Click here to listen to Escape from “Nothing But”: Gifts and Practices of the Symbolic Life with Rohini Walker in the season 2 archives on buzzsprout
In the last podcast, we talked about the crisis of a life of “nothing but” and the inherent dangers in what C.G. Jung called “the one-sidedness” of Western consciousness. The overly rational person is psychologically crippled, and vulnerable to what is repressed in the unconscious. This is also true of cultures, and we are living with the ills and effects of this one-sidedness right now.
So, how do you become a healthier person, and a better citizen in a saner world? You learn to live the symbolic life, decolonize your soul, liberate your consciousness, and keep the mystery alive.
It doesn’t take a lot of time or money or specific expertise, and you don’t have to “believe” in anything. You don’t need to go on retreat or take a leap off the deep end. You don’t have to give up facts and buy the woo-woo. Opportunities are all around, every day, to cultivate a soul-full perspective and a different type of attention, to cultivate what James Hillman called ” a poetic state of mind.”
I’m joined by writer, poet and colleague, Rohini Walker, who lends her insight to this episode. Rohini is the Editor and Creative Director of Luna Arcana, an arts and literary print publication based in Joshua Tree, CA, and much more. She mines myths and metaphors, and like me, is a perpetual student in the arts of soul. I am so grateful to Rohini for being part of this podcast.
Transcript of Escape from “Nothing But”: Gifts and Practices of the Symbolic Life with Rohini Walker
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
In the last podcast we talked about the crisis of “nothing but.” I took this phrase, “nothing but,” from the work of depth psychologist CG Jung. Jung was concerned about the over-rationalization of life and the problem of a one-sided consciousness in Western people, and the way this perspective drains life of its wonder, interest, and meaning, and leads to a soul-sickness. A soul-sickness that makes a person hungry for any kind of excitement, even the sensational, even war. A soul-sickness that makes a person neurotic and vulnerable to powerful irrational forces in the unconscious. A feeling of being chopped off at the psychic roots, dead in spirit, dead in heart.
I said that we’re in a crisis of this “nothing but” right now, with people here in the United States and around the world, spinning out of control, losing sight of their humanity, believing incredible lies, acting from deep fears that are extraordinarily powerful because they are denied. They’re repressed into the unconscious.
The antidote to “nothing but,” to the soul sickness created by a one-sided attachment to reason and the literal perspective, is what Jung called “the symbolic life.” I call it “keeping the mystery alive,” a way of living with uncertainty and ambiguity that leads, strangely enough, to a deep awareness of self and personal truth.
I want to be as free as I can be my friend, from the numbing effects of cultural conditioning. Free to explore and experiment and experience the mystery in the world, in myself, that is life and consciousness.
So today, I want to explore this idea of self-liberation and keeping the mystery of life a little bit more. And I’ve invited a friend and colleague of mine to join me. Rohini Walker is a British-Indian writer and poet who lives here in Joshua Tree. She’s the co founder, editor and creative director of Luna Arcana, which is a grassroots art and literary print publication. Luna Arcana, explores the deserts of the Southwest as a creative landscape through the telling of stories based around myth, nature, poetry, and visual art. Rohini and I initially met through Luna Arcana, and she’s been kind enough to publish some of my writing. We’re fellow travelers in the terrain of symbol, metaphor, myth and soul, and I asked Rohini if she would join me on a podcast to add her voice, and to help me amplify and broaden your sense of this symbolic life, and ways that you can cultivate it for yourself. Welcome, Rohini.
[Rohini] Thanks, Catherine. I’m excited to be here and have this conversation with you.
[Catherine] Oh, good. Now, I wonder if we could begin by talking about the portals that you use to enter this metaphorical or soul perspective. I mean, a primary portal for me is story obviously, that’s what I do here on the podcast. And that is also how I evolved into storytelling, because it was a portal for me. That’s also the reason that I created the Story Oracle divination readings that I’m offering now on zoom. The time that I spent with stories, after a while I realized that the images and the moments that grabbed me in a story were much more than just random flashes of attention. They were clues that kind of upset or stimulated my everyday mundane attention. And that was very exciting. It really opened up in a way for me to consider more deeply my ideas and my feelings and my experience of the world. And that then became this Story Oracle reading project. I have confidence in those readings and in stories as portals for people generally, because I’m constantly amazed at what they catalyze in people.It’s really interesting how just the slightest shift of attention and step out of our usual way of thinking can impact us. So, I know that you work in this similar soul ground but in different ways. So, in addition to story, I mean, what do you what do you do? What is a practice that you use to get into that space?
