson, right, and she goes are you kidding me? I would have divorced him long time ago if he was that stubborn. And mom, mom actually said whatever mother. She called her right. She actually said you can't say that, mother. I just wish I was validated for having a unique worldview, you know, and caring about things that nobody else gave a shit about, that your liabilities become your gifts. So I did gently try to say that to Sherry. You know, neurodivergence can be a gift if you hang in there, and I'm not saying Medicaid or don't Medicaid, but just try to support the unique gifts of neurodivergency.

Speaker 2 45:46

Oh, that's a great thing to say, because it is really weird how our society? I don't know either. It's everybody's neuro. More people are more neurodivergent now than ever, but I mean even Einstein and you know let's just let's just go down the list of you know people that have accomplished great things. We're, all you know, neurodivergent and kind of on the spectrum, off the spectrum, whatever you call it, yeah, so I don't know.

Speaker 2 46:14

I think it's good when people can function better on medication and I'm really happy for adults that have found that and their life is more manageable. It's a miracle. It's a miracle that they're making drugs for people to maybe stop being diabetic. I mean, it's time. It's about time that we're able to function without maybe committing not committing, but contemplating suicide all the time or whatever.

Speaker 2 46:38

And it's a miracle that you got your drugs to save your life. So there's so many wonderful things about it, and yet dot dot dot. Those challenges will either, you know, make or break us, I guess.

Speaker 1 46:49

Yeah, in this case I thought it's. It's complicated because if you don't do the drugs, then there's going to be bad experiences in school. You know being framed as a bad boy, or you know just having interactions with your teacher that can scar you as well. So, who knows? I really don't have any answers, because that can start to define you too. Anyway.

Speaker 2 47:13

Well, and so interesting, because of course, I was four or five years older than you and I don't think I saw you as stubborn, isn't that funny?

Speaker 1 47:21

Well, you probably appreciated it Anyway. I just think I've regularly said like appreciated. Anyway, I just think I've regularly said like I just care about weird things that nobody else gives a shit about. So if something ruffles my feathers, it's just that it's not on their radar, that's all. Weird things like you know, spirituality and humanity, things like that.

Speaker 2 47:41

Just tiny little insignificant. You know ideas? Well, we were going to talk about more about the Insignificant. You know ideas. Well, we were going to talk more about how we need to, you know, clock in to our divinity and make it part of our life's vision board, maybe Because, you know, people are really into getting a yacht per se and they're not ashamed of that, um, to put that on their vision board. But for someone to say, you know, I want to tap into my divinity and and, uh, you know, be proud of themselves for that, that's, I think, people are more excited about their, their embracing their failures right now, you know.

Speaker 1 48:22

Oh yeah, yeah, well it's okay though. Well you're, I sorry. Well, I think maybe we're airing our dirty laundry too, right, like, like we said before, what's your diet, what's your kid on, like, what's the diagnosis du jour. So I don't know if it's a good trend, but at least we're acknowledging again depression and we've all got something, and I think there's that's a beautiful thing.

Speaker 2 48:46

It sure is, Especially when everybody used to have to hide behind, keep up with the Joneses and hide everything. And just imagine just how scary that is to just have to keep up with the neighbor and not share your. Like you said, not air your dirty laundry, Never just hide it, hide it, hide it, fake it, fake it, fake it.

Speaker 1 49:04

I think it's been a steady arc, like if you look at the talk shows, the Jenny Joneses and the Geraldo Rivera's and even Oprah and Phil Donahue. In the beginning we started to expose what we'd swept under the rug right Whether it's domestic issues or learning disabilities or molestation. A lot of things that weren't talked about were literally put under the cultural microscope. So then maybe we hit a point where we're over-diagnosing right and over-medicating children, that sort of thing, and now I do think we're rewarding people for being broken and that's not empowering. I think we're going to find a balance where you can identify, then change the story, instead of beating those old threadbare drums of your diagnosis or your past.

Speaker 2 49:50

frankly, you know which is part of Amateus's journey, is that the bad things that happened to him and the sad circumstance of being motherless, colored or discolored how he saw the world. And he did beat that drum for too long. And and so maybe, as a society, when you, you know, freud had his capitulation theory that society itself is a character, right, and in the beginning we're just, we were cavemen, which is like a toddler, and then we grow up. You know, each society grows up, and maybe that's where we are as a society, as a character is that we're really looking at our wounds, like you do when you're 29.

Speaker 1 50:31

You know you're looking at your history Right, right, right.

Speaker 2 50:32

You're like, oh my God, I have so many wounds from, I've been traumatized by my family, and I want to have a boundary now and I want to just be myself. And maybe as a society we're going through that like, oh, look at all the shit that we have and now we're going to do what you just said, which is not reward people for being broken, but now we can get in touch with our divinity and that as an individual, and that will make the societal divinity that much more powerful, because we've gone through the mud, we've sifted through it all.

Speaker 1 51:04

God, I hope so, God, I hope so. Well, no, I mean, I think this capitulation theory, is that what you called it?

Speaker 2 51:12

I think so.

Speaker 1 51:13

Yeah, anyway, there's also a octogeny recapitulates, something or other. But I think it's a little problematic nowadays, right, to see this country as being in their infantile stage. You can't say that anymore, right? You can't say third world country anymore, just developing country. But really, I'm sorry, it couldn't be clearer.

Speaker 1 51:33

When I first went to Europe in the 90s, I remember thinking, wow, are we more progressive? Just on the LGBTQ front, right? It's like, hmm, why are all their bars underground and you need a code to get in, whereas you go to West Hollywood and write and it's very visible right on the street. And yet I'd go to France and it's like, ooh, there's a billboard you'd never see in the United States, like two men touching noses. So it's really hard to figure out who is more progressive and I finally walked away going.

Speaker 1 52:03

People have really had I'm putting it in past tense really high expectations of the United States as being progressive. Then you come here and you're like, oh my God, they're Puritans, they were founded on Puritanism, so they're just shocked and they expect more from us. I mean, all bets are off now, but I would have said that in the 90s Europe is, yes, being our. We always want that's all the, the baking shows and you know top model. All the competition reality shows have a British nanny, like smacking your knuckles with a ruler. We want to be put in our place by our mommy and daddy, which is Britain, right, but actually I think we're exactly the same. It just looks looks different. If that makes sense, nobody's more progressive, just in terms of Europe and the United States.

Speaker 2 52:51

Yeah Well, and maybe humankind not split up between developing nations and mother nations? Maybe it's just humankind? I'm not saying I agree with it, but it could be one way to look at our development. But you know, it could be one way to look at our development. God knows, we have to pick something to be able to stomach. You know, because we're global now we can see everything that's going on everywhere, and that is actually. That could lead us to my next question.

