THE AWARE LIFE TELESEMINAR JEAN HOUSTON 02/18/13

Transcription

1 THE AWARE LIFE TELESEMINAR JEAN HOUSTON 02/18/13 Lisa: Wow! Welcome, welcome, welcome to The Aware Show Teleseminar Series. This is Lisa Garr. What a fantastic honor it is to be with everyone in this brand new series of The Aware Show Teleseminar with, I think, one of the best lineups we have ever had on the teleseminar series because it Oh, I mean, it brings me so much joy, too, to be here because these shows, for me, and the way that I m broadcasting, is out of a place of an oasis. No matter what is happening in my life, or anyone else s life listening, you can come to these shows for an hour, a little over an hour, and have a completely altered state of consciousness within the hour that you re listening to this show. That is the intention that these are set in, because it s all about you getting the information that you want, extracting the gems that you want, and then taking those into your life in a practical way, making it real and wonderful. So, thank you so much for being here. If you re new to this series we re so, so, so, so glad to you have you! If you have been a regular listener, welcome back! So, today we re talking about, and in a lot of the shows what we re talking about is how to get unstuck; and what are the possibilities that will enable you to get unstuck. There are so many choices that we just might not know about, and sometimes it takes a mentor, a guide, or an event that will really, truly give you that key and unlock all of your potential. You could have been doing work and seminars and read books and DVDs for a such a long time, but you needed that one key that unlocked it all for you. So, that s what we re talking about in this series is those possibilities. So, if you are finding yourself stuck in rut or a job you re not happy with or in a relationship where you re just inspired and you want to find out what the pain might be about that you are experiencing or just get to a greater place of bliss that is what we re talking about today with one of the most inspirational women that I know, honor, love, respect. She is a leader of The Human Potential Movement. She s the author of over 26 books, I m sure that s much more now, and she has spent nearly 50 years consulting with heads of states, indigenous villagers, US presidents, and CEOs around the globe, and one of the most highly respected teachers in the human development movement, that I know of, Jean Houston. Welcome, welcome, welcome! Thank you for being here with us! Jean: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Lisa! What a pleasure it is to talk with you again.

2 Lisa: Thank you for launching our series for us and with us. It s just such an honor to have you be our first guest, so thank you for that! Jean: Well, the honor is all mine, I assure you. Lisa: Aw well, I love your new book, which is one of the things that we re oh, by the way, I want to remind the listeners the website to go to for everything on this show today is theawareshow.com/houston (Jean Houston s last name) and you can check out what s being offered there because it s pretty much everything Jean s done in one place, which doesn t exist anywhere else out there. So, we ll talk about that in a little bit. The book, The Wizard of Us, has made such a huge difference in people s lives. You were on Oprah s Super Soul Sunday talking about it and the Hero s Journey that gets disclosed in The Wizard of Oz, the actual story. Could you tell us a little bit about why you decided to write that book, The Wizard of Us? Jean: Well, I think to deal with the incredible challenges of our time, Lisa, we simply need more mind, more heart, more courage and passion for the possible to get to the great wizardry that we all contain if we re going to survive our time. That iconic story, especially as it s told in the movie, really gives us immense clues and cues. It is a kind of coding of our possible humanity, our Possible Human, and our possible society. Many years ago I actually did a seminar in 17 cities, called The Possible Society. We never had less than 900 people, often it was about 1500 people. We charged almost nothing, I think 25 or 45 dollars for the whole 3 days, and that included lunch Lisa: Oh, my gosh, wow! Jean: *laughter* two lunches! We brought together the citizens of these different 17 cities. From Norman, Oklahoma to San Francisco to New York City, etc. We used the Wizard of Oz as a journey of transformation to transform people give them new capacities that they never knew they had and then immediately apply them to issues in their town, city or village. It had a tremendous effect, it affected hundreds of thousands of people. So, many years later, you know, with so much more interest in this extraordinary story, I said, Well, it s time to deal with it mythically because I never had, you know. I deal with these sort of high-tone myths you know, The Odyssey or Parcifal and the Search for the Grail and it was time to take something that everybody knows, practically at least in North America, and much of Europe too, for that matter and really present it as a journey that anybody reading the book can take, it can grow with, can get the kick in the pants needed just like the tornado to get to the next place; and the next place of course is the incredible richness of their own inner psyche. Lisa: I found it so interesting because as I ve been reading the book and going through the journey, my daughter was in the play The Wizard of Oz, and I was finding myself the