[Rohini] And so yes, as you said, story, myth, are also big parts of how I dive into these realms. And so just expanding on that, dreamwork, paying attention to dreams is a really important way for me to mine those kind of more hidden parts of my soul and my unconscious. Dream work in conjunction with sort of active imagination work. So that is, you know, noting your dreams and then sitting with a character, an object, a place in the dream, and allowing that to just have a free-flowing open dialogue with your conscious mind. And of course, when you first start off doing that, you’re thinking “I’m just making this up and imagining this.” So, it just takes some practice and getting used to and allowing, just allowing yourself to fall into that kind of liminal space of just putting a question to a character in the dream and allowing the response to arise. And I feel that that’s a way that you work with myth as well. Characters or themes or places in a story that speak to you in a very specific way. So that’s, that’s one way that I delve into these parts. [Catherine] Dreamwork. Yes that was an important practice for Jung, too. And, you know, I’ve noticed that a lot of people who talk about working with dreams immediately turned to these dictionaries and look for meanings and you’re talking about something very different. [Rohini] Yeah. Yeah. And it’s mining, it’s mining your own personal—of course, there are, you know, the thing is, you can get these dream dictionaries and refer to them, by all means, but work with your own, kind of– it’s mining your own cache of symbols. And then sometimes you’ll find that it has a bigger collective resonance. Or you might find you have a dream and then and this is, you know, Jung talks about this a lot, synchronicity. So, you might have a dream and pay attention to that dream in this way that I’ve just described and then you might come across a myth or a story, where it’s a similar theme or a similar something remembered. And so that then gives you this thread of meaning to explore further and see, you know, see where it takes you. And usually there is a connection to a collective metaphorical meaning or symbol set. But it’s, I think it’s always really important to start with your own little personal rabbit hole, so to speak.
So it’s like, when you go back to like thinking about when you were a child, or when you watch children, it’s this, this wonder and curiosity that they have with the world that then gets conditioned out of them, or, as they say, like colonized out of them, this forgetting of this kind of like, cool part of one’s soul. And then everything becomes just this cynical, “the world is terrible”… And we, you know, like you said, like the way that we are consuming everything that we’re being told right now, and the way that we are processing and metabolizing that, you know. Instead of imagining something new, and getting curious about what’s next, we’re just all you know, “It’s like Doomsday, this is the end”…. “Why can’t we go back to normal?”
So yes, rather getting curious about it. This is a really intense time, and it’s painful, and people are dying, and there’s all sorts of other things happening. So, what is what is this moment in our history, trying to tell us?
