Dr. Jody Bower: Barbie, Post-Heroic Activism, and the Heroine's Journey

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Welcome.

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And thanks for listening.

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My guest today is Dr.

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Jody Bower.

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Dr.

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Bower is a cultural mythologist and the author of Jane Eyre's Sisters: How Women

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Live and Write the Heroine's Story.

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And The Princess Powers Up: Watching the Sleeping Beauties

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Become a Warrior goddesses.

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She and I met at Mythologium Conference in 2023, where she was presenting.

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Her insights into archetypal themes and superhero movies blew my mind.

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And I was so stoked when she agreed to be a guest.

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In this episode, Jody and I discuss heroes and heroines in movies and

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look at how the Hero's Journey is distinct from that of the Heroine.

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We touch on Barbie, Marvel movies and The Color Purple.

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And a note.

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When I was editing this episode, I realized we'd made references to

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other mythologist Christine Downing, Maureen Murdock, and Kim Hudson

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without really offering any context.

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Rather than disrupt the flow with clunky editing and editorializing, I've

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just added links to the show notes.

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So you can learn more about them there.

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So now.

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Here we go, Dr.

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Jody Bower.

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Will you share your mythic origin story?

Jody Bower: 00:01:46

I was very fortunate I think in a way.

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I was not raised in a religion, but I was raised by parents who were very

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curious and they had moved out to the Seattle area from Boston and one of

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the things they were curious about were the local Native traditions.

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So we would spend weekends going out to reservations and going to

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the dances, learning about the art.

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We had a book of kind of native origin stories and We camped as our family

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vacations and we would bring this book with us and read about, okay, this

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mountain, to the natives is called Wye East and this is how it became.

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So I grew up with this and I also grew up very curious about my friends and

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what they did on Saturday or Sunday.

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So I used to go with them.

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I used to go to church and I used to go to synagogue.

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I had a fascination with origin stories with people's ideas of how

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things came to be without any bias

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as to which was the right one.

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It also became really clear to me going to church or synagogue with all my friends.

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that belief is people believe, and I accepted that they believe

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even when I didn't believe it.

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but I had an understanding from an early age that different people had

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different explanations for, why the world, how it came to be and why it is.

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And I loved mythology, the little bit of Greek and Roman mythology

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that we got in, elementary school.

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and I also was a voracious reader.

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And I was handed both Dune and the Lord of the Rings by my ninth grade

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English teacher, when I was 15.

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And that just sparked a whole other love.

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but I was also, I was in a family the idea was that your life was

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to be of service to other people.

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And although I knew probably by age 11 that I was going to be a writer.

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But I, everybody said, you can't get an English degree.

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That's, that's just, you'll work at McDonald's the rest of your life.

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You have to do something helpful.

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so I did pre med, and got a degree in psychobiology.

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And at some point during my undergrad, I discovered Jung and I discovered

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dream work and I've been a dream worker since I was 20, basically, I can lucid

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dream James Hillman says that whatever your daimon is, it's going to manifest.

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And so I decided I didn't have what it took to be a doctor.

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And I was floundering around as to what I was going to do.

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And I was working as a medical assistant at a major medical hospital, and the

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doctors somehow or another discovered that I could write, and they started

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hiring me to write patient education and to help them with their papers,

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and that resulted in about a 30 year career as a medical and scientific

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writer and editor, a good career, lucrative career, and then at midlife,

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and, I decided, I have a lot of years left and I do not want to keep writing

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about what can go wrong with the body.

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And I'd heard about Pacifica.

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And the other thing is that I had been reading, voracious reader all

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my life, was in a women's book club, reading a lot of novels by women.

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And I had seen this pattern that nobody seem to be writing about or noticing and

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then this bit of serendipity happened.

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I met a man who is an author of books on Gnosticism.

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At one point I said to him what people say to published writers, which I've

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since learned, which is I have a book idea, but he was very gracious.

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And he said, tell me about it.

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And I did.

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And he brings out his card and he says, I'm the acquisitions

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editor for Quest Books.

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And we would be very interested in publishing that book.

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And I thought that is a sign, but I knew that I didn't have the background because

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I didn't have that English degree to, to write the book, and I actually made

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an attempt at it for about a year and then It just became the excuse or the

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reason why I could go to Pacifica and enroll in the myth program, which has,

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one third of it is about literature.

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so I did, and I wrote my dissertation on what I called recurrent

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narratives in women's fiction.

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And I turned that into a book, Jane Eyre's Sisters.

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can we see this?

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Jane Eyre's Sisters, How Women Live and Write the Heroine's Story.

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And I'll be sure to link to that in the show notes, that's wonderful.

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Yeah, so I had seen this pattern and really, I went

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back into the 14th century.

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15th century when women were first getting published and I was finding this pattern.

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I found it in biographies, autobiographies, famous women.

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so I That's what that's about.

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and so then, since then, I have been doing a lot of lecturing, a lot of teaching,

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and just working with, hero and heroine stories, and, but also, I'm aware that

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this is one interpretation, and that, in fact, there are many ways to interpret

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These stories, they're not monomyths, they're not monolithic, and so you've, you

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heard me talk about how I see, the hero story being told differently these days

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in, our superhero movies mostly, and I'm also I wrote another book and published it

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The Princess Powers Up, Watching the Sleeping Beauties

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Become Warrior Goddesses.

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Yeah.

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It's a fabulous title.

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Tracing about 80 years from Snow White and Sleeping

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Beauty to, the, Captain Marvel and, Elsa of Frozen who are goddesses.

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basically, they're.

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They're all powerful goddesses.

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So we've seen this evolution through time.

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And, I'm just interested in this.

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I call myself a cultural mythologist and I'm just interested in how

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myths are playing out in the current culture and how they're evolving.

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Something I want to grab hold of because I got to hear you talk about

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this, you talked about the role of love in this evolution of the hero's journey,

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that there was a time where the love object, like the love was the prize.

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And now the love is a requirement to be a hero.

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Yes.

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When you think about.

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Joseph Campbell, you've got the princess who just waits at home and,

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he, he has to earn her, he has to prove that he's basically an adult male.

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I think, that he's individuated enough to, embrace the feminine and become a father.

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but she just, she's just at home.

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And this is, Maureen Murdoch and other people ask Campbell

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about, what about the woman?

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And he was like, she doesn't have to go on a journey because

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she's the point of the journey.

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And this was not satisfying to, Maureen or anybody else,

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So love was something that got put off.

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He had to prove his, really his masculine self, his courage and his intelligence

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and his ability to persist and all this.

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And then he got to have love.

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But in the new hero stories, and this is the last 20 years

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or so, if you look at any of the Marvel superhero origin stories.

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What it really comes down to is that the difference between the hero and the

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villain and the difference between a hero and a villain is two sides of a coin.

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It is so easy for a hero to become a villain, especially if actually they win

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because then they often end up a tyrant.

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Kim Hudson in, The Virgin's Promise talks about this, the problem with the

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hero winning is that then he has to.

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maintain the winning, and so he has to become a tyrant and control people.

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and in the superhero origin stories, there's always a double.

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There's another character with similar powers, maybe even more powerful than

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the hero, but The difference between them is that the hero can love, and

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the hero calls, it's love that keeps them from turning into a villain,

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and it's like the Final Fist, and it, it's more in the books than in

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the movies, but the real difference between Voldemort and Harry Potter is

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that Harry Potter has this family of friends, and, and supporters and people.

