Ever wondered about the hidden causes of homelessness? Join us as we unravel these with Joseph Jacques, co-founder, and director of Harmonic Humanity. An organization which is not just about providing immediate work for those living on the streets, but also about unfolding their potential through transformational education. Joseph, from his unique perspective, highlights the surprising connection between prenatal trauma and homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues. His insights stem from his extensive work with the Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and are beautifully captured in his book, Legends of Creation.
Joseph’s extraordinary journey began with learning scuba diving at three, a seemingly unrelated experience that would become central to his understanding of the womb experience and birth trauma. Joseph shares unforgettable narratives from his work on the streets and his inspiring initiative of creating a workbook for the homeless, enabling them to realize they are their own heroes. His ambitious vision doesn’t stop here. Picture a future where a questionnaire could shed light on prenatal trauma experiences and a global study could link these experiences to homelessness. These are not just dreams for Joseph, but goals he is working diligently towards achieving.
His work is a testament to his unwavering dedication and belief in the power of love, connection, and education. From the concept of prenatal bonding to raising funds for his organization, Joseph is on a mission to change the narrative around homelessness. His work with Harmonic Humanity has already enabled homeless individuals to earn close to a half a million dollars through selling art and music. This is not your typical conversation about homelessness. It’s a deep dive into the transformative power of understanding and empathy, and the extraordinary impact one man can make. Join us as we explore this and more with Joseph Jacques.
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
Ever wondered about the hidden causes of homelessness? Join us as we unravel these with Joseph Jacques, co-founder, and director of Harmonic Humanity. An organization which is not just about providing immediate work for those living on the streets, but also about unfolding their potential through transformational education. Joseph, from his unique perspective, highlights the surprising connection between prenatal trauma and homelessness, addiction, and mental health issues. His insights stem from his extensive work with the Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and are beautifully captured in his book, Legends of Creation.
Joseph’s extraordinary journey began with learning scuba diving at three, a seemingly unrelated experience that would become central to his understanding of the womb experience and birth trauma. Joseph shares unforgettable narratives from his work on the streets and his inspiring initiative of creating a workbook for the homeless, enabling them to realize they are their own heroes. His ambitious vision doesn’t stop here. Picture a future where a questionnaire could shed light on prenatal trauma experiences and a global study could link these experiences to homelessness. These are not just dreams for Joseph, but goals he is working diligently towards achieving.
His work is a testament to his unwavering dedication and belief in the power of love, connection, and education. From the concept of prenatal bonding to raising funds for his organization, Joseph is on a mission to change the narrative around homelessness. His work with Harmonic Humanity has already enabled homeless individuals to earn close to a half a million dollars through selling art and music. This is not your typical conversation about homelessness. It’s a deep dive into the transformative power of understanding and empathy, and the extraordinary impact one man can make. Join us as we explore this and more with Joseph Jacques.
If you liked this podcast
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/contributors/thomas-r-verny-md
A warm welcome to Pushing Boundaries, a podcast about pioneering research, breakthrough discoveries and unconventional ideas. I'm your host, dr Thomas R Verney, and, much to my delight, my guest today is Mr Joseph Jax. Have I pronounced that correctly, jax?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a Frenchman, thomas, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, bonjour. Co-founder, director of Harmonic Humanity and we'll talk about that a little bit more later an organization that has provided immediate work for individuals living on the street. It also teaches them that is harmonic humanity. Teaches them the importance of transformational education through Joseph Campbell's model of the hero's journey. Welcome, joseph.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, thomas, and I wanted to start the top of the show by acknowledging you, my friend. I was in deep prayer Back. I was 23 or 24 years old. I was having some of my great visions and I was asking God, the universe, please, please, steer me in the right direction with all this wisdom, knowledge, intuition, message from the universe that was coming through me and I needed to be guided. And I came across your work, the Secret Life of an Unborn Child. It changed my life. You became my hero immediately and I realized that you have become this silent guy, this angel from afar, and you've guided me. You've guided me to the point that here I am talking to you after 30 years of work and hard work and research into the field of both birth, psychology and, of course, the field of humanitarian and altruism and homelessness, and finding golden thread between the two. Well, thank you, my friend.
Speaker 1:Thank you, you know those are very, very kind words and you know it always makes me happy to know that in some small ways I have contributed to make this a better world, which is what I think all of us should strive to do, right.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I don't know how you, where it comes from, from here, the depth of you, but, boy, it has guided me in my whole life and your words have guided me. I am grateful for your willingness to play at such a big level, at a global level, with your words and your ideas, and I am humbled and I'm grateful.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you. So let's talk about you. So for 15 years you have served these homeless people right. Listen to their stories and, from understanding your what I have read about you, it is your belief that as much as 90% of homelessness, addiction and mental illness has a common root in burst trauma and the transgenerational transfer of wounds from mother father culture. So could you tell me a little bit more about this journey that you have undertaken and the understandings that you have reached? In your own words, take as long as you like.
