Prophecy of SOUL RETRIEVAL: Greek Mythology, Astrology, Jung Psychology | Thomas Moore

I think people have been lured into this uh the current philosophy that uh the world is only what you see and what you can measure what you count so I feel that our world is suffering because it has pretty much lost its soul and you can't see everything through a telescope or microscope and you can't touch and feel everything that exists the soul is is not something you can grasp easily but nevertheless it's one of the most important things if you can use that word in the world in our lives so um I do think if we could recover our soul our depth uh our uh capacity for relationship and empathy only though that kind of thing could really uh get the world out of its mess right now Thomas Moore welcome to the show what are you most excited about right now in your life I suppose uh uh I'm most excited about my family my uh my my daughter continues to sing that was an early uh video of hers and she continues to become more and more investigated and my my wife is a is coming into her own as a painter and my stepson is uh a designer and an architect and and he's uh really moving along in his work as well so this is all exciting to me I have a book coming out next week so the whole thing the our family is very creative and and making contributions so that's the most exciting thing to me H I love that yeah have a strong strong notion of family um and just to give some people some context we just played um light of your soul by a Jeet your daughter and right before recording we set the intention and one of those was to evoke magic into this episode and right as I was doing the research preparing for this interview I found out that she was your daughter and it just struck me like I was like paralyzed for a moment because when I was in college my first year of college I'm 24 now my first year of college I went through a deep dark night of the soul and I went through a whole Awakening that you know people listening to the show may may know about and my mom she was very present in that journey and she was um while we were living in California she became a Kundalini yoga instructor so when I was going through all of this in college she came and took care of me uh nurtured my soul which I needed and she passed me her playlist uh of meditation so it was bunch of mantras beautiful music and I would I set myself the goal to meditate for 100 days straight and I would use that playlist for those 100 days and primarily a Jet's music was on that playlist so that was almost four to five years ago and already we we can feel the magic um and Diving right into it you mentioned your family uh I wanted to ask you do you feel that our souls choose our family that's a very difficult question because there are so many big questions that uh I don't know if we are in a position to answer uh so my usual response is to say uh I don't know because I don't and I like to I like to affirm what I don't know first uh I'm afraid I I fear that there are many people who pursue a spiritual uh path who uh too quickly say that they know they think they know what's going on but i' Look Backwards too I like to look back and uh it certainly seems in my experience of the family that both my family my parents and the family I was born into and the family that I uh am fortunate to be in now as my as a father they do have definitely a feeling of of design and purpose to them both of them and so in fact I'm I'm I've been toying with writing a book I've written about a 100 pages of a book called The Book of your life because I do feel that the it's almost as though you can find a book that tells you uh who you are and what you've been and maybe what you will be and uh So my answer is intuitively yes to your question uh but at the same time I don't know I love that yeah admitting that we we really don't know we're making a lot of things up as we go but there is this mind the nosis mind the the mind that knows the higher self the soul uh which will start to begin to play around with I would love to get into this because I feel that right now the world is missing this pulse on the soul and we're going through a lot of chaotic times a lot of transition and change and evolution where do you see the soul of the world right now currently it seems quite hidden uh people are I think people have been been lured into this uh the current philosophy it's been going on for a long time that uh the world is only what you see and what you can measure what you can count and quantify quantification is a big way of being in the world today I can't remember who it was I was reading someone recently that said that life is not about arithmetics it's not about how much you you add or subtract it's it's something else it's another quality so I feel that our world is suffering because it has pretty much lost its Soul yeah that's why I do all this work write too many books um I do that because uh the someone has to keep at it and keep us in keep it in mind that uh that we have there are other things that are important and you can't see everything through a telescope or microscope and you can't touch and feel everything that exists the soul is is not something you can grasp easily but nevertheless it's one of the most important things if you can use that word in the world in our lives so um I do think if we could recover our soul our depth uh our uh capacity for relationship and empathy those sorts of things I think that only though that kind of thing can really uh get the world out of its mess right now and drawing upon mythology you said that the most important story for the development of the soul is the ancient story of AOS and the psyche and psyche do you mind explaining to us what what that story is about sure uh there's an ancient story that comes down to us uh from about uh from Rome in the 2 Century it's so it's very old and it's a story about it's an allegory which means that the characters represent an idea each one of them and they are called AOS who means Love and Desire and pleasure and psyche which is the Greek word for soul and uh the story is very complicated as I say it's an allegory and you can look at it step by step and see how it develops but basically uh psyche uh uh has an opportunity she she's actually is it's going to commit suicide she jumps off a mountain and she lands in this uh Enchanted land and finds this young man in a house and she uh begins sleeping with him and uh she becomes pregnant quickly and uh but um her sisters are jealous of her that's a typical Motif in fairy tales and uh so uh they convinced her that she that he's really a monster and that she should uh put some light on cuz she a bit in the dark and she puts a a oil lamp on and she sees that actually he's quite wonderful and beautiful and she's made a mistake but he gets up and goes away so there's the separation of the soul and Aros love and the Soul get separated I think that's the situation that many of us are in and in order to reconnect uh the the goddess Venus was the goddess of love and sexuality uh gives her uh trials and uh uh challenges that she has to handle and with the help of certain natural uh figures like ants and and uh other figures that she's able to do that and eventually we connect with love so it's a story about how how um our love that our love needs Soul sometimes we love the wrong things and the wrong people and the wrong ideas and uh we we need a soul in order to guide us the depth of insight and sometimes uh we have a a loss of love that we don't have love in our life and sometimes we find it in the wrong places and keep searching for it and feel a lot of people feel uh that they've been deprived because they can't feel love in their lives so this story is really about how we might be able to get both love and soul together and you also talk a lot about this concept of soulmates you even have a whole book about it it and you know merging again this love with the soul how do you see the play out process when two Souls come together and there seems to be a spark or or whatever it is a Divine encounter what is that truly going on from maybe a soul level what is what is actually going on it's um I think what happens is that uh we're just going along in life usually and doing our thing and usually it's a person that attracts us somewhere along the line and it's quite unreasonable that attraction and some people would say it's an illusion uh which it it is in manyways but that doesn't mean it's bad it just