ladies and gentlemen welcome back to the true life podcast I hope everybody's having a beautiful day I hope the sun is shining I hope the birds are singing I hope the wind is at your back I have with me today the the incredible individuals we have we have um oh I fixed this here Okay, we have an incredible show for you today, the Orbis Orcana, Unlocking the Hidden Mysteries. Oh my gosh, my mic is messing up. I'm so sorry. Aloha and welcome to another electrifying episode of True Life. Today, we're diving deep into the realms of creativity, Carl Jung, psychedelics, and mysticism with two incredible guests who are reshaping the way we think about transformation, both personal and collective. First, we have Jessica Tracy, a pioneer at the crossroads of mental health advocacy, psychedelic integration, and healthcare innovation. As the founder and CEO of the Sage Collective, she's bridging the gap between ancient wisdom and modern medicine, pushing the boundaries of what's possible in psychedelic-assisted therapy. With nearly two decades of experience spanning group insurance, clinical genetics, and health tech, Jessica is reimagining how we approach healing, one policy, one retreat, and one visionary idea at a time. Joining her is Dr. David A. Solomon, a scholar and educator whose work illuminates the history of ideas from medieval literature to modern philosophy. A former department chair and director of study abroad at the Sage Colleges, and now the founding director of undergraduate research and creative activity at Christopher Newport University. Dr. Solomon has spent decades guiding students through the labyrinth of knowledge. His books, including The Seven Deadly Sins, An Introduction to the Glossa Ordinaria as Medieval Hypertext, unravel the intersections of literature, religion, and cultural evolution. Together, these two minds bring a fusion of intellect and intuition, structure, and spontaneity. Thank you both for being here today. David and Jessica, how are you? Great. Thanks, George. Thanks for having me back on. Yes, happy to be here as well. And thanks for the great introduction as always. Absolutely. I'm so excited you guys are here. It's such an interesting time. And I've already got a few questions from the chat lined up. And I just kind of wanted to start off with one right here that says, in a world of hyper rationality, do we need more mysticism to restore balance? I'm going to start with you, David, what do you think about that? I think that it's a funny thing to say, do we need more mysticism? Because it's not like you can wake up in the morning and say, I'm going to have a mystical experience today. I think we need more spirituality and more spiritual practice, which certainly could lead to the mystical. But, um, yeah, I mean, we are certainly in a, well, we, you know, it's, it's an interesting time, isn't it? And the last two weeks have been very interesting. And, uh, you know, so we, we, we may live in a time of hyper rationality, but we certainly live in a time of anti-intellectualism. So we want to be rational, but we don't want to be intellectual. But I think that, uh, you know, what we really could use is, is, is a real good infusion of, of spirituality and spiritual practice. Yeah, it's a great point. Jessica, what do you think about that when he says we could use some more spirituality in the time we're in? I agree. I agree a hundred percent with spirituality and with the need for more mysticism. I think that we have just as a society and culture just become so caught up in our minds and the intellectual thinking and I guess the rabbit hole that our thoughts, that our thoughts very much are or can become. So I think that being able to kind of connect to our, a higher sense of reality, spirituality, kind of your higher self, it brings you out of the mind and it connects you to more of the beauty that we all have access to that is very much in this world. that I think that we lose sight of over time just because of all of the challenges that we deal with in our everyday lives and just the challenges of modern day society. I think we lose sight of the beauty and the divinity that is within all of us and within everything around us. So being able to connect to mysticism and spiritual practices, I believe it's absolutely necessary to just heal so much of the damage that has been done and to also just bring us to, I would say, a more evolved level of consciousness. I love that. You know, I can't help. I was speaking with David earlier about the ideas of darkness and how sometimes darkness brings clarity. And sometimes it seems that, and for me, the mystic, when I read David's work and I read some of the Carl Jung, the little that I can understand, you know, I come to these ideas that like tragedy. it's necessary on some level. Like it's this crisis of, of knowing it's this crisis of being that really allows us to step into the unknown. And I'm sure both of you are well-versed in that. I would love to get your opinion on it. Like is, are we in the midst of this crisis and is it necessary? Like what is the relationship between crisis, surrender and change? What can you take? Can you start with that, David? Yeah. I mean, it's part of, um, this kind of entering into the darkness. I mean, obviously, the image that I get is a very Jungian one of entering the dark cave in order to confront the inner demons and come out the other side. But the mystics also, especially in the Middle Ages, and it's been more embraced in postmodernism, really embrace what's called apophatic theology, which is negative theology. which is looking at the divine and looking at the divine experience in terms of what it is not. The assumption is that we are unable to really explain it in human language. So all we can do is talk about what it isn't. And so it's sort of part and parcel of that walking through, you know, going through the darkness. You go through the darkness, you can't really see what you're doing. You can't see what's going on. You're confronting some things that... know may pop out at you and then you know you get out the other side and there's the light and you finally see things clearly but you have to go through the darkness first yeah what are your thoughts on that jessica Yeah, I'd agree. And I think people will automatically think darkness equals evil, and that's not always accurate, right? There's darkness that can very much equal evil or your shadows, if you will, that you carry. But darkness can also, to David's point, allude to the unconscious and what is the unknown, right? And I think that the unknown is very scary for people until you get comfortable in engaging with the unknown and kind of just flowing through faith, kind of like as a river with the unknown, it can be very scary until you start to build a little bit of muscle memory and being comfortable with that. But yeah, I mean, your shadows reside there, the unknown resides in the darkness. And I believe that going into the darkness, going into the unconscious, going into the unknown, going into your fears, facing your shadows, understanding your shadows, That is like the epitome of the path of transformation and healing. You have to go you have to walk that way if you want to evolve. You know, it's a seed in the mud. You know, the only way I bloom is if the seed is in the darkness