The Taproot Podcast - 🐉J.F. Bierlein on Poetry, Myth, and Metaphor -www.gettherapybirmingham.com

Episode Date: February 28, 2023

📚🌍 Dive into the Fascinating World of J.F. Bierlein: Author, Teacher, and Multilingual Scholar 🌟📖 Journey back to my middle school days, where my passion for depth psychology was ignited by the captivating works of J.F. Bierlein. As the brilliant mind behind "Parallel Myths" and "Living Myths," J.F. paved the way for my profound interest in exploring the depths of the human psyche. 📚💫 Beyond his impressive literary achievements, J.F. Bierlein is a distinguished educator at American University in Washington, where he imparts his wisdom in the Washington Semester and World Capitals Program. Alongside his academic endeavors, he contributes his expertise to a social sciences consulting firm, expanding his impact even further. 🎓🌍 A true polymath, J.F. Bierlein's intellectual curiosity extends to various domains. He delves into theology, existentialism, art, opera, and the study of classical Greek, Sanskrit, Hebrew, and numerous other languages. This multilingual scholar's diverse interests reflect his deep appreciation for the humanities and his commitment to exploring the complexities of the human experience. 🌟🌍📚 Step into the realm of myth, poetry, metaphor, psychology, and mysticism through J.F. Bierlein's profound works. Uncover the interconnectedness of ancient myths, the power of symbolism, and the insights into the human condition offered by luminaries like Carl Jung. Let the realms of depth psychology and existentialism captivate your imagination and expand your understanding of the human psyche. 🌌💭 Join the discourse and embark on a transformative journey through the captivating writings of J.F. Bierlein. Immerse yourself in the world of gods, archetypes, and the mysteries that lie within the human soul. 🌟📚🔑 📖💡 #JFBierlein #ParallelMyths #LivingMyths #DepthPsychology 🌍🎓 #MultilingualScholar #Educator #Humanities 🔍🌌 #Mythology #Symbolism #Existentialism #CarlJung 📚🌸 #LiteraryInspiration #Mysticism #Poetry #Metaphor    Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.com/ Check out the youtube: https://youtube.com/@GetTherapyBirminghamPodcast Website: https://gettherapybirmingham.podbean.com/ Podcast Feed: https://feed.podbean.com/GetTherapyBirmingham/feed.xml Taproot Therapy Collective 2025 Shady Crest Drive | Hoover, Alabama 35216 Phone: [phone] Fax: [phone] Email: [e-mail] The resources, videos and podcasts on our site and social media are no substitute for mental health treatment. Please find a qualified mental health provider and contact emergency services in your area in the event of an emergency to a provider in your area. Our number and email are only for scheduling at Taproot Therapy Collective are not monitored consistently and not a reliable resource for emergency services.

That boy needs therapy. Lie down on the couch. Frontier Psychiatry. Well, we'll just go ahead and start where I can introduce you. So I'm here with J.F. Bear Lane. Am I saying that correctly? Close enough. Normally I kind of maybe over-prepare for these, but it's been such a crazy week. I've rescheduled three times and I don't have a ton of structure to the interview but i think the themes are going to be mythology

and poetry um because you're a scholar and a poet and a gentleman anything else oh golly uh you're too generous uh i think it's really fun because I just want to give a little background. Joel was very kind when he contacted me. He said, you know, I read your books when I was a kid, which made me feel ancient, of course, and really enjoyed them. And it's so funny because I always spend time discussing my books saying, you know, I wrote them 30 years ago. And this is my OCD side where I say I found the following errors in them. And it's really funny because I got some contact back from people saying, you know, great book, but this was wrong.

And I would write back and say, you're absolutely right. And the three examples I give are I was all excited because the city of mars pennsylvania it's named after the roman god no you've never a man named mars uh maybe he was named after the roman god yeah it might be and then the other one i thought was pretty funny was london the city of london i don't know where i got this from oh it was named after these the celtic god luke and about eight people said all from britain of course said where did you get that crazy idea that was another one it's londonium isn't it isn't it yeah but but yes and then the third one which is what the one i i blush when i admit to is hetero in greek of, right? But hetaira means a courtesan.

And so hetairism, I had read it in a different way. And what it was saying was the period of hetairism was, believe, the period of life analogous to the courtesans. And I missed that completely. It went right past my vision. But I cannot start an interview without, you know, confessing those three mistakes and somebody else, well, if you feel that way, then the rest of your book must be pretty good. And I said, well, I hope so. You know, I think, you know, it's always normal to make mistakes when you're compiling anything that's the

size of a book, but also, you know it's going to be in anything. But I think what made your books better is that they're not strictly academic. They're about very intelligent concepts, but they're not pretentious. And there isn't that not not even pretension, but there's an academic type of writing where you can tell that someone is used to somebody behind them being like, oh, you didn't cite your source. How do you know that emotion comes from, you know, like're like okay just sit with the metaphor for a minute man like i'm not trying you know and then you can tell that there's some people that when they're writing they're trying to qualify everything and lay out these terms and define what the terms mean and explain why they're there before they tell it say anything and it makes the books kind of a miserable read

you know like academic writing has its purpose but the purpose is research it's it's not well you know it's funny you should say that because i all of my all of the myths i cite in my books i always have you know references in the back of the book so if someone wants to know they can look but what i've found most useful is and this is a result of exactly what you're talking about reading works saying you know a lot of people i talk to say will you just tell me what the heck this myth is says what is the story here what is the narrative and you know i found that that people got more out of it and then what's really interesting is they ask more important questions and by important questions i mean not just about the meaning of the myth but how the myth informs their sense of meaning.

And that, I thought, was a much better approach than being too dry and academic. Because that's kind of where I was trying to take people. You know that from reading my books. to contemplate and uh what was it the uh chinese philosopher moses used to say that you know you can't learn anything without self-reflection well when you read a myth it's got to be like how does this affect me what is its sense on my meaning and i that's kind of where i was coming from so well i i plagiarized some of it i think in like sixth grade uh for a sermon because it was like a youth sunday or whatever and you had to give the sermon at the Episcopal Church. And I was doing something about sitting in the imagery of the Bible or sitting in the imagery of the story.