3 last several days really bringing back the stories of change and transformation that happens and even modern-day things, where Dorothy was running around to Auntie Em and saying, Would you share with me, would you play with me? They said, No, we re working, we don t have time for you. Jean: We re counting our chickens, go away Dorothy. Don t be such a bother! Lisa: Yes, Go away, you re a bother! So, she went and she had this incredible journey, which many people can interpret in so many different ways at the end I thought it was a dream but it was really the true story. So, she goes off on an adventure in her life, in her mind and what does she find there? What do we find when we go on that adventure? Jean: Well, I think we find our own souls. We find our own capacities. We find the courage to be. We find that we all have extraordinary minds. We find that there s no such thing as a stupid child, there s just stupid systems of education. We discover the great world within that is equal to the great world without. We discover that we have a capacity for radical empathy and heartfulness. We discover that we are all unique and we are all brilliant; and we re all, of course and this is one of the main themes of this book, The Wizard of Us we re on a great hero and heroine s journey. Lisa: Ah, yes, yes and I love how you say that we also well, Dorothy did she went and found disenfranchised parts of herself Jean: That s right. Lisa: which, it s a brilliant way of saying that. In the lion, in the cowardly lion in the heart if you could talk a little bit about that, that would be so great. Jean: Well, you know, you began by talking about the stuckness, and it begins with three beings. First of all, she s stuck. She s living in an utterly outmoded situation. You know, it s Dustbowl, Kansas *laughter* Lisa: Yes, yeah *laughter* Jean: and it s all in black and white, you remember, at the beginning of the movie; and it s all straight lines straight telegraph poles, straight roads and, nothing is happening, except something that is really evil: the town rich capitalist, the town rich person, wants to kill her little dog. And so, she has got to run away and nobody will listen to her. So, she has that incredible song of yearning. Now, that starts the big hero/heroine s journey. How many of your listeners there are in a state of yearning?

4 If only I wish If I could get Somewhere over the rainbow in that great, great elegy of song that really speaks to our condition when we really know it s time to get on with it! Now, as you know, I ve worked in 108 countries, and I can assure you in almost every one, all the people that I work with, from heads of state to the man who s pushing the broom in his leper colony in southern India. It s all the same thing. It s time to get on with it. There s like a tremendous lure of becoming. So, that great song really addresses something that is being universally help because we re at the end of one era, and we re not quite at the beginning of a new one and what is it that transports us over the rainbow to that next form of our civilization, our world civilization because frankly, if we don t get over the rainbow and get some real training, the human race has maybe 200 years Lisa: Wow! Jean: and I really believe that and not good years, either. You know, what with the ecological breakdown, with the death of species, with the conflicts. So, you know, it s time to have a new sense of what a peaceful, creative, passionate people can be and with it to create a peaceful, passionate, potent society a world civilization which also honors all cultures, all varieties, all variations; and that s what this great story tells. By the way, it isn t just a bump on the head. That was just something that Hollywood did in 1939 to make it more acceptable. In the Frank Baum book, that house is actually picked up... *laughter* Lisa: Oh Jean: and transported by a tornado into another world Lisa: Oh, oh! Jean: into the dimension. Lisa: The whole house! Hmm. Jean: That speaks to us and also what happens after we feel the yearning, which is the call. The call to adventure, the call to the larger life, the call to become the people that we have to be if we are going to transform our time; and, of course, there s always then, the refusal of the call. No, no, not yet. Uh-uh. Maybe later when the kids are grown. When I have more money. When I m skinnier or whatever it is Lisa: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

5 Jean: and then of course, it takes a tornado *laughter* of some kind or other to give us the great push in our lives. How many people have been struck by the equivalent of a tornado? Whether it is illness or divorce or just a sense of just not being able to stand it anymore in order to, frankly, get the wherewithal to get up and go and and to the larger life that is calling us all the time. Lisa: I ve never really looked at the whole Wizard of Oz with so many from this perspective there are so many teachings in there but, even breaking it down where she goes and she finds these disempowered parts of herself, as you called them Jean: Yes Lisa: on the road of spiritual pollen, which I love *laughter* Jean: Yes Mm-hmm Lisa: which I love and then and then she finds them and makes them allies. She takes these disempowered parts of herself, and Dorothy makes The Scarecrow and The Tin Man, and The Cowardly Lion she makes friends with those people, or as you could say, those parts of herself Jean: Mm-hmm. Lisa: and then comes up against The Witch. So, how often does that happen in our lives? When we are coming to terms and accepting parts of ourselves that we may not be happy with? It may be if it s aging, or if it s a broken relationship, or a divorce or whatnot and Jean: Exactly. Lisa: you re coming to terms with that, but then you always find, once again, you get challenged again by that witch somewhere out there in life. Jean: Yeah, the witch is entropy. Entropy meaning the building up or the running down of energy that which tries to stop us unless we hone our pluck and intelligence and cunning and get beyond it and so, that s why the witch keeps showing up, and it keeps showing up in our lives *laughter* one way or the other. You talked about stuck again. There s The Scarecrow, and he s stuck on the perch, you know, on the little hook, and he can t get down, and she gets him down. Then you have The Tin Man, he s stuck. He s so stuck he s rusted away, and she s able to oil him.

6 Lisa: Ah, huh. Jean: And then you you know so, your thing about your metaphor of stuck. The stuckness of our minds, the stuckness of our hearts, the stuckness of courage, where we just run around in circles because we re afraid of the world. He s stuck in his own sense of purpose and passion and courage. So, everything is there, including not just getting on the yellow brick road in a world of color and shape and pattern and texture so unlike the world that she came from, and this then allows me in the book to really train people to really see in different ways to think in different ways to open up not only the vast reservoirs of intelligence and sensory acuity and courage and love and heartfulness that we have, but then to realize that we are all on the great adventure. The other day on Oprah, she asked me, she said, Well, what do you have to say about everything? *laughter* You know finally. What s your final words? I said, We re all in it together. And that s what we re in it, you see. So, it s about the team, isn t it? You have a little white girl. You ve got a member of the vegetable kingdom, The Scarecrow; the mineral kingdom, The Tin Man; the animal kingdom; The Cowardly Lion and you ve got a great guidance a great archetypal guidance a fairy angel/goddess/witch Lisa: Glenda. Jean: The Good Witch, Glenda. You ve got a Wizard, I mean a marvelous a magician within, although it turns that he s really not much of a wizard but he s a tremendous psychotherapist. *laughter* You know, when you get to the end of the story. Lisa: Well *laughter* I never looked at it that way. I never looked at The Wizard as a psychotherapist! *laughter* Jean: Well, look what he gives them. He gives them the adventure. He gives them something to do. He understands their own sense of lack of understanding of who and what they really are, and then Lisa: But wasn t he a fraud? Wasn t he a fake? Jean: Well, you know, he s there in the middle of a magnificent kingdom where people are happy, where it s ecologically green, where Lisa: Interesting. Jean: So, you know and we gather that he had something to do with it, so no, he s not a fake. It s just that what he is, is a tremendous human being. Lisa: Wow!