and in the mud and goes through that transformation process before. And I also heard a really good analogy around a butterfly or a caterpillar in a cocoon. If you if the caterpillar is in the cocoon and if it gets help breaking out of the cocoon, it actually dies. It doesn't actually go through the metamorphosis process. So going through that process of darkness and and wandering through the unknown to see what's on the other side is the process of healing, transformation and evolution. And it's what Jung calls individuation. Right. That's the journey. The journey to individuation. And I think what Jessica is saying is spot on. I mean, you know, people seem to equate the darkness with evil and they do that also. My students do that when we talk about the shadow self in Jungian thought. And they think, oh, that's the bad part of you. Not really. It's the parts of you that you don't want to confront for whatever reason. And but you have to because the only way out is through. And also, yeah, it's a great point. And that's actually where oftentimes your power lies. And some of your most, I would say, your best creative abilities lie and your power often lies in those shadows, right? And it's understanding how you can bring the shadow and transform that into the light. So you're transforming maybe the negative aspects or negative connotations around some of those, let's say, personality traits that that shadow holds and you're transforming them into the light, the positive aspects of that, let's say, archetype. That's probably a better example. So if you can work with the shadow to understand the positive side or the light side of that shadow, you can gain a lot of potential within yourself to bring more of your self-worth. And I think that's a big part of the creative process. And it's something that in particular has been embraced by artists since the beginning of the twentieth century in a kind of conscious way. I'm thinking about folks like Jackson Pollock, the poet Robert Lowell, you know, these artists who understood that the way to really dip into their creativity was to go into that dark place. and discover something about themselves, some truths about themselves, and then bring that out into the light. And unfortunately, for a lot of those folks, including the two that I mentioned, it didn't end well because it meant that they really struggled psychologically because it is very difficult. I mean, as you both know, I mean, if you're anybody who goes through Jungian therapy, I mean, it is brutal. And it's a lot of work, and it's a tremendous emotional toll on the individual doing it, because you are dealing with a lot of things that you would rather just keep, you know, in a box somewhere and not have to face. But the brave thing that people do who engage in this kind of work, including, I think, these creative folks that we're talking about, is they're willing to go and look in the dark. Mm-hmm. And I can vouch for that. I've been in analysis with the Jungian Analyst for the last three years, over three years. And it has, while it's been such a beautiful time in my life, it has also been extremely, extremely challenging because of everything that I have had to face and have had to face kind of all at once. And it has been a process and a journey, really just understanding as you peel back the layers. And I think of kind of like the veil between the conscious and the unconscious kind of like thins, you really have to stay super grounded and really have somebody that you can work closely with in order to understand everything that's going on. Because the things that can come through, the complexes, the ego, it will fight as hard as possible. as you're kind of having these parts of you die. So you very much do need, I think, appropriate support as you're going through that process because it's super rewarding. But yes, to David's point, it's very challenging as well. And Jung makes that very clear in his writing. He said, you can't do this work on your own. You need somebody who's a guide, who's going to help you. To navigate and negotiate through this, because if you try to do it, I couldn't imagine trying to do this on your this kind of work on your own. I really couldn't. You know, I mean, I've been doing it for for a little longer than Jessica has probably going on about twenty five years and, you know, in and out at various stages of the of the work. And what often happens is you do really deep, intense work for a period, and then you sort of need to sort of sit back and digest all of that. And really, you know, it can't be continual because, first of all, you can't keep that up. But you also need the opportunity to sort of reflect and think about, you know, okay, what the hell does this mean? How is this... changing my sense of self and my identity. And then, you know, once you've sort of figured that out, then you can kind of go back in and do the next step. Right? It's again, it's this is sort of like going into the, you know, you don't dive into the deep end of the pool, right? You got to go in through the shallow end and gradually. And because otherwise, it's just too much of a shock. Yeah, it's intense. Jessica, would you be willing to share something that happened, maybe about the process of that Jungian theory? I know you've talked about it a little bit, but is there something that you can share with me and David and the audience that really was something that manifested huge change in your life? Something that you saw in the dark and then were able to bring it back and be like, okay, this is it. I'm going to work with it. Uh, let's see, what would be a good example of that? I just feel like there's been so much all intertwined with each other. So it's hard to kind of pinpoint. Yeah. Um, but I would say mostly, maybe I'll just explain it a bit more kind of in a general, um, general term. So mostly it's, it's about, um, kind of dealing with these, these things that are top of mind that are challenging for you. And then just going back like layer by layer by layer and, um, really going deep into your unconscious to understand how, um, deeply connected these, what's arising for you is to so many different aspects of yourself, aspects of your life, things that have happened to you over time. And just, I think during that process, what was really helpful for me was to understand where my ego or different aspects of myself that I use the word complex is there's different words that, you know, different groups and communities use. but how these complexes can very much come through very powerfully. And when you're not aware that that's what they are, that it's part of an aspect of your personality that's maybe a bit wounded, maybe a bit protective, when they come through, they can totally take over and you're not really aware of it until you start doing this work. So you're just, as Carl Jung says, the unconscious, it'll drive your fate, right? If you're not aware of it until you bring it to light and bring it to the consciousness. So I think where many people may say, oh, why did I just react that way? Or why did I get so angry? Or why am I so hurt? When you do this work, you start to realize have not only an awareness, but you also can form almost like a relationship with these aspects of yourself so that you can start to recognize and identify