And you had a chapter about water and water showing up in myths and all these facts about water. And I remember copying and pasting a lot of lines from that into the sermon. So your words have come from the pulpit, too. Well, the statute of limitations is out, so I'm not going to bother you. I didn't make any money off the sermon. No, there you go. That's the whole thing. But it's pretty funny, though, when I hear people have quoted me and so on.

A couple of really funny things, before I get into some of my later work and what I've been doing, a couple of great funny stories to tell is I'm more popular in Brazil than I mean the United States and I find this totally funny because they sold the Portuguese rights and I speak and read Portuguese so I got to read the manuscript which is pretty cool and make my little you know notes and so on. And I started getting calls for interviews with outlets in Brazil. And what was funny was, and they knew I spoke Portuguese, so it was really funny. And at one point, I think it was, my sales in Brazil were higher than they were in the United States and Canada.

It happens. It happens. You hit the Z-ge to some other country like Japan. A lot of times something will blow up there, you know, 10 years later or something. I think it's Brazil. It's some South American country, but there was this show that was like on APT,

just Alabama public television when I was a kid. And it was like a weirder version of Bill Nye, the science guy. It's called Beekman's world. So there'd be a guy that was like an Iraq costume and they would would do science experiments it was like real wacky so for some reason that is still you know no one even remembers it here for some reason it's like huge in this South American country it's like still on tv being rerun and the guy like went to live there because he's basically a celebrity but it's a show to teach kids science. It's weird, but it spoke to something in the culture.

Oh, very strange. I love stuff like that. That is fun. But yeah, go ahead, sir, please. Well, I guess just so for the listeners to introduce you, we've been wanting to talk for a while, so probably want to qualify so other people can understand the conversation. I'm a therapist now, and I write a lot about myth and psychology and the fusion of those things

and religion and young and um a lot of that i think you know i was born in 87 but i think it was still in the water from the 70s the joseph campbell stuff and um i so i read a lot of like science fiction and fantasy but i didn't really read a lot of nonfiction. And then he was in fifth or sixth grade, and a friend of our family gave me a gift certificate to the bookstore. So I went and picked your book out because I opened it to the story of the Hindu pantheon. I don't have the book on me, but somebody goes to talk to the god God and he's like, how many gods are there? And they're like, well, there's 130. And he's like, yeah, but really, how many are they?

And they're like, well, they share an aspect. There's really 50. And he's like, no, but really, how many are there? And he's like, well, there's three. He's like, well, how many are there? And it's like, okay, fine, you got me. It's really, I'm in all of them. Like, there's really just one, you know?

And it was like, and I started thinking about the way that religion, there's a universalness to it, but then there's also something that's very culturally unique. And then it's this people are talking about basically their life and their existence in a unique voice, but they're all describing the same thing, even though I don't really like the comparative religion trope that all religions are the same. I don't think that's true. And it was like, just open this door like what comparative religion was and all this stuff and i started getting into that and i read about mythology and all these things forever and people would always be like well joel likes history so he's reading these stories and it's like it's not history it's psychology you know like um and but it was no one really got that and it really opened a door. So it's exciting to talk to you now and see.

So what brought you to wanting to write about mythology and doing those books? We have them in our professional library at work, and we let patients and clinicians borrow them. I tried to grab both of them, and they were both checked out. So hopefully we'll get them back. Well, that's a great introduction uh i i've always been a person who loved to read stories i was kind of a i guess you'd say introverted introspective kid and i remember one time my parents uh i think they wanted to shut me up so they said let's give this kid a book and leave'll leave us alone.

And the book was a mythology book. And I got into it. And that's probably about, I would say, 10 or 11. And it was a mythology for children. And it was Greek and Roman mythology and some Norse. And then I said, this is really good stuff. My grandparents then said, oh, that's, my grandparents said, oh, this is the birth

of an intellectual experience for this child. So they decided that they would bestune me with books, which all which I read. And then when I was in college and taking a course, I had a wonderful professor and this guy and I, I'll give a shout out to the late Theodore Ludwig. And this guy and I could talk for hours about mythology. And he was a fascinating guy.

He was a Lutheran pastor and a theologian and a scholar of mythology and all these things. And he said, you know what you need to do? You need to go, you need to get a copy of The Golden Bough by Fraser. And go sit on the beach sometime this I did that. And then it was the whole obsession I had with what are the common things that make us tick? All human beings have stuff that make them tick. And mythology kind of is a record of that search for meaning and what makes us tick and a reflection of it at the same time that makes some sense and so i thought that was really interesting and so i just continued to read and everything else in my my addiction to languages and also helped me out

because i was able to then look at some you know even some primary sources with three dictionaries and a magnifying glass so you don't think i'm that clever uh how many languages do you speak you were speaking like in three or four different languages when we're on the phone telling a story about going to south america oh but how many languages are you fluent in enough uh you know i'm picking up english pretty well uh but actually my latest thing is i'm is turkish i really enjoy it it's not in new york and we've made three trips to turkey i have i'm going to give a shout out to my wonderful turkish teacher in istanbul seda surel and uh and you know you can watch all those great turkish soap operas understand them now without subtitles which

which is great and by the way i want to talk about archetypes okay i'm going to tell you why i know an archetype is i will use turkish drama as a way to explain what archetypes are every turkish drama has the kindly and innocent uh young lady who is being abused by a wrathful father and or mother then there's always the sweet old lady who's the cleaning woman but knows all of their dirty secrets and then there's always the dashing but poor young man who's the hero there's always some vile vile rich spoiled brat kid and his rotten parents and disney movie oh it's it is it's like you know hallmark uh all that stuff well it's so funny as if you know someone were to ask me what is an archetype i'd say watch a turkish drama or actually probably any soap opera and you find

the same type of characters and i said really that is what goes on in myth you've got very much this these archetypes and where do they come from well jung tells us that their image is in our collective unconscious uh but it's they occur everywhere they're fascinating because they occur in every culture and that was another thing that fascinated me in reading the myths that they you know some of the plots even i get one of one of my books I say there's a Blackfoot American Indian story that matches to an Egyptian story I mean that match the Bible story but the Bible story if the story yeah they were neighbors right but Blackfoot are out in the middle of the North America and it's just all of the material is there and levy Strauss and structural, they love that stuff.