Speaker 1 53:23

Okay, but yeah, we can get back on track, but I have to. Now that you framed it that way, I will say, yes, we all need hope to get up in the morning on a really good day. I do see the pendulum swings and I understand them and the regressions, but I know where the forward march, I know what it is and I agree with you. I want to demystify the word. I intentionally used the word divinity in the mythic context, right, but that's a little much for people. That's pretty heavy, right. All I'm talking about is subtract mind and ego from the fucking equation.

Speaker 2 53:58

What's left.

Speaker 1 53:59

What's left without ego, love, and that's what I'm talking about. So call it our nature, our core essence, our pure consciousness. You don't have to go on and say it comes from the collective or it comes from God, it doesn't matter. But we are born pure, right? We build up these defense mechanisms over time as we go out into the world and have encounters and experiences. Anyway, just to demystify it a little bit, I use lofty language by choosing the word divinity, but nobody needs to clutch their pearls, right, when I use the word spirit. Don't you know? Don't worry, I'm just talking about Oprah's spirituality, right, like the non-threatening one everything that's not your body, that's all. Everything that's not your body.

Speaker 2 54:43

Our inner goodness and you. You know that was kind of played out actually this kind of ties in um, when he the the guy that came. He well, I don't know how if I'm allowed to give this away, I probably shouldn't but it was kind of played out in war, when two people looked into each other's eyes and saw the humanity, they saw them as humans. You know, the humanity was like a huge subject in one of the later chapters humanity, humanity, and so I think that humanity could kind of be parallel with love and parallel with one's divinity and remember.

Speaker 1 55:22

Do you remember what I'm sorry if I interrupt did you sit? No, go ahead. Do you remember what happened when they chose to see the humanity in their adversary?

Speaker 2 55:30

Yeah, but that's why I was not sure if I was allowed to say it.

Speaker 1 55:32

Well, what did that mean to you? I don't care. There's no spoilers here.

Speaker 2 55:35

Okay, I was going to ask you about that and I also wanted to ask you about Zeus. So, yeah, was that just well, tell me about it. Yeah, was that, just tell me about it.

Speaker 1 55:53

I'm not going to specify what, my subjective ideas or whatever. No, I'm tempted to ask you because, to be honest, that was one of the mysterious things that came off my pen and I'm not sure I mean. I guess I was thinking that war is all ego. Yes, I have no category for war. So war is all mind and ego run amok and so on the battlefield, which shouldn't really exist in the first place, because all battles are one. Far above the battlefield, right? Right that if you make the mistake of actually seeing the humanity, you're screwed on that front. You better try the spiritual route. Right that if you make the mistake of actually seeing the humanity, you're screwed on that front. You better try the spiritual route. Right, because diplomacy over war, simply put.

Speaker 2 56:33

Well, I mean, that was very clear. So, in my mind, if I was trying to analyze, well, why did that happen? He saw the humanity in his adversary and it almost killed him. So therefore, a, don't bring your humanity to the battlefield. Or B, there's no love on the battlefield, it's only ego, just as you said. Or C, the gods are orchestrating something here because they need him, they need to talk to him, right?

Speaker 1 57:00

Yeah, it was one of many. The stakes just get higher and higher and I think consciously I did think he's lost monetary things, he's lost his symbolic fortune, he's lost love. Right, icarus has flown in the wrong direction. And so what else can be taken from him? And I wanted him because throughout he kind of prided himself on never having to use his skills in battle Remember that. So I wanted him to experience killing and and witnessing death up, real, close and personal. And then he had so many delusions delusions, I guess, illusions about milos and the home. It really never was the place. He's framed it right, and so now you have the mycenaean invasion threatening all he knows. So I just wanted the battlefield to be a place where really there's nothing. He's been stripped of everything, and now he can, as we said earlier, you can be reborn.

Speaker 2 57:54

Right. Well, and also in my, in my mind, comparing it to my journey. You know, I'm going through my pain and I'm all through my maybe it was my 30s. I wanted to be surrounded by green, because green is the color of healing and I needed to heal from all my wounds. And then I broke out of that and was ready to serve the collective. And every day I wake up and go how can I make a difference in the world? But until I got to that point, I was really working on myself. Yeah. So I felt like, oh, here he is, he's doing that. He was working on himself, working on myself. Yeah. So I felt like, oh, here he is, he's doing that. He was working on himself, working on himself. And then it was time he was reborn. I thought, yeah, I mean, I may never see my mom, but in the meantime, I'm going to go serve my country, I'm going to go make a difference.

Speaker 1 58:38

So you're right, it was, you're right. That was the milestone. He learned from Diderot, his commander, that it feels really good to stop navel gazing right and contribute for a cause greater than yourself. And he even says you know, the cause of home is worth fighting for, Home being your spiritual essence. Again, you know.

Speaker 2 58:58

Well, and that's the thing, people that don't read myth, or that don't read fantasy, or that don't read fiction the truth that you can get from the story and then, like I said, it makes me think of my life, or it makes me think of raising my kids, or it makes me, you know, everything in the story is fantastical and there's no such thing as um. I mean, it is obviously centered in a, in the old world of you know, greece and crete and everything but um, clearly it's, it's not real, and so it's like a good science fiction will teach you something that is real, even if it's far-fetched. You can, you take something from it, and that's why this book has so, so, so, so many life's lessons. It's an epic journey and you get you don't just close the book and say, well, I'm glad his life has a little ribbon and bow on it. It doesn't do that. It tells you this is the beginning of another. It ends with the beginning. It means.

Speaker 2 59:57

This is the cycle of us getting closer and closer to what you want to call it self-actualization, or our divinity, or our best self, the best version of our self or the deepest fulfillment.

Speaker 1 1:00:10

Transformation, as you said earlier, or redemption, maybe you know.

Self-Loathing and Redemption

Speaker 2 1:00:14

Well, and that's part of transformation. So I did want to say a couple more things. So I said the thing about the collective and I asked you about the sword. I wanted to ask you about Zeus and why he was so against having a demigod in his line. Or did he represent, like the yin and the yang, the yang of the yin, the yin of the yang, because the mom wanted him to, you know, reach his potential? And Zeus seemed to be like like he's trying to stop him what's happening, what I'm joking?

Speaker 1 1:00:55

oh my god, you want me to call 9-1-1.

Speaker 2 1:00:57

Shit, hold on sorry, I got a tickle and I was trying to finish the sentence and when you're so sorry.

Speaker 1 1:01:16

Sounded like you were getting choked up and I'm like no, that she's choking.

Speaker 2 1:01:19

It took me a minute, I'm sorry anyway, go ahead um tell me about the ze Zeus trying to block.