Speaker 2:Sure, and thank you for that beautiful sandbox. You know it starts. I feel there's a big beginning to this and the beginning becomes with me being hyperally aware. I started. My dad taught me to scuba dive when I was three. Thomas scuba dive. I was scuba diving at three years old. My dad taught me to scuba dive. My father started a scuba shop. I always got to start it with my dad because he's one of my other heroes. My dad started a scuba shop in 1968, the year I was born in Columbus Ohio and that's not a lot of scuba diving in Columbus Ohio. He taught me to scuba dive at three and I was sentient at four, lucid dreaming at five. The interesting thing about and I'll come back to this but he taught me to scuba dive at three is I was able to go back to the womb through that, because the scuba diving is a very similar you know the, the, the, the neutral buoyancy and the feeling of weightlessness and there was a remembering there, and so this has really set the tone and the patterning for for my consciousness. As I grew older, as I was seeing the world, my worldview fast forward.
Speaker 2:I was teaching a class at little gym, and little gym is little kids, gymnastics. They started at six months and they go to 12 years old and it's motor movement, simple motor movement. I was teaching two and three year olds. I was comfortable in that field. That was wonderful for me Two and three year olds. I'm a big kid myself. I know you're a big kid. I could see, I could see it in your smile and you know, there there is this beauty that just, it just comes from the child's eyes and one day it's a lovely day to check out your exercise, exercise in kids world.
Speaker 2:The director, my best friend, came in and he said he said, joseph, I need you to teach the infant class. And Thomas, let me just tell you I was beyond. I'm like I cannot. If you put me in a class with these infants, I will do a terrible job. It will not work. The mothers will see I'm a phony. It's not gonna work. He put his hand on my shoulder. I remember it like it was yesterday. He said, joseph, you are going to shine. And so I sat in this Circle with these nine moms and these beautiful nine months to six to 16 month-year-old babies, and you know how it is. You look in their eyes and there's the universe, staring back at your you, and I wrote it, wrote about this, these little godlings teaching me the secrets of the universe. And here I was and being taught by them. Right, and it was just so magical and I realized that this was my path. This was, this is a profound sense of direction for me, and I did that class for six years, thomas, six years.
Speaker 2:I work with, with, with infants, and I started to realize something. I Noticed that there was an increase in cognition. Well, first of all, back up, I started to ask the parents. I said well, what did you do in utero? Because there was a significant, significant difference from the children that had you Some type of learning, your new to row connection with the mother and the, as the ones that didn't. I mean, it was night and day, because the stimulus was the same. We, the room was filled with colors and and and a little parallel bars and Gymnastics, things, that they had the same stimulus, but it was night and day, the difference in not only cognition but physical development. And I asked the parents Well, what did you do? And the mom's like well, you know, we guessed around, we talked to the talk to the infant, we did music and Mozart, and we did all these wonderful things and and so and I watched him, over a six year period of time, Developed right from sensory motor to pre-operation from. I got to watch them go through the arc of of Piaget's process of development and that was it, brother. I was hooked. I'm like, oh my god, I have something here and, not knowing anything about you, not knowing anything about the world that that was end up being Appa and and those that were doing this profound work, but I had an intuition that this is something that I was going to dedicate the rest of my life to, and that was the beginning. That's where it all started.
Speaker 2:And then, when it comes to homelessness, that was years later I I Went all over and I was talking to people about my insights and the ideas and you know, 30 years ago, brother, there wasn't much listening for what we were talking about, and so I really ran into a lot of these walls of people that just wouldn't listen or didn't care, and I'm I was trying to explain it and it was just discouraging. My best friend in 2008 or 2007, who was an addict, who was recovering addict now, he asked me if I wanted to start an organization with him about helping the, the people that that he was a part. He was a part of this homeless homeless population and addicted, abused, traumatized, and he healed himself from that. And when he did, he said, joseph, will you help me co-found this organization working with the homeless? And I said, of course my brother, of course I. I see this. And now there's a golden thread between both of them, and so I Wanted the audience to kind of go on that journey with me, because there is that golden thread that them the umbilical that connects homelessness and prenatal.
Speaker 2:And while I was on the streets, I Will, I did, I've done hundreds, if not thousands, of outreach walks, just going to the streets, meeting the homeless, where they're at, providing food and clothing. And hey, I love you, brother, you're gonna make it through this. You know, let's give you some resources, let's give you a job and let's teach you transformational education. And that is based on a book I put together, a intersubjective work booklet called the hero's gamebook, which teaches the homeless individuals that they're they're not a victim of their story, Thomas, they're really what makes their story great, they're the hero of the story. So really, to flip that script for this demographic was a big deal.