But I always felt that it's a sense of meaning is what that's about. That we all, human beings, you know, we're in this time now where people are all tribal. And they don't necessarily... They're still fighting about myths. You know, they're fighting about mythology. They don't share myths. They have common myths. And they don't see the commonality of other

people's myths or the commonality of other people and you know this creates strife and all stuff and i of course you know as as you do we try to lessen others suffering and try to make life a little better for people and that's one of the things i think you can do through the study of myth is you start saying ah i am i have cultural differences but the me what makes me tick is a lot like every other person out there in this world and that will change how i view and treat other people well it's interesting with the the doing a podcast that's kind of rooted in brain-based medicine and depth psychology is like union the union stuff in the depth psychology like it informs everything so it's we've talked to musicians and architects and urban planners a guy reached out after our urban planner documentary and he was like or after our urban

planning interview with andre strani somebody sent me their manuscript that now is getting published which is i'm proud of him maybe he'll be on here one day, but he had written a book about using Jung and mysticism to do urban planning, like how to find the archetypes of the way that people want to interact with a design space. There's a lot of things in Jungianism that are just everyday life. You just say, aha, that's it. I'm not going to get into a long discussion but i mean there's archetypalism but also animus anima the shadow all these things you see manifested and and you more than i'm sure but you see it manifested all over the place and they kind of help you navigate a

little bit i feel it's a lens that lets you understand yourself and other people in a way that is gentler, I think? And you can navigate life better. Yeah. Navigate with that sense of meaning that I think everything boils down to. So you started reading mythology as a kid. Did you ever get into psychology or you stayed in math? What did your academic or what did your track look like as a professional? I won't really go into it. You don't want to go into it?

I won't really go into it too much because now I'm working in a consulting firm. We manage contracts for companies to visit with the federal government, but it went into political science and economics. I was teaching as an adjunct in the Washington semester program at American University. And I used to tell people my night job was mythology, that I read and did so many things. And I've had a couple of people who are true scholars, which I didn't claim to be, in the field contact me. And they said, we like your book or we're interested in your ideas, so on. I said, well, I'm going to tell you I I don't have pretension to

be you know this a great deep scholar of the topic I would say rather I'm a really really interested amateur I'm a really very uh emotionally engaged reader of mythology and one of the people I talked to uh actually was a chair of religions at a university, said to me, yeah, but you know what you're talking about. That was pretty funny. It kind of made my day. So, yeah, that was my trajectory. My trajectory wasn't the usual.

And as far as psychology goes, I don't think you can study mythology without bumping against psychology every step of the way. I think that's good. in the sense of meaning i i'm you know you hear me say it over and over again i think that so much is important about human beings having a sense of meaning and navigating their ways through life i think that's and i think a lot of things that used to give us a sense of meaning and hope are going away in the world you know even the younger generations you know there's polls and they don't even think the planet will be

around for their kids in the same capacity that it is now or that the econ the economic system will allow them to have any their kids to have any kind of semblance of life like we have and not saying that's true or false you know but that that's a belief you know people who grew up with an iphone you know think before they're you know 13 they are already sitting with this pretty dark existential stuff and when you see that in therapy it's like the generational difference used to be 10 years apart now it's like when i see somebody 25 and somebody 19, the difference is vast, you know, the way that they see the world. Well, I agree with you. And I also find fascinating all this, you know, the fascination with apocalyptic stuff like zombie stuff and all that.

And, you know, and I've had conversations, very intelligent, rational people said, you know, zombie apocalypse is strange and probably is very obviously fiction, but that type of apocalyptic thing is not so crazy. And they really think that. And then when COVID came out, I remember a number of people, younger people, especially saying to me, well, you know, this is life imitating art. We've had all these movies like outbreak and all this stuff. And, and here we are with this. And, you know, is life imitating art we've had all these movies like outbreak and all this stuff and and here we are with this and you know is there going that whole year was like

you know political catastrophe and plague and fires and yeah i know when you know brimstone and food famine like it was just like the biblical yeah that was my company always when did the locusts show up you know but yeah but i mean what you talked i'm still an optimist but i'm old you know but i also think that you know one thing when you get old is you you've survived so many train wrecks that you say i wouldn't worry about this too much but uh well i think it's a combination of things are probably not sustainable there is going to be a change at some point. And kids just have access to information where they were able to ask that question at six to Google.

Whereas most people get to college and they're like, oh, what if nothing means anything? You know, that's the first time they encounter each year. Anything is, you know, in their 20s. And now kids are sitting with that stuff at five which is probably deprived of the uh pleasure of ignorance that others have enjoyed and i just say when you talk to a seven-year-old who sounds like schopenhauer that's very very sobering well so you you just did you um ever study young or do any union psychology or were you just kind of interested in myth? All of the above, actually.

All of the above. Mr. Prolific Reader. Yes. Well, also, the other thing, too, is I actually had a group of friends who had a Jungian reading group. And this is almost 40 years ago. And that was really interesting. And I read German, so I was another reason to read Jung and and unlike Freud Jung is readable in German uh Freud Freud hurts my brain when I read

try reading him in German but Jung I can get through pretty easily and and it's interesting because I like when he discusses his trips, like his trips among the American Indians and describes his experiences with them and so forth and how their mythology informs their sense of meaning and how they navigate through life. And I think that that's something that I'm still obsessed with. And my poetry reflects that as well. But I always

feel like life is hard enough. I'm sure you feel the same way. If you can somehow help people navigate through life, you're making your own life meaningful. I love the job that I have now, just being able to sit

with patients. I don't like the business part is kind of a means to an end, just to make sure other people can work and we can build a clinic but i don't live for that i live for just sitting in a room with people and um helping them make meaning even when you can't make meaning yeah that's true and work always interrupted my gardening poetry writing it's just a shame and win winemaking. I was not interrupted, you know. You make wine? Yeah, of course. And I got to do that. That's good for you.

