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- [00:02]
A
Welcome to the observable Unknown, where science meets the unexplained. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscubboard.com and after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, grief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experiences often exist in the space between what we can prove and. And what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable influences of immeasurable forces, those hidden factors that shape our reality, but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research in consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation in neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. In today's episode, you'll have a chance to get to know me a lot better than perhaps you have in the past. My wife, Jessica, will read questions submitted through our website by our listeners for me to answer and give you an intimate portrait where previously, perhaps one did not exist. So, without any further ado, let's join the conversation.
- [01:42]
B
Hello, this is jessica ray from crowscover.com thank you for joining us here at the Observable Unknown. You know, as we take in customer comments talking about our products and our podcasts and things that we deliver here through our educational platform, we get lots of questions about who our fabulous mentor and doctor and educator is. And that's Dr. Juan Carlos Rea. And so I'm here today to facilitate that. I want to get these questions answered. I want you to get to know why we here@crownscovered.com believe he is an amazing faculty facilitator and teacher, a mentor for all of us to find our sacred space. So let's jump right into this. Dr. Ray, how are you today?
- [02:23]
A
I'm doing great. Thank you so much for asking. Jessica, I appreciate the time you've taken to answer these listeners questions.
- [02:30]
B
Of course, you know, our listeners, our viewers, our clients, those who have, you know, walked this journey with us. They're very important to us here@crowscover.com and so with your podcast being so successful and everyone joining in with us, of course they're going to want to hear about you. So, of course I'm happy to do that for all of us. So let's jump Right in. You know, I want to talk about what first drew you towards the path of the observable unknown.
- [02:55]
A
Thank you for asking. So, in all honesty, I grew up with a pretty curious nature. A lot more questions than answers, and I've never really stopped chasing those questions. I had a strange hypnagogic visitation at the age of five, which changed me fundamentally. I ended up having a bit of a strange fever. It's probably from the flu. And it opened my eyes to a different texture, a different way of looking at things. And I also believe that it really sparked a profound sense of curiosity. So then growing up, different teachers, instructors, and professors handed me sparks, if you will, and then I have chosen to light the bonfire myself. A lot of people feel like the way of looking at the world that they have is something they've built themselves. The perspective I've assumed is one where I try to integrate not only the perspectives I can't help but to have because of cultural background, education, health, all the things that paint our view of the world, but then also my own personal attitude towards what I should be thinking, how I should be thinking it, and what needs more refinement, if that makes sense.
- [04:10]
B
Yeah, it does. You know, how do we own it? Where do we take it from our environment and the things we find ourselves in or the experiences that happen upon us versus what we decide to lean into when you. You know. Yeah. And when you're realizing that curiosity was more powerful than certainty, you know, how did that come about for you? How did you start finding your path forward in owning it?
- [04:34]
A
So I grew up in Tampa, Florida, and I was exposed to PBS and NPR pretty early on. The attitudes that I think the Florida public education system has towards managing children and students is a little different than it probably is in other states. We had a lot of AV days, and I will tell you that probably fostered a really profound love of movies and television programs and radio programs that I've never really put down. So always hearing these kinds of narrations from different interviewers or hosts from programs watching different documentaries, it always left me with an idea about the story not being finished. If you're familiar with some of these series, like Nova or even Reading Rainbow, as silly as I'm sure that sounds, a lot of these shows, they're obviously designed to educate children and to move them forward into the next week's episode, but that must have instilled within me a sense of, the story is never really finished, so you have to keep going. And so I think for me, that Crystallized as curiosity, superseding any kind of absolute answers kind of left the door open. It didn't give me the gestalt to any single question that I had. So I've kept on asking the same questions over and over again.
- [06:06]
B
You know, I have to laugh at reading Rainbow, right? We're Generation X, so that was a great babysitter for our parents. And so thinking about that, that really did us a great service. Children like you really held onto those ideas and thoughts and questioned, what's next? What's left undone Thinking about that. If our parents got us to the pbs, who was the first person that started to affirm? You started looking up to. You started thinking as a small child, seeing them on these different programs, who did you start seeing? Affirm your ideas, like why it was important, what was the next layer of curiosity getting answered, and who was doing that for you?
- [06:42]
A
My first thoughts go instantly to Carl Sagan. And for a kid watching Cosmos, you know, especially when you're a preteen, some of those concepts are pretty intimidating. They're downright frightening, to be perfectly honest. But I didn't really feel the sense of fear or dread that I know contemplating the infinite can cause in some people. I actually felt like it was more. More of an invitation home. The idea of that vastness, that uncertainty that the universe presents is we won't really be able to grasp and that we should constantly try to solve in. In a way that helps us grow and develop. Other than Carl Sagan, honestly, Phil Donahue was a fixture in my household, and his inquisitive nature, you know, he had this very. He had this very rapid fire question, question, question manner about his guests. And I always felt, you know, there's something about that not really being satisfied once an answer has been given, but instead letting that spiral into a. Sounds strange, but I feel like that formatted my attitude towards seeing the world with more curiosity than any sense of surety or. Or absolute clarity.