7 Jean: Which is what probably the real wizardry is about. Lisa: That s so great. I mean, I love the way that we all look at this and I love the book too, because you really do you take the teachings and you do meditation exercises around them and things to enhance courage, and Jean: Mm-hmm. Lisa: and exercises therefore which I really love. Now, as they re going through this journey we have our own Hero s Journey that we go through in our lives and I know that Joseph Campbell was a friend of yours. Jean: Yes. Lisa: Oh, my God. As Buckminster Fuller and Margaret Mead and you have Jean: Yeah, that s right. *laughter* Lisa: you have surrounded yourself with some amazing people. Of course, you are equally the same, but your stories have always been my favorite. Your stories are absolutely phenomenal. Tell me about your relationship, if you can, with Joseph Campbell. Jean: Oh goodness. When I was 10 or 11 years old, my father gave me a copy of his book, The Hero With A Thousand Faces, and it just struck my very soul. It talked about a call, and I thought, Wow call we re called all the time! My father was in show business, so you know, he would pick up the phone and he would hear Okay, Jack, you have to be in Louisville by tomorrow. Up! He takes the whole family, off we go. Lisa: Ah! Jean: I ended up going to 20 schools before I was 12 years old *laughter* because there was always a call. Lisa: Oh, wow! Jean: And then of course, the refusal of the call, which you know, we didn t do very much; and then, the great allies showing up. You know, when I was travelling. I mean, all these interesting, fascinating people in the 48 states and meeting allies of spirit, allies of energy, allies of comedy. I knew all the great comedians, you know. Fred Allen, Bob Hope, Burns and Allen.

8 Lisa: My goodness! Jean: So, they were all these fascinating folks as well as people in the deep South, as well as native people. So, we were always meeting the allies. So that s part of it, the allies show up when you agree to the call. Just like little Dorothy. She agrees to the call that s on the yellow brick road and she meets her allies. And then, of course, there are all the things that try to stop you. For Dorothy, it s The Witch and The Flying Monkeys Lisa: Uh-huh. Jean: and The Russian soldiers Owee-Oh Wee-Oh *laughter* You remember that? But, what are the things that try to stop us in our lives? There s always what I call entropy again, or same old, same old or, instead of helping people, becoming an assistant dinosaur, you know to *laughter* Lisa: *laughter* Jean: to try to stop other people. And then, the great road of adventure, and we were always on adventures. One darn thing after another. Lisa: Uh-huh. Jean: I write about this, by the way, in my autobiography, A Mythic Life, which is, you know, kind of a funny book and so, you have the road Lisa: and it s an amazing book, and I have questions about that one too, but stick with this, here... gosh, so many titles *laughter* Jean: Yeah, A Mythic Life; and so then, of course, she has all the adventures. She is given an incredible thing to have to do, which is to bring back the witches. Which, and by the way, on the way to The Emerald City, they witch stops them; and they fall asleep, or at least, the ones who are of blood and bone fall asleep Lisa: In the field, right? Jean: Yeah, in the field, and it takes her compassionate friends made out of tin and straw, as well as Glenda, to wake them up; and this, to me, is tremendous. How often have we been very near something that we have almost accomplished and then we get distracted? Lisa: Wow and we fall asleep mmm

9 Jean: and then we get distracted. You know who is the ultimate distracted person, in the world? Leonardo DaVinci. He produced so much, and he finished so little, because he always got distracted *laughter* with something else that he wanted to create. Lisa: Well, that s those creative ADD folks, like myself, yeah *laughter* Jean: *laughter* yeah Lisa: Yes, but so, we do, we get distracted and we also go to sleep as to issues Jean: and we go to sleep, and that s the belly of the whale. That s the part where we then go to sleep, or we go inward we need greater times of inwardness and then we wake up, generally by a push from our intellikey. That is, from our deeper purpose-self, and we get on the road again, and that s where the road the adventures which, of course, happened in my life and happens in Dorothy s life. They then are able to get the broom but almost die in the doing but we, through The Scarecrow s intelligence, through the empathy of The Tin Man, thorough the incredible strange, funny, quaking courage of The Lion, they get through and, of course, the water of compassion that Dorothy throws on The Scarecrow that was meant because The Witch had tried to burn him, falls on The Witch and the water of life, of course, dissolves her. Lisa: Ah! Jean: And then I mean, that s what happens and then, that is, in the Hero s Journey, that s what s called the depth of the mythological world. Where you, out of love, where you find the great love and out of the great love and compassion, you then are able to be given the magic boon, and go back home. The magic boon, of course, is not just love and compassion and courage and spirit and energy and intelligence, which they all get, and then of course Dorothy can go home. When she goes home, she wakes up and she says, Oh, it was all in my own backyard! It s because she sees everybody looks like the people in the, you know, the farm hands look like the people in The Wizard of Oz. Lisa: Now, was it a dream? Jean: No. In Baum s book, no, it is not a dream. It was never meant to be a dream. It was meant to be the travelling to another dimension. Lisa: Ah. Jean: I understand that there s a new movie that s about to come out, a prequel.