means that we don't know what's going on we're overwhelmed by the love aspect instead of the Mind aspect of life in that moment and um it may be not be a person person it could be something else like a a a job or a way of life when I was 13 I was overwhelmed with the desire to become a Catholic priest and I left home to do to pursue that that took a lot because I love my family and I left home I was that was 13 years as a Catholic monk yeah I was 13 years as a Catholic monk and um that was great that was a great part of my life and I think that having had that life allows me to do the work I do today and to live the life I live today so I'm very grateful for it but it was very painful and I'm still homesick having left home at that time but it's a falling in love it's a it's AOS coming into life and uh I think that it's important to to follow that AOS but you have to do it with with awareness because you you you could be making a mistake or you you know sometimes that are comes along and it's like a trial it doesn't trial version doesn't really work so you have to be you have to be aware what's happening but I do think you have to pay attention when AOS strikes the you know the the mythological image is that Aeros is this small figure who has a bow and arrow and sometimes a flaming arrow and shoots it into your heart and I think most of us know what that feels like to have that Arrow come into our heart and uh as I say you have to be cautious with it as much as you can but on the other hand you really have to follow through to some extent on whenever the arrow hits because you don't know that could be your life that could be your whole future in that situation and that's what I did and I left it after 13 years I left uh I left that life uh happily left it but also I had no regrets I really got a great deal I still try to live a Mon's life when I can in in my own way today so that was a wonderful experience in many ways challenging in others and that's just the way it is with Aros and the Soul so the next time you know I I was shot by other arrows and that led me to in the shape of my life and I think that that's how it works with people that we have to we have to pay attention when love is present and Strikes us uh thoughtfully carefully but pay attention and try if we can to follow through on it and if it doesn't last forever that's fine it's okay yeah and and just drawing upon your your teachings I realized I had this this Insight of a lot of these moments in our life that shift us to a new direction that change completely our career or maybe our our pursued path with one person and all of a sudden we get that arrow and we have to go to another place you've said many of these times it is sort of this whisper from our soul that is sort of seeking out this this transition maybe we we're in a place or a moment where it wasn't going to be fulfilling for our soul to be there uh I remember when you were um talking about getting into tenure and then you got rejected and all of a sudden you said I need to shift my career these moment that happen in your life and also in the thousands or hundreds of of patients you've had in your Psychotherapy sessions why are these moments of our greatest challenge actually the biggest gift that we have from a soul level I think the the thing is we do uh I think the best way to live is to follow rather than to lead so we follow the promptings that come from from the world from life and from inside ourselves we follow those promptings and um uh you you have to test them and you you don't want to be under the illusion that you must stick with them forever nothing is forever in that way you it's it's for the next part of life the next move so I think you can do that you can trust those promptings now the exact way to live them out may not be really clear at first it may take you while to find out how to put that prompt into life and I think that has to be done creatively and and carefully and if you do that then what you're doing you're shap you're letting your life be shaped by something other than your ego yourself you're not in charge exactly uh you're responsible and you try to to do it at the best you can but still you're responding rather than making something you're you're responding and I think that's the the clue that's the way to live it's to respond to the uh incl the inclinations that come to you and they are erotic in the broad sense of the word I don't mean sexual I mean erotic in the sense of Desire of leading you in the direction of your Soul's desire not just your own small desire but your the desire of your fate and destiny which is uh expressions of your soul so I would say that uh this is not the way modern people tend to live but I think it's a good way to go and from the blueprint of the moment that we were born I'm just really curious about this because it almost seems that when we are born we sort of forget a lot of um where we came from where where we were without these bodies and as we grow up as we get programmed as we we go through our school system as you know we're taught to go through this path that Society has sort of set out for us this Soul desire sort of gets suppressed or it might get hidden what is your process with people of just sort of uncovering that that desire again because also there's religions out there that teach us that desire is a bad thing or or maybe in our interpretation of it with Buddhism but how do we sort of start uncovering digging up those desires and truly listening to them well um I think you can have a habit of uh of appreciating desire I I don't think that the the Buddhist idea is really contrary to that I think what they are talking about is more craving uh and maybe compulsion that that's compulsiveness can certainly Lead You astray but desire itself is something that's not so not so negative and it's really the it's the it's the power and the energy of life itself that's the way the Ancients talked about AOS that it was what created the world it's the dynamic that creates life and creates the world I I see it as a creative principle keeping us you know uh allowing us to keep living into life and for life itself even on the planet to keep moving I think all of that is Aeros that's what that's that's what the ancient Greeks taught and I think it's a very good Insight that that there's a desire there to move along and um so what I do is my my thought is that um that we should learn to follow desire thoughtfully so it's possible to be misled because it's hard to know sometimes what is design desire what is a compulsion or what is something that is based on some neurotic aspect of our character so we have to sort it out but once you see it I think you can see it as something leading you on it can be rather faint for example when I left the Catholic uh monastic life I was in it wasn't really it wasn't clear like I didn't know why I wanted to leave exactly but I knew that the feeling I had was trustworthy it seemed to be very certain and sure and I thought I could follow it and that's what I did I followed that I didn't know why exactly I F the wise came later but uh I followed that and I've done that throughout my life and U this is an ancient teaching uh about Aros sometimes the the image given is of an Angel this is both in Christian Christianity and in other religions there's a wonderful Sufi story about the angel appearing to this man who who uh has a job and he likes what he's doing the angel appears and tells him to jump in the river and he jumps in the river because he wants to follow the angel and he goes down the river and comes is fished out by somebody who gives him a different way of life and so on he does that about five times in his life following the Angel's word I think that's a very interesting story that's from as I say the sufis and it is about this theme that you listen when the angel speaks the angel could be AOS angels and AOS look very much alike in art they have wings they they appear sort of miraculously and that's the way it it happens I think AOS appears and you you move on and and uh your life then is all is in movement and I think that's another key aspect of of living is that we are in movement we're not static if you find yourself doing the same thing for too long it's probably a good idea to see if there's some desire there to move on and because the it's the it's the nature of living to move to be in movement I don't mean crazy where you're always doing something different but there's movement of some kind