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And when he's in the crisis, he remembers his love for these people.

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And that's what pulls him through it.

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And when he goes into the forest to face Voldemort at the end, he brings

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the spirits of his parents and his two strongest mentors with him because

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he's not a, he's not doing this alone.

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He's, and it's the love in his heart that, that makes him win.

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So this is, and the love comes in very early.

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There's always a character who's a.

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It doesn't have to be a love character, it can be a friend, it can be, what we're

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seeing lately is a lot of the hero is a father figure to a child that needs help.

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So we're seeing, Pedro Pascal is playing this repeatedly, he's this

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loving father figure who protects the child in the Mandalorian, or The

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Last of the Best, what's it called?

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The Last of Us.

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The Last of Us.

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The Last of Us, yeah.

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And it can, it can be a group of people, like in Stranger Things or

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Harry Potter, it's this group of people who come together and the hero is just

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supported by it, but they have to have.

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This love.

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One of the things that I'm that's occurring to me right now

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is this evolution in story from the hero as that individual, as the one

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who's raised above everybody else.

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what I'm actually thinking of is I don't remember which Spider Man

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movie, what the title was, but it had the three generations of

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Spider Men.

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Into the multiverse and or the latest one.

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no way home.

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I

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think I think it was maybe no way home And you have the three

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generations the three Yeah

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And the youngest what set him apart was he had been part of a team The

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youngest one this millennial generation is so interconnected and that's showing up in

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the children's stories and the children's myths, He Man and the Masters of the

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Universe has been reimagined recently.

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And it's very, it's about sharing power instead of I have the power, it's we.

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And there's this movement from I to we, and I hadn't thought about that

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until, I was thinking of romantic love in the beginning of this, but

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no, the love of friends, the mutual support, which is the only way I

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think we can get through some of what we're facing right now is together.

Jody Bower: 00:12:35

Yeah, and I, I don't want to spoil this too much for

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him, but I know that John Bucher of the Joseph Campbell Foundation is

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working on the idea that we are moving from an individual to a collective.

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As hero.

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I want to get him on the podcast.

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Yeah,

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you get him on , he's working on it.

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We've talked, but I don't wanna say anymore because this is John's thing.

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Deal.

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but when he told me about it, I said, wow, stranger Things and Harry Potter.

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I could think of all of these examples and that is new.

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the older hero idea was he had a lover.

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You know, um, Captain America has Peggy and, Thor has Jane Foster and yes,

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they have a human lover who keeps them.

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I think one of the part and problems if you're a superhero is hubris, right?

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And, if you can connect to somebody who's human, that grounds you.

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And it can be a friend, he's got a human male friend, that grounds him.

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It's not his lover, his, Whoever she was, it was his wife through the ages, but

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it's the human friend who redeems him but it is, I do see an evolution, in moving

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from the hero as a solo practitioner to a collective or a fellowship, and

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even Tolkien had, Tolkien He had his finger on some things, I think, and

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even he, realized that one hero probably would fail, and Frodo does fail in

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the end, and if it weren't for Sam, being the backup hero, and actually,

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rescuing him from that whole situation.

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yeah, so I, I think there's It's very interesting to watch.

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I want to turn the corner here, Barbie has been a massive cultural

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phenomenon, and it is truly a movie of mythic proportions with mythic dimensions

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and is functioning on all kinds of levels.

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what do you think is going on there?

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This is one of the instances of where somebody asked

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me a question and it just, blah.

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I was at my dissertation defense and The pattern that I saw in women's

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literature, it is not a dissent story.

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It is rather a leaving and going away story.

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it's a woman who says, I can't live in this situation, but usually she is

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somebody who's kind of oppressed anyway.

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The Color Purple is an example of a woman who is so oppressed.

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She doesn't even dare speak.

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And yet eventually she does this journey where she leaves the situation and finds a

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place where she can be her creative self.

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That's Celie's journey perfectly, and I, that, so I wrote about all the

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variations, Jane Eyre leaves, I mean she leaves so many situations, she leaves

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home, she leaves the school, she leaves Thornwood, Thornfield, she just, she

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has to keep leaving to, cause people keep telling her, no you need to be

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this for me, and she's not having that.

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Chris Downing asked me, why do you like this story, which has no

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interest to me personally, she said.

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Instead of the descent story, which I love and so many women love, so many

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women love the descent story, and I said to her, the descent to the Cave

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of the Dark Goddess has no meaning for me because I grew up in that situation.

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I, I had a alcoholic mother and I we had a severe family trauma when I was 11.

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My brother was killed in our backyard, threw the family into disarray for many

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years, and, I was left to deal with it on my own, basically, which thankfully

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also found some very good counselors.

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so I grew up in a very dark sort of situation with an

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unhappy, difficult mother.

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And I said to Chris, I don't have to go down to the cave.

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I've been there.

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I need something different.

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And that's the story that I was finding of women who really their childhoods

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were not good and they got out and they built a life for themselves.

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But the descent story, as we talked, And Chris told me her own story.

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The descent story, I think, appeals to women who maybe

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were overprotected as children.

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And maybe everything was made easy and fine for them, and they got to a

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certain point in life and they just felt like this is not all there is to life.

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I need something more.

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Chris felt a very strong need to find what she said, her, to find the dark

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feminine, to find this whole shadow self that was not part of her upbringing.

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It was not acknowledged.

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It was not allowed.

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And we look at Barbie who's more cosseted and privileged and happy.

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than Barbie and but she is not whole she and you know that the whole

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thing when she starts saying do you ever think about death, death in the

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Barbie world and everyone is just horrified because this doesn't enter

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in there's no such thing but Barbie, willingly or not, has to go find that.

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And she does and that's when she starts to become a whole person.

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So I think there, this is why I'm not wedded to one particular journey,

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because I think what you need for individuation can be very different,

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depending on where you're coming from, what your life experience has been.

Jody Bower: 00:18:24

But I had not even thought about that till Chris asked me that question.

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Thank you.

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Thank you for that.

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That exploration and that juxtaposition between the story of leaving the story of

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that journey and the story of the descent.

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that's something that I'm going to ponder some more whether the descent

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is what is needed or if you are, if you spend childhood in the cave.

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it's about ascent.

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One of the, one of the topics that you had said you wanted to bring

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into this conversation was around the hero's journey and social activism.

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What do you see there?

Jody Bower: 00:18:57

Yeah, this was, this is something I've, done

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a great deal of lecturing at, mostly in, like liberal churches.

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But it just.

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One day it occurred to me that the way most people pursue activism, political

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activism, especially, is very, it's very much what I call heroic thinking.

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And, first I'd like to just sidetrack a little bit because I think it's important.

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James Hillman said that we have two opposing myths in American politics.

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There's the myth of the fall, which is that things used to be.

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Much better.

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We had a golden age in the past.

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We have fallen away from it, and we must get back.

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We must go back to it.

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This is the, and the past, is glorified, and the future is, scary.

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We don't know, so we're better off going back.

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The other myth is the myth of progress.

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The idea that the best is yet to come.

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and we have a moral duty to make it happen.

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So, getting back is a setback, and we fear the past was worse,

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the future is going to be better.