when they're coming through. And there's a really good analogy where they talk about these complexes as they're just kind of balls of energy right that are just supercharged so these these things that are superly super energetically charged within you and they've been charged by um different situations that have happened over the course of your lifetime so people hurting you um you know taking advantage whatever that may be um and it's not always bad things lifetime right I mean you know the union the collective unconscious yes it's dipping into the the collective of all of humanity Absolutely. And it may be your your your cultural traditions. It may be, you know, just tracing back. I was talking with a student yesterday about this and the fact that, you know, Jung believes that you can actually experience the trauma of your ancestors. Right. Because it's part of the collective unconscious. Well, and that's some of the stuff that I started to realize because it's like, this doesn't feel like mine. Like I don't have, I can't trace this back to anything else. I can't trace this fear, this wound back to anything else, but it is coming up so loud in these certain situations. And then I started to actually think back to, you know, some of the stuff that, you know, females in the past that had gone through and, and, you know, even women that were doing healing work, what they had gone through, especially going back into my lineage of, um, women that were doing healing work in Ireland and what, um, you know, what's that individual sleep Catholicism did to take over, you know, this type of work that they were doing. So all of this stuff started to make sense. And while painful to experience it, when you can start to identify these charges and feel them, you know when they're gonna come up. So then you can almost pause and say, okay, I'm not going to react here. I need to now kind of negotiate and understand what is needed at this time so that I can maybe soften this current energetic charge. And I think that's the process that over time starts to happen is you start to understand it, bring comfort to it, and it softens. I don't know if it ever goes away, but it does soften over time. Well, you learn to recognize it. Yes. That's part of it is you learn how to recognize it so that you can better deal with it. rather than dealing with it supposedly without understanding what it is. Right. I mean, it's, it's, it's a way of, of, it's a way of, of living your life, of trying to better understand what the hell is going on inside of you on a given at a given moment, rather than just, you know, reacting and saying, you know, oh, well, this is the way that I feel. And you're like, people don't often stop to think, you know, well, Why do I feel that way? What's driving that? Where did it come from? And that's what this kind of work does. But, you know, as you and I have talked many times, George, I mean, you know, most folks are not willing to do that these days. This kind of work is not being done by the general public because most folks just don't have the wherewithal to engage in this kind of work. Or as one of my therapists always used to say, they're not in enough pain yet. Hmm. It's interesting how you brought up spirituality earlier too, because I do think that when you engage in this type of work, I do feel that you can be more successful if you have a strong spiritual or devotion practice that is surrounding this type of work. I believe it's absolutely necessary actually to incorporate whatever it looks like for you to find that grounding, whether it's meditation, yoga, and they're obviously really important to clear that energetic system. and to kind of come into that quiet space so that you can kind of clear out some of the thoughts in your head that are happening oftentimes when you're going through this, but also going into nature and lots of different types of practices. But I believe it's really necessary to allow you to stay grounded through this process and to also pull you out of the unconscious and pull you out of the darkness. It's very easy to go in there. And I find it fascinating. So I could spend a lot of time in there and not even realize how long I've kind of been in this active space of the unconscious in my daily life. So it was really important for me. And David, I know you and I have talked about this. is having these practices to make sure that you're kind of coming in and out, doing the work, coming out. And I think you talked a lot about the integration process and doing it actually for a longer extended period of time, which again, I find is really, really important. Yeah, and the really brilliant thing about Jung, and I think he's brilliant, is that so much of what he's talking about aligns with so many different spiritual beliefs and practices that it really is in many ways accessible, regardless of what you may believe. You can engage in this work as a Catholic, as a Jew, as a Buddhist, as a Hindu. It works because it is really kind of a universal. It seems paradigm shifting, too, but also alienating when you start talking about spending so much time in the unconscious and figuring out these different parts of you that cause you to be reactive in a sort of way and then noticing them in other people and being like, wait a minute, is that me that I notice over there? What's going on there? Like it does have an effect of alienation on some level. Have you found that to be true? It can, but I think it also actually brings you closer to not only your own self, obviously, but potentially to others. Because, you know, I mean, one of the first doctrines in most philosophical traditions is you got to know thyself, right? Socrates, right? You got to know who you are before you can know anything else and know about anybody else. So once you've kind of figured out who the heck you are, it's like now it starts to make a little bit more sense. I mean, I went through this for several years where I just felt like I was always the oddball, right? Because I did X, Y, or Z, I was the strange one and everybody else was quote unquote normal. And once I started to really engage in this work and really start to investigate it, I realized, you know what? It's not me. It's not always me that's the oddball. But it's just I had such a weird subjectivity about it where I couldn't see anything beyond my own space. But doing this work actually allowed me to do that because now I can realize, oh, I can see what people are going through. I get it. I get what the problem is there. I get what the issue is there. And it's not me. It's them. I'll also add too for um for like from a relational perspective I think that it helps you to better understand uh your relationships as well and once we start to understand that our relationships are really just a reflection and a mirror of ourselves it also helps to deepen um that understanding of yourself and I think it also helps you to um also be less reactive, more understanding, more compassionate in relationships as well. Romantic relationships, family relationships, friend, work, whatever it might be. Because if we can truly look at, understand that everyone outside of us is just a reflection of what's going on inside, it continues your path and your journey to that better understanding of what you're going through. And