internal movement or physical movement you move some and uh Aeros is the uh generator of that movement I've often heard that the soul is sort of this higher entity of ours that is wired for growth and a lot of the experiences that come through us are that Soul seeking out growth but also I've asked myself what happens in those moments where you are stagnant or where you're not moving where you feel that you're not going anywhere is is there a buildup is that a buildup of the Soul sort of waiting to shake you up so you can grow again or how do we manage these moments of a lot of growth and then maybe there's a moment of of um stagnancy or stuckness that we have in our life I think it's like living a day you're hungry for a while then you eat lunch and you're not hungry anymore you know you go through these changes and that's quite natural so it's very natural to be uh maybe to be in a position where you suddenly feel stagnant and and it you feel like you want something to change and it isn't well that dissatisfaction is a very important emotion and so it has its place and I don't want to I would never suggest that we avoid try to get thiss satisfaction out of our Lives it does does a lot for us or or other negative feelings that uh you feel maybe that uh that your life isn't worth anything that can be a very good uh moment to have that feeling so uh I would tend to not divide these emotions and feelings into negative and positive too easily but rather understand that uh like I say hunger and and satisfaction the food is is something we do every day and that's the way our emotions are and we pay attention and we appreciate the ones that may feel negative but that judgment just gets in the way we don't have to make that judgment going through your enormous research and experience with the religions um I read that you read the taing once every month and you know that is a text that talks about the flow of life and I'd love to know what has has been your biggest Insight regarding this natural flow that is part of life that we're connected to that we are um what have you learned about that that that that book of teachings the da of Jing has been a really a very important guide for me but so have many other religious texts and the ones I grew up in you know I grew up as a Catholic as I've been saying and um yes I I no longer practice uh that the way I did exclusively but it's still there and I don't I don't want to uh I I mean I I it enriches my life even today uh but the da Jing has come along and really given me a a new way of thinking about many things for example uh one of the statements from the daag Jing is allow things to take their course and that has guided me a lot allow things to take their course let them just move along don't interfere don't try to make everything right um take it as it is is and kind of move with it and flow with it if you can and uh I know that can be expressed in ways that are absurd but I I think there's a great deal of wisdom in it especially if you put all the all the sayings of The Da Jing together um and take it as a whole rather than just taking one line uh separately um I have a quotation from the doubed Jing in my book coming up the eloquence of Silence uh a a statement I can paraphrase where it says that uh a house is no good unless it has Windows and a room is no good unless it has a door these are the empty spaces that are necessary in life so I think that's really a good uh I that's one of my favorite passages from this new book of mine that uh from the da of Jang that you need in your you need doors and windows in your life you need uh openings where things can come and go uh you have to allow some of the things you're doing in your life to exit you need a door let them get out of there you need Windows to be able to see the world outside yourself and to open the windows up and get some fresh air into your life so you don't get stifled and and uh stale so I think it's a great image for and you take it in so many different ways as kind of poetry there's such a thing as kind of a spiritual poetry that is poetry that is guiding it's a guiding poetry and that's what I think most religious texts are spiritual poetry taken literally which is a great Misfortune in the history of religion but uh I think they are spiritual poetry guiding us uh to every step of the way so that we could read almost any spiritual text on any day and it would give us uh insight into how we can proceed with our lives Insight Insight you said don't seek for proof look for insight yes and staying on that analogy of the doors and the windows I love that but I also have the image of we sometimes say we want the new opportunity we want the new relationship our doors are wide open on a conscious level and then subconsciously we might have that door completely shut or heart completely closed and we're not able to attract those new opportunities into our life and also drawing on on the big volume of teachings of Carl Young that you've been really influenced by he talks a lot about that unconscious so what what do you have to say about when our unconscious does not match our conscious wishes and desires you work it out you work it out it's there there are no easy answers to it but but yeah uh I think uh for for example for myself part of my unconscious uh to use yung's word uh is comes a lot from uh from my growing up in an Irish Catholic Family which was wonderful and warm and I spent a lot of time now even now throughout my life I have an Ireland I just got back from Ireland about a day ago and uh I feel like that's uh my own home in a way but it also has a really dark shadow Ireland it it has been very puritanical and uh they drink too much way too much and uh uh there's there are certain uh there's a lot of what they call uh Irish guilt Catholic guilt they can't deal with sex at all and you know they're just there are a lot of problems being Irish Catholic in in my Heritage that's my un UNC conscious you might say it's part of my unconscious life Ireland is part of my unconscious so what do I do I go over there I get to know it I I enter the storm I face the shadow uh I spend time there and I I feel it and I get to know who I am by being there I I recognize so much of it as part as what my family was and I understand their roots and where they where they came from so it's like entering my own unconscious Life by by visiting Ireland and I I love it I love I really love it and so I enjoy being there but at the same time I um I cringe when I see all those elements that are part of my own family background and part of my unconscious challenge it's a part of me that I have to struggle with so so often have all my life so it's that's I think that's what you do you go into it and you you deal with it yeah and and in this spiritual sort of self-help landscape we hear a lot the words integration healing um do you see that the soul is something that we need to heal or integrate or how do you see working around that when you're sort of getting to know someone's Shadow and you're working through those and nav navigating through those stories that they've told themselves do you try to heal the soul do you try to nourish the soul what is what is that that process sort of look like well it sounds very much like um what I do as a therapist so as a therapist I uh I I don't I I never really think of myself as a Healer as healing I really don't I think what I do is help people see what their soul wants that's that's a statement that a lot of my colleagues and I used to use in the years past a lot uh a you we ask what does the soul want um and that's a good question to ask because it's a deeper matter a deeper desire is what we're looking for so I am looking more for with my with my clients uh who are they what is their soul like what does your soul want and what gets in the way of you getting what your soul wants because if you're getting in the way of that that's causing your problem that causing your symptoms and your pain so uh the question is not really to heal yourself so much as to respond to that question what is your soul looking for that you're afraid maybe to uh to give it uh does that require a change in your life that you have you have found to be very difficult to do um have are you complacent are you stuck in certain areas that uh you just can't imagine uh living differently um one of my teachers James Helman actually more a friend than a teacher uh used to he he wrote in one of his books that in therapy the the whole point is to