- [07:56]
B
Right? So thinking about those two, you know, opposing ideas, you take a social element like Phil Donahue, and you take a. An esoteric concept like the cosmos or Carl Sagan. And so as a young child somewhere, like you said, five to pre teens, how did you even decide that was two opposing ideas? You know, you said in your household, here's two things going on. Why did you, as a small child, decide, I want to find my answer somewhere between the mundane and the esoteric.
- [08:24]
A
I think that the format helped. Donahue is having this conversation in front of groups of people, and there's audience Reactions and it has a very clear social texture. But anyone familiar with the episodes of Cosmos that Carl Sagan hosted know that it was much more lecture in nature. It was much more documentarian, obviously. And I think that understanding those differences was what really informed my attitude towards number one, how to approach information and number two, how to apply it. There's spheres of conversation and attitude that someone like Donahue or later on Sally, Jesse Raphael might have had when they were handling their guests and their audience members. But that attitude is absent with someone like Carl Sagan or even since I referenced reading Rainbow earlier, LeVar Burton, because these are people who are talking to you directly. You feel like you're receiving the information through the TV screen. You feel like you're hearing them speak to you as an individual. So it gave me a very early sense of code switching, understanding how to interact with people, more of a Phil Donahue or Salad just Raphael type. And then how to interact with later on my students, more of the Carl Sagan type. I hope that makes sense.
- [09:38]
B
Right? It does. So you know, I presume again, making this presumption for the audience, if you found your home being Carl Sagan and the Cosmos or Phil Donahue and Jesse Sally Raphael, that must speak something to volumes to your household. So did you find yourself in a conflictual household? Did you find yourself amongst a lot of people, your sibling number count? Where did you find yourself in this? And why Were you as a small child seeking the understanding of both sides? Did that play into the psychological that brought you to the spiritual, the intellectual?
- [10:10]
A
I would say with some certainty, yes. I was the youngest of four and divided from my older siblings by many years. My mother was a late in life mother. I was an accident and not expected.
- [10:24]
B
Not an accident according to those of.
- [10:26]
A
Us here@crows covered.com I appreciate that I wasn't expected. I think back to the work of Dr. Alfred Adler and when you consider how family dynamics really paint our views of the world that we we exist in.
- [10:39]
B
Right.
- [10:40]
A
The concept of parents who are fatigued with parenting or who have already given their best to the children that came before, usually allow the child that comes late in life or after the primary cohort to exist as something of an outsider. In contemporary parlance this is referred to as a sigma. And I very much took that on, not with resentment, but with a certain amount of pride. So was it conflictual? Yeah, I would absolutely say so. My parents didn't get along very well and their marriage did end in divorce. Did I end up having a sense of identity that Was separate from the household. Yeah. And I actually think that's probably one of my. My deepest salvations, was not choosing to identify with necessarily my family members or the family as a structure, but instead to choose identifications outside of the household. That's really what preserved me. Because, you know, in many households where divorce is inevitable or if there's spousal abuse occurring that children witness, what happens is the child hasn't the wherewithal to identify with anyone other than the people inside of the household, which then gives them a broken model that they repeat and repeat and repeat. But I think if children have the chance, whether it's because of institutions like PBS or NPR or whatever is in their world, even if it's something like a religious representative, an ecumenical sponsor of some kind who they can identify with and perhaps find some mentorship through, then the ease of developing a different sense of self, a different kind of compass than what they would have had in their household is something that I believe makes their lives much easier. That was very circuitous, and I'm sorry.
- [12:23]
B
I probably went, oh, no, not at all. That's absolutely where we're bringing you. You know, this is the questions that everybody has asked, you know, on our website, on our platform is, who is Dr. Ray? Right? What made Dr. Ray so. No, absolutely not. We need to hear that story. You. You're talking about what mentored you. You know, you found yourself in that divide. You found yourself in that gap. And so, absolutely, this is what people need to hear, and that's what they've all asked for. So, no. And bringing that back around, you know, so what was the cost of choosing this unknown over the known? You know, like you said, you've known the broken home, the fractured home. You've known the displacement or the exile or the forgotten or the. Like you said, just let's put it on plain facts and not blame anybody. Maybe people are just exhausted and a child might find themselves in a position lacking because of that. We know what the. The cost was, what the fractured home could have brought to you. But what did you choose? You know, what was your choosing? The unknown. We know what the manifestation is. Look at the beautiful education and the way you mentor those that come to you through grief and fracture. But what was the cost for you to separate from your family and the structure you found yourself in?