Speaker 1 1:01:27

You gave me a good edit point there, thank you, okay, I'm going to have to think about it a little bit. I know that I wanted him to be very faulted. As you said earlier, right, gods have issues too. And again, I looked back at the notes and I, very early on, know that it was about Dianora herself. The first scene I wrote was her on the beach. You remember that. Again, no spoilers, but the part where she's disillusioned by the sensual world. So she's on the beach, she's an expression of divinity, but I mean literally, on a metaphysical level. I wanted her to be consciousness in the physical realm, the expression of consciousness in the physical realm, and that's more than the human condition. That's you know what I mean.

Speaker 1 1:02:16

A lot of myth is about what is the nature of the consciousness expressed in the physical realm. You know all organisms. Bowie does things and I'm like, oh my God, dogs too, Right, like something like, for example, being in a relationship and eventually taking each other for granted. I'm like Bowie could take me or leave me, but he's all over strangers, like really dogs too. So I just think, or even just kind of you know, getting a little older and taking things for granted like, oh, we get your intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm back please so there is I just think all organisms have certain things in common, and it's it's the nature of, not the human condition, but consciousness.

Speaker 1 1:03:01

I don't know if that made any sense no, it's beautiful.

Speaker 2 1:03:03

And to think that there is, they didn't have the language obviously. I mean, a lot of myth is written down, a lot of it is oratory, but just the whole language of consciousness which has been more popular in our lifetime.

Speaker 1 1:03:22

And that was the, I guess twist or the slant of this book was telling it in kind of contemporary terms but very archaic, mythic terms as well. But anyway, back to the Zeus question. I wanted Zeus, a lot of the gods, to have human frailty when they manifested physically. They're great in heaven, but down here, you know what I mean Zeus ran around and was, you know, had his dalliances, and I could say it much more crudely right, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I couldn't come up with the phrase yeah, he was a philanderer at best, right when in human form. So I say that often in human form dot, dot, dot.

Speaker 1 1:04:08

And so that speaks again to the flesh spirituality standoff. That is part of the human condition or just the expression of consciousness. I hope I haven't lost anyone. So I wanted zeus to be so faulted that actually his own, he was overcompensating for his own human frailty and his own dalliances by saying, oh, no, he was ill-conceived, I'm not going to support. He's not my son or my grandchild, you know he kind of disowned his grandchild. No, he was ill-conceived, I'm not going to support, he's not my son or my grandchild, you know he kind of disowned his grandchild because he was overcompensating for his own dalliances love it but on further examination he actually says it's said actually that these were all tests to prove, prove yourself and earn your place in Elysium.

Speaker 2 1:04:47

Yeah, he does say that.

Speaker 1 1:04:53

He actually wanted the best for his daughter, you know, and he wanted the best for his grandson, but he absolutely had to prove himself. So it just goes back to oh, the stakes got higher and higher, the challenges really got harder and harder, and but it was all. And it said the gods are benevolent.

Speaker 2 1:05:06

It said that In the end, yeah, and that it was all.

Speaker 2 1:05:07

And it said the gods are benevolent it's in the end, yeah, and that it's all about love. So I like that. You explain that to me, though, because I get it now that up there, when he's just a god, it's a lot easier than when he's trying to be human too. That's how hard it is to be human and find your divinity. I get it. I love it, love it. Love it because he loses his divinity when he or she, or whoever, comes down and becomes not just consciousness but is in the flesh and in the very, in that very.

Speaker 1 1:05:35

First I'll just say the rape scene, which was the first scene, but I moved it later, as you know. Um, that was the whole idea. Even her, she, she says she was ill-prepared for attraction, like she had no idea what to do, and then she was disillusioned. She, you know, she was kind of obsessed with human beings but she had no idea what they were capable of. And then Icarus ends up being ill-prepared for the real world because he spent so much time in isolation.

Speaker 2 1:06:03

Oh God isn't that good. Oh God isn't that good. And that's why there's many different characters, kind of to reflect, you know, different sides to a diamond or the different angles of an elephant or whatever, however you want to look at it. And that's exactly what you were saying about being younger and caring about certain things. People care about different things, and so whatever's in another person's journey, that's not exactly like yours. The theme of transformation, redemption's, all the same, fear and love, like just breaking it down. But, um, there was also a couple of places that made me cry. Um, um, one of them was stephanus. Uh, oh, yeah, he was. He ended up, you know, meeting. Whatever. Her name was Arianna, or whatever Arianna, arianna who was married to Stephanus.

Speaker 2 1:06:57

And he was crying Staphylos, staphylos.

Speaker 1 1:06:59

Staphylos.

Speaker 2 1:07:01

Staphylos, he's married to Staphylos, and they were sitting there and he's like I know who you are. And he said you can't or whatever. And he's like no, I know, you're part God, you're a demigod. He goes no, I'm not. I'm not. He's like yes, you are. You're like no, I'm not. And he's crying Like you just need one person to believe in you. One person to just go dude, it's really you. No, it can't be. Yes, you're gonna do it, you're gonna you gotta believe in yourself.

Speaker 2 1:07:31

And then and then, when he meets the lady um, maybe it's her, I don't know and they have a special marriage where she's like dude, you you have to trust yourself, you have to trust the world, you gotta trust that guy you're married to, you gotta trust yourself. And then later on they all say every, just about everybody, his, his big brother type figures and not his father because his father's you know done, you know pontificating, but that it all has to come from within. Gosh, damn it, it comes from you if I, yeah, let me jump in.

Speaker 1 1:08:04

Um, thank you, I'm glad. I'm so glad that touched you because it was pretty. You know I'm I drew on life every step of the way. I felt it yeah and um, I just wanted him to think himself wretched beyond redemption. I think we've all kind of been there, right, you think there's no going back. I can't recover that boundary and the whole point of him saying you know, when I saw ariadne on, not, not, um, ariana ariana.

Speaker 1 1:08:31

But ariadne, on the beach, the gods can see the good in you, right? And so I just wanted him yeah to be a to yeah, be that one person who can say dude, I see the divinity in you I loved it anyway.

Speaker 2 1:08:46

And then yeah, the idea that you trust yourself and you can handle what comes, rather than putting your faith in your partner, seems to be the way to go right and that's what faith is right yeah, yeah well and um, I did like how, once he had been to hades and realized that it was more beautiful than people said and that it was the center of all creative inspiration and all of that, I really loved that. He said something like the real hell is war. The real hell is what we're doing to each other out there on the battlefield. I loved that field, I loved that and I loved the whole thing about the. The Hades is not like this place of inspiration and and um, pondering and curiosity and all the things that they're doing on the banks of the river sticks. It's not just for the poets, it's for everybody Right, I loved that.

Speaker 1 1:09:42

Yeah, it's the uh matrix of all germination and it actually was that. You know, I didn't make that up. That's kind of it wasn't what it's become.

