Josh Schrei: Enter the Meadows of Joy
Today’s conversation is with Josh Schrei, a renowned student of mythology - and host of The Emerald Podcast (that I’d highly recommend you check out).
In this episode Josh shares personal and mythical stories to remind us of the hidden treasures to be found in times of sorrow. He beautifully articulates grief as part of the cycle of shedding, releasing, and returning to what he calls the “meadows of joy”.
As you will soon experience in this conversation, Josh brings a profound understanding of mythology - and his ability to articulate its significance, makes him a rare voice in our world.
During this episode Josh shares:
Personal stories of wildfires, grief and his young sons
The pervasiveness of grief underneath the surface of all our lives
Why grief is a vital part of the life cycle - and intimately connected with joy
How mythology has always served as a timeless reservoir of wisdom, capturing the essence of our collective experiences.
With all my heart, thank you for being here.
Love, Jono
P.S. If you're enjoying these episodes, I would be so grateful if you could rate the show and leave me a review on Apple podcasts. These reviews help more people discover the show. You could mention what you like about the show - the episode that made you a regular listener - or your favorite guest or episode. Here’s some easy instructions on how to leave a review. Thank you so much!
-
Josh [Excerpt]: What I've found is that when I make a point of stopping and slowing down and really checking in and really checking in with how I'm doing, and really letting those waves of rhythm and pace subside a little bit, you could say, to get to the heart of the feeling of what is present or up for me, and I feel this is probably true for a lot of people, one of the first things that tends to arrive is a wave of grief. I feel that this wave of grief lives right under the surface of our modern world. We have mechanisms of hiding it. We have ways of continuing about our day. But the grief I've found is an invitation into a deeper place. It's the place of presence. It's the place where actual transformation and, and healing can happen.
Jono [Intro]: Thanks for joining me today and welcome to this episode. Before we dive in, I wanted to take a moment and express my gratitude for the huge amount of support you have shared for this Medicine of Grief season. Over the past two to three months, there's been thousands of episodes downloaded. There's been heartfelt emails and feedback sent and really loads of new subscribers to the podcast. It has been immensely gratifying and touching, and I just wanted to say thank you. I also wanted to honor all of your sorrows that you have shared with me. Your beloved children who have passed away, the friends you've lost, your loneliness, the ended relationships. The betrayals, your depression, the financial challenges, the addictions, the passing of a beloved animal, and the heartbreak for our world. My hope is this podcast can continue to be a place for you, a place of refuge and encouragement and inspiration. And today's conversation is with Joshua Shri. Joshua is a renowned student of mythology, and he's also the host of the Emerald Podcast, a podcast mind you that I'd highly recommend that you check out. In this episode, Josh shares personal and mythical stories to remind us of the hidden treasures to be found in times of sorrow. He articulates grief as part of the cycle of shedding. Releasing and returning to what he calls the quote Meadows of Joy. As you'll soon experience in this conversation, Josh brings a profound understanding of mythology and his ability to articulate its significance makes him a rare voice in our world. And if you'd like to learn more about Josh, once again, I'd highly recommend that you head over to the Emerald Podcast. And if this work of grief resonates with you, feel, feel free to sign up to my newsletter at jonofishernow.com and please consider subscribing to the podcast on either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Thank you so much for listening. It means the world to have you here today.
[Interview Commences] Jono: We're well. I guess I just wanna start by welcoming you, Josh. Um, you know, I've, uh, listened to your podcast for, uh, probably a good solid 12 to 18 months, and, uh, yeah, just so appreciate the work that you're doing in the world. So thanks for joining us today.
Josh: Thanks for having me here. It's great to be here.
Jono: Mm-hmm. I guess I'd like to begin with, I'm curious to know why you said yes to being part of this series. You know, we, um, yeah. Grief, I know is not your specialty. Um, but when I reached out, you were pretty quick to say. Yeah, I'd, I'd love to be part of the conversation.
Josh: Yeah. Um, I did an episode of the Emerald Podcasts a few months back called, I Wish It Could Have Been Another way, and this is, This episode was for me, an opportunity to dive into things that I'd been feeling for a really long time. And, um, obviously as you know, one, not need be a grief specialist in order to feel grief. And I think that in our world these days, um, you know, we're used to a certain pace of life. We're used to a certain way of being. We're used to going about our business in a certain way. We're used to, um, the rhythms and, um, pace of, you know, normal everyday time. And we get caught up in that. And as we get caught up in that, I think it's easy to, um, forget to stop and slow down. And what I've found is that when I make a point of stopping and slowing down and. Really checking in and really checking in with how I'm doing and really letting those waves of rhythm and pace subside a little bit, you could say, to get to the heart of the feeling of what is, you know, present or up. For me, and I feel this is probably true for a lot of people, one of the first things that tends to arrive is a wave of grief. I feel that this, I feel that this wave of grief lives right under the surface of our modern world. I feel that, you know, when I see people rushing around, see those kind of, you know, images of rush hour traffic or people rushing to get where they're going, and I can feel if we were to stop for just a moment, if we were to slow down for just a moment, this, this wave of of grief would come, you know, we'd have the opportunity to pause and actually feel into where we're really at. And with the way the world is today, uh, with the, the frenzy that the world is in, with the things that are happening, the things that we're exposed to, the things that we're bombarded with every day. There's no way that, you know, most of the population is not feeling a huge amount of grief. We have mechanisms of hiding it. We have ways of continuing about our day. Um, but the grief I've found, is an invitation into a deeper place. It's the, the place of presence. It's the place where actual transformation and, and healing can happen. Hmm. And so, you know, I felt this, the episode came into being, um, After a series of, well, really two wildfires here in New Mexico where I live took out about 300,000 acres of my most treasured forest forest that I knew intimately. And, uh, and, you