- [13:30]
A
Well, first and foremost, I want to go on record as saying I don't really hold my parents responsible for any kind of damage. If anything, I give them full credit for who I am today.
- [13:38]
B
Absolutely.
- [13:39]
A
I Am estranged from my father. My mother has passed on. But I don't believe that it's really sensible or even very clear thinking to sit responsibility on the shoulders of a parent. You know, each person wants to come into their sense of self. Awareness really is responsible for who they are. So I'm not going to say that the fractured household did any damage to me in a way that I think I wasn't able to transform it alchemically into something better. So I don't want to make it look like a fractured household caused me injury. But I'd say that as far as choosing the unknown over the known to reference your question, this is something that, in all honesty, I don't feel like it had a high cost. I've always believed that every step into the unknown demanded that I leave behind the illusion of safety. The illusion of safety is what I think leaves people crippled. In all honesty, it's tantamount to the sort of criticism you hear in international social spheres most other countries have, for those of us here in the west, sometimes in America or in Canada, or even in Western Europe, that our safety and the illusion of safety has left us somewhat ignorant and not really aware of the pains of the rest of the world. I'm not sure if I agree with that. I would obviously believe that there's something of a conversation to be had there. But I definitely believe that the illusion of safety is probably one of the most toxic elements anyone could permit into their consciousness. It's probably the one thing halts or inhibits growth the most.
- [15:16]
B
Absolutely. And I agree with that. And to circle back and come back around through the front door. Absolutely. You know, I think we all. That's a human nature to find the fractured self every time we've made a, you know, a chance choice and change that we weren't sure or turned out differently. I think that leaves us all fractured, but taking that responsibility when it's our turn, doing that hard work, like you're saying. So I applaud you for that and applaud you for bringing that to the table for everyone that you have sitting across from you, you know, clients and colleagues alike. So that's very awesome. I just want to point that out.
- [15:48]
A
I appreciate that.
- [15:50]
B
You know, if you could name one or two defining moments that change your trajectory, you know, through the course of finding yourself, what would they be? You know, one or two of them just give us hope.
- [16:00]
A
So earlier I did mention that peculiar hypnagogic visitation that has stuck with me for all of these years. And I I never really discuss it a great deal in public. It's one of those things that I've heard lots of different people's descriptions of similar events. I've watched documentaries, not that I was trying to figure anything out, but just because I wanted to have a sense of familiarity with other people's experiences. Frequently it gets labeled people having shadow people visitations, or gentlemen in hats coming to them. It was something very similar to that. And I can tell you it caused a fantastic kind of crack, I think, in my sense of consciousness. I started seeing the world in two different lights, I guess up until five, from what I can remember. In my third and fourth year, I had a pretty unified and very innocent view of the world. I actually always go back to this one story I remember having with my mother in the car at the age of four where I was talking to her about the idea of being blind and how it didn't make sense to me that someone could be physically blind, not having the use of their optic nerves. And somehow that conversation turned into one about the idea of photography and pictures. And she was talking to me about black and white films and black and white pictures. And I remember very clearly in that moment of that conversation, conversation. And I don't recall exactly what she said, but there was some things she said about looking at the difference between black and white pictures and color pictures. This was how she was trying to convey to me, the difference between being blind and being a seeing person, okay? And it completely annihilated my then view of the known universe. Because I genuinely believed there was a time in history when everything was black and white. And then at some point, because of technology or something else, there was color in the world. And that was the first moment that I realized that completely was not the truth, that there was always color. There was just a difference in the technology that recorded color. So that way of looking at the world, somewhat innocent, somewhat myopic, I guess that was my status quo until my visitation at 5. Then I view the world in distinctly different terms. Much more alive and sentient, very animistic, if you will, thinking that things had feelings and ideas within themselves that might not be identifiable on the surface. So that to me was probably the first really significant moment. The second one that comes to my mind was in second grade. I remember Mrs. Huffman, she was big into AV day, as many Floridian teachers at the time were. And she showed us this. It was a stop motion animation puppeteering film that was done based on Ovid's retelling of the Story of Orpheus and Eurydice. And it stuck with me in a very profound way. I mean, I was probably the only kid who was really paying attention, in all honesty. Of course I liked stop motion animation. Everyone's familiar with the Rudolph stop motion animation cartoons that come on. Well, not cartoons, but stop motion films that come on across the holiday season. And I think that was probably the same year that I had seen for the first time the island of Misfit Toys, which was one of the iterations of the Rudolph trilogy. And, and I think there was something about that stop motion animation that really appealed to me. I remember some of the first VHS cassettes my family rented for me were the Gumby and Pokey series and those were stop motion claymation. But that's probably what piqued my interest was, oh look, this looks like something I've seen at home and something I'm familiar with. But then being drawn into that narrative, it was my first exposure to the myth of Orpheus. And the story regarding he and his loss of Eurydice was. Is so profound. A lot of the imagery in it, which is, it's very. When, when you explore or research this polish, I think it's called Puppetur. It's a. It's a style of cinematography that's done and a style of storytelling. Another one that's very notable and I can't remember the director, but it was something like Crocodiles in the street. That's a more recent one there. There's lots of these that have been floating around for many years now that have captured the interest and the imagination of lots of thinkers. But this, this format for the telling of Ovid's conveyance of the myth of Orpheus really stuck with me in a profound way. And it haunted me until. Well, I mean, I guess it still does in many respects. And I can see the shadow of it lasting in my life. But only recently have I rediscovered it and found out about it. To say, you know, this is a kind of coming back home to realize what impression it left on me. I have the Internet to thank for that. And I, I never really thought I would ever see it again. I honestly believed it was lost fore having it back now. That's the second most significant moment for me.