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I would say neither group is living in the present.

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and I think personally that the cultures do evolve and we do progress,

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and a lot of our politics is about the people who are fearing that

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versus the people who want that.

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and that is, there's the tension.

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I think the bulk of people in the society are okay with change if it happens slowly.

Jody Bower: 00:20:34

But so I think really, and I've heard this from others that in a way,

Jody Bower: 00:20:39

the conservatives hold us back from changing faster than the society can

Jody Bower: 00:20:44

actually handle and the progressives.

Jody Bower: 00:20:46

Meanwhile, trying to pull us the other way, but so there that's part of it.

Jody Bower: 00:20:53

So there's a fear that's behind a lot of it.

Jody Bower: 00:20:57

there's a fear that we.

Jody Bower: 00:20:59

That we will change and go away from what's good.

Jody Bower: 00:21:02

There's a fear that we will not get to what's good because we'll

Jody Bower: 00:21:06

be dragged back into the dark ages.

Jody Bower: 00:21:07

There's this, and fear based, leads to anger.

Jody Bower: 00:21:10

And I, this leads, I think, into heroic thinking.

Jody Bower: 00:21:14

I'm going to pick apart the heroic mindset, if you don't mind.

Jody Bower: 00:21:19

Heroes fight on behalf of other people.

Jody Bower: 00:21:23

They fight on behalf of the community.

Jody Bower: 00:21:27

And they fix the problem through what Sherry Tepper, who was a,

Jody Bower: 00:21:34

a fantasy author, she wrote The Gate to Women's Country, I think

Jody Bower: 00:21:37

was her most favorite book.

Jody Bower: 00:21:39

She talks about how the hero fixes it to the, what she

Jody Bower: 00:21:42

calls the single wondrous act.

Jody Bower: 00:21:43

he pulls the sword from the stone, he destroys the One Ring, it's all good.

Jody Bower: 00:21:48

He defeats the bad guy and everything becomes perfect.

Jody Bower: 00:21:51

what she didn't mention, but that I've also noticed is that, and Kim

Jody Bower: 00:21:57

Hudson also says this, that actually we go back to the status quo.

Jody Bower: 00:22:02

So that's what the hero does.

Jody Bower: 00:22:03

He actually defends the status quo.

Jody Bower: 00:22:05

again, it's very emotion based.

Jody Bower: 00:22:07

There's a righteous anger to heroic thinking.

Jody Bower: 00:22:10

I have a lot of friends who say, if you're not angry, you're not paying attention.

Jody Bower: 00:22:15

Hey, you must be angry.

Jody Bower: 00:22:16

I'm going to post all this stuff on the internet to make you angry because this is

Jody Bower: 00:22:20

how, people, this is motivational, not for me, but, it is to a lot of people, heroic

Jody Bower: 00:22:29

thinking is right and wrong thinking.

Jody Bower: 00:22:31

I'm right.

Jody Bower: 00:22:31

You're wrong.

Jody Bower: 00:22:32

My hero is right.

Jody Bower: 00:22:33

Your hero is wrong.

Jody Bower: 00:22:35

Therefore, your hero is villain, so we have two hero villains fighting each other

Jody Bower: 00:22:40

and people tend to, because we think it's a single act that's going to make it.

Jody Bower: 00:22:46

There's this hero worship that goes on and we see it in politics.

Jody Bower: 00:22:51

My guy versus your guy.

Jody Bower: 00:22:53

My guy is better than your guy.

Jody Bower: 00:22:54

And I've seen this on both sides.

Jody Bower: 00:22:56

people worship their political candidate on both sides, and they

Jody Bower: 00:23:02

really think that if only we could get our guy into position, then

Jody Bower: 00:23:07

everything will turn out okay.

Jody Bower: 00:23:08

And I saw that a lot, during the Obama administration, there was

Jody Bower: 00:23:12

all this, Oh yeah, we get Obama.

Jody Bower: 00:23:14

We elected our guy.

Jody Bower: 00:23:15

Yay.

Jody Bower: 00:23:15

Everything's good.

Jody Bower: 00:23:16

And then because there was too much opposition, not much

Jody Bower: 00:23:22

happened, and people blamed Obama.

Jody Bower: 00:23:25

And we're disappointed in their hero, but the other side of that is that you get

Jody Bower: 00:23:31

your hero working for you and you can go.

Jody Bower: 00:23:33

Yeah.

Jody Bower: 00:23:34

Okay.

Jody Bower: 00:23:34

Yay.

Jody Bower: 00:23:35

I don't have to do anything like

Boston: 00:23:37

the election is the big event.

Boston: 00:23:39

That's the polling that's pulling the sword

Jody Bower: 00:23:41

or that's right.

Jody Bower: 00:23:43

And once, my part in that is to vote and then it's not anything else.

Jody Bower: 00:23:50

There's actually, I think, a little bit of, reinforcement

Jody Bower: 00:23:53

of low self esteem that I can't personally deal with these problems.

Jody Bower: 00:23:57

And, the problems are really overwhelming, but my guy can't, if I get the right

Jody Bower: 00:24:02

guy and if I vote for the right person, but this, then you can imagine

Jody Bower: 00:24:06

the burden that it puts on the hero.

Jody Bower: 00:24:08

And I take this back to just, to scale it down, if you've ever been

Jody Bower: 00:24:12

the person in a organization that everybody asks to do everything.

Jody Bower: 00:24:17

could you run this?

Jody Bower: 00:24:18

Could you do this?

Jody Bower: 00:24:19

After a while, people just get burnt out, but everybody else is

Jody Bower: 00:24:22

going, Oh, they're so capable.

Jody Bower: 00:24:24

They're so good at this.

Jody Bower: 00:24:25

Let's ask them instead of saying, maybe we need to share the load a little bit.

Jody Bower: 00:24:31

So I've seen it in almost every organization I've been a part of, is

Jody Bower: 00:24:36

that you have these heroic few take on everything and then burn out.

Jody Bower: 00:24:41

and burnout is a.

Jody Bower: 00:24:43

A scary thing, because I think the people who are shouldering most of the load,

Jody Bower: 00:24:50

the problems are not solved by one act.

Jody Bower: 00:24:55

They realize that they can't do it all themselves.

Jody Bower: 00:24:57

They ask for help.

Jody Bower: 00:24:58

They try to enlist help.

Jody Bower: 00:25:00

If they don't get help.

Jody Bower: 00:25:02

And the problems can seem so overwhelming that you can.

Jody Bower: 00:25:07

You can become obsessed.

Jody Bower: 00:25:09

I had a friend who was so obsessed about an issue in my town that every time

Jody Bower: 00:25:13

I saw her, she'd talk at me for two hours about, trying to enlist me to the

Jody Bower: 00:25:18

cause because the problem was too big for her and she needed to get everybody

Jody Bower: 00:25:22

else in line and she couldn't do that.

Jody Bower: 00:25:25

And then she got very burnt out and angry and frustrated.

Jody Bower: 00:25:28

And I actually think that, sometimes you lose your really good people

Jody Bower: 00:25:33

because they're burning out.

Jody Bower: 00:25:35

But the real danger is, I think this is the roots of terrorism.

Jody Bower: 00:25:40

I think, because people have been trying maybe who knows for decades

Jody Bower: 00:25:44

to say, there's a problem here.

