Episode 8: Earth, Body, & Shadow: Keys to Soulful Living in a Lost Culture, ft. Simon Yugler, Depth Psychotherapist & Psychedelic Integration Coach
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Sureya: “What are some of the core issues that you've seen a lot of men facing, challenges that you see as a common thread these days pulsing through the collective?
Simon: “Well, that's such a huge question. I think the roots of so much of what I've seen that is not specific to men, but just in general, is a crisis of meaning and a crisis of coming to terms with the fact that your job might not give you your purpose. And despite everything that we've been told, the fancy car might not give you your purpose, or the house, or even the family, and the kids, and the wife, and everything. Like, that's not going to give you deep meaning and purpose.
Simon: “Everyone knows in Christianity, the Holy Trinity, right? Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Jun apparently spoke about what he called the Unholy Trinity, which is the Earth, the Body and the Shadow. And the shadow and the earth and the body all contain the feminine as well.
So Western culture as a sort of collective has organized itself around suppressing and essentially exiling those three qualities from individuals and from the collective, right?”
Simon: “When I think back to the many folks that I've had the privilege of working with doing psilocybin work, so many of these folks have never taken psychedelics, or essentially, maybe have never done yoga in their life so they're coming with an expectation of what a psychedelic experience is going to be like; that they're going to sit back and watch the movie when in fact the movie is in their body and they're the director, and the actor, and the editor, and all of it.
So, so much of what I find myself doing as far as integration work is bringing their awareness to the what's actually happening in their bodies because psilocybin, like many psychedelics, are bodily somatic medicines, as well as cognitive intellectual tools.
Simon: “I think that shadow work strangely has become a word and kind of a fad, which is really weird to me as a jungian. It's just very strange because there's nothing glamorous about it at all. and I don't think shadow work is something that you want to post on Instagram for instance. It's not something you really want to show the world. It's something that happens either in a very tight therapeutic container, it's something that happens in a very well held psychedelic, or it's something that happens in a really safe, relational dynamic.
Sureya: “I see this happening with the feminine too, where there's this, Madonna Whore split, where it's like, you can either be the Madonna where you are the good girl, the good mother, you're pure, you're worthy of respect. You're the Kind you bring home to mom. And then the Whore, who is exciting, and fun, and sexual, and free, but not worthy of respect.
And you're not going to bring her home to your family. You're not going to be in a relationship with her. And they are like these two characters of the two sides of the feminine that are disintegrated from each other. Ultimately everyone has the light and the dark within them. And I think the whole light supremacy thing, that the light Is better, is really problematic.”
Simon: “Robert Bly said that for men, the way to enter the soul can almost only come through grief and that men, just by nature of who we are, and how we're organized, we're not going to go there unless we have to. So often it's grief, it's a deep loss that’s that doorway for men to be able to enter a soulful space. I mean, have you ever met someone who hasn't lost anything? It's like you're talking to someone who just hasn't lived. It’s kind of like, ‘oh, like that's nice,’ but there is a depth that grief provides, especially for men.”
Simon: “I would be really interested to have more nuanced discussions as a larger community about Leadership in psychedelic spaces because it is that role of you're not just a guide, but you might be initiating someone into the rest of their life. And, I've heard, I think, again, it was Michael Meade say, if you are to be a mentor for someone or steward some kind of initiatory process for someone, you are essentially, in some way, responsible for that person for the rest of your life. And that's a big weight to carry. There's an element to that that is true and there's an element to that that’s like, whoa, I don't know if I can, carry all of that. Right? It's just this question of, just because you can, should you?”