We live in Texas and we have grapes. I mean, what's wrong with, you know, it's all good stuff. So, yeah, I mean, but it is. I've always felt most useful thing we can do is help other people navigate through life. That's, I guess, the way I would put it in. And mythology is built to help people navigate through life. I mean, my second book. It's an attempt to make meaning. Yeah.

My second book, Living Myths, like each stage of your life has a myth that has got a myth of some culture or many cultures that help you to navigate that phase of your life. I know you've read them, but just for the listeners, in case anyone's not familiar, the Iliad of Merchea did Sacred and the Propheted, which is a pretty early book about study of religion and mythology. One of the things he did was he would find these aboriginal tribes that had a stick, and the whole history of the tribe is written on the stick. And the stick is the tent pole of your tent.

And then in the morning, it falls in a direction. And then you go where the stick tells you to go. And the great world axis. That's so well. So that's what was making their meaning. You know, and if the stick pointed to a river, oh, great. The stick wanted us to have water. Thank you, stick. If it goes to a mountain, oh, it's a holy mountain. meaning you know and if the stick pointed to a river oh great the stick wanted us to have water thank you stick if it goes to a mountain oh it's a holy mountain thank you stick i appreciate it and he would talk to the tribes where the stick would have been lost

in a flood or stolen by an enemy or something and the people would just wander and die like they had no ability to make meaning out of without the stick and how many and how many people do we encounter right yeah i think that's the problem. We've lost our stick or we're fighting about which stick the sticks say to go different directions. But that's the primal myth is it's just this is order and this is chaos. And somebody goes from order into chaos and then turns the chaos into order. You know, that's the primal myth. And, you know, you can get into all the archetypes that make that process more complicated.

But that's all it is. It's what psychology is. it's what myth is well i look at and look at hindu mythology too right it's like you know things are going to be created they're going to decay and they're going to be destroyed you can't get around it and but it'll happen again and again and again. And I always tell people, I say, you know, that's a very pessimistic worldview. I say, is it really? Not really. Not really. It's a realistic point of view that, you know, I've been reading. And that everything is a dream, that the vision is dreaming everything into existence.

But eventually, when it wakes up, it'll just be gone. We're just, we're just. Well, yeah, the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi? Uh-uh. I don't know. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. I just stimulated the Zhuangzi story. Zhuangzi had this thing

called Zhuangzi's Butterfly. And Martin Heidegger thought this was the coolest thing ever. He thought this was very exciting. And which Zhuangzi said, I woke up from a dream where i was a butterfly and i was you know flitting about from flower to flower and getting nectar and all this happy stuff and then i woke up and i was juan z again and he said you know ah am i a butterfly that dreams about juan z or my Zhuangzi who dreams about being a butterfly I just love that story and then he said yeah he said you know it was fun being a butterfly

you know and I just like the way he said that though it's like you know and Martin Heidegger thought that was a great story he was a big fan of that story it's probably challenging to some of Heidegger's stuff too because he was all that language is the house of being and you know you're trapped with the cognition so if you're a butterfly and you don't have language and you still exist what are you you know fine and saying and does yeah he was the happy guy yeah it's been a long time since my heidegger classes it's funny being in time is not a fun read in English. No. Un sein.

Un sein. Anyway, it just sounds so awful in German. Anyway, actually, I'm a great fan, though, of Karl Jaspersen. I guess he was a great fan of myth. And he was the man who came up with the idea of the Axial Age. All these religious, great religious thinkers emerged around the world somewhat simultaneously. And, you know, some, I think, did inform each other and some did not. But he's a great one for saying, you know,

he never took a Jungian tact, but he was a great one, though, for saying that, you know, it's all about meaning. People have got, like you said about this in richard out of the stick it's all about meaning everything everybody wants to do is about finding meaning and navigating life and that uh you can tell people what to expect in life but until they experience it they don't know how to navigate it that's very on it our order making i mean i think part of the contradiction of human nature is our order making principle in our ego that is the organizing principle of the psyche is what stops us from

making meaning because we cling to it and too rigidly and so we have to dissolve it and then go under the ego and under language even into the body and the emotional and the Transcendental space and that is how we come back from the descent You know like Campbell says in the hero's journey or Jung says with the shadow To we come back with a greater meaning from that, but we can't quite take all of the information from that place with us You know, I was a of the information from that place with us you know yeah a whole process of life is finding God behind God in other words mm-hmm what you think of as God is gonna be shattered by what God is in reality to the next phase thought till I can't

about that because it doesn't stop that the reality continues to unfold as you as you know it and as you cry and reality of god continues to unfold as you as you know it and as you grow right and it's a reciprocity of self as well uh well i think that's the problem with a lot of different models of psychology is that they're perfectly fine if you're here you know so if you're like coming out of recovery or if you're 21 and you're you broke up with your boyfriend for the first time in college or this you know they're they're fine with helping you with that but you know 10 20 years of cognitive behavioral therapy i you know i can't imagine you'd be doing the same thing like what is it ervin yalom's the existential philosopher the existential psychologist and

he would always kind of poke fun at the cognitive people that um don't really do anything other than uh ego management strategies which are which is fine you know but it was always like i mean when cbt therapists get sick why don't they come see me why don't they go to another cbt therapist if it's so great and it's a script you know you're you're if the client says this then you say this is manualizable and because it's manualizable you already know how it works so there's no point going to see one and then there's a lot of people too who say they do cbt um but then when you sit with them in therapy or you work they're really doing more of an attachment existential thing you know they've figured out you know physician heal thyself oh that's great stuff yeah so i mean all these metaphors for mythology i mean it's

that i think that's one of the biggest things is it can kind of take part of psychology. The thing that is challenging is you've got to take people outside of their experience to make them kind of doubt their assumptions. But that is threatening. So you have to do that in a way that doesn't make somebody defensive. And mythology is a great way to do that because you're taking somebody and being like, hey, this is what's going on with you. But you're not saying that. You're being like, you know, there was this centaur, Chaur chiron and he could heal everybody but he had this wound that he couldn't heal i think the reason that he could heal everyone is because he was in such pain and

then the person's like oh holy that's me oh my god you know and chiron was a centaur of attention he was a what the centaur of attention oh what do you mean there theaur of attention. Oh, what do you mean then? The center of attention. I was trying to make it that fun. Okay, gotcha. You know, when you have to explain a joke, it's not that good a joke, right? Sorry. The audio kind of dipped for a minute, and I thought I was dismissed. I thought the noise canceling was mushing.