Jody Bower: 00:25:46

Listen to us.

Jody Bower: 00:25:47

We need, nobody's listening.

Jody Bower: 00:25:48

Nobody's helping.

Jody Bower: 00:25:50

And at some point I think people can become so frustrated and angry.

Jody Bower: 00:25:55

That they feel like I've got to get people's attention somehow, I've got

Jody Bower: 00:26:00

to call attention to this problem that nobody's, that's not being fixed.

Jody Bower: 00:26:06

And I do think that this is where some of the terrorism comes from

Jody Bower: 00:26:10

is just sheer frustration with the inability to get other people to

Jody Bower: 00:26:16

pay attention and fix the problem.

Jody Bower: 00:26:19

So where I see heroic thinking, how that plays out in our politics

Jody Bower: 00:26:25

and what I usually challenge the audiences in these liberal churches.

Jody Bower: 00:26:30

I say how much of this is in keeping with progressive values, you know,

Jody Bower: 00:26:35

seeing people as the enemy, all of this,

Boston: 00:26:39

I want to grab hold of something that's percolating there.

Boston: 00:26:42

There's, The thread, when we were talking about the hero earlier and you

Boston: 00:26:47

said the hero, if he keeps winning, he becomes a tyrant, so that's one destiny,

Boston: 00:26:53

or the heroic personality becomes so overwhelmed, he becomes a terrorist, or,

Boston: 00:27:00

which then constellates a villain, either way, this is that sort of old parable

Boston: 00:27:05

that says you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the

Boston: 00:27:08

villain, but there's this, but the hero,

Boston: 00:27:12

The hero is, seems to be a stage or a step along the way.

Boston: 00:27:16

that it's destined to become, I don't dunno if destined, this is one

Boston: 00:27:20

way, it can go two different ways.

Boston: 00:27:22

It can become a villain.

Boston: 00:27:25

Overwhelm, either way, faced with this inability to, assert control.

Boston: 00:27:30

In a inability to win to

Jody Bower: 00:27:33

win permanently to win permanently.

Jody Bower: 00:27:35

That's and this is part of heroic thinking this idea that it's possible

Jody Bower: 00:27:41

to win permanently, it's possible to do one thing and have everything be okay.

Jody Bower: 00:27:48

This is an idea I think we really need to let go.

Jody Bower: 00:27:51

this is fundamentalism.

Jody Bower: 00:27:52

Yes, it is.

Jody Bower: 00:27:53

It's the best.

Jody Bower: 00:27:54

Again, it's the very right and wrong black and white sort of thinking.

Jody Bower: 00:27:58

but yeah, the hero.

Jody Bower: 00:28:01

Part of it is the hero worship.

Jody Bower: 00:28:03

Everybody's putting them on a pedestal and that can, of course,

Jody Bower: 00:28:07

what does that do to your ego?

Jody Bower: 00:28:08

And I think I'm not going to mention any names of any political candidates

Jody Bower: 00:28:11

right now, we can see the ego, getting over and, or the burden

Jody Bower: 00:28:19

and because you, your side can win.

Jody Bower: 00:28:24

But that doesn't mean the other side goes, Oh, okay, we're all in

Jody Bower: 00:28:28

line now, the other side, as we see, is going to keep fighting.

Jody Bower: 00:28:35

And the more you try to, so then you're put in the position of your job.

Jody Bower: 00:28:41

And, the idea, of course, is your hero wins and becomes a hero.

Jody Bower: 00:28:45

The wonderful king who you know, fixes everything, fixes the roads

Jody Bower: 00:28:52

and fixes the, the infrastructure and everybody lives happily ever after.

Jody Bower: 00:28:56

But instead, the king's energy has to go into quelling all of the people

Jody Bower: 00:29:02

who do not want to live in that.

Jody Bower: 00:29:05

And so what happened?

Jody Bower: 00:29:07

Nothing much happens.

Jody Bower: 00:29:09

that's.

Jody Bower: 00:29:11

And then of course, everybody else can say, see, they failed.

Jody Bower: 00:29:14

And, we do this tug of war and worst case, we get into, I think, a

Jody Bower: 00:29:20

situation like the Middle East where people are now in this thing of, we

Jody Bower: 00:29:25

just have to wipe the other side out.

Jody Bower: 00:29:27

That's never going to happen.

Jody Bower: 00:29:29

How many times have people tried to wipe the Jews out?

Jody Bower: 00:29:32

And people try to wipe out gay people.

Jody Bower: 00:29:34

That's not working.

Jody Bower: 00:29:35

it's it does.

Jody Bower: 00:29:36

They just keep coming back.

Jody Bower: 00:29:38

And so we have to find another way of thinking about it.

Jody Bower: 00:29:43

Besides, but this is hard when you're dealing with fundamentals thinking, which

Jody Bower: 00:29:47

says that only evil people do evil acts.

Jody Bower: 00:29:50

So it's okay to wipe them out.

Jody Bower: 00:29:52

rather than having the mindset that maybe there's a cause.

Jody Bower: 00:29:57

That we could address, we know that abused people become abusers.

Jody Bower: 00:30:02

So how do we break the cycle of abuse?

Jody Bower: 00:30:06

in families, how do we break the cycle of abuse in a political

Jody Bower: 00:30:13

arena, because it is abusive.

Jody Bower: 00:30:15

I think a lot of it is abusive.

Jody Bower: 00:30:18

Do

Boston: 00:30:18

you have an idea for an alternative archetype or an

Boston: 00:30:21

alternative type of thinking?

Boston: 00:30:23

I'm so glad you asked that question.

Jody Bower: 00:30:26

Well, I do because I started thinking about the heroine

Jody Bower: 00:30:29

journey that I had written about and how she approaches life and i'm going

Jody Bower: 00:30:34

to just say at the outset that Ireland they got past a lot of this because

Jody Bower: 00:30:40

the mothers stood up and said we are done And this happened in my lifetime.

Jody Bower: 00:30:46

I'm a boomer.

Jody Bower: 00:30:47

I remember in the 70s when the women of Ireland just rose up and said, no more

Jody Bower: 00:30:53

of this, Protestant versus Catholic, Northern, you know, all of this,

Jody Bower: 00:30:57

we're just, you're killing our babies.

Jody Bower: 00:30:59

Stop it.

Jody Bower: 00:31:00

And they stopped it for the most part.

Jody Bower: 00:31:02

so it was the feminine energy of love that came in and said, no, stop.

Jody Bower: 00:31:08

Enough.

Jody Bower: 00:31:08

and I, I pray with all of my non denominational, non defined

Jody Bower: 00:31:16

energy that this happens.

Jody Bower: 00:31:18

elsewhere, but in the heroin journey, what happens is that she

Jody Bower: 00:31:25

is, she's in a situation where people are telling her who to be.

Jody Bower: 00:31:29

And she says no.

Jody Bower: 00:31:30

And so her resistance is part of her being.

Jody Bower: 00:31:34

She just resists what she doesn't want, but she doesn't fight them.

Jody Bower: 00:31:39

She doesn't try to conquer the people who are trying to control her.

Jody Bower: 00:31:44

she actually, the very first thing she usually does in the stories is she goes

Jody Bower: 00:31:48

exactly where they tell her never to go.