Speaker 2 1:09:52

Uh-huh, yeah, well, leave that to organized religion. That's another, another podcast. But, um, I don't know if, um, I mean, I know your life because I've been close to you and I was reading the book as my own self, I wasn't thinking, oh, my brother wrote that, because he went through this, and my brother, I really was just reading it.

Speaker 1 1:10:16

It's hard to do, though I give you a lot of credit for that.

Speaker 2 1:10:18

I am good at that and I believe that I did it. And I didn't want to especially the first read. I just wanted to see what the story was.

Speaker 1 1:10:26

Thank you, yeah, thanks.

Speaker 2 1:10:29

And I also am a big fan. One of my favorite short stories in the world is Brokeback Mountain, Annie Proulx. And you know, God bless her. She's not gay and she's not a man, and she wrote a story that had nothing to do with her life and she got canceled and said I wish I never wrote that. And yet it's the best writing you'll ever read. 30 pages will knock you down because she's connected and because she chose to write the story about two gay guys. Whatever, she thought, she was doing something good. So in my mind, you're a writer. It doesn't have to be your life story, right? I'm just going to read what the writer's writing and see how it relates to me and what it means to our human condition and the hero's journey and all of that. I heard some things like the sins of the father, and then I heard some things like rescue my mother. And that's when your voice was narrating it when I thought, oh huh.

Speaker 1 1:11:36

Yeah, so well, there's a lot in there. Renee, you're, you preface questions very thoroughly. I don't know if it's leading to a question or not, but I think there was a lot there. But I will say this about the Annie Prue thing I didn't know she was canceled. I've.

Speaker 1 1:11:51

I've read the short story I have a book about, from page to screen, talking about the adaptation of the film. If you know, it's one of my favorite films ever, and not just because it's gay themed. I think it's a really beautiful haunting film. I just love it. So I don't know, I didn't know she'd been canceled.

Speaker 1 1:12:08

But I will say this you know, when people say, oh well, you know why are all the gay parts going to straight actors? It's appropriation, right, and gay actors need jobs and they're up in arms about the wrong things, I will be the one guy that says well, that's why it's called acting. When I cast my gay themed film, I didn't even ask them their sexuality. We just did the proper procedure for auditions and whoever gave the strongest performance, and then you line up the headshots and it really ends up being about the chemistry of the screen presences in question. It's a lot that goes into it but never wants to even think about their sexuality. Anyway, I don't know if that makes sense, but yeah, isn't that what makes us writers? We have access to the full reservoir, however you want to put it, but in Jungian terms, you know the collective unconscious. We have access to that reservoir and we can absolutely step into other shoes. That's what makes us writers. One hopes.

Speaker 2 1:13:01

Right, and so that was my story, because everything is story. That was my story. To just back me, back up myself, justify that I promised you I read it without what's it called projecting your life story onto this guy, onto the story I did, and so when I heard your voice do, it is when some things kind of clicked for me, and so I'm just laying it out there in case you want to discuss any of it.

Speaker 1 1:13:29

You'd have to be a little more specific. I will say this you know, I absolutely believe every milestone or impasse in the novel is a milestone in the spiritual journey and that it's relatable and universal. Or I wouldn't have written it. I also wanted to infuse my life experience with every effing word. Right, I've joked like if I can't access something, I'll just take a walk. I'll come back later. But from concept on, it only comes from a life experience.

Speaker 1 1:14:01

Because if you have nothing to draw on from life experience, whether it's emotional or just literally the logistics of walking through the seek I always use that example in you know the nameless Prince walking through the seek in Petra and describing the way the stones crumbled, and you know, if I can't draw on something, I won't write it. And uh, because if you don't, what do you fall back on? Well, old, tired tropes, stereotypes, cliches, and so I'm not out to mimic or be derivative or reductive at all, or I wouldn't write. Sorry if that's grandiose, but I tried to pick things that are universal. But there's also that unconscious level where, of course, you think you're writing about certain themes, but you're also working shit out unconsciously.

Speaker 1 1:14:48

So I made discoveries throughout and that's called the creative process right. So I joke like I always get to a point in a novel or even a shorter piece where I'm deciding on policy for my own life to move forward. And it's a lot of responsibility. You're a writer. Do you ever hit that point where you're like I guess I'm making decisions for my life by writing this sentence?

Speaker 2 1:15:07

How do you ever hit that point where, like I guess, I'm making decisions for my life by writing this sentence? How do you know what you?

Speaker 1 1:15:11

think without writing? Yeah, I know well, but does it ever feel like a lot of responsibility? I, I find myself writing a passage. I'm like, oh wait, is that my policy now?

Speaker 2 1:15:20

this is going down in writing and it's going down in history.

Speaker 2 1:15:22

It feels like a commitment you know what I I find that I do like constantly is put a little bow on everything, and I'm very positive, I'm very Pollyanna for writing Like. I have this habit of just trying to put a bow on it when really nobody wants that. People want honesty, people want all those storms, they want Zeus to come and and blow the ocean and they want to see the the dirty part of your life. They don't want to just see that you came to this lovely conclusion.

Speaker 1 1:15:53

Well, if you're French, you really want not just the melancholy endings, you want the noir endings. Right, but do you feel like the ambiguity is more like life?

Speaker 2 1:16:02

Oh yeah, like we said, you never arrive, yeah yeah, but I think that comes from my Pollyanna glasses, from being in the Christian church for so long too, that I want everything to work out in this particular way.

Speaker 1 1:16:17

I did not learn the word ambiguity until I was 38. Wow, isn't life amazing. That's so symbolic. But here's what I'll say, though I have to say this here's what I see in your work, because you are so sophisticated and, as you said, you study literature, that you know. Didactic content in narrative format is a no-no, and I've said a million times and I'll say it again I chose to impart philosophy. Call them spiritual tenets, if you want. It's called visionary fiction. That's the whole genre is imparting, you know, philosophy and or spiritual tenets, and it's very awkward. I've never seen a Dunwell, ever, and you know I did it anyway and I don't hate it, but it's not my best writing.

Speaker 2 1:17:03

Oh, I see what you're saying, okay.

Speaker 1 1:17:05

So I think you know that you're not trying to cleanse the world or offer a hallmark anything. Your work is very layered and textured and I think it has the good, the bad and the ugly and you see the beauty and the decay and the beauty and the melancholy and the value in it. So I wouldn't be so sure. I think you show all the colors, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 1:17:26

Yeah, I think it's just.

Speaker 1 1:17:27

But you do the redemption like I do. You once said to me oh, you can write narrative nonfiction, but you always put the redemption in there.