You know, what's really interesting is when I talk to young people, especially when they're talking about Game of Thrones, I just kind of sit back and grin because hey i can give you games of thrones uh mythology from here till you know heck won't have it right because it's so much of so much of uh and i really what martin wrote in game of thrones is really brilliant but it's all very mythologically based. And all of the themes and archetypes and even episodes are mythologically based. And why does that resonate? Well, you and I know why it resonates, because this is their own human journey.

And, you know, they're seeing things, seeing conflict and seeing issues that may not play, obviously, in the warrior's stance of their daily life, but they play in their daily life. All of those things, you know, betrayal and loyalty and victory and defeat and failure and success. And ambition and not realizing that you're the bad guy. Yeah, exactly. And identifying with your own victimhood and suffering that you don't realize that you're victimizing others. Yes, and scuttling yourself. And that's what I always think is really interesting is telling a person the most painful things you ever tell the other human being is, you know what you're doing is scuttling yourself.

But it's true. great theme in mythology. The hero is just blindly rushing ahead and his vulnerability is obvious to all of us watching him. But everyone but him. And then you say that it speaks to the human tendency to be not introspective enough to see where you're going to scuttle

yourself. I thought that was very interesting. Can you parse what you mean by scuttle there, for the listener? Oh, I'm sorry. Like, you scuttle a shit. Like, you pause the sync. You know, I'm sorry. I'm used to that term.

Thank you. Yeah. Just make sure everyone can understand. I mean, we feel like the enemy is out here, but really, the thing defeating us is inside. You trip yourself. That's right. You trip yourself. You defeat. I don't want to use the word defeat yourself because that's a little bit too final.

But you trip yourself. You set yourself back through choices you've made. You are not seeing the fact that those choices will set you back. Have you ever read Neil Gaiman? You ever read him?

Oh yeah. Yeah. I read a lot of Neil Gaiman in high school. Behind me on the shelves, you will see much Neil Gaiman. I always felt like he was a more interesting thinker than a writer. Like his writing is kind of in service of the idea, not the idea in service of the writing,

which I like, I like stuff. I get really bored when it's like, people will probably be up in arms, but like something like stuff i get really bored when it's like people will probably be up in arms but like something like lolita like i just i have a hard time going through because it's so well done but it's just kind of this character thing and you're reinforcing the theme and like i want super rich you know density of ideas and the things and and gaiman's not the best writer at least he wasn't um with the american gods era he was kind of shifting from comics to

that but ocean at the end of the lane i really think is like a perfect book it's like that's the book he was trying to write for 10 years so funny i i've always thought of him as a great narrator he was a he was a narrative guy yeah you know he's a structured guy yeah structured Structured guy. Yeah, structured. You know what I mean? How would I put it? Who would you rather have at the coffee pot? Him or Vladimir Nabokov, the guy who wrote Lolita? I would dig Gaiman any day. Yeah. Because I think he's, how do I put it? He's very astute.

He is very attuned and intuitive to human beings that would make them tick and that's why i always like i always like robert graves for that reason because yeah he was very good and said you know here's what happened that myth now what does that make you think about what does that remind you of that was like he doesn't say it in so many words but he leads you that point like well now what does that remind you of and i love that because it's like somebody said to me why in the heck are you reading mythology that stuff is dead that stuff's old it's like i don't hear it let's open a myth and i do the work and let's read it who does that remind you of does that ring a bell and it always does well in in the an ocean in the end of the

lane kind of what we were talking about that making order out of chaos and that all psychology is this descent to let go of what we think we are to become what we really are and accept change and all that and there's like a metaphor towards the end of that book where the narrator's talking about going into the ocean and they're like as they are dissolving in the ocean they're like I am able to understand how everything works I'm able to see from all perspectives I'm able to understand I see everything so clearly but that can't fit into a person and if you stay there you become nothing yeah I'm everything that you become nothing because you dissolve you know and look at the Bhagavad Gita Gita with Arjuna and Krishna's conversation. It's like if you do what you think you're supposed to do, you're going to be doing exactly the wrong thing.

And if you do what you're supposed to do, it's going to break your heart. And I always thought that was just the most brilliant analysis of human life right well and um uh the bhagavad-gita my that's one of my favorite lines is that behold i have become time even without your sword all these warriors which turn into dust and die he's trying he's the book if anyone it's a it's a hindu religious book but um vision is trying to convince a prince to go into a battle and fight and the prince is trying to nail gaze and not do it well he's showing him i meant to kill my relatives that's yeah he's he's trying to avoid you know this complicated decision and he says you know well look i've become time even without your sword all these people will turn to dust and die even if you do nothing yeah and the other thing i always like

that too is arjuna is the uh is the audience's perspective in this story. It's part of a greater thing called the Mahabharata, which is a Hindu epic. And it's the segment of where Arjuna the charioteer is about to go into battle against his cousins. And it's the epic battle of good and evil. But some are good and some are evil and some are a little bit more good than evil and there's a little bit more going on there and uh krishna shows up and says you know you've got to do something this is your duty okay you are this is your dharma this is what you were made to do and the guys yeah i don't want to do this just here are the reasons why that's a great discussion because like every human being goes through that