know, it was, it was really difficult to watch and be here for that and to feel the, the forest that I'd grown up with burning. and it wasn't, you know, sometimes you can look at forest fire as a healthy expression of the natural life cycle of a forest. And this, this wasn't that. This was, um, this was something very, very different response to climate, crisis and drought. And, um, and I felt it, I felt it so deeply and what I really felt, and one of the things that really. Has been a doorway into a lot of grief for me, is not wanting to have to tell my toddler, my young sons not wanting to have to tell them what we've done to the world. You know, um, not wanting to see that look of wonder as they gaze across the world, as they see the vastness of the world. Not wanting to see that diminished, not wanting to see that lesson, not wanting to say, yes, this is all beautiful, but guess what, it's all, you know, in, in danger. And we've really not done the best job of maintaining it and having done the best job of caretaking it and. This feeling of like, I wish I had done better for you. You know, I wish I'd done better for you, my son. I wish I'd brought you into a better place. And, um, the tendency to want to shy away from that feeling or flinch when that feeling arises. Or sometimes we like, allow ourselves into like, we, we like dip the toe in and we feel that wellspring of grief and then there's kind of a fear that arises. Like, oh, if I let myself feel, feel this, it's gonna swallow me. You know, if I let, if I actually slow down. If I actually get out of this anxious rush of a life for a moment and slow down and actually feel this, well, well bubbling well of grief, it's gonna swallow me and I can't possibly let myself feel that. And then there's like a recoil. We recoil against the grief and probably try and distract ourselves with something, you know, turn our attention to something that we have some control over. But the calling of that grief is the calling into a natural cycle. It's the calling into a, a cycle that is linked to and, um, reflective of and resonant with the cycle of the season. It's a calling into a cycle that must be expressed within our beings in one way or another. It must be expressed. So the invitation to slow down and feel the grief, and even feel like after the initial recoil to let ourselves go into that space, is the calling into a space that you could say has been like incredibly mythically important for human beings for a very long time. And I don't mean mythically in some kind of abstract way. I mean the understanding that the dissent, you could call it the dissent, the exhale, the like, I have to let go. I have to feel what I'm feeling. I have to let the tears fall, right? I have to shed, I have to collapse. And we don't let ourselves collapse very often in this modern world. We're not supposed to collapse, right? We're supposed to keep on producing, keep on producing, keep on producing. You know, agitate our way forwards. Even our, even our, you know, saving of the ecosystem, quote unquote, has become a sense, a, a source of relentless agitation, agitate our way forwards. I've gotta do something, I've gotta do something, I've gotta do something. Well, in nature, wintertime is a great collapse. Wintertime is a great shedding. There is a dissent that is an innate part of the cycle, and we need to allow ourselves to go through that cycle. We need to allow ourselves, you know, or, you know, um, I feel that I need to allow myself to, uh, to experience that cycle, because that cycle is ultimately the cycle of rejuvenation and renewal. It's the cycle through which transformation actually happens. Like, have you noticed, right, that if we just keep agitating our way forward, keep agitating our way forward. Maybe I take a weekend off and I go have my little retreat for a second, but as soon as I stop and uh, step into that retreat space, I'm already thinking about what's gonna come out the other side. If we keep agitating our way forward, agitating our way forward, that transformation, the deep alchemical transformation, the deep connection that we long for of us to the planet, to the actual forces of nature. It doesn't happen. It doesn't happen unless we allow ourselves to be taken on a particular journey. And that journey involves shedding, letting go often involves weeping, right? Often involves collapsing. When we realize that we've done everything we can and the problems of the world are still what they are, and we haven't fixed it right? Despite our best efforts, we haven't fixed the world. You know, that's a deep one for me. Right. And then we let ourselves feel that, and we let ourselves collapse. You know, and then the, the natural course of that, right? Because everyone knows that feeling. When the tears finally start to flow, that feeling of relief, relief, and all of a sudden it's like something that had been stuck and agitating and gnawing at us. All of a sudden, it's like the whole world is singing back. It's like whatever barrier had existed between us and the world, the living world, all around us, whatever barrier had existed between us and the world, suddenly with the opening of that floodgate of tears, suddenly the whole world springs to life. Yeah. And we feel the voices of the, the world around us, and we feel the presence of nature and we feel connected again. So tears move stuck energy. They move stuck things that are stuck within us. And in that eruption of tears or that cascading of tears or that shedding of tears, right? We, we open ourselves up to actually change. To actually transform. Yeah. So there's, you know, for, and this is something that I have felt acutely at certain times in my life, and it's something that I feel in small ways, like throughout a day, right? And you know, in the western world, it's like we like to compartmentalize everything. So grief becomes like this thing in a box almost. Uh, even if we're honoring it, quote unquote, it still becomes this like separate thing in a box, if you know what I mean. And, um, Grief is part of a, of a cycle, a whole cycle. And there are other things within that cycle too. And that cycle, um, is the inherent cycle that beings go through in a world of life and death and a world of transformation and change, right? That energetic of grief is, um, is a release. Like I said, it's a shedding, it's a letting go. It exists. It exists like in the world all around us. And there are stories and stories in the mythic traditions of outpourings, of grief. There are stories of weeping stones and stories of wailing sirens. And these stories remind us that this too is an integral part of the cycle, and that this, too is part of what it means to change.
Jono: I, you know, I can't help but feel the, uh, the kind of the reference, the wide lens that you are kind of bringing to your work and even to this conversation and maybe is also context for people who may be hearing you talk about stories or myth. Um, what is that kind of mythic lens you're looking through and why is it important? How's, how's it kind of helping you in your life? Cuz I really hear the support of this context.