- [21:08]
B
Oh, when you recreated in your mind before you knew the Internet was going to bless you with this gift of remembering through the visual thinking about the difference between your mom speaking to you about the difference between black and white photos and colored photos and how that changed your perception of how reality worked and Then you have this visitation with, you know, our friend, so to speak. And that was such a profound experience. And you had to probably compartmentalize that and decide, well, if my mother change my trajectory on understanding reality, how does that now change my reality? And then seeing in Claymation. So when you're remembering those both as a, as a tangible experience that you had as a child and a film you didn't know if you'd ever see again, what do you bring forth as a 40 something year old adult? We won't say your age on television or the radio, but what did you bring forth in that, what imagery, you know, because if everything is speaking to you through imagery, how did you hold on to that moment? How did you hold on to that 5 year old who saw both of those experiences and took it into Claymation? What did Claymation speak to you from that hypnagogic or dreamlike state that you find yourself in making new decisions?
- [22:19]
A
If I understand the question, I think it has more to do with being able to suspend aspects of the identity. There's this concept that Dr. Julian James discusses at great length in the Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, where his perception of states of consciousness is one really clearly articulated that explains we have a kind of innocent bicameral state and then we have a less innocent conscious state. Of course, that's the field of focus that thinkers like Freud and Adler and Jung put a lot of effort into the idea of the conscious mind. Jung, of course, went on to discuss the collective unconscious and its structuring of archetypes in great detail. And I think that he has a lot to say about how it is our unconscious minds find their organization. But Dr. Jaynes gives us a sense of the world being alive to us on a very fundamental level. And that in instances of dreaming or imagination, or perhaps even in certain states influenced by psychedelics, we can attain this natural bicameral baseline, that bicameral state of consciousness, that innocence in the approach to the world that we're born with, or that we are really allowed to start out with. I think I must have been given an opportunity to maintain that or to suspend that in some way from a very early age, probably right after that visitation, or maybe the shock of finding out that the world was always color. I think the idea, I think the idea that bicamerality is a functional starting point for consciousness, that to me really resonates because having the chance to look back at the way I've looked at the world as though it's never aged. You know, it's interesting because when you think about how we age and grow and develop and change through our years, we realize that every journey starts with a new open door. What we don't recognize is that the old rooms of our lives don't really fit us anymore. So we have to move forward. That doesn't mean we can't remember them or look back at them. It just means that we can't go back to them. We can look back, but we can't, we can't return. That always reminds me of Homer's Odyssey and the idea that you really can't go back home. You know, that's something that seems to really resonate with us in our mythic intellect, that once you grow to a point, once you mature to a point, you can't return to what life was, but you can reflect on it, you can have a memory of it, and you can probably use that memory to grow from that trajectory point, whatever that starting point was, you know?
- [25:17]
B
Absolutely. You can't unring that bell. Right. You can't go home, you know, so thinking about that. So like you said, and then it matures into a thought. You can't spend all day daydreaming about that film you saw as a little boy or that visitation. But what did you bring forward in your 40 something years? What, what is the one color or the sentiment or the sentence you say? I encapsulate that if I don't remember the totality of it. But you bring it forth in that innocent way. Is it a smell? Is it a fragrance? Is it that? What is it that calls you back to that moment so you don't. Some people scramble and say, I don't want to ever forget that. So they spe much time in nostalgia. And then that doesn't help our future.
- [25:53]
A
That's a good point. Nostalgia does not help our future. I think that there's this. There's this idea I have about how myths work. A lot of my understanding of myth and mythic resonance is informed by Dr. Joseph Campbell. His concept was that as a species, we are amongst the most fragile on the planet. Our young don't mature until 14 or 13, typically.