then to David's point, it also does help you to kind of understand others and what they're going through as well. And we start to realize I think how similar we actually are. uh you know everyone has some sort of trauma probably many traumas that they're carrying and um while they're different in the experience and in how somebody experienced them they're what I find is that they're actually quite similar so what people have gone through have more similarities than than differences you know they're obviously unique to the individual but they're um they're fairly consistent I think this goes to the collective unconscious um wounds that we all carry And I think this greater need of really having compassion for each other and also just being more open and curious with each other too. Because I think we tend to like be really super closed off thinking that we're so different, but having more of like a curiosity around each other, with each other, I think helps everybody involved. And those commonalities for Jung present themselves in the form of the archetypes, also in the form of symbols, right? I mean, his book was many books on symbols and the importance of symbols. And so much of it is, it grows out of fundamental myths of our humanity, regardless of where we're from or what our religious traditions are. There are commonalities that just are common about the fact that we're all human beings, that we share some of the same basic history and basic beliefs. Yeah, it's the whole idea of how powerful symbols can be. You know, it reminds me of Eleusis a little bit. Like people would go there and they would take something and then they would sit down and watch this, the Rape of Persephone or something like to watch these plays. But this idea of a symbol that you, Jessica and I could sit down and all watch something in silence, but then come away with a shared understanding of what happened. That's almost more powerful than language in some ways. What do you guys think? Yeah, well, I mean, symbols are so fundamental to who we are as a species and how we operate on a daily basis as a society, as a culture, right? I mean, the fact that, you know, we just sort of universally agree that red means stop as a symbol is just something that we just all have in common, right? So it is, and I think this is what Jessica was talking about earlier, it speaks to that as well, that we really have, much more in common with each other than we think. And a lot of it does sort of come down to that. And so if you start to work with Jungian interpretations of symbols, which I'm intrigued by, animals, colors, you name it, And the overlap then for me with so much of what is happening in Eastern thought, particularly in Buddhist traditions and Jung's work with mandalas, it sort of just, it mushrooms, it just keeps growing. And in some ways as an academic, it's frustrating because there's just so much to do and you just don't know where to start. Yeah. We've talked about the Red Book a little bit, Jessica. We talked about it a little bit when you and I chatted. Yes. Jung's Red Book, which I mean, I haven't even begun to deal with. I've started that and it's fascinating. What I find really interesting too with this work, so I'm a Jungian coach. I got certified to basically use Jungian psychological principles and apply them in more of a coaching modality to kind of really focus on empowering people forward. And what I really appreciate about the use of symbols in this work, symbols, archetypes, if somebody has a symbol that comes up in a dream, in a psychedelic experience, in their unconscious when they're going through the process of exploring whatever we're working on, there's this commonality about the symbol that we can bring into it. But what's most important is always tying it back to the individual. What does that symbol mean for them? there's this collection of experiences that they've had around that specific symbol. So it has while there's this universal meaning, there's also a very individual meaning with these symbols, which I find so fascinating in going through the process with individuals, because we want to kind of bring that knowledge that we have around the archetypes of the symbols into it and then really now take it, take the person on a journey to explore the what, where, and how that symbol has meanings for them. So we can kind of uncover why that symbol is coming through. Because the symbol is coming through for a very personal reason, right? It's coming through. It could be part of this collective thing that we're going through. But in these sessions, a lot of times it's coming through or coming up for a reason that's very personal to them. So it's really interesting to explore their very unique meaning. And ultimately, what is the unconscious trying to say to them? What is the psyche trying to say to them through this symbolic message that it's giving to them to pertain to the challenge or the issue or the topic that we're discussing? And to me, that's the break point. between the jungian approach and the freudian and um you know any freudians on who are watching can can chime in and yell at me in the in the chat but um freud's symbols are to me at least they seem fixed whereas in young the symbols yes they're as jessica says they're universal but they also operate on a personal and individual level and that makes it kind of unique yeah it's it's interesting to think do you do you think it's a language we talk about the symbols and how they can speak to us as individuals and also collectively do you feel like the collective unconscious is is there for everyone to have a conversation with is it is it a field of information that you can pull from or is there a dialogue happening there what do you think jessica I do think so. I think that's where a lot of our thoughts come from and we're kind of grabbing onto them based on whatever belief systems that we've created, whatever belief we have about the person's situation. we're grabbing onto them and then feeding it with whatever energy we want to put into it. And that's where we get, you know, can get very much lost up in the story. So yeah, I do believe that, that it is very much there for us to access. And I think there's value in accessing it. I think there's value in accessing it to understand each other, you know, universally. I think that it's there for us to utilize information that we need to kind of maybe bring the best parts of us forward to understand ourselves and then also to figure out, you know, what's our purpose here on life? What are our unique gifts and how do we share them? So I do believe that the collective unconscious is kind of this reservoir and the unconscious is a reservoir of information. It's a wealth of knowledge that we can have access to through these different modalities, whether it's through Jungian analysis, whether it's through dreams, whether it's through a psychedelic journey with plant medicine. Ultimately, that is where you are going into this space. And you're given a wealth of knowledge to bring forth and then now figure out what to do with it. And that's really where this integration process is super important so that you can understand what that information means for you and how to integrate it into your life. I mean, to me, the collective unconscious is a sort of a thread