get a new narrative a new story uh to be to be free to live at a narrative that is not so painful so that's what I do I talk about stories and I work with dreams primarily and the dreams provide so much so much imagery for to guide us in directions we would never thought have thought of and I find them to be uh very very effective so most of my work is dream work and I take those dreams to be uh Reflections they're like uh they're like uh Little movies about what the soul is doing what's going on and you can see in those dreams where the dreamer is resisting what is going what what the soul wants you see desire in the dream and you see the you see in the dream the the dreamer resisting it all so it's quite clear really you can just look at that and say well let's explore that is this happening in life too yeah and before we go deeper into the soul world because I definitely want to talk about that with you I want to say on that topic of the stories um and developing a new story because I feel like Humanity right now is at a a moment in time in history that we're sort of creating a new story and we're we're sort of leaving an old story behind what story is in your eyes being sort of developed right now as we're transitioning from an old Paradigm a lot of systems might collapse in the next couple years we're already seeing a lot of that start to happen What new story does Humanity need uh for this era of of what a lot of people are calling a golden age or just a new time uh for for Humanity it needs love that's the whole thing that's what all the religions Teach as far as I can see and I think they're right uh we we we are afraid in that of so many things and that fear turns into hatred and um hatred is creating such difficulty across our planet across the planet and not just hatred of other people but we need to love our world our planet and the world in which we live the natural world we live in the animals around us and the plants we need to love all this love will motivate us to take care of it all and we will be in mutual relationship as it is now we're exploiting the natural world only only exploiting it and in a way exploiting people that's what we do we don't uh we don't really love people we don't love people who are different why not seems to me it's so obvious you go and travel to another culture and it's so interesting and fascinating how they live why don't you love that why hate it why why set up this this barrier between you and another people be you know is it because that that newness is is too hard to handle I think a lot of people have been brought up to to fear other otherness what however it appears so if we have a new world taking shape now it's got to be loving the world in which we live in all those different ways if that happens we're in good shape if it doesn't happen I think it's over yeah anima Mundi the soul of the world how are we wounding right now the soul of the world and and how can we start to sort of nourish the soul of of our planet of the world right now you were talking about unconsciousness before there's a kind of raw unconsciousness which means uh there are many many things in this life that we have to be taught so important to teach others so important for parents to teach children about how to relate to Nature how to relate to animals uh so many parents are afraid of all this and have never been taught themselves and so they uh they they care they pass on a kind of violence in regard to Nature and to animal life and to Natural Life and so we need an alternative there but that has to be taught we have to be taught to be sensitive to these things we have to be taught to have a sense of Ethics that doesn't come naturally the natural thing seems to be very raw and undeveloped and violent so that violence has got to be turned into creative Force you don't get rid of it entirely you transform it into a creative force and uh if we had this this great desire to live in a in a world at peace with nature and with uh with the world in which we live and we're part of then I think everything would change for the better but if we continue to live unconsciously and we continue to raise children that way we're not going to get anywhere and we are being self-destructive right now so that's not a good sign self-destructed yes for sure and violence War all these things that we've been seeing you know since the beginning of of time for Humanity are these aspects that are also part of the soul that it it in incorporates to grow in its process or is that something that we acquired uh being here on the planet um I think that I've done quite a bit of work on the issue of power and sism and that kind of thing and uh I feel that um Power is something that we all need we need it all the time it doesn't have to be destructive it can be very creative but it is power and it's force and we need to be able to appreciate Force you don't need to be passive in order to be a decent person it's not that you have to find ways to be creative and powerful and uh uh to to make a mark and to to speak up when things don't look right and to be be uh you know to get your own creative spark out there in the world that's a kind of it's it's it's not violence but it is in the same genre as violets the same on the same Spectrum so you have violence and aggression on one side and that's very destructive but if we could bring that down not to get rid of it but to transform it into a greater force I think that we might be able to accomplish a great deal I would never never suggest becoming passive and quiet and uh uh you know to go in that direction the the direction we need to go is toward more more power each of us having more power in expressing it how do you create Alchemy in your life well Alchemy is a a very interesting thing uh Alchemy it's uh there's so much to say about it it's like astrology in the sense that it uses the natural world as and how it looks and we have a lunar nature that is also important a light that's not quite as bright as the sun on and on we could go you know endless how we could look at the physical things in the world and see them poetically as having as being aspects of the psyche and it's it's learning how to read those things poetically not just seeing them as matter as form but as you're saying like the the ancient astrologers would look at the sky and like we look at the sky now we we don't even see the stars because of the pollution but anyways they would see a sky lit up and then create stories and archetypes and incredible things I wanted to ask you how do you create Magic in your life with your black obsidian Stone this is a very interesting story that I uncovered yes I uh uh you know I I studied what's called called natural magic magia naturales natural magic which was common in especially in the uh the European Renaissance they're like around the 15th century especially in Europe uh natural magic and I've studied that I wrote my dissertation on it I mean I really got into natural magic went you went deep into it I did and uh so it is uh what it means natural magic means it's not anything Supernatural it's natural it's ordinary it's like using things ordinary things but using them for their sort of hidden powers powers that would not be obvious hidden Powers so one of the one of the things that the natural magician did he he would get a a stone made out of obsidian which is a volcanic glass-like rock molten rock and it so it reflects and it reflects very clearly and beautifully and um I I don't have I don't think I have it with me right now but I usually have my obsidian Stone close by I have several different sizes and they're are shiny black stones and these have been traditionally used to look into to activate your imagination around a particular issue in your life m I've been saying all along that I'm interested in how images can be related to the conduct of Our Lives not just in themselves but how they relate to how we live our lives and that's what the sub cidian Stone does it was used uh by um one of these magicians who's in England whose name was John D who was living around the time of Queen Elizabeth the First and he advised her she would come to him and he would check out with this obsidian Stone to see what he saw there and what you do is you look into the stone you just you might see some images like looking at clouds and you look at a cloud and you say oh there's a horse you know it's not a horse but that's what you see in the cloud it's a similar thing in the obsidian Stone you