well it's not really about war or not war it's about the way that we make decisions and make meaning i mean so many of the people who are citing um the bhagavad-gita like gandhi they're they're citing it as a work of arguing for peace and arguing for non-violence but the whole text is a debate about a guy needs to go fight a war against his family but the context is where what leads to the point you just made which is in regards to who ends this war you're all going to be gone victory is your victory is not that it's not that big a deal and there are no winners in time no and it's certainly this is how it is and I love reading about the vodka ties read it many many many times in fact on my bedstead I've got a Bible and I have Gandhi's translation of the Bhagavad Gita because

yeah little commentaries in there in the margins of where's what I think was in Arjuna's mind Here's a professional is trying to tell him it was written is His translation was written for businessmen and people who really didn't work Sanskrit scholars But we need it needed to read the Bhagavad Gita It's my favorite version that I had well, I mean, I think we've kind of answered the question about why mythology is important to study and why it's a part of psychology what about poetry I mean that's the other half of the stuff that you do you report now you've got a blog about poetry

do you publish poems on print or do you just do them on the web I'm doing on the blog now and I'm in the process of doing some in and i'm in the process of doing some in print i'm also the process of translating my poetry to turkish uh which is that's my little intellectual exercise to keep me keep my old brain uh cells working but i've had a really good response to the website and encourage people of course to look at it and also make comments uh and we'll link to it in the show notes. Sure. And one of the things I put in there, by the way,

is the critics were somewhat right, is what I say, because I address the issue of criticism and how when you are doing anything like writing or painting or thinking, that there's criticism. And how do you take constructive criticism and in retrospect you realize that a lot of the criticism whatever the person's motive is useful is very useful and helps you to think and you can say yeah well his or her uh you know motive was terrible they were just this isn't like okay but maybe they said something you may want to consider.

And that was one topic I've done. But I try to do things that I think I listen to people, and I try to do things that help them navigate, right? And somewhat informed by mythology, somewhat informed by introspection and philosophy. A couple of the poems that are really popular, mean if i may i'll read them for you that would be wonderful i'd love for you to read some oh thanks well the one that is most popular and written is uh unselfing and there's a prologue to it where taran russell uses the term unselfing to describe the practice of going outside yourself, your needs, and your present situation to connect with others and with things greater than oneself.

Hmm, I should say yourself. I realize inconsistency there. In Russell's case, the wonders of science, mathematics, and the universe. This led to a meditation on unselfing. For Christians, it seems particularly appropriate during Lent, which is now. Now, I also think it's very fitting for Muslims at Ramadan. So, I'll read it for you. Myself is me. Imagine myself as a hot air balloon with many heavy rocks attached to it by ropes, anchoring it firmly to the ground. The balloon is my spirit,

and the rocks are my own concerns, needs, wishes, worries, desires, preoccupations, preconceived notions, prejudices, fears, and worries about things that will never happen. If I am in this balloon and look down, that is all I see. I look up, however, I see the infinite sky. And I know that if I cut the ropes to these rocks weighing me down, the balloon will soar and I will see new panoramas. I will see others. I will see the place I had been from a loftier height and see just how small it is. Unself, cut the ropes to your own petty concerns and soar.

Move higher towards visions beyond myself, toward things greater than the self where I am. My spirit will rise beyond the self that weighs me down. And as I rise and soar, what was once large becomes small. My heart expands beyond me to embrace others and what was small in my spirit becomes greater as it rises that was beautiful thank you that was fun i enjoyed it i do my writing of poems i'm going to tell you this is kind of fun early early in the morning when i first get up i think i ponder ponder, I meditate, I read things,

and I make little notes, right? And I do that one day. And the poem usually gets written a day or two later because I then end up arguing with myself saying, that's not what you want to say. That's kind of stupid. Or that's, I really, that sounds awfully, you know, Vaseline on the lens, Hallmark-y, so don't do that. And so that's how really that sounds awfully uh you know vaseline on the lens uh hallmarky so don't do that and so that's how these things come out another one i'm going to read is one of my most popular ones i've seen getting good feedback on it's called what does it matter to me and i'm going to warn you up front it's very straightforward not a lot of of uh metaphor to work through anything it starts with a quote if you, if you feel pain, you are alive.

If you feel another's pain, you're a human. What does, and guess what this is inspired by, by the way. I'll let you hear the whole poem go. Oh, yeah, I get it. What does it matter to me when there's a war on the other side of the earth? Very sad. Quite tragic. Sorry to hear about that.

But it isn't my war. What does it matter when there's an earthquake on the other side of the earth that kills as many people as live in most small towns? Tragic. I feel sorry for them. What a shame. Should I buy a hot tub?

We really should install track lighting in the dining room. What does it matter that a child is hungry on the other end of the earth? After all, people shouldn't have so many children. Well, it matters, I suppose, really, but they always have problems there. If it's on the other side of the world, I really can't see it. So it doesn't exist. It doesn't matter. Or does it matter matter it isn't my problem if it appears on the screen i can change the channel and relax by watching a zombie

apocalypse the human condition is so tragic but it's not my condition well perhaps that's the real tragedy because they're humans and then there's me. My indifference means that I'm not human, but some other kind of creature. But if I see the things I'd rather not see, it will make me human, and then those things will matter to me. The empty stomach of a child will become the emptiness in my heart.

The empty hand of another will matter when it touches my hand. And fullness of soul is when other souls matter. The empty hand of another will matter when it touches my hand. And fullness of soul is when other souls matter. Beauty of face is not an expensive cream, but in seeing the beauty of another human face in our eyes. And the best defense against aging is a maturity that is so young that it sees itself in a hungry child.

And you both matter a little bit. And you both are undeniably human. Perhaps human evolution means becoming more human. And the discovery of the amount of room in the human heart is our next great discovery. Wow. There is a complexity to that. That is very affecting. Thank you, sir. I appreciate that. That is very affecting. Thank you, sir.

I appreciate that. Appreciate the kind words. I hadn't seen that one on your blog. Is that an older one? Oh, yeah. It's ancient, February 11th. It's an old timer. Would you like another one, or am I going to get more of you?