Josh: The, you know, the, the mythic lens is, you could call it the lens through which our ancestors have viewed and experienced the world for hundreds of thousands of years, right? The human reality is a reality of mythic narrative, right? The world is singing its stories to us, and, and we, um, as human beings listen and give voice to those stories and sing back and use those stories as points of connection to the cosmos. And I don't mean this in an abstract way, I don't mean that. Like we read a myth and it's an allegory for something, and we think about that and, uh, you know, then come up with some cool insights about the nature of the world. Certainly that can happen, and certainly that's a fun process, but what I'm talking about is much, much deeper than that. Myths lived at the heart of ritual traditions and myths were told in certain instances, um, in certain ritual practices. The myth of Persephone, for example, which has a lot to do with, um, what we're talking about today. The myth of Persephone was the heart myth and the mysteries of Elyssus. And it was told at a certain time of the year and it was told to initiates. And the initiates who heard it had gone through something incredibly powerful right before they heard it. And their consciousness was altered. And they had been fasting and they had been dancing and they had been singing. And at the culmination of all this, the experience, you know, that kind of ritual, initiatory experience where you're not sure, um, if you're going to make it to the other side and you're not sure what the mystery is, that waits at the other side. Then the myth is unveiled and it becomes something that embeds itself into the initiates’ tissues. It becomes part of their living reality, their living understanding of a living world. So, um, the mythic vision, as I see it, is a reconnection to a living cosmos, to understanding the forces of nature, to understanding how the forces of nature move through bodies. There's nothing dead about myth whatsoever. We are living in mythic times. If you don't believe we're living in mythic times, just look at some of the stories that are at play within our world right now. And they are stories, right out of what you could call like dark fairytales, right? You know, overlords controlling and manipulating reality, this type of thing, right? And I don't wanna sound conspiratorial, but you know, it's like, Yeah, we are absolutely 100% within mythic narrative. We exist within mythic narrative. There's a great mythic narrative that's caught hold of possessed, even you could say, minds across the world. And that mythic narrative says that if you accumulate limitless amounts of stuff, then you will be happy. That's a mythic narrative, right? That's a mythic narrative that has got its grip on our entire, uh, modern society, right? So myth is alive in all its permutations is alive. And what I find is that finding stories that mirror, right. I once asked, uh, indigenous author Tyson Yunkaporta, um, about the difference between good story and bad story, right? And that's something that he talks about a lot. Good story and bad story. And he talked about story that is connected to and reflective of the laws of nature versus story that is not the, the mythic narrative that we can continue with a trajectory of, um, limitless consumption on a planet of limited resources that is not reflective of the actual laws of nature that doesn't play itself out in nature, right? So that is what Tyson would call bad story, right? The myths that are reflective of the cycles of nature, the myths that do, um, reveal insights into how this world app actually operates and actually works. And the myth of Persephone is a good example because it's a myth of the changing of the seasons. It's a myth of, um, the shedding of the old and renewal. Um, it's a myth of grief and loss. Um, and it's also, um, a myth of joy and hope, you know, myths like this are, you could say, embedded in the world around us because they're reflective of the world around us and how it operates, right? So for me, um, myth is as relevant as it's ever been, and the myths are alive, and they can offer us portals into understanding and feeling and rekindling a certain kind of relationship with the natural world around us, in which we understand the forces that are at play in nature around us. We understand what's happening, um, in the world around us in a, in a different way. And through that we can, um, gain some traction for transforming. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jono: I've heard you refer to humans as instruments and could you talk a, talk a little more about that?
Josh: Yeah, yeah. The human being as instrument is something that you'll find in the mythic stories and also in the ritual practice traditions in culture upon culture, upon culture. And this is the understanding that human beings, um, have the ability, you could say, if we learn what it is, to tune ourselves correctly, we have the ability to, to tune into the song and voice of the world around us and to receive from it and to sing back to it. And that this has been a huge part of, you know, how the role of human beings has been envisioned for a very long time. So, resonance the world operates in principles of resonance. The, um, our ancestors attuned to each other and learned how to cooperate through group ritual resonance. It's quite possible that we learned how to communicate and bond with each other, through sound, through repetitive enactments of sound. And in those repetitive enactments, sonic enactments, dancing, drumming, singing together, um, suddenly the body of the collective becomes as one body. Right? And this has, um, you could say like evolutionary application in terms of like how paleolithic peoples needed to cooperate, how they needed to hunt, right? Resonating with each other, resonating with the natural world around the, um, There's increasing evidence that the paleolithic caves, the art galleries, and many of the paleolithic caves are in the, um, caves. They're positioned in the particular chambers that have the greatest acoustic resonance. The, there were almost certainly rituals of resonance and, um, what you can call group entrainment through resonance that happened in these spaces. And so, um, right at the heart of human experience is the ability to, you could say, resonate with each other and resonate with the world around. So understanding the human being as an instrument through which, um, story can pass, song can pass. Yeah. Artistry can pass. This is like the bardic vision, right? The human being as a hollow instrument that learns to attune itself to the voice of the world. And receive that voice and then sing back. And in that singing back, we establish ourselves as, um, caretakers in reciprocal relationship with an animate cosmos. Right. That we are part of a great reciprocity, a great exchange, and in honoring and understanding that reciprocity, we learn what it is to, um, to sing back and in singing back to care for this world around us. Yeah. So human beings as instruments, you know, there are, um, like Tibetan tantric traditions where the teachers literally became instruments after they died. Like their femur bones were turned into flutes, and their