Jody Bower: 00:31:51

So she goes into the forest where the witch is, or she goes to the big

Jody Bower: 00:31:56

city, or she goes to where, she goes to where the enemy is, and she learns.

Jody Bower: 00:32:04

She, so she embraces, she goes to the witch, and the witch to the hero

Jody Bower: 00:32:09

is a villain who must be killed.

Jody Bower: 00:32:12

But she goes there, and she humbles herself before the

Jody Bower: 00:32:17

witch, and she says, teach me.

Jody Bower: 00:32:19

And the witch is usually, well, prove to me that you're worthy of my being taught.

Jody Bower: 00:32:24

Because I'm not wasting my time with you, otherwise.

Jody Bower: 00:32:27

The whole story, the devil wore product is such a, going to the which to

Boston: 00:32:34

learn.

Boston: 00:32:35

I was thinking of the Little Mermaid, but,

Jody Bower: 00:32:37

yeah, she's got to learn and she gets tested.

Jody Bower: 00:32:41

it's, she's learning, it's very experiential how she learns and

Jody Bower: 00:32:45

she gets handed, impossible tasks.

Jody Bower: 00:32:48

And there's a magic element that comes in, usually it's a mother energy that she's

Jody Bower: 00:32:52

got with her somehow, who advises her.

Jody Bower: 00:32:55

But what she learns, she has to sort out seeds, right?

Jody Bower: 00:32:58

It's a pile of seeds and she has to sort out the wheat from the chaff and

Jody Bower: 00:33:02

the black seeds and the white seeds.

Jody Bower: 00:33:04

This is a test in discernment.

Jody Bower: 00:33:07

How do you know what is good?

Jody Bower: 00:33:09

how do you know what is of value?

Jody Bower: 00:33:11

And your job is to choose what is of value and what will feed and nurture people.

Jody Bower: 00:33:20

So her focus is not, she's picking out the black seeds, but she's not

Jody Bower: 00:33:24

spending a lot of time going, Oh, these horrible black seeds must be burnt.

Jody Bower: 00:33:28

They must be destroyed.

Jody Bower: 00:33:29

They must be, it's no, they just go off to the side.

Jody Bower: 00:33:32

And this is what we need.

Jody Bower: 00:33:33

This is what we're taking.

Jody Bower: 00:33:34

This is what we're planting.

Jody Bower: 00:33:37

So her whole learning is about how to focus on what is a value

Jody Bower: 00:33:43

and how to have more of it.

Jody Bower: 00:33:46

It's, it's everything that the manifesters talking about, what

Jody Bower: 00:33:49

are you putting your energy into?

Jody Bower: 00:33:51

Because whatever you put your energy in to, there will be more

Jody Bower: 00:33:54

of it will come back at you.

Jody Bower: 00:33:56

And so She's also learning how to see things as they really are,

Jody Bower: 00:34:03

not to be fooled by the seeds that are masquerading, maybe,

Boston: 00:34:08

And I'm just thinking about that distinction between you're not

Boston: 00:34:11

sorting things into good and evil, you're sorting things in discerning value.

Boston: 00:34:17

So you and you can do either one is a way you can approach a situation,

Boston: 00:34:22

but this is blameless discernment.

Jody Bower: 00:34:24

Blameless discernment.

Jody Bower: 00:34:26

What do you want to foster in life?

Jody Bower: 00:34:30

So focus on that.

Jody Bower: 00:34:31

And do you want to spend all your time putting angry stuff up on the Internet?

Jody Bower: 00:34:37

Or do you want to look for what's good?

Jody Bower: 00:34:39

What's working?

Jody Bower: 00:34:40

I follow all of these Goodable and all these other sites on Instagram, which are

Jody Bower: 00:34:46

just people giving you news about good.

Jody Bower: 00:34:49

There are people who have cleaned up that enormous patch

Jody Bower: 00:34:54

of plastic crap in the ocean.

Jody Bower: 00:34:57

They've cleaned it up.

Jody Bower: 00:34:59

There are kids inventing amazing things that are helping people.

Jody Bower: 00:35:05

There's a girl who came up with a $400 dialysis machine.

Jody Bower: 00:35:11

Honestly, I believe it's the kids of today who, where we really have

Jody Bower: 00:35:14

to look because they are, they're doing, but there's a lot of people

Jody Bower: 00:35:18

who are doing amazing stuff out there.

Jody Bower: 00:35:21

Yeah, it's so hopeful.

Jody Bower: 00:35:22

There's some guy, all he does is the positive climate news.

Jody Bower: 00:35:27

Because there is a lot going on with addressing climate change.

Jody Bower: 00:35:31

There was a lecture at the Mythologium about, or there

Jody Bower: 00:35:35

was a whole panel on mushrooms.

Jody Bower: 00:35:38

They're discovering how mushrooms can help us in everything.

Jody Bower: 00:35:42

I mean, you, you mix a fungi into concrete and the concrete doesn't fall apart in 20

Jody Bower: 00:35:47

years, like our, our bridges are falling apart because the mycelium heals it.

Jody Bower: 00:35:53

and what it's doing for our health.

Jody Bower: 00:35:55

I mean, there's so much good news.

Jody Bower: 00:35:57

and then I think the amazing thing too, is that Once you get

Jody Bower: 00:36:04

somebody who's doing this good work.

Jody Bower: 00:36:07

what happens in all the heroine stories is that she Starts creating

Jody Bower: 00:36:12

this wonderful life for herself based on her own values and other people

Jody Bower: 00:36:16

look at her and go wow I like that.

Jody Bower: 00:36:20

I want to try that.

Jody Bower: 00:36:22

Celie, you know who came out of just the worst kind of life just so oppressed

Jody Bower: 00:36:29

and so beaten up and so abused and she comes to the sense of self and then she

Jody Bower: 00:36:35

starts She actually creates community and she attracts all these people to her

Jody Bower: 00:36:40

She even attracts her abusive ex husband who looks at what she's doing in life.

Jody Bower: 00:36:46

she's making pants.

Jody Bower: 00:36:47

She's making pants for women because she, for her pants represented a stepping

Jody Bower: 00:36:53

out of her role as a subservient, basically slave to other people.

Jody Bower: 00:36:58

And she makes these beautiful, wild, crazy pants.

Jody Bower: 00:37:01

And her ex husband comes to live nearby and says, I will make shirts.

Jody Bower: 00:37:08

And they have this wonderful conversation at the end where he talks about how

Jody Bower: 00:37:12

once he stopped trying to control other people and get them to do what he

Jody Bower: 00:37:17

wanted to do, he was so much happier.

Jody Bower: 00:37:21

And she said, yeah, and other people like you better too.

Jody Bower: 00:37:25

So there's this, in all of the stories that I read, there is usually a man

Jody Bower: 00:37:32

who looks at what she's doing and goes, that is a better way of being.

Jody Bower: 00:37:37

And I'm gonna.

Jody Bower: 00:37:38

I'm going to go with you rather than go, with what my parents, my

Jody Bower: 00:37:44

parents want me to be all this.

Jody Bower: 00:37:45

They want to say, in Sense and Sensibility, Edward Ferrars, the family

Jody Bower: 00:37:50

wants him to be a politician and they want him to make a name for himself

Jody Bower: 00:37:54

and, further the family's thing.