[Catherine] Right, right, what is it trying to tell us? Yeah, we’re in something, you know, we’re not just doing something. You said, “relating to everything” and you even use the word “objects.” And I’m certainly in your camp, but it led me to think about, you know, in terms of the conditioning then and the obstacles.. well it led me to think about what some of those are, you know. I think one of the most toxic– in some ways– ideas that we have right now, is this notion of anthropomorphism. You know, that if I imagine that I know anything about your dog’s feelings over there, as he’s sacked out in tremendous comfort in the dirt, that I’m kidding myself. That I’m in some sort of fantasy world. When, as far as I’m concerned, having laid in the dirt myself, I know something about that and also, you know, there’s a feeling tone to the experience. So I would put anthropomorphism on the list of things that we need to be really very suspicious of right now. Is there anything else, you know, in your decolonizing project, any other concept like that, that you can think of that we just sort of latch on to, that allows us to dismiss actually what we’re experiencing? [Rohini] Well, so it’s, it’s this, what you mentioned, when you’re saying this, this feeling tone. And I think that is a really important aspect of this, in a soul decolonization work, which then filters out into the world, which is this dismissal of the felt sense and this raising up of the knowing, like, it has to be known in this very tangible, factual way, which is now I think, given all that, you know, all that quantum physics is discovering, you know…this kind of like, “well, I don’t know this with my eyes and my ears”… you know, this kind of reliance on just pure fact is just arrogant now, I think for lack of a nicer word. Because we know, empirically, scientifically, that there’s a lot going on that we can’t know, with our senses and with our, with our desire for factual concreteness.So, dropping into this felt sense, which then allows us to find a common ground, and imagine, and imagination, I think, is not just fantasy, and just making believe. I think it is a tool that can be used to really project one’s consciousness outside of just its own little separate sense of, you know. So this felt sense of like, what does it you know? He’s lying there–my dog– lying there in this very comfortable, dusty satisfaction in his hole and I can know what that feels like. So, if the knowing part is that important, then, but yeah, so it’s just, it’s, it’s bringing that that more feminine, receptive sense of feeling into a balance with this kind of more masculine, projective, empirical, scientific rationalism. Of course, we need that too. But more of a balance of feeling into things and allowing for that to reveal its meaning.
[Catherine] In a weird way, we seem to have fallen into this habit. And we could say, well, it’s dualism but it’s really more than that, you know, because… so let’s say dualism is splitting things in two, you know, the masculine, the feminine, right? Well, then they’re both there. (Exactly). We have, and I think this is another way of thinking about this one-sidedness, we’ve taken that another step further to say that only one of those things is legitimate. In fact, only one of those things is real. And so, the effect of it is to diminish ourselves. If I haven’t read it in a book, if somebody hasn’t given me an idea or a word for something that I’m experiencing, then I guess I’m not experiencing it. And this is our golden opportunity to break out of that.I know you do a good amount of work exploring this masculine, feminine “duality” or “polarity,” I’m not sure which of those terms maybe you prefer. Do you want to say anything about that?
[Rohini] Ultimately, I mean, it’s kind of I know, “masculine and feminine”, it’s a bit old school gendered. But you know, just talking about it from the energies that exist within all of us, you know, going back to Jung as he’s talked about all women or female identified people contain the masculine polarity of being and, and men contain the feminine. And it’s seeing that, you know, there’s this otherness within ourselves that we need to get in touch with, in order to find wholeness, wholeness being the kind of foundation of where we talk about healing from. To heal is to become whole. And we’ve been taught, you know, just gender stereotyping, and girls must be like this, and boys must be like that. And of course, now things are much more fluid and I find that really exciting and amazing, because it’s, it’s kind of going towards a more true for me anyways, sense of what it is to be a human being.So the kind of like, masculine, feminine, light, dark aspects, essentially, I guess it’s going back to mystical teachings, you know, they’re both part of one, for lack of a better word. The universe, divinity, whatever you want to call the source, it’s experiencing itself in these polarized ways. You can’t deny one in favor of the other, and it’s about finding a balance, is what I guess I always come back to in everything that I explore with my work.