disciples played the flutes long after they passed. And the. Wisdom and song of those masters was passed on to their disciples through like their actual bodies becoming instruments, right? Like we look at early flutes, paleolithic flutes, and they're made of bone, right? Bird bone, um, bone of various animals. Those animals went on to become instruments and through their bones, the song was played in the song of the world echoed and reverberated, and maybe it touched an ear and opened a heart and opened an eye to a new way of seeing and a new way of experiencing the world, right? The um, what is it that a Agamben says? The Italian philosopher says, the primary interaction between the human being in the world is not logical. It is musical, right? Which is a very deep and very powerful quote to understand, you know, everything in this world operates in principles of resonance. You know, even like how we vote for politicians, like how we vote for politicians, people think they're making these deep, logical choices about the politicians and the policies. And a lot of it they've found in, you know, in studies, a lot of it has to do with who we resonate with, who we feel a common resonance with. So understanding that this is a world of resonance makes me want to understand more what it means to be an instrument. It makes me want to understand more what I can do to feel more attuned and connected, because the source of our grief, if I may be so bold, the source, the source of our grief, is a feeling of great disconnect from home. It's a feeling of great disconnect from home. Again, I see like all the people rushing around at rush hour. I see this frantic human energy, this frantic, um, anxious seeking. I see people who really ultimately miss home. And the home I'm talking about is a feeling. It's a feeling that the tiger or the flamingo or the, um, Anaconda never has to feel. And the blessing and the curse of human beings and what you can call their upper brain function or frontal brain function, right, is that we have this great thing called self-awareness and self-identity and this type of thing. And we also feel separate. We feel separate from this world. We feel like something is missing. We feel a great lack. We feel a great hole. What in recovery circles is called the god-sized hole, right? We feel something lack lacking. We feel something lacking, and we find every possible distracted way to try and fill that hole. Oh, maybe if I run around and have a successful career, I'll fill that hole. Maybe if I get that new Audi, I'll fill that hole. Right. You know, and, and I'm not saying that those material pursuits are like, you know, bad or anything like that. I'm simply saying that underneath it all, underlying it all is a deep feeling of separation from home. And if we were to have regular practices of reconnecting, regular practices of reconnecting as our ancestral cultures dating back hundreds of thousands of years, have Doubtlessly had. Right. But for some reason we've decided in the postmodern world are unnecessary like human beings for 300,000 years have had practices of reconnection, and yet in the last like 500, like we decide that that's unnecessary. And then you look at the rates of anxiety and depression and malaise and you say, Hmm, are these two things related? If we were to have such practices regularly of reconnection, of knowing that what we're experiencing is a disconnect, is a dismemberment and we need to remember, we need to rejoin, we need to find our way back home, ritually, I think it would go a long way to starting to, um, address some of the modern societal ills. I think that we need these practices of reconnection and we need to recognize that part of the human experience is simply. That separation. That separation is painful, and that separation is also beautiful. It's bittersweet. You know, I am one with the world, and yet I am separate from the world. I am one with the world, and yet I am separate from the world. I feel so close the world. One day I wake up and the world feels like the closest lover. Feels like so present, so here, so near. And I say, oh look, thank you mother goddess. You're right here. I can feel you. And then the next day, guess what? She feels like she's a million miles away and we're left picking up the pieces. Well, what are the devotional traditions teach us in those moments? They teach us sing of the separation. In those moments of separation. Sing of the separation. Sing about how separate you feel. It's what the blues musicians do, right? Sing about how separate you feel. In moments of grief, sing of it. Sing it out loud, right? The sirens in Greek mythology, like the sirens were cursed and blessed at the same time. You could say they didn't lift a finger to stop Persephone's abduction, right? And Demeter comes to them. And in her wrath says, why didn't you do anything? Why didn't you do anything to stop the violation of the world? Why didn't you do anything? And she disfigures them. But then she gives them the most beautiful voices ever heard at the same time. And those beautiful voices are to sing. They are to sing of the abduction of Persephone. They are to sing of the violation of the world. That is what they're to do. The sirens in times of separation, sing of the separation. In those times when we feel distant from source sing of that separation sing, you feel a million miles away from me today, a world of nature. You feel a million miles away from me today. Sing that too. Right? This, I feel, is a bit of what it means to be an instrument, to recognize these cycles of conjoining and separation, and to sing our way to the rejoining and to sing our way through the times of separation over and over and over again to sing our way back home over and over and over again. Yeah. The recognition that we're longing for home is, you know, that'll make the tears start to flow. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. What have I been longing for this whole time? What is it that's been missing? It's a feeling, a conjoining, a state of consciousness. A trance, a shimmer, a hum. It's a call right home. It calls to us, right. That feeling of conjoin with the world around us, that feeling of union, that divine wedding, as it's been described in so many of the fairytales and alchemical text. Yeah. But when we recognize that, that's what it is, then we, we have a, a portal that opens up. It's like, oh, this is what I've been longing for. This is what I've been wanting. This is, this is where the grief ultimately comes from. And then when we know that that's where the grief ultimately comes from, then we can let it pour through. Yeah. And it can inform our songs and our prayers and our circles of poetic exultation, our laments. It can inform all these things. Creator, I'm crying to you, calling to you because I'm longing for home.
Jono: What I notice when you talk and when I've listened to you or podcast, is just how close all this can feel. Um, so often when I've heard stories or myths presented to me in growing up, it's always felt a long way away. It's always felt like just distant, you know, and somehow theoretical or fantasy in a fan, a distant kind of fantasy way. Um, yeah. Do you wanna speak at all to how close this is all to us?