that runs through all of existence and existence, not just being human beings, but any living thing. It's an energy. Yeah. And we sort of tap into that energy. And so, you know, I like what Jessica is saying about, you know, we sort of get thoughts from it. It's a reservoir. We sort of pull from it. We throw back in. Right. I mean, it's just part of of existence. And I really do. I've always in my mind, at least the thread has always been the thing. It's a thread that runs through and we're kind of hanging on to that thread. Right. love it it's a great way to think about it on that aspect just I'm curious to get your your opinion on what do you think is the relationship or in your opinion what what is the relationship for you between psychedelics altered states and Jungian psychology yeah well I feel as though psychedelics are just kind of a very a let's say a more direct entryway into the unconscious and the collective unconscious and what other realms we may be going into when we engage with those types of medicines. There's value in it, right? Because you are able to now access this space, this kind of vast reservoir of information, of information that's for you, other information that's out there that you can utilize to do your own healing work, to do your own transformation. But there's also, of course, challenges because you are going in there and you're getting a lot. And, you know, you have to be able to manage and handle all of the information that you receive. And that's why the integration process of being involved correlated or connected to psychedelic medicine is so incredibly important because that's when a lot of people can utilize psychedelic medicine and they can have this pretty intense journey and almost just come out a bit more confused than they were going in just because they're not sure what to do with all of the information that they received. You also are bypassing. If you follow IFS, you're bypassing what they would call your managers, your protectors, or you're bypassing, let's say, the ego in other terms. And the ego, the protectors, the managers, they don't like that. So that's another part of this process when you come out. You've bypassed these systems that have been in place to protect you over the course of your lifetime. And now when you come back out, there's this kind of process that you have to go through to have those parts of you be able to soften into this new version of yourself. Because when you go into a psychedelic experience, parts of you are absolutely going to die. Right. You have to let these old parts of you go through this process in this journey. And Jungian is very much that process of going into the unconscious. Now, I believe it's a much more gentle process while it's challenging going through Jungian work. It's a much more, I would say, intentional and gentle process where you're going in with a very targeted intention to work on a very specific thing. So it allows you to kind of go through, let's say, a psychedelic journey and kind of these bite size pieces, which I think can be super maybe a bit more palatable for people. But it is, of course, a bit more of a longer process. But of course, I mean, there are there are lots of different ways of accessing those altered states. I mean, you know, the use of psychedelics is nothing that's new. Right. I mean, it's been around for for thousands of years. We know that. I mean, anthropologists, archaeologists are able to tell us that. But I mean, other traditions, you know, there's other ways of doing that. I'm thinking about things like the deprivation tanks, the isolation tanks, which apparently are back and hot again. Who knew? I mean, I remember them from the nineteen eighties when they were pretty frightening things to do and and and a little bit not sanitary. And now they look clean. I've done them a few times. Me too. They've been upgraded. I guess so. I haven't done it in a long time, so I don't know. I mean, maybe I should try it again and see. But I mean, you know, the isolation tanks, I mean, Native American sweat lodge. I mean, there are lots of different ways of doing this. And, you know, The mystics also engage in extreme ascetic practices like extreme fasting, hair shirts, self flagellation, and it's all intended to reach that state of consciousness. And so it's interesting that That today now we're talking so much about psychedelics. In fact, there was, I don't know if you saw it, there was a big article in yesterday's New York Times and the Science Times on MDMA and PTSD. A really interesting article. I read it this morning. And so... I think that the use of psychedelics today, and I'd be interested to hear what you think about this, how connected that is to our modern sense that everything can be fixed with a pill. Yeah, it's a great question and a great point because I think that you hear a lot of this when people start to engage with psychedelic medicine. You can hear the term people chasing the medicine. They want to continue to go back in. And that's where it's really important for individuals to take a substantial amount of time to integrate those experiences during the journey and Um, I don't think, you know, you can go in for a journey and if you go in for a psychedelic journey, but you don't come out and you don't do that deep work, uh, after the fact with what you've gathered. not going to have the transformation or the outcome that you want you've had a mystical experience and there's been some shifts of course uh but doing that deep work afterwards um is absolutely necessary for that change in evolution and that healing that people are looking for and I think that you know perhaps when people do continue to go back to the medicine they're not actually doing the deep work that's that's necessary um afterwards so that could be a potential But yes, I do think that, you know, psychedelics can kind of fast track that journey into the unconscious and inwards. So, you know, I think at the state that we're at right now, where so many people are suffering, it's not necessarily, it's not a bad thing, right? Because people are transforming and healing from these medicines and they're super powerful. And I always look at them too, as like these catalysts for transformation. You know, you are, when engaging with these, you are going to be a different person. And, you know, I would say in almost, you know, I'd say the vast majority of cases, a better person on the other side. So there absolutely is value. But I hear you on people looking for this quick fix. I think that a lot of people are just in kind of such a challenging state right now. And a lot of people are in a bit of crisis mode that, you know, we do need to have tools like this to kind of pull people out to the other side. so that they can then engage in the other types of practices like meditation, where you can go into an altered state. Tapping into your creativity and getting into flow state to get into that altered state for sure. I just think right now, sometimes where people are at, and I know for me, when I had really troubling anxiety, sitting in meditation or trying to engage in any of those types of practices, It was, it was really challenging for me at that time. So being able to kind of reset that nervous system, get out of that kind of crisis mode was really beneficial