[Catherine] A balance. [Rohini] Yes. Which is a, you know, we’re all looking for balance. But, you know, it’s like knowing this otherness in ourselves, whether it’s through our dream characters, or through anima and animus, and, you know, getting curious about them, instead of dismissing them as just being like, you know, I’ve got to just—you know, go I’m losing my mind if I [Catherine] Right.! Yeah, I know who I am. And I’m not that! [Rohini] Yes, exactly, exactly. This like, very, like, “I am this person, and this is what I’ve done my whole life, and this is my name, and this is where I live.” But what else is there? What else? [Catherine] Right. Yeah, I sometimes have people ask me, “, what, what’s the benefit? You know, like, what are we after? You know, that was fun. That was fun listening to the story and exploring, you know, the different avenues…and I had my moment and that’s great, I’ll meditate on it.” And there are lots of answers to that question but certainly, for myself, it has to do with contacting that “other.” And not just contacting it, but also then exploring or interrogating the nature of it being “other.” How is it “other”? Have I decided? Is it “other” because I don’t do it every day? Is it “other” because I have disowned it? Is it “other” because I’ve let someone convince me or convinced myself, that it doesn’t exist? There are lots of different dimensions to that. And certainly, I see myself as a multitude, as Whitman said. [Rohini] Exactly. And that in itself has all of these disparaging connotations. You know, “multiple personality disorder” and all of these kinds of things. We go down these kind of more pathologized ways of looking at the multifaceted experience of who we are. And that’s, I think, one way that that’s denied and made “other” in a pejorative way. When I say other, but it’s just like seeing that there are others, and then that helps you to get closer to a kind of, the kind of soul aspect of who you are. And the soul speaks in symbols, and speaks in ways that are not linear language. [Catherine] So, we’re talking about the “other,” otherness inside. And a moment ago, we were using that phrase to describe the others, you know, in the world. And one of the things that I’ve discovered, and it’s something that you have also written and talked about, is the sense of reciprocity that opens up when you address or consider anything to be an Other, rather than a thing. And for me, that reciprocity takes the form of being aware that I’m knit into, for lack of a better word, my environment. You know, I notice the birds as Other and then suddenly I become aware that they are aware of me. They’re calibrating their behavior around my presence, just as I am doing that for them. What can you tell us about this notion of reciprocity, the way that you think about it, and your experiences of it?
So, it’s going back to this more indigenous way of being in the world, you know, that has existed the world over, of knowing and being in the world. And I think that if, if we were able to implement that in our lives, that would have a knock on effect in the way that we operate in the world. And I think the planet really needs that, needs us to relate to her now, as opposed to dominate her.
[Catherine] I agree. And I think this is an important theme, to spend a moment on in the context of this podcast, where we’re talking about being stuck in one-sided Western consciousness, and what that costs us, and how we can break out of it. Because I think there’s a temptation and again, I put this in the cultural conditioning category, a temptation to imagine that if we do any kind of work with ourselves, and our own psychology, imagination, soul, that it’s purely personal. And so if you’re a person who’s concerned about the rest of the world or community, it can feel kind of selfish, when actually, I think it’s a cornerstone, because as we each take up the task, and I almost hesitate to use that word, because it’s profoundly interesting and enjoyable thing to do.And it’s not something that you have to spend hours and hours and hours on, you know, opportunities are available everywhere. That’s I think, how you become somebody who can really be of use in the larger sense, to the world and as you say, has this particular notion of recognizing the Other everywhere, and seeing oneself in relation to, has implications for the earth and so then for everything, really, at this point in history, that well, everybody knows I don’t have to, to spell it all out.
[Rohini] Yeah. And I think that notion of selfishness, again, is this very over rationalized concept of what it means to be a self, a person in the world. Because everything that we do, even the smallest change that we make, has a ripple effect out into the world. And quantum physics, again, proves that. And I think it, just to address that notion of like selfishness in a, you know, selfishness as a negative thing. Well, obviously selfish, if it’s just all about me, and it’s a hoarding energy. But if you’re going at this work with the intention of making change in the world, then it’s not selfish. And then to look at it in another way, like, I think it was Angela Davis, who said, you know, the personal is the political. So, it is going to have an effect, especially when you start, you know, working through these layers of, of meaning of who you think you are in the world, and what, what your work is in the world, beyond just earning money and feeding yourself and feeding your family and having, you know, doing all of those things beyond that.Like, what is what is your meaning in the world, because we all have meaning and we can, you know, and I think myth for me is, and story, is a really, is a really amazing, profound way of finding these links, that where you’re just like, Oh, I’m just an I’m not just crazy imagining these things, it’s like, you can see these, these threads of meaning that connect you to something bigger.