see these images and as I what I do I get into a little bit of a very slight trance by looking into the subsidi and stone and those images I allow myself to kind of lose my normal thinking self and go into the stone and be affected by it and if someone especially if another usually another person has asked me to look into it um they ask me questions and I answer from deep inside the stone I don't answer from way back waking mind so I answer from that place with in that image there keeps me anchored to it and um and I I answer it more for as as as the stone speaking not I'm not pretending that it just that's where I am I'm deep in the stone and what comes out of it I find is is useful it like it's a kind of guidance that is not uh it's not it's more deeply intuitive rather than I I use that word just to make it sound more rational than it really is but uh it's it's in that direction it's so it's like a deep intuition that you get from looking in the stone and use it regularly yeah so you're sort of in a way merging your Consciousness with this consciousness of the stone and the stone itself is holding wisdom in it is that a property of the obsidian stone is that is that what's going on there I don't know I don't know uh I I you could you could look at it that way I don't you could look at it that way I see the stone own as a way of activating of establishing a relationship between me and the the world around me that is more intense and deeper than my usual way of thinking so the stone takes me to another place another place where I have the power of being able to maybe glimpsing the future more than I would normally see generally speaking I think it's I think it's very important for us to develop our sense of Prophecy that that I think and I know it's hard for a modern person to hear that but I don't mean it in any crazy way all I mean is that it's a natural thing we could do we all have it to some extent we can kind of Imagine what's going to happen and have a have a good sense of what's coming up well with that stone I can go further than if I just stand back it helps me go further into that sense of Prophecy which is a very natural thing it's not that's why it's called natural magic there's nothing unnatural about it it's a very orinary thing we can all do but uh uh Sometimes some some sort of craft some some method helps rather than just sitting down and saying I want to think about the future the whole ritual of using a stone can help us go deeper into it yeah we had on uh Dr Dean Raiden on the show he talks about real magic and in in his book he does talk about the power of Our intention and creating sort of a sacred ritual which we sort of did at the beginning of this podcast we created a space we meditated together we listened to music and then we went into it with through an expanded Mind through an expanded Consciousness and that's sort of what you're doing in this process with your with the stone and people can probably use different um Properties or different scenarios I think also would you recommend people to find their own Rhythm or find their own ritual that they could take part in how how would you advise people to do that find your own find your own way whatever works for you and that doesn't insult your intelligence this is not trying to do something really you know goofy it's not that it's this is this is completely compatible with a with a very sharp scientific mind I think but you have to expand it expand your mind Beyond science so that you can see that uh that there are other things going on in this world than than we can easily explain and just like astrology an astrologer could really Astound you with what they see in your chart how that works I don't think I don't think anyone knows or should know it's not about knowing how I always tell people that's the wrong question if that's what you're asking you're in the wrong place you should be rather it's just learning how to do it so that it really does something for you and that's I how I feel about you using this obsidian Stone it's not a huge thing in my life but it it allows me to have you know I've studied magic I'd like to be able to do it and not just talk about it yeah yeah Dean also he he during the podcast he showed us the spoon that he bent with his mind um through magic and I'm really interested I'm passionate about psychic abilities and uncovering sort of beyond what is beyond the five senses we've been told we we've been put in these boxes of we're just Meats suits with five senses but we're much more than that we can access wisdom from higher Dimensions we can see into the future we can have premonitions we can go into the dream world and have locid dreams like there's so much that we can develop um in our capacity and I love that you're giving us sort of this blueprint of what is possible when we're also Bridging the scientific mind with natural magic so I'd love to know when when you're in that Trans State when you're in that space what sort of questions are you asking yourself to sort of guide your soul your next moves into the future well I don't I do uh how would I put it uh normally I usually go to the stone when we're traveling to try to give a sense of what to expect for our travels although I have had some rather extraordinary events you know different things with with the stone that kind of scary almost and there you can share that all here we're open to anything if you are open well I'll give you an example um one time uh my daughter's quite a few number of years ago my daughter's friend had disappeared and the the police were involved and the police pretty much had had determined that she had been murdered and um so my father my my daughter was very upset and she asked me to look at the stone and I said I told her I said I don't usually do things you know like this is pretty serious I don't usually do that I usually look at a journey we're going to take but she said do it anyway so I I looked in the stone and I said I don't know it seems seems to me the stone is saying that uh she's on a bus somewhere she's not dead you know I said that's hard to say because I'm just going by what I say in the stone and that's a big thing to say but I said that's what I see take you know take it for what it's worth and sure enough a little bit later they found she had got on a bus and to leave her family and was cross the country and wow and was safe perfectly safe so I don't know what do you say about that you know I it I've had I've had many actually quite a few experiences very similar with the stone so I take it seriously and I think that the limits of what we can know that way are are unknown and I but at the same time you know at the beginning of this uh broadcast you said uh use the word humor I I noticed that because humor is very important to me I take this stone with a great deal of humor I don't I don't get heavy and serious I about it uh not that I don't do it seriously but that I keep us there's this humor that attaches to it that I appreciate so that's that's my main attitude my my feeling tone of the work with the stone is more humor than uh isn't this fantastic yeah and most of the times I've seen in my personal experience when we're in that playfulness is when most of the magic actually happens have you seen that in your life as well oh yes yeah yeah you need a playful attitude that's it's play that's what it is you know from one point of view there have been really some excellent books written about this religion is play essentially it's a form of playing and uh it's you know play is serious it's very important in human life but still it's play and I I think that uh work with the stone to me is definitely play yeah yeah and I love one of the definitions or sort of um ways that you've described religion which was and and this may have changed over the years but one I recently heard from from you was that religion to you is about sort of reestablishing a relationship to the mystery the mysterious um in the world um do you still see it that way and and how can you sort of help people redefine what religion is I know this is a big topic but religion is sometimes very triggering for people to to hear and and they don't want to see you know they want to keep things in boxes with religion so there's Mysteries around the world you just described the big mystery how could have you known that she was on on the bus or some people also how could they have known that they dreamt about this and then it happened you know there's a lot of