to allow me to do other types of practices. Yeah, I mean, I think I think you're exactly right. And I think that part of it is that so many people right now are in that sort of crisis mode for one reason or another. I mean, you know, as I alluded to earlier, I mean, the last two weeks have been absolutely hellish since the inauguration of a certain person and all the insanity that he has spread. And as a result, I mean, I and lots of people I know are just so frustrated and angry and don't know what to do. And I posted something on social media Saturday morning. And within thirty seconds, one of my oldest friends sent me a text and said, I'm worried about your mental health. And I said, yeah, me too. I said, I just don't know what to do. And she said, yeah, she said, we're all feeling that sense of helplessness. And I said, yeah, that's not a good look for most of us. We don't do well with that. We want to take control, but we don't really know what to do. And so I think there is a lot of that sort of crisis feeling for a variety of reasons, I guess is what I'm getting at. I think that's a perfect time for psychedelics. There's nothing you can do. There's nothing you can do. This is way beyond our control. I would add, too, that people that are chasing the medicine, they're not doing big enough doses. If you do a real dose, you are not going to chase that medicine. You need a transformational dose. You need You need something that you sit with and you're like, oh, my goodness. I had this thing all wrong. Or I had this thing way out. I was way wrong here. The natural integration process will happen for you if you take a large enough dose. And on top of that, it's scary. You should be afraid to take that medicine. You should be like, I'm going to eat five. I'm going to eat twelve grams of this. Wait a minute. I think it was Terence McKenna who said, if you take a dose and you don't immediately say, oh my God, I took too much, I think I'm gonna die, then you haven't taken enough. Like you should have, like, if you want that experience, if you want transformation, it's right there. Like, and it works every time, but it's scary and it should be frightening to take. And like that, that would be my message to people that are listening, that are chasing the medicine. Like you're not doing enough. I know that that might not be the sages medicine. William Blake, the poet who was probably somebody who did psychedelics in one, one way or another. And he wrote, you know, you don't know what's enough until you know, it's too much. Yeah. But there's a real relationship with control in psychedelics because you find yourself on the receiving end of I can't control any of this. I really, really do not want to think about this right now. And the more you think that, the harder it comes on. Oh, my God. You're like when you say I don't want to think about this. you might as well be lighting like a bonfire and like land here, land here, because that's what's happening. And I think on some level, psychedelics teaches you, you must sit with this. You must sit with this thought. This is what's bothering you. And I can show you a million movies about it in your mind in this next five hours, but you will learn to sit with this. And once you learn to give up control on some level, you know, I think, I think you're right, David, like so many of us struggle with control, but I, Almost everything is out of our control, right? It's interesting to think about. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, but that is the thing. I mean, as a species, we don't like not being controlled. And that is something which can be really frightening. And so I imagine that when people engage in this kind of practice, and as I say, there's plenty of other things that you can do that would achieve similar states of consciousness. It's frightening. Because it is, you do have to release and relinquish control. And that's scary. I mean, I don't know about you, but I mean, you know, I mean, in the work that I've done, you know, I mean, it is. I mean, you know, the most intense work that I think I've done, and it was very early on, was in hypnosis. And I mean, that you have to completely give yourself over. Your control is gone. You know, the therapist is guiding you through. And as a result, as a result, though, I mean, that was some of the most impactful work that I did. Yeah, I know for me, some of my psychedelic experiences that have been, let's say the scariest, have been the most impactful. And that's where, you know, most of a lot of the transformation has happened. And my, you know, what I had been working on was anxiety and fear. And I had dealt with that for a vast majority of my teenage and adult life. And it was It was pretty challenging. And it would just be these kind of this rush of worry, fear and doom that would come over me out of nowhere and for no apparent reason. And I didn't know what to do about it. And oftentimes it came around at night when I had to try to sleep. So, you know, I worked with these medicines a lot to overcome that. But to overcome that through the journeys, I had to sit with fear. I had to very much sit with fear. So I would feel that on one of my journeys, I had the most blissful, beautiful experience of love. And then the other part of it, I had the most fearful experience that I think I've ever encountered. And what I had to do during the psychedelic experience was Choose. I had to choose. Do I want to sit in this fear? Because it's really easy to stay in it. Even if you want to get out of it, it's hard because now you have to choose to go into another space, which feels scary for some reason, even though you're in a really scary place that you don't want to be in. And this is life, right? This is kind of getting into... the habits that you've created that don't feel good, that you don't want to be in anymore, but because you have to go into something new, the unknown, if you will, it's really scary. Most people will stay in a habitual place that's more challenging for them or kind of damaging to them just because it's what they know. So I had to go into this place of fear and and then find my way out of it and choose to go back into that feeling of love. And what it taught me was that this is what I need to do every single day of my life with every choice that I make. I can always come at something with feeling scared about it or feeling empowered or courageous or loving, whatever it might be. And that was something that I had to learn, but it was really challenging. And it took me a long time to really integrate that And that's kind of what I had experienced many times early on when I started working with psychedelic medicine. And, you know, another time when I went into it as well, and I did, you know, a very heavy dose of hero's dose, if you will, in Jamaica. And it was, again, kind of going into this dark place where I wanted to curl up and cry. But instead I sat up in meditation and through that experience and facing it, I was able to get into, again, this most blissful experience that I had ever felt. And it was this constant teaching of understanding fear and understanding anxiety. And knowing that every single day in every single moment, I'm going to have to choose between fear and love and I get to choose. And it's still a practice that I have