[Catherine] I want to spend a minute before we have to wrap up here, talking a little bit about writing and writing as one of these portals into the symbolic life. Something that we both do, and I know for myself, it is a form of inquiry, it’s a kind of conversation. And the places that I end up and the things that I end up writing about, don’t feel to me to originate with me. The mind that is finding the words and getting them down on the page is receiving something. I guess I make an assumption that writing is a portal like that for you, also. [Rohini] Definitely, definitely. And I think that’s when, you know, any kind of creative work for me obviously, writing primarily… if I sit down and I have a specific deadline or piece of work that I need to finish and put out, like the way that I can get out of my own little, “I have this deadline, and it needs to be good, and it needs to be this and it needs to be that” like me, me kind of space, is to just be in, again, be in relationship with whatever is coming through so that it’s not just, it’s not me and mine. It’s like I’m working in partnership with whatever you want to call it, the Muse or inspiration or an idea as, as a something other outside of me, but coming through me.So, then it doesn’t necessarily belong to me. I mean obviously, I still get writer’s block and procrastination and all of those things. It just brings a different dimension of experience to that work. Where it, kind of like you’re working, yeah, you’re working in collaboration with something.
[Catherine] Right. People that I work with sometimes have a resistance to journaling, which is something that I have done for years. And when I probe that, it turns out they don’t want to do it because it’s boring, because they think that they have to make some true record of events rather than just exploring whatever it is that comes into mind, and to be in a conversation that could be different from the ones that you’re called to have throughout the rest of your day. You know, got to work and all of this other stuff. Do you journal?
And I find that you know, especially with the morning, journaling, morning pages routine, it always ends up being a conversation between parts of myself or between my, my core aspect and, you know, different parts of myself, or with different characters that I may have encountered in a story that I’m reading or working with, or, or just, yeah, just stream of consciousness and what comes out, and it’s not linear. And it’s not meant for anyone else to read. So that gives you the freedom to just allow whatever comes through to come through and I think is one of the most therapeutic practices, journaling.
[Catherine] It occurs to me as we’re talking, that one of the common obstacles to experimenting with any of the things that we’re talking about: working with a story, writing, interrogating a dream, taking a few extra minutes to give your attention to someone— we’ll use the word “someone” instead of “something”– in your environment, or noticing a synchronicity, is time. And I’ve found that it’s not a matter of making big chunks of time. It’s not a big time project. Certainly, if I have a piece to write, that can be a big time project, but it’s more an orientation, and then taking advantage of the opportunities that present themselves. Do you think that’s true? I mean, do you think that one necessarily needs to block out time and devote days, you know, to cultivating the symbolic life? Or can it happen in the course of a day by waking up to the chances? [Rohini] Yes, I think so. I think, I think obviously, if you have chunks of time to block off and great do that, but most of us don’t. And yeah, I think it’s, it’s just incorporating that way of relating to the world, to yourself, as part of just your day. So that, okay, so you can just, you know, make a note of a certain feeling that came up when you saw something or heard something, and just make a mental note of it. And then when you’re able to sit down and just have a little five minute moment with it, or journal with it, but it doesn’t have yeah, like you say, it doesn’t have to be these huge swathes of time that, you know, it’s more just an idea.And this is difficult for me because I’m still, even after having lived in the desert for nearly seven years, I’m still, peeling away those layers of like, got to get up and got to get this done and dud-duh-duh-duhda, and I don’t have time for this and that and the other and, I mean, I have my morning practice, where I do devote a container of time to myself, selfishly. But then you know, as you go through, throughout the day, it’s like how to not turn, you know, to be like, “okay, that’s my morning time. Over now, it’s time to like, be the doer, rather then just allow that sort of quality of consciousness from that morning time to, to also be there with me throughout the day.
And I find that difficult, because you get into the mode of needing to be productive and needing to do this and that and all of the other things about you know, just being alive and human in the world. So it’s, so it’s just checking in, I think, and checking in with yourself and, and remembering just a remembering, like, “what am I doing right now? Am I just completely lost in all of the thoughts, or can I just have a little pause? Even 30 seconds?”