10 Lisa: I saw that, yes. I didn t see the movie, but yeah. Jean: Yeah, where Baum (Frank Baum) goes into the other realms. Lisa: Now, what was the significance of the ruby slippers? Jean: Well, the ruby slippers are our own enormous powers, which we all have, but we don t know how to use; and it is by going through the great adventures of life that we discover what these powers really mean. So that s why, what I try to do, in the book, is give people access to powers of mind and heart courage and stamina and creativity and invention... so that they discover that they ve been wearing the ruby slippers all the time. Lisa: Oh, wow. I mean, the questions that are coming in right now on theawareshow.com/houston are questions about exactly this: How do I live my best life, reach my highest potential? What do I do in the meantime, while I m trying to reach my highest potential? How do catch my self up with my soul s calling? Great, great, great questions coming in but people are very curious about the gap, Jean, about that gap Jean: Where? Lisa: between the consciousness and the roles that we play in our lives. How I mean, and of course, comparing it to something like The Wizard of Us, and that s a great way of looking at it, and all of the incredible lectures that you do are filled with this type of inspiration Jean: Mm-hmm. Lisa: and that s, again, at theawareshow.com/houston, because everything is bundled together but, to get to this place how do you fill that gap, Jean, how do you do that? Jean: Well, you begin. *laughter* Lisa: One step? Mmm at a time? Jean: You begin, you turn the page. Lisa: Mmm. Jean: You turn the page on your possibilities. You say, I am ready and I am ready to take on the great adventure. Now, there are various things that I always suggest, at least in my teachings. You get out of the stuck place like, just sitting in the chair or watching television or, you know because the stuckness of the body, now remember, that s part of it, isn t it? in the story, the stuckness of the body stuck up on a hook. The Scarecrow is stuck, rusted away. You start to move your body and you put on

11 beautiful music; and you dance your dream, or you walk your dream, or whatever it is. Nobody has to see you do this, but you begin to put the desire for the fuller life, for the realization of who and what you really are, you put it into your body so that you dance it, you move it, you drum it, you sing it, you run it, you dance with the dog with it, or whatever you do (dancing with the dog is one of my favorite ones), but *laughter* Lisa: *laughter* Jean: but you start there, because you ve got to get up out of the sloth chamber, you know, and get going. Now, what I then Lisa: Real quick, I want to mention someone here is asking, How do I get mentored by Jean?...and that is Jean: *laughter* Lisa: and that is, I mean that s how. If you go, and you can listen to the hours and hours worth of Jean s passionate talk about her life. I just want to take people back to that offer for a second at theawareshow.com/houston because I really feel so sincerely about telling you the vast being that Jean is and her passion and her knowledge and the education that she brings to her talks is so deep and so rich (as you are in your life, Jean) and so full of texture and the way that you speak is pretty much like poetry when you just ramble off these sentences that could be written in prose. I m mean, it s beautiful the way that you draw people in with your sentences that seem to trail off down a long path. They re absolutely beautiful. All of the things that we have in this offer, I want to let people know, is your way to basically be mentored by someone like Jean Houston. To listen to her humor and her wisdom and her passion and all of her teachings in this offer. It s in one place for you, which we ve done and worked together hard as a team and with Jean s team to put it, all of this, together. Her 4-DVD set, the Discover and Deepen Your Potential, amazing; and The Storied Life of Jean Houston which thank you for finally putting that on a CD set because your stories are so good and unbelievable; and the keynote speech and it oh, my gosh. If you want to ever learn how to be a speaker and how weave story into your speeches in order to deliver teaching? Jean s a master at that and then, of course, bringing in The Compassionate Brain, which is great, because having the science around it and I see a huge trend now towards science and consciousness (and you ve seen it for many, many years, I m sure); but your publisher, Beyond Words, has really helped to put together this incredible offer and I do know for sure this whole bundle doesn t exist anywhere else because they help us put it together. So, thank you Beyond Words and thank you to you for allowing us to