phenomena like this so so how does religion relate to the mysteries of life um mystery is one of those words I don't know was one of the M you mentioned at the beginning I think so one mystical mystery um there are other words that that are like myth myth and Magic yeah so they're all they're all I think related I mean theologies of those words is Highly Questionable but um I think they're closely related and so with mystery what we're dealing with is the what we don't know and it's very important that we don't know too much I think that we that we uh I know we make a big deal of wanting to be educated and I of course I was in school for 35 years I can't talk about that but I I uh at the same time I feel that uh there's so many things that are unknown and those are very important to us those Mysteries and I think that Rel religion was created to deal with the Mysteries obviously I'm not talking about institutional religion as we know it in the 21st century or the 20th century certainly uh I think that kind of religion really lost lost it all they lost the relation to mystery they wanted to explain everything just the opposite I think religion lost its Soul really at that point uh although when you look at history of religions they didn't they weren't pure for very long they they don't last very long they quickly become the the thing that they're supposed to not be doing so I I'm not too happy with religion too much very much I agree with many people who don't like it on the other hand to me it's everything it's my field I love it I love being a my my field is religious studies that's what my PhD is I love it I wouldn't want anything else but not not not the institutional religion but religion as something is natural it's a thing that people do which is they relate to the Mysteries around them they relate to them they don't explain them they relate to them so they might create a ritual if they don't know what the looking up at the moon and wonder why is the moon getting bigger and then it gets smaller instead of uh trying to explain it what they might do is set up a Stonehenge kind of they're all over the world different kinds of stone hedes where you set up rocks where you can measure and know ahead of time when the moon is going to be at a certain point or when certain planets are appearing when the year is starting uh when summer is coming all of those things they can be ritualized without being explained I think I think not explaining but responding to the Mysteries is what religion is essentially yeah best I can come up with and I've done a lot of study I have to tell you about religions yeah yeah I know and it almost seems like in the Western World now when we come across a mystery that we don't know how to explain we go to the new God science and we go no we're going to we're going to take all our knowledge on biology on physics on any sort of scientific field and figure this problem out and yeah we've solved a lot of those problems we've we've solved a lot of things like that and understood things in a different way do you think there's ever going to be a mystery um about life that we're not going to be able to understand or know there are all kinds of mysteries now and I think they always will be I hope there will be um otherwise the religion is out and I have to get another degree of something PD in um no I I think the I I think that where we're headed I I wonder I mean one way I imagine a direction for us to go is where we could revise our scientific way of thinking so that we don't make it so exclusively materialistic I there I think it's very possible to have a non-materialistic science and uh and to continue doing all the work we're doing in science which is really amazing um but to uh but not separate it from from uh religion uh I it's you know you know that uh the astronomer Carl Sean uh who uh was very popular you may way before you were around uh Carl I've heard him around here and there yeah he was a wonderful uh wonderful imaginative intelligent uh person who could really speak to the public about science and I arranged a debate with him about religion and Science and we were going to do a public debate on it because he was calling a lot of things that I appreciate and very attached to he was calling them superstitions and I thought that was a bad word for them so I I arranged with him and he agreed we were going to have a debate on this issue but he developed cancer at that point and we were not able to carry it out but I really have always been grateful to him that uh a scientist I think it is possible that's been a model in my mind it's possible to to to question what what science is not not to say we want a non-scientific world but to say that the science itself could be adjusted so that could Embrace some of the Mysteries that uh other we that we then leave to other areas other methods what other arguments would you have laid out for Carl Sean in that debate if it would have taken place well I I would have made this this argument that I just did of saying that religion is not there to explain things and we don't have to explain everything but we do need to have some relationship with it with with things that we don't really understand or when you say talk about the planets in motion you'd say well we understand these we understand now what a planet is and it's foolish to say that they can have any effect on on human life well let's let's let's be a little more open-minded let's see if maybe looking at these planet planets in their look at them imagistically trying to think of a more poetic way of looking at the planets then through that poetic Feud maybe they may have more power than only their scientific uh existence and what you have to do is to be able to appreciate how the validity of a of religious ritual and validity of Mythology because the stars are mainly uh mythological their names are all mythological uh so our the days of our week are mythological you know with mythology is here right with us but we don't know how to deal with it so I would have I would like like to have talked to a scientist and try to try to let him know that there it's a very intelligent way of looking at these things that is not scientific and yet valid yeah in the beginning of the conversation you mentioned how we take a lot of things in in religion very literally um things that maybe are meant to be read or or proceed figuratively what exactly are we seeing literally that we can sort of change our point of view and perspective on well we could we I was just saying we could uh we could uh uh look at the stars in the sky at night and a night sky and notice their positions and how they move and the uh age-old uh ways of looking at these patterns that are in the sky and relating those patterns to what goes on in our own lives to look at our birth chart the birth chart showing where this where the planets were at the time of our birth that of course scientifically it doesn't mean anything but poetically this is looking at it poetically it's it uh it describes uh our situation the moment we were born so the astr astrologer wants to know where and when exactly you were born and that's important because and that's that is an important part of the ritual so you find out this is about your timing of your life looking at astrology uh now when John D did it for England he did it for the queen queen uh Queen Elizabeth who wanted to have her coronation and a and a really important good time so she asked him to look at the stars and see where would the Stars be in their best position where I could have my coronation that's not it's play it's a kind of play but it's very serious and it brings in then a whole different perspective and Imagination of what's going on here about Cosmic timing and about being in relationship to the whole world uh all of those things are there and only astrology could bring that in um we have lived we human beings have lived in in an astrological world all the way up until about 500 years ago an as totally astrological the whole time but we think we're smarter now because we think that's silly to do that I think we've lost a great deal losing that sense of cosmic time is this sort of the intellect or or some sort of intellectual arrogance stepping in and sort of seeing past civilizations ancient civilizations as lesser than because we've had a lot of experts here on the show talk about the mysteries of the ancient civilizations and truly the the power and and the magic that those civilizations br brought um