[Catherine] Yeah, that little pause. That little pause. And, you know, I sometimes think that we live in a world where the significance of the most important things, seems to have been lost. And many of us feel small or ineffectual or kind of pushed around by the big forces, or we feel that the things that we want to do, maybe aren’t worth it, because we can’t do them on a grand scale. And yet, that sense of significance that we’re looking for is something that we have to give ourselves first. And making those, taking those little pauses, choosing to allow your response to something to be significant enough to think about it for a minute, to feel that for two minutes, can really have a big impact on not just your feeling of being connected to the world, and your sense of inner wholeness and communion, but also your sense of real power in terms of what you know, what you’re doing and what your life means. [Rohini] Exactly, and that tuning in is I think, that’s where, you know, again… this is a constant practice for me, because it’s that tuning in and tuning into your body. Because we just get so caught up in our heads and with our thoughts and our bodies always communicating with us. And I know that when I’ve not paid attention to my body and to what she’s saying to me, then I get— now there’s zero tolerance, I get sick, I get pain. You know, the pain comes because I’ve been ignoring. And then I know that “Oh, yeah.” And then when I, and then when I finally do pause and think, “oh, yeah, hang on. I’ve just been going like this, like wind up, endless wind up, dull bunny, whatever. That yeah, the battery, the battery never runs out. And oh, until yeah, until it goes rrt and breaks. And that’s, you know, and then I know, I haven’t been paying attention to my body. And again, that’s another thing that we’re you know, it’s like, oh, this, you know, we’re just taught to not pay attention. [Catherine] Right. Because it’s not important. All that’s important is the ideas that somebody has handed us, that we then think about with this very narrow sense of mind. And there’s so much more, there is so much more.So, I hope that you’ve gotten some ideas out there my friend, about ways that you can work with this idea of the symbolic life. I mean, I know that seems like kind of a weird, strange thing. And I’m aware that, that sometimes when I use the word “soul,” you wonder, what am I talking about? Because I’m clearly not talking about something that’s going to go sit on a golden throne. So, I hope that in this conversation here, and with the addition of Rohini’s thoughts and practices, that you have some ideas about how you might for your own purposes, which as we say, are actually then really, for the purposes of the world, play around with this idea a little bit more.
I’m going to be posting a longer bio about Rohini and her work and links to Luna Arcana and some of the other things that she’s doing with the transcript of this podcast. So, go to my website, mythicmojo.com to find those. I want to mention that she’s writes regularly on these themes, and has an essay/ newsletter series called “Letters from Luna,” which you can subscribe to, and I heartily recommend that you do that. They’re very, very rich pieces.
I have a new offering called “Stepping Into the Fairy Glen” that’s going to begin on October 16th with the new moon. This is a short course in ways to tap into the power of story to activate your symbolic life, and it’s going to be self-guided for those of you who are tired of zoom or decided never to get onto the zoom and video bandwagon. If you head over to mythicmojo.com, you’ll find more information about that course and the link to this new school that I’m setting up at teachable.com. Thank you so much. Rohini.
[Rohini] Thank you, Catherine. Really, as always, with all our conversations, really enjoyed it. [Catherine] I want to welcome the new subscribers. I also want to give a thank you to my patrons on Patreon and bandcamp. I’ll make that thank you from all of us really, because those folks are playing a crucial role in keeping Myth Matters going right now.And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself. And until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life.
More about Rohini Walker
Rohini Walker is a British-Indian writer and poet living in Joshua Tree. She’s the co-founder, Editor and Creative Director of Luna Arcana, a grassroots Arts + Literary print publication. Luna Arcana explores the deserts of the south-west as creative landscape, through the telling of stories based around myth, nature, poetry and visual art.
Rohini has always been deeply interested in exploring personal growth through creative practices. Since moving to the desert almost 7 years ago, she has immersed herself in the ways that Myth & Nature and the practices of inner alchemy intersect with, inform and decolonize identities, especially for women.
As well as working on a book on this topic, she’s been exploring these themes in the essay-newsletter series, ‘Letters from Luna’, which you can subscribe to at lunaarcana.com.
Rohini is also a Reiki Master Practitioner, a Mindfulness/Vipassana meditation teacher, and a student of western herbalism and Ayurveda.
Link to Catherine’s new short course in the power of story, “Step into the Fairy Glen.” The course begins with the rising of the new moon on Friday October 16th and culminates with the full moon on Saturday October 31st. Explore the power of story as a portal into your symbolic life, and learn the value of small moves in a practice of 10-15 minutes/day. Make your escape into the fairy glen.