- [26:20]
B
That's why it's. It's that young. I thought it was a little bit older. Just joking.
- [26:26]
A
Well, well, typically, most cultures will have initiatory rituals designed for allowing a person to enter the adult aspect of their community at the age of 13 or 14. This could be first communion or their confirmation. This could be a bar mitzvah or A bar mitzvot. This could be certain scarification or tattooing ceremonies in other cultures. But the idea of letting someone take on their adulthood at the age of 13 or 14 is one that really says, that's when we think you're prepared. That's when we think you're capable. And biology says this too. You know, most young females are capable of having children by about that age. That's usually when they start their menstrual cycles. And so I think what happens is we let biology determine where adulthood starts. So if that's the case that we've been following for probably, you know, hundreds of thousands of years, there has to be something that we still use to prepare us for that. And Dr. Campbell explained that we use myths as a test lab for experience, that myths teach us what experiences are supposed to be without forcing us to suffer the consequences. You know, you can live through a myth by hearing the story, hearing what the protagonist did, hearing what the antagonist did, and then listening for the outcome or reading the outcome. And so through that, we get to experience many different aspects of life without having to go through the actuality of those events. I feel in my heart that understanding this is the model for improving the self learning through the narrative. Whether we're speaking directly to the subject of myth or folktale or legend, or even these days, simple narratives like jokes or what we'll find in the newspaper, the idea of the narrative as a model for approaching, understanding and digesting our environment, knowing the rules of the game has really profoundly impacted me. Coming back to my. My early years. Both of my parents were the kinds of people who were fond of a wide array of different intellectual pursuits. One of the books that I remember, both of my parents really enjoyed a great deal from my childhood was Games people play by Dr. Eric Byrne. He was the father. Transactional analysis. And the reason most people would keep that book was because it was a thesaurus of pastimes or social exchanges that you could anticipate people's reactions to based on this transactional analysis model that Dr. Byrne gave us. And so when I. I think about that and how that kind of whet my appetite for understanding, there are only really seven narratives that are available for any story that's to be told. It. It gave me a fantastic framework for how to expect the unexpected. That might sound really generic, but that, that's how I feel. I've navigated where I am today and what I've looked behind on.
- [29:38]
B
I love it. Thank you. You know, bringing that myth cycle and, and that like you said, hopefully you avoid some consequences. It's the, you know, lucky person gets the knowledge is the wise person who takes it. Right, yeah. So you avoid that consequence if you can hear yourself in that myth. Right. But of course, we got to bring it back to me. So here@crowscober.com since I'm answering all your questions, my biggest question is, how has love informed your path based baby?
- [30:05]
A
No.
- [30:05]
B
Okay, so of course I'll keep it professional, but really, how has love changed it? Whether it was from when you came into the world, did you find love? How was love? How has love been on your path, so to speak?
- [30:16]
A
If I'm being frank, I don't think there has been a lot of love in my life. I will say that in my past two decades, I've probably just discovered what love is, if I'm being honest. I. I think that there's patterns of familiarity that people will carry forward because they're forced into those roles, whether they're siblings or parents or their children. Society does us a great disservice by forcing us into identities we were never meant for and we probably dislike immensely when we reflect back on them, whether it's because they're wasting our time, eating our resources, changing our compass, whatever that is. It's something that I think is part of this great tragedy of the human condition. But outside of the need to live in a society and to have to take on those mantles of identity, I think the idea, the feeling, the truth of love is something that for myself, I never really knew until pretty late in life. I ended up marrying my wife and I think of her as my anchor. I personally am a big believer in alchemy, both in the metaphysical or esoteric sense. And then, of course, I love the scientific approach that early chemists had to what the natural world meant. One of the lessons of alchemy, especially if you're looking at it through that hermetic lens, is that the alchemization of the soul as it conjoins with another is the highest truth. Dr. Carl Gustav Jung actually spoke about this at great length, and he talked about the conyunkyo being the best form, the kind of divine hermaphrodite, which is, I think, is what every couple should aspire to be. And in my opinion, that's what my wife Jessica has brought to me. So I believe that in my life, learning love in the way that I understand it now, late in life, it's made it that much better. You know, people treat love when they experience it very young In a way that's almost disposable. And then I think what it does is it orients them to shortened relationships and trivializing the significance of connectivity. If you wait until later in life, and I'm not advocating that everyone do this because I, I believe everyone's path is their own, but if you wait till later in life, as I feel I had to, I think that the lessons have a texture you can really only appreciate with age. There is a truth to what Mark Twain said about youth being wasted on the young, because only in old age do you really understand the perspectives that bring to life the textures and the nuances young people will lose. As a grandfather and a father and a spouse and a son and a brother, I think of all my experiences as occurring in a kind of a photo album that you go back to frequently to re evaluate the details of a photograph. You reevaluate a picture to think what was happening at that time. Look at the style of the clothing that the people are wearing, look at the lighting, look at even the, the grade of the photo stock that's used and what that that mean to someone looking at the picture. Is it a high quality photo? Is it a low quality photo? There's so many pieces that you can reflect on better in time than you can when you're in the throes of it, when you're in the middle of it.