The Gods' Tests and Co-Creating Reality

Speaker 2 1:17:36

Yeah, I like to read a work that's redemptive. Flannery O'Connor wrote a lot of really dark kind of Christian-themed work and she was one of the most celebrated authors of the beginning of this century. That is a woman, but I'll never read it again, I'm sorry. I don't like stuff without redemption, but I did. Speaking of those things, you said what did you say? Oh, is this my policy now, or is my name going to go under this on a meme someday? One of the things, two of the things that I loved was that one of the chapters he was just fighting with despair Okay, one of them. He was fighting with futility, oh my God. So despair is one thing and futility is another. But when he was upset and he was in despair, it said this is a great quote that despair forces a person to betray himself. That one. If you have anything to say about that.

Speaker 1 1:18:33

Well, yeah, I'm waiting for the question. Okay, I better answer it because I want to go back to your writing in one second. Despair, say it again.

Speaker 2 1:18:42

Forces a person to betray himself.

Speaker 1 1:18:46

Well, another passage says despair pushes until inspiration pulls. But I guess I was talking about and then do you remember the phrase? So early on in life we betray our essence. And so I'm just talking about how, really early in life, ego does take the front seat. You learn what are called Freudian defense mechanisms. I didn't. I didn't have those tools. You know, as the youngest of four and the youngest of 10 grandkids, I somehow didn't develop those survival skills of whether you know name the Freudian defense mechanism, I didn't have it. Whether you know name the Freudian defense mechanism, I didn't have it. You know what I mean Projection attribution. I guess I misplaced some aggression here and there, but you know, I just didn't have a strong ego and it made me very vulnerable. I don't know where I'm going with that.

Speaker 2 1:19:42

But despair does what now? Despair forces a person to betray himself.

Speaker 1 1:19:46

Oh, the next. Oh, that was about the stealing the coins and stuff.

Speaker 2 1:19:48

Right, yeah, that's yeah and then later it said it's. It is said that despair pushes until inspiration pulls, but for me, if the way I was trying to do my diagram was transformation being in the center and what I saw was like little tunnels and stuff, so like despair was a tunnel, but without that. That's where the transformation comes from. That's the eye of the needle.

Speaker 1 1:20:12

Yeah, it's coming back to me. Do you remember him saying that my biggest transgression was willingly breaking a heart?

Speaker 2 1:20:20

Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 1:20:21

Yeah, and then there's a lot about how the broken heart are out to the break.

Speaker 2 1:20:26

break the hearts of others yeah, and so people hurt people right, right, um.

Speaker 1 1:20:31

So I think he was saying, yes, I've hit bottom, because the one thing I said I would never do is intentionally and you know tennessee williams talked about this a lot blanche dubois was kindness, she had a lot of rough edges, she was a diamond in the rough, you know. But uh, the one thing she was never guilty of was unkindness or intentional. I put the stakes, you know, and way higher, breaking the heart of another. So that was just meant to be bottom for him and that, what was, you know? And then he stole the coins. That was just symbolic, it was all about currency. That whole chapter was about currency right?

Speaker 2 1:21:05

I? I see Right, because he was stealing the money and then he was using it to break the other guy's heart. I was going to say something. I'm sorry, it just flew right out of the window. Never mind.

Speaker 1 1:21:21

Despair, breaking the despair.

Speaker 2 1:21:23

Oh self-loathing.

Speaker 1 1:21:24

Thank you Okay.

Speaker 2 1:21:25

Self-loathing, thank you, okay, self-loathing and then so, but in my mind it's like, if transformation is the big eye of the needle and things are going through it right, the self-loathing had to happen because that's that's, you know, that's even that came before the physical death, the, the sword. The self-loathing was another bottom that he had to hit. So when you, when you look at the little circle that I did, with the transformation being the center, it's like everything leads to transformation because and transformation leads to redemption and and that's and the redemption leads to love, and so it's just this like weird spiral, circular dna thing that we're gonna have to keep going through. And it might not be as bad at 60 when I, when I go through my next self-loathing stage, let's, I'll let you know okay and I'll.

Speaker 2 1:22:17

I'll rate it like how hard? How is this mountain as hard to climb as when I was oh I don't know 45, and the one that I had to climb when I was 35 and the one that I had to climb when I was? If it's gonna keep that I had to climb when I was 25. If it's going to keep happening, I wonder if it just kind of isn't so intense the older we get, since it's going to.

Speaker 1 1:22:34

I used the word navel gazing earlier, right, yeah, I love it. Don't you think we stop kind of navel gazing if nothing else?

Speaker 2 1:22:47

Maybe we still gait nasal.

Speaker 1 1:22:50

I think we do stop navel gazing.

Speaker 2 1:22:52

but I think when you turn into this person like this New York, I am who I am, leave me alone. I got a right to be who I am. I'm 60. Then it's like, well, I don't want to be around you. Then Cause, if you don't want to keep getting back, like mom said that till the day she like couldn't think straight. She said I wake up every morning and say how can I do better today than I?

Speaker 1 1:23:14

did yesterday and she was 70 something. Yeah, I think intellectual curiosity and plasticity is a gift and some people have it and some people don't. Right and um, I don't know, maybe it can be learned. But I'm thinking about the word self-loathing. I mean, those are really strong words and I wonder what illustrated self-loathing to you, like that bottom where he stole the coins and broke a heart. He expressed some self-loathing, is that right?

Speaker 2 1:23:42

Yeah, that's exactly when it was. He was mad at himself or he felt some self-loathing.

Speaker 1 1:23:48

I think I was maybe just trying to show that self-love is part of that journey too. You've got to learn to love yourself despite your bad blood and despite your disillusionments and your futility and all these other things you've kind of taken on throughout life like a burden. Part of it is learning to love yourself. Maybe that's why it heightened the stakes on the self-loathing yeah, and it worked.

Speaker 2 1:24:09

It worked and I related to that in a big way. Um, the other thing that I I loved that um, it has to come from. You know you must have. This isn't in a lot of um the way you wrote it. It's not in a lot of memes or like I don't know videos that I know, but, um, when thera's daughter came, one of the sea nymphs and whose daughter?

Speaker 1 1:24:33

I'm sorry, who's?

Speaker 2 1:24:35

I can't remember her name, thank you. Fetus's daughter came and she um is a sea nymph and she was scary at first and then she became beautiful and a human form and she was trying to say you can't expect your circumstances to change, you have to change. I was just like, oh my God. But it took a human being to, it took her to take the human form.

Speaker 1 1:25:01

Interesting.

Speaker 2 1:25:02

Human to human to say don't ask the gods to keep changing your circumstances. They're waiting for you to change.

Speaker 1 1:25:07

Honey, you know, just like that has been said in many circles it's kind of a conventional wisdom, right that you can't change. All you can change is yourself. I mean, there's a million ways of saying it.

Speaker 2 1:25:19

Yeah, yeah I guess, wherever you go, there you are right right yeah, but people do that all the time and they get on their knees and they ask the Lord to take this cup away from me.