why are we seeing the past through this lens of oh we're way more Superior than ancient cultures I think it's very simple very simple psychology uh we have been successful obviously evidently in many ways through this materialistic science and the technology that came out of it I mean look at we're talking to each other today you know on computers it's that's pretty marvelous you know know I I think um I I always feel that my my Mac uh laptop is is is tremendous I I I give it great honor uh so I think it's wonderful it's a short step from that to thinking boy aren't we great and we know so much more than people of the past because they didn't have one of these things one of these gadgets and we do they didn't know anything and look at what they say we don't understand what they're talking about so we think they're stupid I have done some work in medicine over the years and I remember reading his histories of medicine where they have been extremely arrogant in relation to the Past saying that people in the past knew nothing it's a matter of fact when you look at some of those uh earlier medical textbooks you find a great deal of uh insight into illness that we don't we've lost and I think we would be much better off if we knew more about it so the arrogance that we've had is understandable it's very understandable but it lets us know that we're pretty naive and immature that we can't get over that problem you know to to be to succumb to that kind of arrogance that's it's naive it's it's immature so we need a psychological maturity to go along with our scientific development yeah to bring to bring this conversation sort of Full Circle and going back back to the third M that we s for the audience to have some context we set an intention to evoke what we call the four M's which was mystery the mystical the the myth and Magic going to the third M the myth I'm really curious to know your current sort of perception of of the the movies and and and the stories that we tell right now in modern civilization and if you're if you're interested in seeing them through the lens of Mythology and sort of maybe if the future civilizations are going to see these stories like Avatar like Marvel movies um are they going to see that as sort of their mythology I've I've been always really curious because we're creating these sort of Heroes in our modern time which are in the form of you know these characters and in Iron Man and all the all the superheroes that we have and a lot of the movie that I've seen recently are deeply rooted in just mythological storytelling so I'm really curious to hear your perspective on that well yes uh when you begin to when you study mythology you you you can see uh various myths uh in life everywhere around you and yes the movies may be uh quite graphic because they look like mythology and maybe they share some qualities of Mythology but I think uh also you find U myth everywhere so for example as the therapist I I may have someone sitting across from me and they're looking very sad about their father and I'm thinking wow this is Hamlet sitting right in front of me right across from me now that's from Shakespeare but Shakespeare's characters have Mythic qual Mythic standing so I would say if I'm seeing that in this person Hamlet that helps me get inside it let's Orient me toward what's going on there and uh with a deeper story and if I educate myself in mythology I will be able to have more my imagination will be educated and trained more to see this myth and wherever it may appear so it may be in these uh these movies like you're describing but um uh some other movies uh like movies about what politically what's going on in the politics uh in the world world politics you can certainly see myth at work there and you see it quickly if you're familiar with mythology you see it right away oh yeah that's that's what's Happening Here you see a love story where someone's been completely tapped by uh love you say well I know this myth you know this is for Daddy I know how that's going to end I know how it's going to end I've I've I've studied it very carefully read it in many different versions so yes I think that the Deep sense of myth can help us that's why I think it I've always felt that if I were teaching a training program and Psychotherapy I have an inclus included course on mythology so that people could have that uh that ability to see the Mythic and what is happening in ordinary life yeah it's almost like you're stepping into the Matrix when you start seeing the world through the lens of archetypes and mythology that's super interesting sing um yeah very thank you for mentioning that because I feel like it's a field where we can learn a lot from um and might not be so highly regarded nowadays because people are so focused in in the sciences and the technology so yeah I really really appreciate that even in my own life when I started looking at astrology um you were going to say something well that's all right just one thing I wanted to say before we finish if we and that is the another M I would like to mention is music um I've been a musician all my life a classical musician I studied composition for for many years and uh I love arranging music and writing music and playing I play the piano every day and I feel that the things we're talking about here seeing myth I feel music is very similar that um I uh I think musically when I write a book and I am hearing music when I listen to a client in therapy and uh forms of music goes what goes on in music uh it's uh it's it's it's part of life we are musical beings we are musical beings and if you know music uh know it with some intimacy uh then you can see it in human life all the time just very similar to myth and sort of because when I hear about music I hear you know there's sound playing and just to tie in to this New Concept that you're developing around silence what is the value also behind just being in a state of of of nothingness of Silence of of no action than actually you know having to be constantly on the Move doing emailing texting Tik Tok nowadays yeah what is the power of of Silence well the power of silence and also other forms of emptiness uh is to allow yourself to be present without there's a way in which all these other things these all these activities we get engaged in all the things we have around us all the voices talking to us all day long uh all of that prevents us from really hearing ourselves and being aware that we exist on our our own emptiness can be very very helpful when again going back to when I was a monk we lived in a quiet place pretty much uh there was no we weren't supposed to say a word after 900 p.m. from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. and the rest of the day was quiet anyway we ate in Silence about maybe 3/4 of the time and uh so uh I grew up in that silence and quiet and that's a kind of emptiness an emptying out of all the activity and the sounds that uh are around and that the silence that emerges The Emptiness of sound there that emerges is is very calming and uh it allows yourself to hear yourself to know yourself better and uh to know your world better because you're able to be closer to it without all those other distractions so I feel that uh uh this book that that I've written is called the eloquence of Silence but it's actually about emptiness of all kinds and uh I think Emptiness is it's a teaching from India and from other places it's big in uh Zen Buddhism in particular and I'm very happy that Zen Buddhists have endorsed my book uh iess I got a number of the leading Zen Buddhists which really made me feel good because I feel that I'm that's what I'm trying to do trying to bring emptiness Down to Earth where we can not just make it a very abstract and difficult concept but something we can live every day of Our Lives all the time by emptying out in terms of sound or possessions or activities or words all these things empty out and I think we'd be much better off so one of the final questions I wanted to ask you is if silence is a way that we can begin to start taking care care and nourishing our soul what else does the soul need um the soul needs uh so many things the soul needs uh good food uh and I often suggest to the people who come to me for therapy that they take cooking classes because um cooking is so valuable to the soul to be able to to to get vegetables and other foods and prepare them and develop recipes or get recipes or learn really how to do it well to get people together and