12 offer all of these in one place. So this is your education, right here, and you can get it by going to theawareshow.com/houston and I want to let you know this is just an amazing way to basically somebody asked, on the call here, How do get mentored by Jean Houston? *laughter* and that kind of explains it, and she gets into the whole all of the concepts of A Passion for the Possible and The New Human. So, speaking of which, someone also is asking, from Portland, What is The New Human? Jean, what is it? What are we? Jean: Well, The New Human varies enormously from person to person. I mean, radically. I mean, we re not encapsulated bags of skin dragging around very little egos. We are marvelously, fantastically unique. We re not flaky, my friend, we are snow-flaky, *laughter* in our very Lisa: *laughter* Jean: but if I were just to say what the sum of The Possible Human is well, you have acute senses and you re able to use these senses to enjoy life much, much, much much more, and you have long pleasures and short pains instead of having long pains and short pleasures. Lisa: Mmm Jean: You re able to self-orchestrate your brain waves. Alpha, you know, for deep relaxations. Theta, for creativity. Delta, for deep sleep. High levels of beta for acute focusing. You re able to orchestrate time, so that you can take, let s say, 3 minutes of clock time equals subjectively to hours and practice something that would normally take your hours, like say, a skill, or a musical instrument, and get the same amount of practice as if you d had hours. You can learn things much, much faster. You can enjoy being in the body. You have access to the all manner of levels of inward intelligence to create with, to write with, to explore with. You have crossed the great divide of otherness, so you live in a state or radical empathy and know what to do and help and be with people always servant, never lord you know, as you work to make a better world. It goes on and on and on. You have a relationship to the intellikey, the high-purpose essence that is within you, that then guides you and leads you. You are sourced in spirit and above all, you are never, ever boring God. *laughter* You know? Lisa: *laughter* Do people that they re boring God? Really? Jean: Yes, I think they do! *laughter* or, they re so bored in themselves. Lisa: Right. Jean: It s the same thing, in a sense, isn t it?

13 Lisa: When they re not fulfilling their destiny, absolutely! Jean: Well, destiny is on a rise right now. I think, frankly, we re in a state of a second Genesis, you know, where we have lived out, as a species, a certain level of our destiny. You know? We ve covered the globe, we ve technologized it. We re at a point in, with the rise of women to full partnership with men in the whole domain of human affairs, which is shifting everything, I might add; and we ve overpopulated the earth, we live on a planet that s meant for no more than 2.5 billion people Lisa: Wow. Jean: and we have well over 7 billion people and rising. Lisa: Oh, my goodness. Jean: I mean, we have become the stewards of the biological and evolutionary process on the world and this beautiful planet, and we re not trained for it. So, you know, my passion is, and always has been people say, What in the world drives you that you work 18 hours a day and have never stopped and you haven t obviously, there s no retirement in your future. Well, it s because we re in the holy and awesome and challenging moment where what we do will profoundly make a difference as to whether we grow or die. So, that s why I teach around the world so much. That s why I do the things I do. That s why I mentor people Lisa: Well Jean: you know, and do all this kind of thing. As you do, too, Lisa. I mean, with your programs, and I ve known you for years. Lisa: Yeah. Jean: You ve been working at this for years. Let me ask you, why do you keep at it? Lisa: It doesn t even feel like it s been as many years. I mean, I ve been doing, yeah, working at this for almost 15 years and I don t feel that. I feel like I just started because I have so much more to communicate. I m just getting started, and you too. I mean, you have I saw the interview on Oprah that you did and she asked you about graceful aging. I can t remember the exact term Jean: *laughter* I like that.

14 Lisa: that she used, and there s actually a woman here who says that she s 55 and she s completely falling apart and nothing in her life works. Jean: Yeah. Lisa: Now, I know for a fact that you had your 75th birthday and it was an amazing celebration. *laughter* Jean: Sure, yeah and people think I m 40 years old. Lisa: Ah but, yeah! You look so beautiful! Jean: Yeah, I don t age, and part of it 4,000 years of olive oil, being half Sicilian, but Lisa: Oh, okay! *laughter* Jean: but a lot of it is having a very look, we need a hundred good years. You know, *laughter* that s the problem. Lisa: A hundred years. Jean: You know, adolescence doesn t end til you re 40. You don t really know really know anything til you re about 55. *laughter* Lisa: *laughter* Yep! Jean: And the information just floods you all the time and it s quite possible. So, yes, I mean someday I should write a book about it because I don t do anything different. I eat what I have to Lisa: A lot of people ask you about it, I m sure. Jean: Oh, all the time and it s gotten shocking now. You know, because and it s embarrassing to me. I look in the mirror and I say, Who is that young person? because I know I was born in 1937 for God sakes, you know. Lisa: Oh, my goodness. Wow. Jean: Yeah. *laughter* Lisa: Well, you said something in the very beginning of the interview that was very important Jean: Yeah

15 Lisa: and I don t want to gloss over it. You said we have about 200 years left, if we live, as a humanity Jean: Yes. Lisa: in the old ways of living, and I saw this horrible movie that was some it was called Looper, and it was basically showing our dismal future, if we were to live, I guess? Jean: Yeah, I walked out on it, it was such a terrible Lisa: I don t recommend the movie, at all. Jean: No, I can t recommend it. I had to walk out on it. Lisa: It s awful. Jean: It s a horrible Lisa: I walked out of it, too Jean: Yeah. Lisa:..but I walked out of it because I don t subscribe to that way of thinking. I cannot imagine I can t even I don t why somebody would waste so much time and money on making a movie with that dismal of a future. Jean: No, but it didn t do very well, either. *laughter* Lisa: Good! because it s I mean, what we are up to now, and what you re talking about, is our destiny. It is everyone listening to this call. It s everyone in our community, in our tribe, we don t even know them all (which is even more immense) that we can look at our destiny as something that is challenging and exciting and possible and passionate and on the rise and No, you can t be 55 and falling apart. You have an incredible journey ahead of you, Maria, in Los Angeles. Everyone on this call does, and I know that there are challenges out there and I m reading them, and I get it but I also know there are possibilities which you stand for, and I just want you, if you can, to share some of your stories with I mean Buckminster Fuller, he was your teacher! *laughter* Jean: He was a friend no, but Lisa: What?