No, no, please. And say the website, too, so people can make sure they can find you everywhere that you are. Very hard to find. It's jfbeerline.com. But now, since my name is not quite phonetic in English, it's B-I-E-R-L-E-I-N. And absolutely. And since I'm a great lover of gardening and wine, I planted lots of grapes. And I wrote a poem about it called Dormant.

I just love that word. Does it sound awful? Dormant. I planted some grapes and was warned that they looked dead, but they're merely dormant. Sure enough, beyond beneath that appearance, I nicked the vine with my jackknife and saw green inside. But the right combination of sun, rain, and warm soil, and it will spring to life, send out shoots, and eventually yield fat,

juicy grapes. I will drink that wine for many years to come. It would have been easy to declare the vines dead. By all appearances, they were gone. What a waste that would have been. There have been dormant times in my life and yours. Things seem dead, inert, even sterile, completely devoid of any growth. In these times of anxiety and fear, I had to reach deep inside myself to find that speck of green. It seems that nothing would bear fruit, and that one is at a dead end. Others may have decided that you were finished and done, but you weren't. It appears so to them, but if you know there's still that green alive in you, with the right combination of hope, faith, and the warm soil of the heart, you too will sprout out and

reach out your branches. You have no idea of the fruit you'll bear. You have no idea of what fine things will come with the years. Learn the magic, that the magic of dormancy is not death but the staging for magnificent things and learn the mystery of seasons in our life and the hope arising that seasons change and of the seasons last but we can it's beautiful thank you thank you thank you so much oh my pleasure i have to garden some more and write some more poems. Yeah, I need to.

Do you do audio recordings of any of them? Sometimes, like, we're noticing that younger generations, like, I recommend books or something. Like, they won't do it unless it's recorded. But, you know, the Audible seems to be boosting everyone's sales. Well, I think we'll have to do this. We'll have to do this and credit Joel Blackstock on his excellent suggestion. I think that's a great idea. Audible publishing is pretty easy.

You need a nice mic. You can read it yourself and just upload it. And then if it sells, they send you a cut of it. Amazon does. Well, all right. We'll investigate that, Joel. I mean, actually, I will pick your brain at another time and we'll figure it out in the next track. Yeah, it's funny.

A lot of people who are aspiring writers have sent emails and i've told them that or or current writers um but if you got books that haven't sold for a while or something you know they're not highly circulated you can just go back and either pay somebody you know 200 bucks to record the book uh with on fiverr or something one of those contractor sites where you just read it yourself and upload it and uh people looking for an audiobook they have the audible subscription we'll start doing it and it will old classics are getting rediscovered that way and also too i mean if any of your patients have issues with insomnia i can read that'll help so you can help you ever read pen warren robert pit warren oh yeah i love robert pen warren his stuff

is very hard to find like in nashville my friend lived in nashville and said there were all these he would go to all these antique stores and use book places and we had all these books and then throughout the year some of them got lost and i was like well i'll just order another copy and it's like you can't find a ton of his poetry anthologies of modern quote unquote and i say in quote unquote american verse that my mom bought in like 1958 or something and i still have that thing and i got it all marked up and it's got post-it notes and coffee stains and i think tears i think it's got all the words in there and that book contains a number of his poems i think a way to love god and waiting are two of my favorite ones oh they're lovely i i also i'm a big big fan of um well t.s

elliott i'm a big fan of t.s elliott i'm also a great fan of uh frost i know frost has become kind of overly popular but frost is very good for navigating. Well, and overly romanticized. I mean, a lot of his stuff is a lot bleaker than people will let it be. Oh, that was. You know, the story about him waking his daughter up at night. Are you familiar with that? I don't know that story. He was drinking whiskey, and he went and got his daughter up with his gun

and was like, come downstairs, and kept holding the gun and being like, do you love more me or your mom and drinking whiskey until she was like no dad i can't choose and then the sun came up and he got tired and he finally went to bed but it's just like he was not a well guy well i kind of changed a few things i didn't have to go back and do some revisiting of frost uh that came from my poetry professor at swanee so i've always seen that happen firsthand i've never heard that before but that is well i want to know why a prunty was the professor who taught uh poetry to me and he was swanee so he had known he knew a lot of things about poets especially the southern agrarians and the inklings that were not common knowledge because he knew people who

had seen it so he knew the dirt on the people so it's like would be at swanee he'd be like oh that's the balance that's the balcony that alan tate held this other poet off because and he said he was going to drop him if he didn't recount all the women had slept with and then all the women left the party and then it turned into this huge rager and then this other poem was composed i don't even remember all the stories but it's just like you know things you can't google because they were first or second hand accounts of these guys you hear these things and boy you feel very well adjusted you know i always get a kick out of that i hear the string go really that's that's something that's pretty uh that's pretty edgy behind the flowery language you know is this

insanity or what pinhorn was really good friends with uh what's his name who behind the flowery language you know is this insanity or what it was really good friends with what's his name who's the guy that wrote dope deliverance Oh not Vicki yeah I was gonna say Duffy and that's wrong that was and Vicki I think Vicki was stalking at Swanee like right before he died of alcohol to Vicki was Vie had a had a rough life dickie was horribly golly you're talking about people with depression dickie was on the top of that list he's pretty serious i'm trying to who else was i just finished reading the the joel cohen is super into you know the cohen brothers he loves existentialism and spinoza and all this stuff and he spent a really long time trying to get the james dickie book made he's good there's a script of joel cohen adapting a

james dickie book which is really interesting spinoza's best quote that i liked i tell everyone when i have a chances but peter says about paul tells you more about peter than does about paul that is from spinoza, believe it or not. I always thought that was a brilliant quote. Well, the thing I like about Penn Warren is his books are kind of poems, and his poetry

is kind of prose. And that's why I'd ask you, because you were reading something that was just a series of statements that was not overly ornate that turns into, just by the way that these simple statements are arranged this beautiful thing and pen warren would kind of do that where he's just being like oh you know the way that sheep chew grass and their eyes watch the sky yes yes i know what you're saying and and and pen warren has a very nice way of lulling you into this happy place and then biting you. You know what I mean?