- [33:44]
B
True. And let's just give it a foundation though. So if you feel like you found love later in life, you know, how, how did you decide what love was and what you were looking for? Like what, what did you see as a love example? And then go, oh, maybe that's not love. And I'm. And this is what I'm looking for. And you didn, you weren't satisfied until you found it later in life. Maybe that's what I'm asking you. How did you find that distinction and how did you wait for it? How did you find that healthy boundary?
- [34:12]
A
So I think I waited for it by default. I believe it was sort of a de facto unraveling of my own life. I didn't have a lot of opportunities as kind of a, I guess, kind of a sigma my whole life. I didn't have a lot of opportunities for meaningful connectivity. And I, I shirked them because I thought of them as distractions. I thought that course my, my academic pursuits were more important. I believe my professional pursuits were more important. So I didn't really take the time for meaningful connectivity until later in life. I believe that just discussing the Subject of my academic pursuit, specifically true love, has really taught me things that I don't believe any textbook could. I understand the biochemical processes involved and I have read lots of literature. I find myself to be something of a poet and I. I frequently will write a number of works based concept of love. And I have for a very long time. But really knowing it, understanding it and appreciating it firsthand is something I don't believe you can ascertain through the written word. Not meaningfully, not directly. I would also say that love is the ultimate unknown because it's an experiment in faith. It's an experiment in a really fragile kind of faith because it's the faith you have to have in a testable object. You know, when you have faith in a deity, in every likelihood, you're not going to have a lot of opportunities to meet that deity. So they will survive that testing phase and you will retain faith in them. But when you have faith in a person, in the object of your love, you go through daily life and in daily life there are tests. And if that individual passes or fails those tests to keep the love alive, you obviously have to have a certain degree of faith that you maintain and you, I hope, shelter from unnecessary damage. And with that, I think that it really improves your perspective because it shows you the flexibility of faith and the flexibility of emotional growth. It's not rigid. It doesn't follow a format the way intellectual growth does. It doesn't follow the same kinds of structures that learning does. It might very much be tied to the same set of biochemical processes, but that doesn't mean that it, it has the same logic.
- [36:38]
B
Right, right. Because it's emotional. Right. And we, we separate that all the time, even though we're learning how to blend them, but we tend to separate them a lot. You know, but thinking about that, when has love been your teacher more than your comfort? When has that uncomfortability served you and you sat through it? And I am here to testify what a large amount of faith and tenacity you do have have in this arena. So you know, that tenacity of having those boundaries, whether you were given them or cultivated them, has certainly shown itself in its maturity in your older age. So thank you for that.
- [37:13]
A
Absolutely. So, teacher, more than comfort, I would say learning about a difference in the family structure, you know, Please explain. Yeah, yeah. So I don't really believe that I came from. I won't, I won't say that I came from a healthy family because I don't think I Did. I don't think I came from a healthy family. I don't think I came from a good family. But then learning through love and becoming part of a new family or different family, I think I pretty fully and completely realized there isn't a norm. There's not a standard. Right. There's not a right or wrong model. Now you'll say, well, why is that a teacher rather than a comfort that should be comforting? I think that it just showed me a little more, and perhaps this is a bit pessimistic. It showed me that no matter what you do with people, some flaws are inevitable. Some successes are inevitable too. But I think that the overarching approach that we have to family, whether that's informed by Judeo Christian mythology or the mythology of Sanatana Dharma, or even if we're looking at indigenous cultures, the concept of family and what it is supposed to be, isn't healthy. It just isn't. And I don't care how you cut it, I will never say that the concept of family is healthy because you imply, even through the use of the word, that there's a standard. And the same way in our very enlightened, post postmodern view of the world, we've taken a different approach to the concept of gender. I think we have to take the same concept to family. If we can say that gender can be fluid, we have to say that family can be fluid as well. And so breaking my concept that there was a. A healthy versus an unhealthy style of family was probably my. My teaching moment rather than a comfort moment. Does that make sense?
- [39:07]
B
It does. And, you know, you and I, of course, being married. Thank you, sir. Come from similar backgrounds, differently, but similar. And so understanding that and reconciling that and finding your place in life and finding your comfort and finding your. I'm just okay with, like you said, the fluidity of family. And I think that for me was one of my lessons learned. We talk a lot, a lot privately about individuation. And, you know, how could a family be anything other than conflictual and hard, whatever word you want to label it? Because how are we going to individuate if it was so comfortable? So, like you said, we're not going to sit here and blame anybody's family, ours, theirs or otherwise, because you need that discomfort, you need that contrast. You need that teacher at its nicest point and that monster at its worst point to teach us what we want to be is an individual and the observable as unknown. Right. I think that's what you're bringing to the table.