Josh: Yeah. It's, it's in the air, it's in the breath. It moves through sound. This is part of the heart of it. Part of the reason that it feels far away is because we've literarily abstracted it, right? So the myths were committed to the pages of books. And, and I always say, don't get me wrong, I love books. You know, I have a great fondness for books. But a book is inherently, um, uh, a layer of separation between us and the world, right? Just in the very structure of what words are, they are things that represent something else. Words on a page are things that represent something else. The myths for many thousands of years across this planet were not things that represented something else. They were living oral animate tradition whose, um, feelings like you're describing. I think were transmitted from voice to ear. Transmitted from voice to ear. And because of this, you know, this transmission is very, very different than what it is to read words on a page, right? So if the storyteller has been through a journey of descent themselves, if they've been on their underworld journey, as I'm sure many of us have been, to the river of tears, been to the river of wailing cries, found their way through that river to the meadows of mourning on the other side, felt the light of the new rising sun, and saw those tears melt from tears of grief into tears of joy, or perhaps live in the place where grief and joy are one thing. If the storyteller has been to that place, been on that journey, been alchemized transformed through that journey, and then are able to speak to it, right. Able to, to speak to it from the place of having been there. Then there's something through the voice of the storyteller that transmits, right. And it transmits and one feels it. That's the power of uttered sound. Right? Part of the reason I started the podcast to begin with is because there's a lot of scholarly study of this stuff, right? And that scholarly study is wonderful and I, I love scholarly study, right? But what I felt was being lost was what in tantric traditions would be called the transmission, right? And just for the record, I'm not, you know, saying that like I transmit or something like that. But I'm saying that like when circumstances are right, Within a storytelling circle, transmission happens, right? There's an energetic movement that moves Hearts. It moves bodies, right? It moves us to tears. Sometimes it moves us. And that in that moves our lives change. Transformation happens. So think of the one, the like, the wonder of this for a moment that someone uttered a story. Say again? The story of Persephone, cuz it's kind of been what we've been talking about a bit today, that someone uttered that story, who knows the earliest iterations of that story. Go back, back, back, back, back. Somebody received a story. First they received it. What do I mean? They heard it in the winds, they heard it in the waters, they heard it on the breeze. And then they uttered that story and people heard, and it moved people. It moved emotions and people, it moved them to tears. It moved them to experience life in different ways. And then see how that story, so when I was telling that story of the sirens, I could see some like emotion moving in you right? Think about that 5,000 years later that the air, the, the, the sonic energy of that story is still making its way into hearts and minds and bodies and stirring things awake and causing them to change how they see the world causing people to change how they see the world, right? Then you can start to see what many animus traditions are talking about when they say that a story is a living being that a story is a being. You can say like, what's the body of a story? What is the feathered, serpentine body of a story that stretches back across ancestral generations and generations? Right. Uh, the sounds of that story are still finding their way into ears and into bodies and changing behavior, and changing the way that people talk about things and see things and making people weep. And then in weeping, maybe, maybe making people like, you know, go home and see their families in a different way and causing them to bring a little bit more attention to their children or whatever it is. Like this is the power of a story over thousands of years. This is the power of a story. This is the body of a story expressed over time, right? So the living force of story, the living force of myth is close, right close. There's a quote from the Quran that says, the, the divine is as close as your jugular vein, right? Part of our, you know, fraught relationship with religion and divinity and even animacy and um, and animism, is that these things have been abstracted. They feel far away. Right. But no, it is the heartbeat. It is the swish, swish love dub movement of blood through the body. Right? It is the cry of the hawk. It is the flow of the water. It is these things. It is the flood of tears that leave the body and find their way back, evaporate and find their way back to the ocean where they were born. I like to feel that tears are finding their way back to the ocean. Yeah. Saltwater finding its way back to the ocean.
Jono: When I was, um, I was actually visiting my folks in another state yesterday, and I was at the airport thinking about our conversation. And I think I saw your, uh, most recent episode, uh, around, it may not, may not have been the most recent one, but it was about how psychology, the psychologization won't solve where we're at something with something around that, you know,
Josh: The revolution will not be psychologized is what it was called.
Jono: There you go. There you go. Anyway, somehow I found myself googling something around that and grief, and I just felt to kind of just share it and just drop it into the conversation. It was a, it's actually a dissertation by a woman by the name of Leeat Granek and. It was on grief, and her dissertation is actually called Bottled Tears.
Josh: Mm-hmm. Beautiful.
Jono: And this was the summary, and maybe this could also lead into some of the, some of the stories that you could share, which you already have been referencing. But she says, the image of bottled tears is jewel. On the one hand, it refers to the feeling of contemporary grievers who are taught to bottle up their sadness and repress their tears in public. On the other hand, bottled tears alludes to people's grief and tears having become pathologized by the psychological professions and have literally become bottled. Both in the sense that one is taught to express them only in private and in the sense that grief and tears, and now being treated with quote unquote bottled. Interventions such as medication and therapy.
Josh: Yeah. That's a great quote. I love it. Um, mm. You know, I, like I did in the episode, when I talk about psychology, I always give a caveat, disclaimer and say that I am very well aware that there's all kinds of incredibly important work happening and incredible therapeutic work and blending of psychology and somatic and spiritual traditions. And, you know, when I, when I raise issues that can be perceived as like, critical of psychology, I'm not doing so to, um, you know, just put it down or anything like that. Um, what I think is important, I mean, really, you know, is exactly what that dissertation is. Speaking of, um, You know, history, like there's a long history within western psychology of pathologizing, the griever and particular, particularly the female griever, right? The hysterical woman. Um, in which, in Victorian society and, uh, post Victorian society, anything that was perceived as emotionally expressive was labeled hysterical and, you know, pathologized and needed to be treated right. And so, um, what you could call like natural expressions of grief, um, became, turned into to something else.I think obviously now in, in modern therapeutic systems, there's much more of a recognition of the need of the, the release of grief. Um, what's interesting, I think to look at always in these kind of movements and trends within the psychological world is, Is also how much of it always comes back to the individual. So either, you know, so grief for example, is always seen as kind of an individual thing. Like, I, I had something that I experienced and because I experienced it, it's lodged in my body and now I own that and that is my property. Because, you know, in the modern world, we want to turn everything into individual property, right? So you know that that grief is, is mine. And I think that that too, even if we're celebrating, it can become, um, you could say a burden on the individual to bear. It's a lot to be responsible for our quote unquote grief, my quote unquote grief. I think if you look at like animate traditions and by animate. You know, I'm using a pretty broad definition here, but I think if you look at traditions from like, you know, the Irish Keenan traditions to, um, romany expressions of grief to traditional grieving rituals and ancient Greece and stuff like this, what you see is much less of like, um, a need to find like individual ownership over it, but an understanding that it's like the seasons. It is a force that moves through bodies and it moves collectively. And there are rituals. You know, the ritual, uh, the nine day fast of Demeter, which was a women's ritual, an ancient Greece, this wasn't quote unquote a grieving ritual. This was a ritual that enacted every phase of demeanor's journey after her daughter Persephone was