Speaker 1 1:25:28

They ask God to change the circumstances right and left.

Speaker 2 1:25:32

You know they do.

Speaker 1 1:25:34

Yeah, well, you know, god is not Santa Claus or a genie, right, but that's, yeah, I mean I think Zeus even says that, right, it's kind of tough love in a way. Right, I love it. Yeah, he did learn at one point careful what you ask for, because I mean that's what the I'm a myth was about, if you remember that story about I'm a.

Speaker 2 1:25:59

Yes, I didn't know how to spell it when I was taking my notes. The I'm a myth is be careful what you ask for, right.

Speaker 1 1:26:05

Yeah, she was the illustration of that, so it's all kind of interconnected a little bit. You know, don't, don't give God your wishlist. He's not Santa Claus, it's all on. You know, another way of putting it is it's an inside job.

Speaker 1 1:26:18

It's always an inside job, and Abraham Hicks says it in a very funny way. She's like well, when you get out of Dodge, you take yourself with you, you take the lens, all those lenses through which you see the world. You bring them with you. So she's actually said you know, oh really, you want to get out of your marriage. He snores like whatever you know. He leaves his underwear on the floor, really Okay. Well, you know, the next relationship you find yourself in it's going to be the exact same thing, unless you do the work.

Speaker 2 1:26:44

Unless you do the work. That's right. Well, it's just really spoke to me. Whether I've heard it a million times or not, I cause I mean I'm so stable, right, I've been in the same house 40 years, I've done the same business for 40 years, like you know. I'm just so stable that I'm not the person that tries to run away from my circumstances or I don't expect them to change, but, um, that spoke to me because I was with that guy. I was with him and I was like, oh my god, he's the one that has to change, like I just really felt it. It was really really good. Um, and then in the very end, of course, I mean I don't know if we're allowed to really go to the far final end, but the the message, literally of you brought it up. When we first started talking about co-creating, which is manifestation and the things that we manifest because of our hurts or our positivity, there was a lot of stuff about being positive. In the end. You didn't use the word positive, though.

Speaker 1 1:27:45

Yeah, well, hmm, yeah, it all came together and it got a little bit preachy at the end, but it is what it is, you know it's. I blame it on the genre, but I think he did process everything from the whole journey and it all. I mean, really it is the hero's journey. It's always. Everything you needed is in your own backyard. The alchemist everything he was seeking on his odyssey, was always there. To begin with, you again just got to change out the lens through which you see it. Wizard of Oz, everything you needed is in your own backyard.

Speaker 2 1:28:16

Wizard of Oz right, yeah, that is one of the beautiful themes. And then the other hero's journey is where they go down into the darkness, into Hades and the miserable storms and all of that, and you come back up and you have a jewel to give to society, which to me was a little bit how he wanted to serve the world by fighting for his homeland.

Speaker 2 1:28:38

You know, he wanted to be strong, he got some strength and he wanted to share his strength and that's how I felt that's part of the hero's journey is to come back with something to give to others, absolutely, once he got a hold of those concepts that he was partially responsible for the place that he ended up, he played a part in it, and then he wanted to then not keep up beating that same drum, to use that metaphor that was in there.

Speaker 1 1:29:22

Well, here I have to react to. You said positive and negative. So much in there that I will, in case there's any value to it. I don't know how it relates to the seeker, but for most of my life being an artist, I think we're really good, we artists, at seeing again the beauty in the melancholy, the beauty in the decay, the beauty in the traditionally negative, right, right. So I would have always said you can't have the yin without the yang, you don't recognize the beauty without whatever the opposite is. And only in western judeo-christian culture do we put values good, bad, right, wrong, black, white, whereas you know, eastern philosophy is a little more yin and yang. They're complementary, they all have value. So I've always said well, sorry, I'm an artist, I don't.

Speaker 1 1:30:03

When people talk about positivity, positive thinking, I thought well, stay with the shadow. And a lot of people Thomas More and even Young talk about embracing the shadow side of the human condition. So I maybe was just justifying my own negative thoughts by saying well, it all has value, sit with it. But I've come to the point where because, as as you know, I've learned a lot about the law of attraction and manifestation the past few years I would say you know what, you know how it feels in your body, you know if the feelings are toxic to your body, it's called you feel it in your gut. So as much as I've resisted positive and negative thought forms, they're alive and well. You know which thought forms produce cortisol and adrenaline, and that's called stress. Stress equals inflammation, inflammation equals disease.

Speaker 1 1:30:55

I had to learn that to remain above ground. So I still resist. You know putting too many value judgments on things. But I will say you know what feels good in your body. I've learned. So now I I'm really preaching, but I just read the Biology of Belief with Bruce Lipton and I've learned in no uncertain terms how your thoughts and feelings literally change through the cell wall, called non-local energetic communication effect that goings on in that cell. And so you know. Eastern medicine acknowledges the super highways, the energetic super highways throughout your body. You know chakras, things like that, whereas Western medicine is totally focused on, oh, let's treat everything chemically and it'll diffuse through the cell wall, but they don't acknowledge the, the power of thoughts and feelings to affect every cell of your body. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2 1:31:49

yes, but I feel like that was sort of what was happening, that his every cell of his body was feeling all of the stuff he was supposed to learn, and then he was ready to use it Right. And so there was a part in the end where he said something like about a mantra like your belief becomes your action and your habit, what is?

Speaker 1 1:32:13

it. Yeah Well, actually, gandhi, has this list of your thoughts become your habits? Your habits become blah, blah, blah? It's kind of based on that. But really, just beliefs are thoughts you keep thinking. Beliefs are just thoughts. You keep thinking. Maybe it was something around that, I don't know well. Well, he was talking about how he manifested that dark reality. I was kind of bringing it home for the reader, like actually he didn't just have a hand in it, he was responsible for all of it. Quantum, you know, that idea of the observer effect and quantum mechanics, absolutely you know, acknowledges that we literally create our own reality.

Speaker 2 1:32:50

Thoughts have power. I got that though. I got that toward the very end and then, especially after he met with his mom and she kind of, I want to say, validated his journey Like it's all worth, it was all worth it. And then they talk about how you can get. You have to transform your own will, you, and that's like when the sorry, when the gods send you trials, right then you're allowed to challenge those trials and you're allowed to then infuse your will in order to transform. If that's your goal. And so he never had, except for that one time he started, remember he started telling bad stories about himself, about the guys not, yeah, tarhun and Ermed.

Speaker 1 1:33:40

Ermed Ermed.

Speaker 2 1:33:42

He started, he started thinking negative thoughts about them.

Speaker 1 1:33:44

Remember he was like well because that's what we do stories, we build stories, that's what we do.