- [39:59]
A
I. I agree. I think that recognizing the value of friction is something that's lost on so many people. I always try to explain. A lump of coal doesn't become a diamond by being treated nicely. It becomes a diamond by being put through so much pressure and so much heat that it has only one choice. Be annihilated or crystallized and become dead different.
- [40:22]
B
But then I love your other, and I'm just going to pull it out of you right now. I love your other side to that because everything has duplicity in life. And so I want you to tell your story about the pepper in your food. Right? So take the opposite. If you're put under that much fire to become this beautiful diamond. Once you're that diamond and you shine, how do you find the contrast? Back to modesty. Tell us about the pepper in the food. Right. Do we just dump all the pepper on the food or what do we do?
- [40:45]
A
Right. You know, I. I have always said that you can't sit down to a meal of salt and pepper. This has to be added. Added sparsely to foodstuffs that otherwise might be quite bland.
- [40:56]
B
Right.
- [40:56]
A
If you sat down to a bowl of just spices, you'd probably become very sick. So only a little bit of that seasoning is necessary. I believe that for the human condition, and as painfully fragile as we are as a species, it. It only requires a little friction to get fantastic results. You know, we aren't lumps of coal, but as carbon based life forms, we do require some friction. I think too much is unhealthy. I think too little is just as unhealthy. But a little season goes a long.
- [41:26]
B
Way and in either side. Right. So the lessons and the blessings. All right. And of course, bring it back to me. You know, any mess can be holy if you bless it. Right. So what was the most difficult lesson love demanded of you so far? You know, in your. Your ripe old age, here you are in your late 40s.
- [41:45]
A
You know, I think that it has to do with fitting in. I think of myself as more a free agent than anything. I think of myself as an independent person. So having to be cooperative in a way that my childhood never demanded is probably the most painful or difficult lesson that. That love demanded of me.
- [42:02]
B
Okay. And so thinking about that, you know, and bringing it back to Jessica being, you know, the greatness that she is that you've transformed into this blessing of a life that you and I live. So thank you again. I'll have to turn this Podcast over to me. But how have I, Jessica, changed the way you understand love itself? How have I brought, you know, everybody who knows us and has listened to us at any time have this conjecture. They know how different we are and how, you know, up and down and back and forth and left and right, we are, and we flux in and out of each other in this beautiful marriage. But bringing, like you said, I've tried to love everybody right out of the gate, right? And like you said, you didn't find it till later in life. So that, that duplicity, that change juxtaposed in both of us. How, how did, how did I help you understand love?
- [42:46]
A
You know, if I'm being as frank as I can possibly be, I think that you and your love style is different from person to person. You, you actually try to tailor how you love people according to the individual, which is special for you and I think unique to you. It's, it's a bit different than the love format I've seen in lots of individuals. I believe for me, and I won't speak to how you've loved other people. For me, you turned love into a mirror that both flatters and wounds with equal brilliance. So I think that's valuable. I think that to have a healthy dose of criticism to continue growing, which of course is the most important thing. I believe that growth comes only again through friction, which is where these, these wounds from, from difficulty or challenges comes from. So I think that being a mirror that really reflects upon me both my positive and negative attributes is the greatest way for me to understand love itself. And that's something I think you've brought to the table.
- [43:48]
B
Oh, thank you so much, sir. You know, for me, reflecting that love back through you, through. You know, I, I use my lens more for the criticism than I do for the compliment. And so we balance each other, other out in that way. You, you work so hard and, and you've given so freely and so kindly to all of your clients and colleagues and, and family and friends and foes alike. And, and so, but for me, you've, you've taught me to slow down and to mirror back that slow pace of self reflection and you don't fit in. Because I have always tried to fit in or make everybody fit in with me and, and you've shown me the beauty of standing out and finding your own path through love. So thank you for, for that.
- [44:26]
A
Absolutely.
- [44:27]
B
You know, and thinking about that, do you integrate both of those parts? You know, you and I have this private conjecture a lot. Do you integrate the best parts and the worst parts of yourself and find yourself there? Or do you separate them and contain them differently? Or, you know, what do you do with that? When one door shuts and another one opens, you know, whether it's in love, whether it's in your family dynamics, and whether it's the observable unknown. Bringing it back to where we're coming to the end of this episode of the podcast, because we have a million more questions, and I'm sure we'll have another million more episodes together, but bringing it back into this total package, you know, when one door opens and another one closes, or one closes and another one opens, how do we walk forward with those experiences from early childhood in the innocence to the more critical, mundane life of living and just walking through those doors and accepting that, how do we find ourselves there?