taken, right? So it enacted. And so women fasted for nine days and they reenacted this whole thing. And they sang and they danced and they performed ritual sacrifice. And part of that journey was deep into the depths of grief, right? Because that's what demeanor experienced, right? But um, it didn't need to be named a quote unquote grieving ritual.] It was, uh, a ritual that enacted a full cycle. And within that cycle, grieving existed and grieving, um, waves of grief would take over the collective body. And there probably wasn't as much of a need to say, like, this is my grief, but no, this is the wave of grief that moves through communities. This is the wave of grief that moves through all of our bodies these days. You know, on certain days, you know, my body becomes a vessel through which the wave of grief passes. And on other days it might be your body. And on other days it might be, um, Our bodies together and understanding that cycle as whole and beautiful and necessary and part of a great cycle of nature, but also not something that's necessarily like ours, I think is really, really important. Because the Greek traditions worn, um, in the underworld, in that place of the river of tears and the river of wailing cries, they warn of a grove, a tangled grove of myrtle trees. And that grove of myrtle trees is where people wander, wander forever, who cannot let go of grief. And that's another aspect of grief, right? When we individualize it and make it ours, it can become something that becomes attractive and addictive. And we want to go back to that place over and over and over and over again. And maybe you've been in a place where you've felt that way, or maybe you've known people who've gotten caught in that grove for a little while. And I think that that becomes much more likely when we're determined to label the grief hours. I think it's, uh, and you know, um, and again, this isn't, I think that individual grieving in this day and age is very, very necessary. Um, but I think that there's a way of working with grief in which we start to understand it, as you could say, an animate force that moves through communities and moves through bodies. And we can learn what it means to be good vessels that allow grief to pass through and feel it, and also feel the other part of the cycle. And, you know, stories of grief. Mythic stories of grief are never just stories of like, okay, there was grievous, something grievous. And that's the end of the story. Mythic stories of grief are always a journey through grief is a journey through, right? Grief is like, the shedding of tears again, is like the opening of a door. That allows us to journey through. And what is at the end of the other end of that journey is often joy, grief, and joy are incredibly intertwined. I don't feel like I've been able to feel like the level, certain levels of joy, except, you know, when it came on the heels of grief. Right? Grief and joy are, um, I think Kahlil Gibran called them like siblings or something like that. I'm not remembering the exact quote right now. Um, but grief and joy are so, so close. And so those rituals, the rituals like that enacted like the goddess and nana's dissent into the underworld, and then her rise again as the morning star or Persephone's dissent into the underworld, and then her rise again back into the upper world. The rituals weren't just descend and stay there stuck. Right? That's not what the ritual cycle is. Just like we don't find ourselves, thankfully, in a place of eternal winter, uh, right. The, the ritual process to is to enact the natural cycle. And that takes us into the place of grief, shedding, releasing, letting the tears fall, feeling what we need to feel, singing the songs of separation and union, and then finding the journey through the other side to the meadows of sunlight and joy, right? And then knowing that we'll go through that process again and again. Right? And then that process is a process that's vital to every body in its own way. It's vital to everybody. And like I said, it moves through communities. It moves through landscapes. It moves through geographies, right? So the, I think that, you know, s the, to bring it back to your question, I think that.Psychology has in its history a deep fear of, and pathologization of grief. And like I said, particularly female grief. And then I think now we're finding therapeutic systems that are kind of celebrating grief. And I think that's, you know, a good thing given the alternative. Right. And then I also think it's important to look at, is grief something that is, um, individually owned as an inextricable part of the individual person? Or is grief a force that moves through the world? Right. Who's honoring is necessary, the feeling of whom is necessary, right? But it passes like water, like wind, right, passes through us. Human beings are porous. Things pass through us, right? What do we actually own in this life? What is actually a ours? Right. And to me, that helps me when I feel a wave of grief, I know that it's a wave. It's a not, it's not a wave that I own. It's a wave that's moving through and it's a wave that I certainly need to feel and need to express. Right. And in expressing, gain access to the rest of the journey. The rest of the cycle. Yeah.
Jono: Were there any, you've referenced a few stories as we've been talking. Is there one or two that you wanted to share or include specifically in our conversation?
Josh: Um the, the story, the story of Persephone and the sirens is a, is a powerful story about grief. And the role of this singer singing the Song of Separation, singing the Song of the Violation of the World, and how in this day and age I feel we are called to sing the song of the violation of the world. We are called to Grieve, to keen for the Earth. I did an episode of the podcast where I talked about how I can imagine a great festival of grieving and in and in this festival. It would simply be about weeping for the earth. And it wouldn't be about finding solutions. It wouldn't be about, you know, signing petitions. All that work is incredibly necessary. But what would it feel like to simply gather together and weep for the mother? What would that feel like? So I feel the presence of the story of the sirens in this call that I have to, to simply grieve what's going on in the world to grieve how distant human beings have gotten from her to grieve our mixed up priorities to grieve. Yet another school shooting that has gripped this country simply to shed tears, simply to sing, simply to shed tears, simply to collapse on the warm earth. There's a story in the ancient Greek tradition. It's a difficult story, and I'm not gonna tell the whole thing, but it tells of Niobe. And Niobe goes through a great suffering. She goes through a great suffering. She suffers more than any mother should suffer. And she goes to Zeus and she asks Zeus to be released from her suffering, to be released from her tears. The pain is too much for her. She says, make me a stone. Turn me into a rock. So I can't feel anymore. And Zeus and Zeus, who's hardly ever moved, was moved by the plight of Niobe and he granted her request. He turned her into a stone, but that stone continued to pour with water. That stone continued to weep. It gushed forth with water, and that water became the spring. That gave life to the community, to the villages, all around a weeping stone that gives life to all around it. There's a story from the Eastern European traditions. I think it's a Latvian story that speaks of the son, goddess looking down upon the earth, and she sees the state that humanity's in. She sees what human beings are up to. And the the sun weeps. The sun weeps, golden rays she sees with her. All encompassing, all illuminating light. Like when you really take the, the view from above and you look down on the world and you see the love and the joy and the pain, and the loss, and the ignorance and the confusion and what we're doing and what we prioritize and what we think is gonna get us somewhere. And the sun. The sun weeps for us. The sun. The sun goddess weeps and her tears become amber. Amber, the crystallized teardrops of the sun goddess. There are mythologies of tears, stories of tears that exist to stir something in us, to move us to tears, right? The myths were sung. The laments were sung. People felt them. They wept as they were being sung, right? They were sung aloud, right? All of this exists to, to move things in people, right? Again, this is what it means to be an instrument to be connected to this force that moves, right? The word muse in ancient Greek means move music means that which moves right? The song stories. The song myths. The myths of tears. They move us, right? The story is meant to move. And the the phenomenon of tears is like something feels stuck inside. Like I said at the beginning, we've been going at a certain pace. We've been, you know, operating in a certain way, but there's something that needs to move. There's something that must move. So we sing of the separation, we feel, or we invoke one of these stories of tears and we sit in a circle around a fire and call out the name of Niobe, who suffered more than any mother should suffer and became the stone that weeps forever. And as we invoke the name of the stone that weeps forever, then the tears start to pour and something moves within us, right? And, and this is how Story, myth song, this is how these things move people. And allow space for people to move and be moved.