to do every single day. And you would think it would just come like this, but it's something that we have to constantly do because there's so much fear and anxiety and everything that's coming into us all the time. And it's this process of shedding through different practices like meditation, yoga, whatever it might be, while also making those active choices every single time. But I think that what the thing that frightens people away from doing this kind of work is that it will uncover things that they that are going to make them uncomfortable and then they don't know what to do with it. Right. It's OK. I've worked all this out. I discovered all these things. Now, what do I do? And so that's why it's so important to have somebody like Jessica, to have somebody as a therapist who can walk you through, who kind of knows the roadmap, if you will, to help you to deal with those things, because we can't deal with them ourselves. I mean, I know when I've hit sort of brick walls in my therapy over the years, and it usually has has ended up in being that I needed to change therapists. It's because that therapist had helped me to discover a bunch of things. But couldn't figure out now what I was supposed to do with it. Like, okay, you helped me. I understand. I see all that. Now what? Yeah. And they didn't know what to do with it. Now what? And so that for me was always sort of the indicator. It's like, all right, it's time to change therapists now. And I've done that, you know, over the last, good Lord, four years. And, you know, many times. Is there a... Is there a real problem? Imagine coming to the understanding that what... You recently said that people are afraid to uncover that they may have done something wrong. But isn't that the root of people being unhappy? Does that kind of make sense? I think that uncovering this thing, what are your thoughts on that? To me, it's the first noble truth in Buddhism. There's suffering. Suffering exists. And so to sort of uncover the cause of your suffering And to understand that and then, you know, to move on from there to the the second noble truth, which is, you know, there's there's a way out, right? I mean, there's this there's a way to fix this, but you can't fix it until you understand that that it exists and that it's there until you admit that it's there. And that's what in Jungian analysis is dealing with things like the shadow self is all about, right? It's things we'd rather not look at and rather not think about. But when we do, They will ultimately make us better people and help us to be more content and happy, which was, you know, supposedly the goal of life for Aristotle. He never really was really good about explaining what that meant, but that's what it was. It's mind-blowing to me. See, this is why we have to do either more of these or we have to do longer sessions because we're almost at an hour. And I feel like we just kind of got the conversation going on so many levels. I do have another question. I got a bunch of questions from the chat. So let me just get a few in here and we'll move on from there. Are we in the midst of a cultural initiation? And if so, what is the threshold we must cross? Who wants to take that one? Maybe I'll start, and David, I think you should dive in here, but I actually, somebody that I trained from, actually a mentor that I trained from, had talked about COVID being an initiation and actually being an initiation, a collective initiation into the unconscious. And I very much believe that that's true. And it actually is terrible and horrific as it was for so many people. It actually did help a lot of people transform, have new perspectives, have new awareness, which is ultimately the process of going into the unconscious, right? You're going into the unconscious to change your limiting beliefs, to see in with a broader perspective. And so I do very much believe that, you know, All of these like really challenging times are initiations for us to face the shadow and now find a way to kind of bring that darkness and transform it into light. Any of these collective traumatic experiences, I think, would fall under that. I mean, I'm thinking about, you know, let's go back to, you know, folks who lived through the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Then, you know, move forward. The Kennedy assassination, MLK, RFK. Right. I mean, the various traumatic events that have happened to us as a culture right up through things like nine eleven and then COVID. Right. I think that they all have that kind of an effect on us. It is an initiation on a road to an awakening. And I think that the the major point there then is people have a decision to make. Right? It's, you know, it's Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken, right? It's, you know, am I going to go down that path, right? Which is the path that, you know, it's well worn. Everybody's walked there already. It looks safe. Or am I going to take the path that looks like nobody's walked on yet? That's available to me. It's more frightening. It's, as Jessica said earlier, it's unknown. Am I going to take that chance? Right. And of course, at the end of the poem, Frost says he took the road not taken and that's made all the difference. Yeah, I think that's pretty consistent, too, for people is when they do go through that road not taken. That's where they find these kind of hidden gems that are available on their journey. a lot of people when they're dealing or struggling with all of the people that are hurting right now and all of the people that are directly impacted and trying to figure out what can we do for those people. Oftentimes what they'll say is you need to work on yourself. The best thing you can do for everybody else is to work on yourself, to heal yourself, to transform yourself. One, because you are impacting or contributing to the collective unconscious and kind of raising that frequency, that vibration to a higher level of consciousness to help other people kind of raise to a higher state as well. So by you having that healing and transformation, You're helping yourself, but you're helping every single person around you. There's a very vast ripple effect that happens from the work that you do on yourself. And then the other aspect of it is that you are then connecting to your own divine gifts. Like, why are you are uniquely here on this earth? And what is your purpose? What are you meant to give to others? So by going into the darkness in that path, you know, not often traveled. You're uncovering who you truly are, your highest self, so that you can determine or almost learn what those unique gifts are and then share them with the world. Now you're feeling joy, you know, fulfilling your purpose. And then you're also contributing to the greater good because you're offering what your kind of services, what you're here to do in service for others. Yeah, it makes me think of what they tell you on the plane, right? If the air things fall down, right, you know, use your own first and then help somebody, right? But we tend, especially folks who are empathic and empathetic, that's hard to do. It's hard to do and it's a real challenge. And so I do think that so much of this is about how we connect to each other and care for each other. This morning, I was walking outside my office and students study