- [45:20]
A
So people who know me intimately know that I'm a huge fan of the Italian director Pierpaolo Pasoli, and for him, his greatest work, in my opinion, was his Medea. It's based on Seneca's Medea rather than other tellings of that story. And it opens with the centaur Chiron speaking to a young Jason, explaining the nature of the world, explaining that the world is full of holiness, full of sacredness, the world is sacrosanct, and everything is alive, everything is an aspect of the divine. Well, that narrative moves on, and the little boy ages a little bit, the narrative changes a little bit, and Chiron tells him in each age that we see young Jason maturing, different stories about Jason's background and how to perceive the world. When we finally arrive at Jason as an adult and Chiron as this very stoic philosopher, approaching reality as cleanly and as compactly as he can, he explains to Jason that, in fact, nothing is sacred and that there is nothing natural in nature. What I see in this opening monologue that is so profound to me and that I think Puzzellini really did mean to convey to his audience, is that the growth, the change, the cycles that we grow through, intellectually, emotionally, philosophically, the process is more important than the product. I think that what he meant for us to understand is that what we grow through and the perspective that that growth affords us is so much more significant than any of the content that gets yielded as we age, we have different changing perspectives on what our life has become and what we have brought with us. You know, a lot of things you can't bring with you. Most of the time, you have to leave a lot behind, but you can still keep a Token. You know, it's kind of like the idea of, what do you take when there's a house fire? When you're, when your house burns down, what you bring with you? You should be bringing things that remind you of important moments. People take photo albums. They might take keepsake jewelry, or maybe they'll take the collection of video cassettes. It just depends on what's really valuable. Most of the time, I think people bring these little memorative hints at something bigger and better, sort of like a mnemonic key to remembering the lessons of their life and the beauty of their life. That's what I think is the most important, is understanding the journey rather than the destination.
- [48:16]
B
Well, and you know, we're going to come to the close of this podcast today. We've gotten through three of our questions of our 24 questions. But I want to stop here and just put a pin in it because I know you're going to invite me back. I know we're going to get through these 21 other questions that our, our clients and friends and family want us to get through here on crowscover.com but just leave us with that. Leave us with that momentum. Leave us with that key. Leave us with that trifecta, that three parts key to take away from the innocent to the mundane to the observable unknown through this podcast of all your important early moments. What are the three keys you want people to take away from this podcast today?
- [48:57]
A
The three keys to take away from today's episode.
- [49:00]
B
What are important? What are you handing us? What three keys are you handing us? Short snippets. Yeah.
- [49:07]
A
Okay, let's see. So the three most important takeaways, I believe, would be from. First and foremost, structure is an illusion. And you will only hurt yourself by trying to fit into structure.
- [49:21]
B
Oh.
- [49:22]
A
Secondly, the process is more valuable than the product. Finding out how the alchemization occurred is an infinitely better lesson than the philosopher's stone that you'll find on the other side.
- [49:37]
B
Okay.
- [49:38]
A
And I believe that the most transformative force for the human condition is true love. Not the love that you accept because society has demanded it of you, or not the love that you accept because you are imitating role models. But the love that you find that is painful, gritty, and therefore transformative.
- [50:04]
B
In loving more, baby. In loving more. All right, so here we are. We've got 21 more questions to come later on. You're going to invite me back, I know you will when you get through all of this long list of guests you have ahead of you. Thank you so much for allowing me this time and space with you. Thank you so much for allowing us into your private life, for letting our clients and our colleagues ask questions of you that are big and deep and meaningful and leave you vulnerable. Dr. Ray, thank you for being invulnerable in front of us here@crowscover.com on the observable unknown.
- [50:36]
A
Absolutely. It's been a pleasure. Have a great night.
- [50:38]
B
Thank you. You too. Bye. Bye.
- [50:42]
A
In today's episode, I was able to answer a handful of questions taken from the most frequently submitted through our website, crowscupper.com those questions submitted by our listeners and clients, those who wanted to have a better understanding understanding of not only who I am as a person, but what my motivations are. With this podcast and with much of the work we do through crowscoper.com I was happy to share my insights and I found the questions invigorating. I look forward to many more coming in the future. Whenever we consider what what makes a person tick, if you will, we should always think about what has shaped them, what has influenced them, what seeds were left in them. You might be surprised by what kinds of seeds were left and how those seeds were deposited. Sometimes it is normal for us to judge a book by its cover, but that doesn't make it wise. Remember, what appears unknowable often stands right before us, waiting to be observed through both the lens of science and the wisdom of spirit. Until next time, this is Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscubboard.com inviting you to look deeper into the observable unknown.