Jono: You spoke earlier about the landing, landing somewhere after the, after the tears washed over you, there was a you nearly, nearly to it, referred to it nearly as a land. Mm-hmm. Arriving somewhere.
Josh: The participants at the initiation that took place at Lucas, they went through a process that went deep into the night and then into the day, and then into another night. And that process involved them being taken to the point of awe and exhaustion, fear, grief, wonder. telos, right? The initiatory moment. The place like maybe we've felt when we've, I don't know, been in like ceremony all night or we've taken part in a ritual that extends like deep into the night, or we've done an athletic endeavor that's taken us to the point of total exhaustion, that place of being completely spent. We just, we just don't know if there's anything left totally hollowed out. Right. And you know, I remember a long time ago when a good friend of mine, um, lost his life in an automobile accident. I remember that night. You know, that long, long, long, long night and feeling just spent. I don't have any more tears left to shit. I don't have any, there's nothing else remaining. There's nothing else in me to hollow out. Right. I've been completely hollowed. Yeah. And that place, that place of hollowness is a very sacred place. Right? That place of hollowness related to what we were talking about earlier, like that place of hollowness is the place at which we become an instrument, right? Like the hollow flute, right? So perhaps you've experienced mornings, mornings as in dawns, not as in laments mornings per perhaps you've experienced mornings where you went through that deep night of sorrow and despair and were completely hollowed out and came out the other side, and then the sun rose, and you found yourself in a meadow, and it might have been an actual meadow. Or it might have been a metaphorical energetic meadow, but you found yourself in a meadow with the sunlight streaming through the tall grass, and you felt renewed and you felt the light of a new day, and you felt this too shall pass, and you felt a sudden wave of relief and a sudden wave of joy, a sudden wave of joy. So that place is something I've experienced in varying ways, which I'm sure many, many people have experienced. Right? Sometimes it's like life circumstance that takes us there. The tragedy of loss. Sometimes it's ritual that takes us there. But what is beautiful about the human journey is that the space is absolutely essential. We crave this space, we crave to be hollowed out. We need to feel that exact cycle, right? The whole problem now, I think, or part of the problem now is that we're not letting ourselves experience this cycle. We're going around pretending everything's all right, and meanwhile, look what we're doing to each other and to the planet, right? We need that experience of ritual hollowing out. We need to be raw, right? You know, those experiences of, experiences of rawness that you have, that, you know, sometimes it's like discomfort out in nature. Like, oh, you get lost for a couple miles, take the wrong trail, and you're, you know, out in the woods for a little longer than you would expect it to be, right? And then it starts raining and the rain is on your skin and the hair start to rise, and you're on the edge of awe and fear a little bit. It's like your experience. It's like things have gotten just a little bit intense and raw, but you never felt so connected. You never felt so alive. It was like you could breathe through every pore of your skin, right? It was like all of a sudden you were home again, connected to the animate and everything around you was singing and breathing, right? We need those experiences of rawness. We need them, you know, we don't want them to like always have to come through loss and tragedy, right? But this experience of rawness is something that is so inherent to human beings that we need to, we have found ourselves needing to ritualize it over and over and over again. Rituals are designed to take you to the raw space. Like ritual rituals aren't designed to take you to the comfortable space. You know, rituals aren't about like, You know, I talk a, i, I poke fun at like, kind of, you know, spa wellness culture in my podcast quite a bit because it's like, you know, I, I see how bodies kind of gravitate towards that and sure, like I, I love a good deep tissue massage as much as like the next person, you know, but like, I feel like what people are actually really longing for underneath is some type of raw experience. They're longing for something much more primal, much more raw, and the spa vacation in which everything is comfortable can't provide that. You know, our ancestors thrived on ritual intensity. Why do the cultures that are closest to nature who, like from the outside we might say like, Hey, don't you want to just kind of hang out and be comfortable indoors for a while? Why do those nature cultures have the rawest of rituals? Right. You know, rituals like the Kalahari rituals where they're in such deep trance states that their noses are gushing blood, right? Like, why do you find this over and over and over again? It's because we need to be scraped, clean, hollowed out, turned into an instrument, feel the breath of life move through us, feel the voice of the winds and the fir trees move through us. We need to feel that, right? We need to feel it, and we need to understand that it's part of a cycle and not an end into itself, and that the resolution of that cycle and then the beginning again happens over and over and over again, and that cycle includes ecstasy and joy. Right? You know, we, again, we try to categorize experiences. So there's grief over here, and then there's ecstasy over here, and then there's joy over here. There's fear over here, and there's wonder over here. And these things are all intermingled. These things are all intermingled in human experience, right? The ecstasy of the paleolithic hunt, the fear of the paleolithic hunt, the awe, the terror. You know, I have to feed my family the life-giving blood that pours forth, right? The moment of, um, the moment of death is the moment of life and renewal for the entire community. Like human beings are, are not wired. So that like grief is here and ecstasy is here, and trance is over here and wanders over here, and joy is over here, and these things live in their little boxes. Pain and joy and grief and wonder and awe are intermingled in the rawness of the human experience. And we have to find ways to ritualize our access to this rawness, or we miss out on what it is to be human. And we start acting upon each other in, um, unfortunate ways. If we don't have those ritual outlets, we start acting upon each other in unfortunate ways.