16 Jean: he wasn t so much a teacher, he was the world teacher. Lisa: Yes. Jean: but he was a friend and someone that I respected. He was, you know, in his 80 s when I knew him well. He was actually a research subject of mine, briefly; and Margaret Mead, of course, lived with us the last six years of her life. Lisa: Wow. Jean: Joe Campbell I knew for 20 years. *laughter* Lisa: My God! Jean: Aldous Huxley Lisa: What a I mean, do you ever want a normal life? *laughter* Jean: No but, remember I also was in New York a lot, and it was very easy to meet people. I met Teilhard de Chardin, I ran into him, I really knocked him down; and then we walked together off and on for 3 years in Central Park. Lisa: OK. Jean: And he told me, Jean (he has a French accent), The people of your time will be taking the tiller of the world; but they cannot go directly, you have touch every culture, every people, and bring them all together in the newest spirit. (The field of the world mind, taking a walk with itself). So, I was but, I think part of it is to live in a state of expectant grace. Not, I wanna it isn t I wanna, I wish it s you live in the state of expectant grace and you are there. You know, every morning, you say to whatever it is you believe in, God or spirit, Let me be of value and of help to someone today. Let me be of service. And once you shift and jump the track from I wanna to service, and then, opportunities come your way; because it s as if the universe says, Hey! We ve got a live one there! *laughter* Let s give them something to do! You know. Lisa: *laughter* Well, I mean you had you met de Chardin in Jean: Teilhard, yes. Lisa: were you 17? Jean: 14. Lisa: 14, and in Central Park, right?

17 Jean: Well, I met him by no, on Park Avenue, I ran into him. He lived down the street from where I lived and so, I was running and running and running because I was in despair because I had discovered that my parents were getting divorced and I was told that if you run you can run away from your grief and that s called 1950 s stupidity. So, I ran, and in this case, it was true. I ran into this old man and I knocked the wind out of him. But I picked him up, and he said, Are you planning to run like that for the rest of your life? I said, It sure looks that way. He said, Well, bon voyage! I said, Bon voyage and ran off to school and the following week I saw him, because as I say, we were I was getting out of school at the same time he was coming back from where he was working and we had to cross on the same street and he said, My friend the runner! Are you maybe Fox Terrier? Lisa: *laughter* Jean: I have wrote many letters start walking. So, we began to walk in Central Park. He had no self consciousness at all. He would suddenly fall to his knees on the grass like, Jean, look a caterpillar! Mmm! Lisa: *laughter* Jean: What is the caterpillar becoming, huh? Moving, changing, transforming Jean, feel yourself to be a caterpillar. Can you do that? I said, Oh, very easily, Mr. Terry. Here I was 5 11, you know, 14 years old, with red dots on my face. I felt like a caterpillar! Lisa: *laughter* Jean: He said, What are you, when you finally become? Un papillon! A butterfly! What is the butterfly of Jean? I said, Oh, I don t know Mr. Terry! Yes you do, you do, you do! Well, I think when I m a papillon a butterfly I ll fly all over the world and maybe I ll help people? You know, and I ve already set my intention at that point, and it followed. You know? Lisa: Wow, and the days and the days and days after you oh, my God. How long did you spend with him? I m just chills Jean: Oh, we would we would sometimes we would meet Tuesdays and Thursdays, because as I say, we just lived down the block from each other. I lived just off 86th St. and Park and he lived off of 84th St. and Park Avenue, and I would walk the dog down Park Avenue to go into to Central Park. Lisa: The runner, Jean, the runner. *laughter*

18 Jean: Jean, the runner, yes. Lisa: The Fox Terrier... Jean: *laughter* Lisa: And how many years did you have these wonderful Jean: Until I was 17, until 1955 Lisa: My God and how does that kind of Jean: and, a but, no it wasn t whole summers would go by and wouldn t see him but, we would just Lisa: Yeah. Jean: and we never made dates to meet each other. We just sort of showed up. *laughter* Lisa: You just randomly Jean: And then, the last time I saw him, which was April 7th, 1955, I was already in college, at Barnard College. He began to talk to me about this whole emerging field of a new order of intelligence that was coming, and I had bought him The Shell of the Snail, and he said, Ah, escargot! You know, the great spiral shell. He began to talk about the great spirals of creation and he talked about the labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral, which by the way became the symbol of my work. It was I and some of my students who put the labyrinth all over the world. Anyway Lisa: Oh, my goodness, wow. Jean: So, the labyrinth and then he would talk about the world pattern and flowers and the meandering of rivers and said it was all a great spiral of becoming. You know, that was our last conversation, and then he died that Easter Sunday. Lisa: Oh, my goodness. I mean what an amazing story and what a mentor for you, and I believe he was one of your first real mentors Jean: Oh, well... yes and no, I mean, very serious mentors Lisa: and your dad, of course, yes. Jean: My dad, my mom