It's like, it's like you lulled into, well, this is a pretty bucolic image. And all of a sudden, boom, something, something nasty hits. That's that in waiting.

And it's like, you think I speak in riddles, but I don't. Yeah, exactly. The world means nothing but itself. It's lovely. I'm glad you enjoyed that poem. and I'm glad you enjoyed the poetry.

It's wonderful. And my wife likes to, I think I've never seen her roll her eyes harder than when our daughter, our first child, was taking her first step, and she was like, oh, my gosh, and Violet stood up and walked, and Violet recited the Ovid, the animals must cast their gaze upon the grass to trod, but humankind can stand erect to avert its eyes to God. She's just like, oh!

It's priceless. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, can you talk about the transition from mythology to poetry you know we know as mythology was poetry or is poetry sure sure uh you know the the greatest thing you i always tell people is they say well what's the difference in mythology and poetry i'll say well go see ovid go see heshet go see homer go see the writers of the mahabrata go see these guys look at them it's all poetry it was recited as poetry uh the epics the recited

epics they all are poetry and poetry has always been the way of conveyance of the elements of meaning well in pre-writing that was how you would memorize it you know if somebody told the story you could change stuff but if i you know somebody else could invent a new thing but if every end of the line rhymes with the next thing and there's a meter then you can't change it you gotta you know what's funny is people immediately recognize poetry as separate from prose or basic narrative instantly. It's almost like I don't even know if they have to be taught. It's a fascinating thing to me.

I think there's some innate poetic thing going on with people. And in mythology, it works the same way. They instinctively know what the story is. They instinctively know that it's not an objective recounting of something you know it's like I always find fascinating both poetry mythology you have to explain to people the difference from usually at least they're most sane people I should say you don't have to explain the difference from that from normal stated narrative and they know that conveys something different than normal stated narrative. And, you know, a few times I recall talking to people and I remember years ago, this person speaking poetically.

They don't know they are, but they're speaking poetically. And I would tell them, I'd say, what do you mean by that? And I would say, you're not speaking in normal narrative. It's not like, you know know we need some coffee creamer uh you're speaking about conveying to me a very cons very complicated concept of negotiating our way through human existence in a relatively simple way that i can grasp and that i think is what poetry and mythology do yeah and i think there's something about poetry that when people have kind of a rigid ego when they kind of cling to logic or existential whatever it bothers them you know yeah um yeah i don't remember you know there's certain types of people

that if a poem or something is in the book, they start to roll their eyes. I think it's a lot of why Carl Jung is on the outside of the medical institution and probably always will be. What is it in school they said? You can't be a Jungian because there's no way to objectively disprove it, the theory. The theory isn't valid because there's no way to objectively disprove it. It's like there's no way to disprove a metaphor like it's not a literal psychology it's yeah it wasn't built that way you know his book the end answer to joe is uh i always felt was an amazing piece of poetry really you understand the answer to joe it's very good and it's it's the problem of misery and why do we suffer and all these things and it's very poetic to read you know makes you go back and read the biblical book of job

and get some new insights out but it tells you about the awareness that derives from suffering and that suffering is an important element in navigating one's way through life that suffering generates values last line of the red book is thank you for the suffering oh I guess I am plagiarized in the suffering generates values I may be wrong there that's my memory but yeah so I find I just find that really interesting that you know uh to look at things that way and and what is tragedy tragedy tragedy is a finger-wagging form of uh of wisdom isn't it what is tragic what is tragic is meaningful i always tell people that

what is truly tragic is always meaningful that sounds like simone vey you read simone vey or any of the myths of course but they got the publisher perfect they they they did the publisher did all this republishing of a bunch of um greek plays and um they would have like historical photographs on the different things. Like for the Agamemnon, it's like Mussolini going into Italy and different things. And, but the, for the Antigone,

there was just a picture of Simone Bay. Like, I was like, I mean, that's just a perfect thing. Cause there's such a melancholy sadness that you get this person who is so wise, but it's also kind of halfway in this world and halfway out.

Oh yeah. One of my, one of my worst puns of all time, I must say is, uh, that you get this person who is so wise but is also kind of halfway in this world and halfway out. Oh, yeah. One of my worst puns of all time, though, I must say is, Euripides, believe it or not. You've heard of Ripley's, believe it or not, but I always say, Euripides, believe it or not.

That's clever. Oh, yeah. Some people find that tiresome, but it's fine. Well, I'm going to cut us off in a minute here. We can keep going for a few minutes yet. Yeah, you've got a meeting coming up, so I don't want to keep you past that. But this is more fun. Yeah.

Well, it's fascinating. We'd love to do a part two or something. Maybe we could do just kind of a poetry reading or something. Another thing too is if you're ever in Texas, you can drink some of my wine with me. Oh yeah, that'd be wonderful. We do some work with another clinic down there and we're thinking they have a thing here. So I might, maybe, maybe at some point, I don't know. One of my good friends is from there, but I don't travel a ton after the kids and pretty much just work and do stuff for my kids.

Listen, you have a wonderful day and it's been a joy to talk to you, sir. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Let me, um, stop the recording. And then is there anything else that you want to plug that you want to talk about? People can get your books or the books still for sale on Amazon? They sure are. So parallel myths and living myths by Robert, by, uh, Jeff Berlin, anything else? People can get your books. Are the books still for sale on Amazon? They sure are. So Parallel Myths and Living Myths by J.F. Barilane. Anything else? I think it's by Robert Frost. I don't know why Robert wasn't there. I swear I never drink whiskey and use a gun, so I don't think you're worried.

Let's see. All right. So those books are on Amazon and then jfbearlane.com. That's J-F-B-I-E-R-L-E-I-N.com. And we'll link to that in the show notes and the notes on the YouTube, but check it out. And thank you so much for making time to sit with us.