Jody Bower: 00:37:56

And he just wants to be a minister, take care of people.

Jody Bower: 00:38:00

And he wants to go with Eleanor because she understands that about him.

Jody Bower: 00:38:06

And, he sees his path with her, his path to being who he wants.

Jody Bower: 00:38:12

So, this is what I think that we do a lot better with a role model

Jody Bower: 00:38:18

that we choose to follow rather than a tyrant who tells us how to be.

Jody Bower: 00:38:25

Because there's no need from that point on to be enforcing anything.

Boston: 00:38:30

It's a chosen path.

Jody Bower: 00:38:31

It's a chosen path, which is chosen not because out of

Jody Bower: 00:38:35

belief, but rather out of experience.

Jody Bower: 00:38:38

And looking at, seeing that it works.

Jody Bower: 00:38:41

I'm, I think essentially I'm a pragmatist.

Jody Bower: 00:38:44

And the question I always ask is, how's that working for you?

Jody Bower: 00:38:47

Yes.

Boston: 00:38:47

Yes, I love that question.

Boston: 00:38:50

Yeah, yeah.

Jody Bower: 00:38:57

What I'm also excited about, There's a lot of work being done,

Jody Bower: 00:39:02

by non binary people, and non binary people, by definition, don't do well

Jody Bower: 00:39:10

with black and white either or thinking.

Jody Bower: 00:39:14

And I've been venturing out and reading, some really exciting work

Jody Bower: 00:39:19

by people who are talking about how a non binary person individuates.

Jody Bower: 00:39:26

It is not by incorporating the other because there's not that, I'm male,

Jody Bower: 00:39:32

that person's female, I don't have any real, I don't understand female energy.

Jody Bower: 00:39:36

There's not that.

Jody Bower: 00:39:38

and there's this wonderful theme that keeps coming up.

Jody Bower: 00:39:41

and Chris Downing is one of the people who talked about this.

Jody Bower: 00:39:44

I individuate not by integrating that which is my shadow side,

Jody Bower: 00:39:50

but by envisioning my ideal self.

Jody Bower: 00:39:57

So it's a double, it's not an other double, it's a sort of a perfected self

Jody Bower: 00:40:05

that is what my goal is to work towards.

Jody Bower: 00:40:08

and everything that I might have been trying to put on the other.

Jody Bower: 00:40:15

is in that image.

Jody Bower: 00:40:17

And I can, I can imagine that.

Jody Bower: 00:40:19

So it's a wonderful as if exercise.

Jody Bower: 00:40:22

I've always loved this with the counselors I've gone to when I've

Jody Bower: 00:40:27

been struggling in it with an issue.

Jody Bower: 00:40:29

And they have said, what if you were that that you're trying to be?

Jody Bower: 00:40:37

Can you imagine yourself as if all of that were true?

Jody Bower: 00:40:42

And you sit and you imagine you are the person you want to be.

Jody Bower: 00:40:47

And I think that holds a lot of value instead of looking for somebody else to

Jody Bower: 00:40:51

complete you or a hero to do the work that you don't feel that you're capable

Jody Bower: 00:40:57

of, just sit and do some as if what if I were that person, who would I be?

Jody Bower: 00:41:05

How would I feel?

Jody Bower: 00:41:06

How would I behave?

Jody Bower: 00:41:08

How would I act in the

Boston: 00:41:09

world?

Boston: 00:41:10

What an excellent exercise that feels, if that feels like a, there's one thing I

Boston: 00:41:15

would like for listeners to get from this.

Boston: 00:41:17

It's that, and actually put that in action.

Boston: 00:41:20

I do this in my coaching, right?

Boston: 00:41:21

This is. One of the things we do is really sit in your idealized self.

Boston: 00:41:26

What does it feel like, sound smell taste what's around you.

Boston: 00:41:30

It is such a powerful activity.

Jody Bower: 00:41:32

it's huge.

Jody Bower: 00:41:33

It's huge.

Jody Bower: 00:41:36

It's life changing.

Jody Bower: 00:41:38

I've had it be life changing.

Boston: 00:41:46

What were your favorite stories growing up?

Boston: 00:41:48

Nursery rhymes, children's books, movies, cartoons, comics, anything?

Jody Bower: 00:41:52

My mother gave me, Kurti, no, The Princess and the Goblin by

Jody Bower: 00:41:57

George MacDonald when I was pretty young.

Jody Bower: 00:41:59

She read it to me.

Jody Bower: 00:42:00

It was her favorite story.

Jody Bower: 00:42:02

And that got me started on fantasy novels.

Jody Bower: 00:42:04

And then Tolkien fell on very fertile ground, I think, but I really

Jody Bower: 00:42:11

loved that story There's a hero in it, but the princess is pretty

Jody Bower: 00:42:14

active and it's a descent story.

Jody Bower: 00:42:17

They go down into the mountains, but, I really loved that.

Jody Bower: 00:42:21

I loved The Wind in the Willows.

Jody Bower: 00:42:23

I didn't care for Mr.

Jody Bower: 00:42:24

Toad, but I loved, I think the friendship between, Ratty and, Mole

Jody Bower: 00:42:31

and the messing about in boats.

Jody Bower: 00:42:34

I grew up in boats.

Jody Bower: 00:42:35

We sailed and everything and I loved messing about in boats.

Jody Bower: 00:42:39

And then, of course, when I was a teenager, like I said, I discovered Lord

Jody Bower: 00:42:41

of the Rings and Dune and that was, boy.

Jody Bower: 00:42:44

Oh, and, I think in junior high, Pride and Prejudice.

Jody Bower: 00:42:48

Which was just, I've done a lot of blogging on Jane Austen.

Jody Bower: 00:42:53

I think she's an amazing psychologist.

Boston: 00:42:55

thank you.

Boston: 00:42:56

What's something that you believe to be true that you cannot prove?

Jody Bower: 00:43:00

That we have an eternal soul.

Jody Bower: 00:43:02

I've had experiences, I've actually had a near death experience.

Jody Bower: 00:43:06

Oh, a year ago, year and a half ago.

Jody Bower: 00:43:09

are

Boston: 00:43:09

you willing to share a little bit about what that was

Jody Bower: 00:43:11

like?

Jody Bower: 00:43:11

yeah, I had, I'd had a lot, I've had a rebuilt shoulder and before

Jody Bower: 00:43:16

it was rebuilt, I was taking a lot of anti inflammatories, much

Jody Bower: 00:43:20

more than the recommended dose and I had a catastrophic GI bleed.

Jody Bower: 00:43:24

I lost half my blood volume.

Jody Bower: 00:43:26

and, passed out at home, and I was not unconscious.

Jody Bower: 00:43:34

I was unconscious because I had no awareness of my body at

Jody Bower: 00:43:37

all, and everything was black.

Jody Bower: 00:43:39

But I was there.

Jody Bower: 00:43:40

it wasn't like, being asleep.

Jody Bower: 00:43:41

It wasn't like being, anesthetized.

Jody Bower: 00:43:44

I was present in nothingness.

Jody Bower: 00:43:47

And I was given the choice to go or stay.

Jody Bower: 00:43:53

I didn't see anybody.

Jody Bower: 00:43:54

I didn't talk to anybody.