Speaker 2 1:33:49

That's right, and I and so then, when he came to his senses and he met them again, in the end he was just like I, I fell water under the bridge. Yes, and and basically he's like I don't need to tell myself these stories anymore, I can can move on it was everything came together and it's called forgiveness, right?

Speaker 1 1:34:08

I think the main thing the mother taught him cause I actually didn't follow you just now I thought, oh well, but I thought she taught him forgiveness because she was saying, yeah, we're giving everything away, but, yes, your father did A, b, c and D, but I've actually forgiven him. And remember Amateus is like holy crap, you can do that. And that's where the flesh and spirit thing came in. And I do think that's the key to all forgiveness is realizing we all have an ego. When we don't feel safe, we act less than lovingly and we protect ourselves through ego. And how can you not forgive that? You know, I've got my list of reasons for okay, but that's crossing a line, right?

Speaker 2 1:34:47

yeah, well, I, I just loved the story itself, whether you pull it apart because in the end you got me. When he comes home to his dad and and he hasn't, his father has no ill, just no ill, whatever it, whatever it's called, ill will or whatever, they're just the connection that they had at the end and just how he was home and how the most important things in life you know, he saw them. Now, after he's been gone for seven years, it was really, really a good story. I mean, regardless of whether you didn't feel comfortable with the messaging that was in there which was, you know, brilliantly done it just was weaved into the story because we want to know what's going to happen next. We're not reading it to say, oh, what is the tenet I'm supposed to learn in this chapter?

Speaker 1 1:35:41

Thank you for saying that. I think I my way around. That was, I tried to make any spiritual wisdom I was trying to impart. I tried to make it universal enough that it felt mythic. You know what I mean. The mythic context felt better to me, you know, because I really do. When I read really didactic messaging and writing, I think just just write a fucking self-help book, just write in the wellness genre, don't awkwardly put it in narrative format. But the mythic thing was my way out, if that makes sense.

Speaker 2 1:36:12

It worked. I'm telling you it worked Because it wouldn't have worked. I mean, you wouldn't want to read however many pages 300 pages and not cry in the end when the man comes home and embraces everything that matters. It was beautiful. I loved it as stories go.

Speaker 1 1:36:29

Very sweet. Thank you, I'm glad I moved you. I want to come back to the coming home idea, but a little earlier I did want to say every time and again, I'm not an expert on any kind of mythology, but every time I read a myth my jaw drops at how succinctly it approximates the human condition. Every time I read a Bible passage which is not often every single parable in the Bible is jaw dropping. It doesn't get any better right In terms of the power of storytelling to betray the true nature of not just consciousness but the human condition. It's jaw dropping. They got it right straight out the gate and that's why we've been retelling stories, regurgitating the same archetypes ever since.

Coming Home and Future Creative Endeavors

Speaker 2 1:37:09

That is a great point. It is amazing because each story, like Andrea, obviously my friend Andrea, who knows she's a mythologist, she knows every story. When you just read a little book with vignettes and your jaw, like you said, it's just on the floor because you're like and even Shakespeare, how the hell, how the hell did he know that? At you know, 28 years old, and he put it because when you study Shakespeare, then that's when you see all the human nature is just written like a myth.

Speaker 1 1:37:41

I was going to say the scary part is we haven't evolved because it's all still 100 relevant. Yeah, he nailed it, man. And to, to be 20, you know. You know, she lay the artist, right, you love begun, she lay. Oh yeah, I died at 26, but to reach that level of genius, right long before 26, it's true. But I will say, in william shakespeare's case, we didn't live very long back then, so you had to yeah you had to hit that genius mark earlier early.

Speaker 2 1:38:10

So for you then, now that this is, um, it's kind of uh, containing your story up to this point, what's next for you? What do you think? Writing wise.

Speaker 1 1:38:24

Wow, good question. Um, before we bring it to a close cause, I feel like we're getting close. I can't believe you care enough to even have these conversations. You're totally indulging me. I appreciate it and I do believe that the piece spoke to you. But it means a lot to me that you're like willing to humor me and even get into the nitty-gritty, but I I like that. You'd like the coming home and I guess it was a bow. I feel like it was more of a bow than I normally write, by the way. Anyway, just just thank you. But what is next? I don't know. Oh, I do know I had.

Speaker 1 1:38:55

I'll be honest, I have not had any creative wind in my sails since the election. I'm not kidding, and I'm trying to just wake up every day and give a shit about humanity and the planet and the future. You know little things like that. No, I just have not had any inspiration. I continue to do the podcast and to put myself in really good company. You know how mother Teresa has said yeah, I didn't see the presence of God for 20 years, but I did the work. Ah, I forgot about that. She would still do the work in the trenches.

Speaker 1 1:39:30

So I'm going through the motions on the podcast because I believe in the contribution. And then, of course, it's getting comical because I have to work through stuff and I sadly involve Virginia in that and it takes the form of me going, wait, why did we, why did we book this person? And, like I have to really force myself to to get there, and then I fall in love with them. Every time I fall in love with them and we have a great episode. So I am going through the motions and it, like you, it's keeping me inspired, but creatively nothing. So I'm trying to just promote the books that are already out there, like doing this interview, and but I did have, let's see, one little bit of inspiration the other day and it's do you like Faulkner at all? Do you read?

Speaker 1 1:40:18

yeah, I have, I mean in my past yeah, I can't think of which piece, maybe as I Lay Dying. I loved that. And then my actor remember, aaron from Outpost yeah, I can't think of his last name, aaron. Anyway, he did a beautiful film called Redlands and it was just about and I've written about this a lot but our powers, yeah, to manifest, and I always say a woman's will can move mountains. Don't know why it was from another story I wrote, but how we have this subconscious wish fulfillment and it can move mountains. So I like haunting stories about like hey, how did okay wait, why did that person get removed from the equation and how did that one just mysteriously die that allowed these two people to be together? So, like the subconscious, preconceived notions can manifest. Desires are really powerful in terms of manifesting a reality, and so I won't say too much, but a story about kind of a cautionary tale about the power of desire and how, if something's standing in the way, you're going to do away with it. Is that mysterious enough?

Speaker 2 1:41:31

Well, yeah, but it also kind of echoes the idea that your lens is going to control your destiny.

Speaker 1 1:41:39

Yeah Well, you know me, I write about the same things. But anyway, I just had a little inspiration and I you know we've talked about this I'm kind of fascinated with episodic writing now for Netflix. So I thought there's a million of my short stories or short novellas or long sorry, long short stories or short novellas that I feel like kind of lend themselves to that episodic format, but I'm too lazy to write them in screenplay format.

Speaker 2 1:42:05

Yeah, ask.

Speaker 1 1:42:06

Chap GPT to do it for you. Oh my God, I should.