19 Lisa: Yes. Jean: You know, all these comics I knew, and Lisa: and then you went on to mentor presidents, I understand? Jean: Well, I ve worked with two presidents, yeah, and for three first ladies; and of course, I knew at 15, 16, I met Mrs. Roosevelt because I was president of my high school, Julia Richman High School Lisa: Oh, my goodness. Jean: and she was gathering all the presidents of high schools in New York and New Jersey to meet with us regularly, to get us inspired to work internationally and to work with the UN. She used words like wands it was just pungent and she spoke to us of having it was like The Wizard of Oz, I mean, she really was The Wizard. You know, she nobody said anything stupid, even though we were pretty stupid but she called us to our greatness and to the quickening and I remember she turned to me once, she said Lisa: Wow. Jean: She said, I rather suspect, my dear, you re going to have a most interesting career, but you have to remember that as woman, you can expect to be trashed (she didn t use the word trashed, it was something like that) but remember, too, my dear, that a woman is just like a tea bag. You put her in hot water, and she just gets stronger. *laughter* Lisa: *laughter* Jean: *laughter* Lisa: Oh, my God, that is awesome! What an amazing opportunity to sit with the first lady when you were in high school! I mean, that I can never imagine... Jean: Well, she was very friendly. She talked to kids all the time. *laughter* Lisa: Wow, and I mean... Jean: She was great.

20 Lisa: and you remember it so well and of course it s President s Day today, so it s a great way to Jean: In fact, Washington s birthday, yeah. Lisa: be able to but, to have that type of I think, maybe, some people would look at that opportunity and think it was an amazing thing to do, and then maybe possibly for forget it, or it would take them on the path that you ve gone on to. How did you stick with it, Jean, with all of your eccentric life and everything that you did? I mean Jean: *laughter* Lisa: Did you ever want to go back to sleep, or have a normal life or stay in one place for very long? Jean: Oh, I don t think I knew what a normal life was. Lisa: Right, right. Jean: You know and, you know going to so many different schools and not really seeing people decline, *laughter* because we were always on to the next place or the next school Lisa: *laughter* Jean: and then, in New York, it was such a zippy place. I went to PS 6, which was one of the great schools of all time, really. It was, you know, it was that the teachers were still using John Dewey s method. So, we were taking the Meet The Great Elders of the Time. I even met Albert Einstein, when I was 8 years old. Lisa: What?!? Oh, my God! Jean: Well, we were taken across the river to Princeton. Lisa: Huh. Jean: He was very sweet. He had a lot of hair and he was a little vague, but very, very kind and I seem to remember that he had a blue sock on and a red sock on. *laughter* Lisa: Ah! Yes, that makes sense. *laughter* Jean: But, you know, met Helen Keller and so we always were in a state of expectant grace and delight because we went to the schools before that whole lousy no child left behind, which turned out to be no child left alive, and the schools that we were in, they

21 had art, they had music, they had celebration. We drummed and danced information. They tended to be fairly art-centered. It was a very different time for schools, and it s been really much of a decline since then, you know. Lisa: Wow. Well, you have been such a mentor to so many people. There s a woman here who met you in Seattle at one of the Women s Wisdom conferences? Jean: Yes, oh yes. Lisa: You challenged her use her gifts to do something more meaningful in the community and she just wants to let you know that she founded a group of EFT practitioners that help Jean: Oh wonderful! Lisa: best release symptoms of PTSD and she s at one of the bases, Lewis-McChord, and she s working with an embedded Army unit and really doing So she, of course, hit her Hero s Journey now, which is a challenge of there s such a need for more help that the volunteers can t meet the demand. Jean: Isn t that wonderful? What is her name what is her name? Lisa: Her name is Lynn Waring. Jean: Hi, Lynn! Lisa: Mm-hmm. Jean: Well, thank you, Lynn. I m just so glad that you re doing this great and good work. That s just glorious! Lisa: Wow. Jean: You know, I just did the EFT on a dog, whose mistress had to be gone for a month, and so it was I did all the *laughter* Lisa: What? *laughter* Jean: *laughter* It was a big, big dog. I said, Even though my mistress, Mary, is gone, I love and accept myself *laughter* Lisa: Oh my God! *laughter*

22 Jean: It made him much happier. He started to wag his tail like mad. Lisa: On a dog. Okay. Jean: It was so funny. Lisa: *laughter* Jean: This was just a couple of days ago. *laughter* Lisa: Well Jean: I did it as a joke, I did it as a joke, but the fact is the dog, you know, calmed down from before. *laughter* Lisa: Well, I know that it is being used with a lot of people in Sandy Hook, which is really enormously helpful. Jean: Yes, indeed. Yeah, yeah. Lisa: So, alright. I just want to mention to people on that path of wanting to hear more from Jean Houston and if you go to theawareshow.com/houston, once again, you can all of Jean s products, not all of them, but probably the best of the best are here that have been put together by Beyond Words, her publisher, and to get into a deeper place and all of the questions you re asking right now and how to bridge that gap, how to deepen your passion for the possible, if you might have even lost your way or if you re well on your way, her stories, her teachings, her references, all that we re just touching on here now, she goes into hours worth of story-telling; and teaches you how to use your stories to frame your destinies and of course to bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. So, there s one of her keynote speeches that was incredible. The Sounds True and The Compassion Brain is on there. The keynote speech from The International Conference on Science and Consciousness, which is one of your most I loved that speech. Where was that set? Jean: I don t remember. When they told me about that, I don t remember. Lisa: It was 2008, yeah. Jean: You know, I give so many talks in the course of a year and often I don t repeat myself and so, when you re asked to say something like that, I m not sure. Lisa: Yeah, I know. I m surprised you don t repeat yourself, that s amazing. Some of the quotes that you have, and I had the wonderful pleasure of being with you in Colorado