Jody Bower: 00:43:55

It was just but I also was completely at peace.

Jody Bower: 00:43:59

just completely at peace.

Jody Bower: 00:44:01

Everything was fine.

Jody Bower: 00:44:03

It was just you could take this out now.

Jody Bower: 00:44:07

You can go.

Jody Bower: 00:44:08

This is an option for you to leave if you want to leave or

Jody Bower: 00:44:13

if you don't feel complete.

Jody Bower: 00:44:14

With this life you can go back and I thought about it.

Jody Bower: 00:44:21

Wow, this is a pretty easy way to go.

Jody Bower: 00:44:23

There's no pain I'm really calm, but on the other hand, there's

Jody Bower: 00:44:26

so many people who would be upset and do I feel like I'm done.

Jody Bower: 00:44:29

No, I don't feel like I'm done so then I woke up on the floor of my,

Jody Bower: 00:44:33

hallway and managed to reach up and open the doorway and call for help.

Jody Bower: 00:44:38

And I was in intensive care for a week.

Jody Bower: 00:44:41

I almost died one other time while I was there because I kept bleeding.

Jody Bower: 00:44:46

But, but that whole week was so blissful.

Jody Bower: 00:44:52

I can't tell you every connection that I had with every person in that hospital.

Jody Bower: 00:44:58

It was like I saw their loving, angelic Self.

Jody Bower: 00:45:03

Those nurses were amazing.

Jody Bower: 00:45:05

And I think they felt me seeing them that way because the way they treated

Jody Bower: 00:45:10

me and saw me was just amazing.

Jody Bower: 00:45:13

I mean, it was it's bizarre to say, I'm lying in intensive care with three

Jody Bower: 00:45:18

different IVs going in me because they're trying to keep me, you know, from dying.

Jody Bower: 00:45:23

And I'm blissed out.

Jody Bower: 00:45:26

Wow.

Boston: 00:45:27

Yeah.

Boston: 00:45:28

I'm so glad you decided to stay.

Jody Bower: 00:45:30

Thank you.

Jody Bower: 00:45:30

I am, too.

Jody Bower: 00:45:31

I am, too.

Jody Bower: 00:45:33

It's, doesn't, hasn't meant the end of challenges in my

Jody Bower: 00:45:35

life, but, I wouldn't imagine.

Boston: 00:45:37

No.

Boston: 00:45:38

But you chose them.

Jody Bower: 00:45:39

But I chose them, yeah, and I'm not worried, I don't

Jody Bower: 00:45:42

fear death, I'll tell you that.

Jody Bower: 00:45:43

I do not fear death.

Boston: 00:45:44

That is powerful.

Boston: 00:45:48

Thank you.

Boston: 00:45:51

Oh boy.

Boston: 00:45:52

After, after, after that, the next question is going backwards in,

Boston: 00:45:57

in what ways are you the same now as you were when you were a child?

Jody Bower: 00:46:01

I was a very serious child.

Jody Bower: 00:46:03

I've loosened up a bit, but I was all I was a very questioning child.

Jody Bower: 00:46:09

Wayne Mueller, who's a mentor of mine, he wrote Legacy of the Heart.

Jody Bower: 00:46:15

And he talks about people who have had a different difficult childhood tend to

Jody Bower: 00:46:21

ask the big questions early on in life.

Jody Bower: 00:46:23

They're more thoughtful.

Jody Bower: 00:46:25

They're more empathetic.

Jody Bower: 00:46:26

they're more questioning, they become seekers.

Jody Bower: 00:46:30

And I think my childhood did make me that way.

Jody Bower: 00:46:33

And I've never stopped.

Jody Bower: 00:46:35

And sometimes I know, especially my family finds me a bit, you

Jody Bower: 00:46:39

know, could you listen up already?

Jody Bower: 00:46:41

We don't have to have an intense discussion about the

Jody Bower: 00:46:44

deeper meaning of everything.

Jody Bower: 00:46:46

But yeah, I do.

Jody Bower: 00:46:49

I do.

Jody Bower: 00:46:51

When I need to, I go and watch, a Ben Stiller movie or

Jody Bower: 00:46:55

something to lighten me up.

Boston: 00:46:59

Your seriousness and depth has transcended the years.

Jody Bower: 00:47:03

Yeah, I think I just was conditioned.

Jody Bower: 00:47:07

my father was a scientist.

Jody Bower: 00:47:08

He raised me to be a critical thinker.

Jody Bower: 00:47:10

I had a very influential teacher in high school, who taught us, Plato, the

Jody Bower: 00:47:16

unexamined life is not worth living.

Jody Bower: 00:47:18

And I'm just a questioner.

Jody Bower: 00:47:19

gets me in trouble sometimes because my friends sometimes put stuff up on

Jody Bower: 00:47:23

the internet that they saw somewhere and believed and I will go on

Jody Bower: 00:47:27

Snopes and say, no, that's not true.

Jody Bower: 00:47:32

I've decided to stop doing that.

Jody Bower: 00:47:33

I've decided that I am not here to police, that whole cartoon about the guy typing

Jody Bower: 00:47:38

away badly and going, I can't come to bed.

Jody Bower: 00:47:40

Someone is wrong on the internet.

Jody Bower: 00:47:45

I trying to like, let people there's a woman, I forget her name, but she

Jody Bower: 00:47:49

has this whole philosophy of let them, just let them, whatever they want

Jody Bower: 00:47:53

to believe, whatever they want to say, however they want to treat you,

Jody Bower: 00:47:56

just let them, don't worry about it.

Jody Bower: 00:47:58

I'm trying to adopt that.

Jody Bower: 00:47:59

They're on their journey.

Jody Bower: 00:48:01

Maybe I'm not.

Jody Bower: 00:48:02

I told my nephew when he started driving, and he's a very serious character too.

Jody Bower: 00:48:08

And I said to him, you are going to encounter people

Jody Bower: 00:48:12

on freeways who are jerks.

Jody Bower: 00:48:16

I didn't use that word.

Jody Bower: 00:48:17

I said, they are looking for a fight.

Jody Bower: 00:48:19

You do not have to give it back to them and he listened to that.

Jody Bower: 00:48:24

He told me later that was actually very useful advice.

Jody Bower: 00:48:28

And they do cut you off or flip you off or honk or something and you

Jody Bower: 00:48:32

go, yeah, you'll find somebody to.

Jody Bower: 00:48:35

You'll find the person you want to have a fight, who wants to give you a fight.

Jody Bower: 00:48:38

I'm not going to be that today.

Boston: 00:48:40

That is great life advice in general.

Boston: 00:48:42

Yeah.

Boston: 00:48:43

You will encounter people who are looking for a fight.

Boston: 00:48:45

You do not have to give it to them.

Boston: 00:48:46

That's

Jody Bower: 00:48:47

beautiful.

Jody Bower: 00:48:47

They will find somebody else.

Jody Bower: 00:48:49

Someone else will come along.

Jody Bower: 00:48:51

Yeah.

Boston: 00:48:52

this next question, you may have already answered it, but here

Boston: 00:48:55

it is again in a different shape.

Boston: 00:48:56

Have you ever encountered a phenomenon that you just cannot explain?