to provide a dining environment where people really have pleasure and uh and joy and uh en jooy of the of being together food does so much of that so that's one area it's huge uh that would bring more soul to anything it still does uh so I I really Advocate that uh the Arts the Fine Arts uh music uh Visual Arts um uh D Dance drama uh all of it is all the Arts are uh they speak directly to the soul you know they speak directly to they are the speech of the soul and I think if we could do and do it more soulfully I I'm I'm not one who's in favor of art education too much maybe to an extent but I don't like the Translating the experience of art into ideas uh I think it's the ideas can be valuable as secondary but the primary experience is the encounter of the art the encounter between you and an art object is so important so the Arts are huge um um we could bring soul to politics so that politics was done less literally and less acting out of emotion and more with more reflection and more poetic sense uh and more uh spiritual awareness because the spiritual activity is also part of the life of the Soul um so that go we go on and on there's there's much more but those are some of the main things I love that and also what should the Soul or what may the soul avoid um to become its highest state become its Highest Potential what can what are some of the things or ideas that we can start avoiding well uh I I don't think about it that way too much but I suppose we could uh we could avoid uh activities that are soulless places that are soulless uh a lot of people I think when they think of going on a holiday or a vacation somewhere think of a soulless place to go it's not a good idea go someplace that will really nurture your soul not a place that will just give you an escape so much what we do is escape uh don't go into religions that aren't worthy of you uh they will really twist you around and uh so if you can go to some religious I I definitely think you you can get a lot from all the religions of the world I'm great great fan of all the religions but but uh not not these institutions that are soulless um and that means um you have to be very careful very selective and where you go in that direction be very careful how you get educated a lot of people go into the field of psychology I remember when I was teaching in a psychology department once all the students coming in where I I'd ask them what do you why do you want to study psychology and they'd say they want to help people and the first course they took was statistics and I thought this is not the way to start helping people start counting um but that's what we do and we don't we psychology the word itself means the logos of the psyche the logos of the soul and we uh We've made it into you know a science and a laboratory thing and measuring how many people do this how many people do that um I'd avoid psychology of that guide all together wow Thomas you have a fascinating World viiew from all the the wisdom that you've acquired through your years um I truly appreciate you for just being so generous with with sharing the teachings that you've gained um and giving back as well to humanity and and the the the younger Generations as well so we can take on sort of that Legacy and and continue continue seeking and and eventually just having a brighter understanding of the world um we end every podcast with a final question called the Time Capsule question but before that I just want to ask you where would you send people to connect with you you mentioned the new book eloquence of Silence that is coming out next week we're in May right now so that that'll probably be out when people are listening to this where else would people um go to connect further with your work uh I have a website called Thomas soul.com thomasmore soul.com um I teach a course online called Soul psychology and it's a life transforming believe me it's a wonderful course you can find information about that on uh my website uh uh otherwise I've written 32 books now and they are almost all available online various places wherever you buy books so you know I could recommend those to find out what I'm doing um I owe a great deal to Carl Yung and uh James hman Hillman was my close close friend who died about a about 10 so years ago and and um so his books I'd recommend to you and there's I wrote a book an anthology of his work called a blue fire so you can find out about himman and me in one volume if you'd like and and it's in paperback that would be a good book to get beautiful thank you so much now for the Time Capsule question we ask this at the end of every podcast and it's so interesting the the responses we get because this question sort of takes us around 15 to 20 years into the future and in this scenario you are given a time capsule you are given the opportunity to put in anything in this time capsule that you could possibly imagine knowing that this time capsule is going to be opened by the next generation of leaders sort of right now the youth the younger generations of the of of now are going to open this in 15 20 years time when they're going to be in leadership positions in all different fields around the world from politics to um academics to psychology to psychotherapy the leaders of those fields are going to open this time capsule and they're going to gain anything that you want to put in there to help them build and create the new Earth um you can literally stretch the imag ination as far as you can include anything you want in there it doesn't actually have to fit in a time capsule but what would you leave behind to the to the young Generations I feel like it's one of these capsules you send off to Mars you know that so my answer would be similar to that I would put in it um a uh a recording of Glen gold playing jsbach on the most uh profound artist experiences I think anyone can have and um I would uh I would probably include uh a little book of the complete poems of Emily Dickinson it's going back time it's you know 200 years before this time but I think now we are beginning to appreciate what an extraordinary woman she was and both in her life and in her writing so I would put her in there for sure and I would uh I would also uh include uh the best translations of uh sacred texts that we have now that we know and value today like for example the DED Jing the uh the Psalms uh the uh song of songs uh Sufi some Sufi stories maybe some videos of Sufi dancing and uh great Jewish storytellers and uh the gospels for sure and especially the gospel of John which is about the relationship between me I and that which is beyond me wow I think that would give us a good start amazing and on the top of the Time Capsule there's a a spot where you can leave a question behind sort of this like a self-reflective contemplative question um when these next Generations are going to open the Time Capsule they'll read your question what would you leave behind as a question as a question yeah um I think one of the most difficult questions that has never really been answered at all is who are the animals and understanding what the animals are what is our best relationship with them that take us down a a rabbit hole we'll answer that one on round two if we get the chance to do this again brother thank you so much for your open heart and just coming on here with such great energy and sharing um so much wisdom with us I really appreciate thank you I really uh also very much appreciate the the your style and you know one of the things I liked about the way you do an interview is that you you're able to keep moving along people can't do that you're able to cut into whatever the conversation is at the moment and move it to the next step that's fantastic and to listen carefully and so I appreciate it very much thank you that that really means a lot brother thank [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Emilio Ortiz

Views: 5,062

Keywords: thomas moore, thomas moore care of the soul, thomas moore dark night of the soul, thomas moore the eloquence of silence, depth psychology, greek mythology, jungian archetypes, jung soul, soul loss, soul retreival, decoding greek mythology, religion, thomas moore interview, thomas moore soul, emilio ortiz, spirituality, carl jung, jung psychology, healing, soul, care of the soul, emilio ortiz podcast, mythology, greek mythology stories, astrology, soul retrieval, carl jung psych

Id: LrcUTYyR3nk

Length: 89min 6sec (5346 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 07 2023