Speaker 2 1:42:09

They will. You just give them the book and go. Can you put this in a 30 minute episode for a Black Mirror type? You know, whatever season, don't tempt me, don't tempt me.

Speaker 1 1:42:26

You know, whatever season, tempt me, don't tempt me. No, I conceived this one kind of as a as a you know 10 episode season in a way, so maybe that'll be my next. Now I just need to get final cut pro again so I can write in screenplay format oh, you have to.

Speaker 2 1:42:36

I don't know anything about that final cut pro I I thought was for music oh, I, I meant Final Draft.

Speaker 1 1:42:43

Sorry, I need both Final Draft.

Speaker 2 1:42:47

Okay, well, so that's. I'd like to also just say that it feels like your creativity is like dormant. But of course, just getting up and trying to be positive and doing the podcast and all of that, you know, is creative work. It's just not in the form. It's taking all of your creativity just to live your life right now.

Speaker 1 1:43:08

The self-talk is creativity yeah.

Speaker 2 1:43:11

You know, I literally I kid you not have a friend who uses ChatGPT as a therapist and as a self-talk helper. They know everything about them and they tell them every problem. And know everything about them and they're they tell them every problem and they come at them and they go okay now and they just just like, does it archive all the conversations, everything. It knows everything you've been through Right.

Speaker 1 1:43:34

Yeah, that's awesome Free therapy man, but I I do as much as I just I'm not gonna say despise AI. As much as I just I'm not gonna say despise AI. But as controversial as it is and we just did two episodes on it, uh, that are upcoming, probably be released in about a month let's say, as ambivalent as I am about what it means for humanity, I do like that it retains a degree of objectiveness. So if you ask it a direct question, it'll take the cesspool of humanity right or the status quo and actually give you an objective. You could argue about that right, that even the status quo has an agenda and is propaganda, but within reason it can be pretty objective.

Speaker 2 1:44:17

I agree, I'm writing the memoir and I'm not smart enough to understand all the legal mumbo jumbo. And so I did one time, just one time, ask ChatGPT to explain it to me like Democrat, republican 101. Help, help me, because I don't understand a lot of politics to this day. And so they gave me a really great um report on what what I needed I was. I'm like Jim, I'm leaving you for chat GPT. I was so rescued, that was my knight in shining armor, but it is the reason I quit teaching at the college.

Speaker 1 1:44:58

I remember that. Yeah, no, it's great for um information. You could argue it's going to be slanted or blah, blah, blah, it's got an agenda or it's propaganda, but it's good for information. My favorite meme is you know, I just wanted to do my laundry.

Speaker 2 1:45:13

That's right, like free me up for more creativity stuff, just my laundry. Well, in any case, I hope that you keep you know. I know that sometimes you tell me you have told me, and I've just always loved it like writing has gotten you up in the morning, it's gotten you through hard times getting up and writing from beginning to end in that handwriting on those black composition books.

Speaker 1 1:45:40

I don't do that anymore.

Speaker 2 1:45:41

It's your lifeline and so I know right now you're not in that stage and that you don't do that anymore. It's your lifeline and so I know right now you're not in that stage and that you don't have to be. But I know that it's part of your DNA and if it's a little bit shy right now and in the closet, so to speak, it's going to come out. I mean, there's no way you can be Dominic Domingo and not be creatively working hard and expressing yourself and using all the skill and talent and thought forms and philosophies and heart that you have. There's no, no way. It won't happen.

Speaker 1 1:46:10

Well, thank you, thank you, Thank you for reminding me who I am, cause you're not, you're not wrong.

Speaker 2 1:46:16

I am Steph Apple, Stephan up.

Speaker 1 1:46:18

What's his name?

Speaker 2 1:46:19

Steph Staphylos, I am Staphal Staphylos, I am Staphylos at the table.

Speaker 1 1:46:25

Did you catch all of the Greeks we grew up with? By the way, all the names are in there. There's Mandrula, there's an Eleni, there's a Christophe you got Christophe Kitchen.

Speaker 2 1:46:34

Yeah, that was great. Well, I'm really excited. I will write the cliff notes for you when it's time.

Speaker 1 1:46:42

I want to see your Venn diagram too, please.

Speaker 2 1:46:45

Oh yeah, I mean I. It was started out as a Venn, I don't know that it's called a. It's a spider, I guess, is what it is Right.

Speaker 1 1:46:52

I don't remember the name, but I get the idea. I can't believe you did so much homework. Thank you.

Speaker 2 1:47:03

It was fun, it was absolutely fun. You know, I'm in love with literature and, uh, first I just read it from for no reason, right and. And then I listened to it for just to enjoy it. And then I went back and was like, hmm, I wish there was some cliff notes. Hmm, I wish there was some summaries. Hmm, I wish there was a character, and I thought we need to do a cliff notes.

Speaker 1 1:47:19

Are those still a thing? Oh, hell, yeah, I will take whatever you want to give me. I'm just honored you would even do it. I'm realizing now at the top of this episode, I'm going to add it. I'm just going to read the book cover, the book jacket, because I think a synopsis will help some of this make a little more sense.

Speaker 2 1:47:38

Yeah, and I didn't want to give it all away and I did listen to Shana. I listened to it and I did enjoy it, and so I really didn't want to do too many repeats of what we discussed and I did kind of want to ask you more about the creative process and about all the research. But I guess we'll have to talk about that next time. I'm on and we talk about my research, you can throw in your research.

Speaker 1 1:48:03

Okay, yeah, we're coming up on how long we're coming up on. Oh, are you serious?

Speaker 2 1:48:09

Well, no, because we didn't start right on time.

Speaker 1 1:48:11

Okay okay, yes, next time for sure. Yeah, like I said, I kind of looked at my research. It's been five years, renee. I wrote this in 2020. I started in 2020.

Speaker 2 1:48:22

Oh my gosh. I can't believe that much time has passed.

Speaker 1 1:48:25

So I looked at my own notes and I was kind of shocked. You know, it becomes something else and I kind of completely forgot where it began and what came straight off the pen, straight out the gate, and what came later. So yeah, I would love to have that conversation about how I approached it and specifically the research for sure.

Speaker 2 1:48:42

Well, I really love that you returned to your notes, even if they were a little bit foreign to you. I love that. I think that that might trigger something or activate something in you.

Speaker 1 1:48:50

Well, it certainly allowed me to be able to do this. So again, thank you so much for indulging me. I appreciate it.

Speaker 2 1:48:56

I wasn't indulging you, I was indulging. I was enjoying the actual work itself. I was shaking the snow globe.

Speaker 1 1:49:05

Thank you, I'm grateful either way. Okay, thanks guys, and to our listeners remember life is story and we can get our hands in the clay, individually and collectively. We can write a new story. See you next time.