23 doing the Gaiam TV Show, and you have a very deep passion for the theatre. Were you in the theatre for a long time? Jean: Well, I grew up in the theatre, of course Lisa: Of course. Jean: and I did a lot of theatre til I was about 20 or 21. Then, when the opportunity came, just right after I graduated from college, like within weeks, to have a (what probably would have been a) fairly significant career in the theatre. I was sitting in the temple of Athena, on the Parthenon (there s a badais that you could actually sit on in these temples) and I had three telegrams. Each one was inviting me to do something fairly major, because I d done all this off-broadway work and had won an off-broadway award. So, I was ready get up and go racing back to New York to work with Joseph Papp, the great director and Shakespeare In The Park Lisa: Uh-huh? Jean: and a voice said, No! and I couldn t tell whether it was a voice in my head or a voice of Athena or a voice of the temple I couldn t tell. Lisa: *laughter* Jean: I mean, it was very loud, and I said, What do you mean, No? No! If you say yes, it means a life in theatre and films. I said, That s right! Let s go! *laughter* You know? Lisa: Uh-huh? Jean: And the voice said, No! Well, why No? Because your kind of mind is made for different things in this time. Lisa: Wow. Jean: And I said, No. Lisa: Wow. Jean: And I had a terrible year *laughter* because I had jumped the track of my possibility. Lisa: Mmm

24 Jean: And then, of course, I was gradually led to do things that perhaps have been of some use in the world. Lisa: And that s was one of your Hero s Journeys. Have we gone into that? Have we dived into what the Hero s Journey is? If you could explain it to the listeners. Jean: Well, the journey is one that was depicted by Joseph Campbell, from his study of 240 different cultures, and he found that this was pretty typical. It begins with a call, the yearning, and then the refusal of the call, because it s never convenient. *laughter* Lisa: Uh-huh. Jean: The dentist appointment always comes up at the wrong time. Then it s followed by agreement, and then the allies show up, the book opens to the right place. You hear the right voices or opportunities come your way, and then you have to go past the guardian of the threshold that tries to keep you in your same old, same old life; but once you get past, you go into the belly of the whale, where you go deeper into your own possibilities. You really do some inner training. I mean, that s what a lot of my work s all about Lisa: Uh-huh. Jean: and then you are on the road of new possibilities, adventures, learnings until you get, finally, to the depth of the mythological world where you really find the sense of loving compassion. You get new kinds of capacities and then you bring all of this and all this experience back to this world, to the regular world of space and time, where you really enter a period of higher usefulness, before you start all over again. *laughter* Lisa: This helps so many people who realize they are not alone. That this is a very normal course of events that might feel like you re the only one. Why me? Why is it happening to me? type of thing. When you understand that this is a normal part of psyche I mean, when you said that you were well on your way to Broadway, and you got the call, so to speak, to come and do theatre, film and you refused the call. What was the agreement? What was that in you, the agreement to stay? and did you choose a different way of life? Jean: Well, I think it was I didn t know! Lisa: Mmm wow you didn t? Jean: No! I didn t know what it was! Lisa: Mmm.

25 Jean: So, I went into graduate school instead and all kinds of opportunities came my way but, I did not know I really didn t Lisa: OK. That s interesting. Wow. Jean: and so that was really quite a *laughter* you know but, let me say a little bit more, and I just put this up recently on my Jean Houston page, that s who I am on Facebook, Jean Houston page, and I ask questions about people. I said, in studying the stages of the Hero s Journey, I find that once you agree to it and answer the call to a larger life, there really is no turning back and so, I suggest to people that they might usefully consider where they are right now on the cycle of this journey. For example, have you heard a call to the larger life? Have you refused it, and if so, why? Have you accepted the call, but then met with monsters of recalcitrance who refuse to let you pass across the threshold into your own deeper capacities and possible life? Did you finally outwit these monsters and get across? Are you caught in the belly of the whale through despair, depression or just plain sloth? Lisa: Mmm Jean: Have unusual allies or helpers shown up? I mean, a telephone call, as I said, at the right time a book falling open in an important passage Do you find yourself in the midst of the road of trials, the road of adventures, and if so, do you discover it as full of adventures or just one damn crisis right after another? Is there a new kind of loving awaiting you or a transformational friendship? Do you feel the yearning for the inner beloved of the soul? Are you seeking attunement with your mother or father or the society for what they may or may not have done to you? Do you require recognition? Are you finding an insight, a boon, a project that may bring some healthy solution to your own and the world s problems? Have you crossed the magic threshold and come back into your ordinary life with a sense of accomplishment? Are you planning to rest for a while or are you raring to start the journey all over again? or perhaps you find yourself like the rest of us, in several different stages of the journey at the same time. Lisa: Ahhh I want every person to listen to the replay and I want you to outline exactly what Jean just said. You completely outlined the Hero s Journey Jean: Yes. Lisa: in your own words, step-by-step. That is so valuable because we understand this is a normal Oh, my God, that was so beautiful!