Jono: Yeah. When you think about our society today, and you think about the need for ritual, and I'm sure you've probably imagined a lot about what could be possible, what arises for you when you think about what could be possible for us in this contemporary world when it comes to ritual and community and emptying out?
Josh: Mm-hmm. Well, first I think I would acknowledge what's already there and what's already there is vast and powerful and beautiful, and it's like, you know, we're not always in the western world. We're not always taught to. To feel into it or to think of it in this way. But for example, like the Yoruban traditions, the Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Caribbean traditions, like there are millions and millions and millions of people across the planet who have access to regular, um, states of ecstatic trans ecstasy on an absolutely regular basis, and it forms the lifeblood of their community. And ecstatic ritual, trance, ritual is a living, breathing reality for millions upon millions of people. And those traditions are also incredibly open. They're incredibly welcoming, right? There aren't huge cultural barriers around people who want to, to practice those traditions. India is the same way, and this is where I spent the most of my time of exploration, right? India, the lifeblood of, of India. When you start like going out into the villages and the rural areas and you see how, um, Ritual works, you know, deep trance, ecstasy. There's a substrate to Indian tradition that has to do with this type of deep consciousness alteration that absolutely it just forms the foundation of traditional all across India. And again, those traditions tend to be incredibly welcoming. Um, and I understand why there are cultural barriers around certain traditions, and I think those cultural barriers should be respected. Absolutely. And then I also think that often it's not as closed off as we think it is if we approach with respect and nowhere to look. Yeah. So all across the world, I talked about this in an episode called Animism as Normative Consciousness, but all across the world there is a living, breathing, pounding, strumming heartbeat of animate practice that exists and is alive and is not in its final throes as certain narratives would like to have you believe. And, um, it's available. So I just wanted to say that right off the bat. And then I think in an era in which we're going to see, um, well, we're already seeing a huge influx and rise in like, you know, uh, psychedelic and entheogenic. Um, use. I think we're gonna see the rise of new traditions, and this is a good thing. Traditions don't have to be old in order to be valuable. Like, if you look at the history of any tradition, traditions are syncretic and traditions change and traditions morph and what you could call like the transmission again of, um, of the animate, the transmission, uh, works mysteriously, it arrives in, you know, traditions that are 50 years old just as it arrives in traditions that are 3000 years old. And so I think you're gonna see a proliferation of new traditions too. I think that there are festival traditions like within the US and probably in Australia too, there are like festivals that are trying to create sacred experience for people. I think there's certain things, and I did a whole episode on this called festivals, but I think there's certain things that sometimes we miss out on because we're used to a certain way of doing festivals. And what we, for example, miss out on is, you know, we often opt for like a very broad focus as opposed to, uh, funnel focus. So, you know, we go to the festival and over here there's a poetry reading and over here there's a shiatsu workshop and over here there's like, how to, you know, um, green your backyard and over here you like, and, and those are fun and wonderful. But ancient festivals, surrounded particular deities, ancient festivals, surrounded, particular animate forces, forces of nature. And there is a power to all the poetry, all the song, all the intent, all the focus going funneling towards one particular thing. And within that, the understanding that you're not at the festival necessarily to just kind of like, have a good time. And maybe you'll kind of go into that ecstatic space and maybe you won't. But if there is a group intent around, I am entering this festival space, this ritual space, I am entering it in order to step across a certain threshold of consciousness and to be taken along a journey, right? That, um, is particularly revolving around the oak tree. For example, the festival of the oak tree, right? The prophetic power of the oak tree is seen in ancient Greece. Right. And right at the heart is a living oak that, um, is adorned as the ancient Greek oaks were with bronze tubes that moved in the wind and uttered the voices of the animate forces around. And, you know, we all spend like three straight days sitting at the base of the oak tree listening to the voices of the animate forces as expressed through the bronze tubes that are hung from, um, you know, from its branches. And singers come and sing of the qualities of the oak tree and invoke the, uh, beings that live in the heart of the oak tree. There's a, there's a power to that that is impossible to replicate with a kind of festival of dabbling. Right? And, and again, dabbling can be wonderful, but I think what you're gonna find is that people these days are longing for something deeper. People are longing for something that allows us to go into the depths of the journey. So that oak tree thing was just like off the top of my head, kind of example. Right. You know, but that's the kind of thing, and it's the kind of thing that, um, time allowing, I would really like to devote some time and energy to helping to create, um, because I, I think we need, uh, to, I think we need our ritual spaces to be more like a funnel and less like a, um, collection of potholes, if that makes sense.
Jono: Yeah, it does, it does. Well, Josh, I really want to respect your time, um, but I just really want to thank you for the work that you're doing in the world. Mm-hmm. Like, it's, um, it's, it's such a profound offering. Mm-hmm. I feel like that you are offering to the world. And I want to just thank you for your time and your commitment and probably in the words of your. Podcast too, your, just honor your commitment to meet your sons. Mm-hmm. Guys. Mm-hmm.
Josh: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. All of this must translate into how we treat other people, how we treat the animate world around us, and how we show up for our children, how we show up for one another. All of this has to translate into that or else it's for what, right? So thank you for for that. And thank you for taking the time to talk and I enjoyed the conversation.
[Episode Wrap Up] Jono: Thanks so much for listening. It means the world to have your support. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing on Apple or Spotify. That way you'll be notified when a new episode is ready. It would also mean a lot if you would take the time to write a review about this podcast. This way more people can discover and participate in this work, and if you feel like this episode could benefit someone else, please share it with them, whether that's a friend or family member or even on your social channels. Finally, if you are interested in participating in grief rituals or any other of my programs, feel free to head on over to jonofishernow.com where you can sign up to my newsletter and you'll receive seasonal invitations and episodes as they are released. And please always remember that although the hour is late, We can always make beauty. We can always make beauty. Sending love to you and your loved ones.
About the Guest
Josh Schrei
Listen to Other Episodes