outside my office here. My office is in the library. And there's a group of these three young women who I always see together. I don't know any of them. I don't know who they are. I've never talked with them. They're not students who are in any of my classes. But the three of them are three young Muslim students. They wear head coverings. And I always see them together. And so I walked out of my office this morning and one of them was sitting there and she was doing some work on her computer. She was by herself. And I walked over and I sat with her and I just said, hey, is everything OK? I mean, I just wanted to make sure, with everything that's going on right now, that she was okay. Because my campus is... pretty white bread. And so, you know, she stands out and I wanted to, and I even said to her, I said, nobody's giving you a hard time. I said, you know, everything's okay. And she said, yeah, you know, she, she thanked me for it. And I, I went back in my office, I got my business card and gave it to her. And I said, you know, if you have any problems, this is where I am. And, you know, come see me. And I do think that some of it is just us letting other, letting these people who are suffering know that they're not alone. Right. Or letting these people who are potentially in a potentially dangerous spot, whether that's psychological or physical, that they're not alone. And that's a big part of the kind of work that you do, Jessica, and working with your clients is, you know, is helping them to know that, you know, you're not alone in this journey. Right. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. For sure. Yeah, I think it's necessary just to let people know that we are here, that we are here for each other. Because I do think everyone truly does want to genuinely help each other. And how healing community is for one another as well. And I think we need more of that, more opportunities to bring community, people together in community, people of all walks of life together in community. There's actually something really beautiful that I just saw, something called the Human Library, where people, it was such a beautiful story where you go and you don't get a book, you get a person. So you can sit down with that person, just hear their story. People oftentimes just need to be heard. They just need an active listener to sit there and hear everything that they've been experiencing in that and going through and like that alone can be healing so if we can kind of bring to get people together in um in community to just share their stories to um you know offer a hand on their shoulder a hug whatever it might be I mean it's truly transformational just something yeah the human library is a global initiative so it's a really cool thing um if folks aren't aware just google it and Uncle Google will help you. This is why George does his podcast, too, though. It's that sense of community, right? It's bringing people together the way that he has. Yeah, thank you. I'm blessed to have both of you here. I thoroughly enjoyed my time, and I'm still left wanting more. But as we're landing the boat here, landing the boat, landing the plane. As we're landing the plane, I just wanted to give you both some time to talk about some of the projects you have going on and where people can find you. So Jessica, maybe you could start and where can, like if the people in the sound of our voice that have heard us, where can they find you? How can they reach out to you? And what do you got coming up? Sure. So LinkedIn, you can find me on LinkedIn, Jessica Tracy. And let's see a few different projects I'm working on. I am focused on creating access to awareness, education and access to psychedelic medicine. So with some of that work, it's focused on educating and creating more awareness around these medicines and then also supporting access through advocating for insurance coverage and actually educating employers and unions on the value of offering psychedelic medicine to their employees and their union members, and also providing a mechanism for them to actually fund those services so they can help with the affordability aspect of access. I'm also doing some work in coaching, of course. So I am a Jungian coach. Let's see, after a year of doing this, I just got a website launched, so it's still coming soon. So there you can find me at jessicatheyungian.coach. And yeah, I would love to explore working with individuals and helping them on this journey. And then also beyond that, I do work with drumming, so drum circles, so bringing that community together. My partner and I do some work with the djembe. So We're really excited to be bringing this into communities, into different corporations. And I would say they're kind of some of the ones that are more top of mind right now. But yeah, lots of work primarily in the psychedelic space and then also in the kind of individual healing and transformation space as well. And there's a number of different practices that I pull in kind of a little bit beyond just the Jungian coaching. Jessica, is the drum circles of those just for women or are they co-ed as it were? Co-ed. Co-ed. Yes. Yes. We do both. David, you have written some amazing books. Word on the street is you might have another one coming out. Where can people find you? I'm finishing up the next book, which is on angels, demons, and demigods in pop culture. Probably be out, I think, in the fall. and working on a few other projects at the moment as well. Doing my teaching, a lot of teaching this semester, so pretty busy with teaching and getting ready to take a group up to New York City in a few weeks for a week-long study away trip where we're going to do museums and historic sites in New York City, which of course is my hometown. So I'm looking forward to that. Nice. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you for hanging out. Yeah, go ahead. It's actually pretty important. My partner and I are hosting a retreat, a psilocybin and drumming retreat in the British Virgin Islands, April the twenty-seventh. So that I should mention before we drop off here. Is scholarship money available for that, Jessica? Well, hey, I'm always down to find creative ways to help people, help people attend. That's great. I should say my website is davidasolomon.com, and you can find all my books and speaking, lectures, all the consulting stuff. Everything is up there. Where can people find those tickets, Jessica, if they want to check out that retreat? You know what? I think the best place to get this, let me just pull up the actual. Hopefully not Ticketmaster. No. Okay. Okay. I will be sharing something soon. I did not share that. Okay. So the best place to go for that is wake.net clinical retreats. So wake.net slash clinical retreats. And it's April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April, April And I'll be sharing some more stuff on Instagram and also on LinkedIn. All right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for hanging out with us. Go down to the show notes. We'll put all the links down there for you to check out David and Tracy and reach out to them. Incredible individuals. I hope you enjoyed this podcast today. That's all we got. Jessica and Dr. David, please hang on briefly afterwards, but to everyone else, have a beautiful day. Aloha. Thank you.