Jody Bower: 00:49:01

besides the other thing I saw, I've seen a UFO, and, I was camping,

Jody Bower: 00:49:07

I was up in the San Juan Islands, we were camping on the beach, there was

Jody Bower: 00:49:11

a stretch of water across from us, and then another island, and we're

Jody Bower: 00:49:15

sitting there, we've had a campfire, we're thinking about going to bed.

Jody Bower: 00:49:19

And this very bright light comes up over the island by, far from us and comes down

Jody Bower: 00:49:26

and goes along the water in front of us.

Jody Bower: 00:49:29

And it was just a globe of light.

Jody Bower: 00:49:31

There's absolutely no sound, And then it disappears.

Jody Bower: 00:49:36

And we all sat there for a while and finally someone said, did you see that?

Jody Bower: 00:49:41

And we all said, and we didn't talk about it.

Jody Bower: 00:49:45

We didn't talk about it, because it made no sense.

Jody Bower: 00:49:47

It was, it couldn't have been a helicopter, and this is in

Jody Bower: 00:49:50

the 70s, I don't think we had stealth helicopters anyway.

Jody Bower: 00:49:54

No sound, couldn't have been a boat, because it came up over the hill and down.

Jody Bower: 00:49:58

I have no explanation for that.

Boston: 00:50:00

and how do you think, having that kind of experience, what do you think that

Boston: 00:50:03

does to, did or does to your worldview?

Jody Bower: 00:50:07

I did.

Jody Bower: 00:50:08

There's, Shakespeare, "there are more things under heaven and earth than

Jody Bower: 00:50:11

are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Jody Bower: 00:50:13

I don't think anybody has the answers.

Jody Bower: 00:50:17

I don't think science has all the answers.

Jody Bower: 00:50:19

I think that there's just so much more to the fullness of life than

Jody Bower: 00:50:25

any one or set of disciplines can add, and they're just mystery.

Jody Bower: 00:50:31

There's mystery.

Jody Bower: 00:50:32

And, I think a life in which you think there's no mystery or that any mystery

Jody Bower: 00:50:37

could be explained, would be kind of sad.

Jody Bower: 00:50:41

I think I would like to have more experiences where I go.

Jody Bower: 00:50:45

I have no idea what that was.

Jody Bower: 00:50:48

Yes.

Jody Bower: 00:50:50

And I may never know what that was, but whoa.

Boston: 00:50:55

Yes.

Boston: 00:50:56

more mystery.

Boston: 00:50:57

cheers to that.

Boston: 00:50:59

The last question is when in your life have you experienced ecstasy?

Jody Bower: 00:51:05

This is a funny thing.

Jody Bower: 00:51:07

I've had a few moments usually out in the woods where it's just been a perfect

Jody Bower: 00:51:16

moment, where everything, I don't know where you feel a part of everything.

Jody Bower: 00:51:23

And I think that's the biggest part.

Jody Bower: 00:51:24

The other times would be I'm a singer.

Jody Bower: 00:51:27

I'm a singer in a choir.

Jody Bower: 00:51:29

And singing with a good choir and singing an amazing piece of music and everybody's

Jody Bower: 00:51:35

in harmony and it's one of those times when it's really clicked when the choir is

Jody Bower: 00:51:40

your breathing is what you're an organism.

Jody Bower: 00:51:43

I think that's it when you feel intensely alive and intensely connected.

Jody Bower: 00:51:49

That's when I think my most ecstatic moments have been.

Jody Bower: 00:51:54

I can think of one in particular.

Jody Bower: 00:51:57

I got to sing, the Verdi Requiem in the opera house in Seattle with my choir with,

Jody Bower: 00:52:04

I was at the University of Washington at the time and, it, the head of the music

Jody Bower: 00:52:10

department was retiring and we put on this one shot show and it was transcending.

Jody Bower: 00:52:17

it was that's an amazing piece of music and I don't know, I was just,

Jody Bower: 00:52:21

I was somewhere else for most of it.

Jody Bower: 00:52:23

Oh, wow.

Boston: 00:52:24

Yeah.

Boston: 00:52:25

Yeah.

Boston: 00:52:26

There's something so beautiful in that, in what you just shared,

Boston: 00:52:29

there's so many components to it.

Boston: 00:52:30

Breathing as one, merging with something bigger than yourself, and then you throw

Boston: 00:52:35

in music, which transforms a soundscape and you put that in such a fabulous

Boston: 00:52:42

cathedral, which is acoustically designed to elevate that.

Boston: 00:52:45

And it itself is something that is built to elevate, like

Boston: 00:52:49

that's just sounds magnificent

Jody Bower: 00:52:52

and you have an audience.

Jody Bower: 00:52:54

who is feeling everything you're, I'm not an actor, but I can understand that

Jody Bower: 00:52:59

it's not about you being up on stage.

Jody Bower: 00:53:01

It's just you and the audience.

Jody Bower: 00:53:04

And also, I think that there's a skill level, there's a skill you've worked

Jody Bower: 00:53:07

at, that you are getting to employ.

Boston: 00:53:10

we've covered a lot of ground.

Boston: 00:53:11

Thank you so much for being willing to just dance in this

Boston: 00:53:15

conversation and share so much.

Boston: 00:53:18

How can people find you?

Jody Bower: 00:53:19

I have a blog.

Jody Bower: 00:53:20

I have a web page it's just jodybower.Com.

Jody Bower: 00:53:24

Also, you can reach me through LinkedIn.

Jody Bower: 00:53:27

and right now, I am available to speak or run workshops.

Jody Bower: 00:53:32

I do a lot of work with, film programs.

Jody Bower: 00:53:35

Because, you know, it's the script writers who really get

Jody Bower: 00:53:39

how myth translates into words.

Jody Bower: 00:53:42

I also do book coaching.

Jody Bower: 00:53:44

I was an editor for years.

Jody Bower: 00:53:46

Now I'm working at a higher level.

Jody Bower: 00:53:48

And one of the things I do is, especially when people are at the

Jody Bower: 00:53:52

early stages of writing a book.

Jody Bower: 00:53:54

I like to do a a two hour sit down where we talk.

Jody Bower: 00:53:58

I have a lot of questions.

Jody Bower: 00:53:59

I have a lot of advice for how to take the vague idea and understand What your

Jody Bower: 00:54:08

structure should be, who your audience is.

Jody Bower: 00:54:10

and you can find my books on Amazon or independent books, sellers, always

Jody Bower: 00:54:14

plug the independent books, sellers.

Boston: 00:54:17

Outstanding.

Boston: 00:54:18

Jody, thank you so much for your time today.

Boston: 00:54:20

You've been really generous

Jody Bower: 00:54:22

This has been fun for me.

Jody Bower: 00:54:23

Thank you.

Boston: 00:54:29

Thanks again to my guest Dr.

Boston: 00:54:31

Jody Bower.

Boston: 00:54:33

And thank you to our listeners.

Boston: 00:54:35

If you enjoyed this episode of Mythic, please consider leaving a review

Boston: 00:54:39

wherever you get your podcasts.

Boston: 00:54:41

That helps people find the show.

Boston: 00:54:42

You can also find more information, including show notes and other

Boston: 00:54:46

resources at mythicpodcast.com.

Boston: 00:54:49

If you want to know more about me and my work, check out bostonblake.com.

Boston: 00:54:55

Until next time.

Boston: 00:54:56

Journey on.