Speaker 2:And so, while I was on the street, I was, I would ask them well, how was your childhood like?
Speaker 2:How, how was that?
Speaker 2:What happened?
Speaker 2:Because I was just interested.
Speaker 2:I was there, I was, I was, I'm a social scientist, I've got to do that work.
Speaker 2:I'm just, you know, I'm asking. And it wasn't even. It wasn't even eight, nine times out of ten man, it's ten, it is ten out of ten that that there there was trauma, there was a significant wounding and, like God born mate reminds us, he said if you don't address the wound and its source, then you will suffer its evolution. And here I was working with the evolution of that, and I know it's pretty bold to say 90%. I say that because of Of my work on the streets, but I say that because of the profound Inaction that the homeless had with their, with their trauma, trauma, traumatized youth. Everything that aces talks about, everything that prams gets into pregnancy, risk assessment, monitoring systems, systems that at least monitor these types of of anomalies that happen from abuse or adverse childhood experiences. So I have I, I, as you will know, I put together a book, an intersubjective workbook. It called legends of creation and and, and it's a workbooklet that starts nine months before conception and goes nine months in utero, to address just that.
Speaker 1:So you say 90%, right, and you did say that that was kind of bold. It is bold, but my question is what is your evidence for that?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, boy, of course, reading your work, reading being in direct dialogue with David B Chamberlain, working with APA, the Association of Predatal and Paranatal Psychology, and talking to Renee VandeCard, his wife, kristen, of Predatal University just so many things aimed at and reading the work, of course, gabor Maté and Bruce Lipton just so many things aimed that there was a direct connection, absolute, undeniable, direct connection with the mental state, with the trauma that was handed down, with those that had been beaten, bullied and bruised by their culture and by their either their mother or their father.
Speaker 2:And to really get to the core root of that was something I was interested in. So I guess it's just a bold statement and one that I will spend the rest of my life solving, and I don't want to upset your audience by any means in saying something so bold. Maybe it's a little foreshadowing on my part to say that this is something that maybe this is mine to do and that, if I can bring that to light, if I can, through the work that I have created in the world, through legends of creation and my correspondence with you and others, that we can, as a collective family, bring light to this horrible situation and literally bring 100% solution or reduce homelessness and addiction and mental illness by 50% to 60%, at least by the time I go. So that would be cool OK.
Speaker 1:OK, listen, I'm not concerned about upsetting my audience. I'm not concerned about upsetting anybody. I'm just interested in the truth. And so I'm asking, because I've always tried to put pre-imperial psychology on a solid scientific foundation. That's what I've always been interested in for the last 40 years, since I wrote the Secret Life of the Unborn Child. So I take it from what you have told me that your conclusion is based on talking to these homeless people right, talking to them. Now, when you talk to them, how many of them were able to tell you that their pregnancies, in other words, when they were in the womb of their mothers that their pregnancies were in some ways traumatic? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 2:And that's a great question. It was difficult to make it that far Because of their mental illness, because of their situations, because of their addictions. It was very difficult to get to that, yeah.
Speaker 1:I understand that Very difficult. Ok, so, as you are continuing to work with these people, right, and we'll talk about your long-term aims, which are even more ambitious than what you have done so far Would it be possible perhaps for you in the future to perhaps create a questionnaire that everybody would answer and that at least would give us some statistical answers to the question of trauma, define trauma and then ask about it in a specific questionnaire kind of a way, without leading the witness, without saying have you had a traumatic pregnancy? Ok, just say what kind of a pregnancy did you have? How would you describe your pregnancy? Ok, not asking did your mother beat you? Ok, so if you would be interested in doing that, then I think that we could put your work also into a much more solid research context, and that would be good for science and for pre-imperial psychology and in terms of doing more good for future generations.
Speaker 2:That is awesome and I welcome that. My friend, I sent you a paper called the Bio-Psycho-Social Healing Project, where I've been in conversations with Sandra, who is the former president of APA, and, of course, Ray Lean, who's the current president, and others who see the benefit of putting together a national or even global study that can connect the two and really shed a lot of light on this through what you, the questionnaire and some of the ideas that you're speaking into, because I feel that if we can do that, we can step one, we can put one foot closer to really bringing a lot of awareness in a scientific manner, in a more of an empirical way, and I would love that, you know. I think it's awesome and I'm grateful. That sounds like a great idea.
Speaker 1:Have you thought of coming to our next conference in Denver in October?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thought about it. I'm financially struggling. I harmonic humanity. We have not done well with our fundraisers ever since COVID. We've been kind of handed our butts. So I'm here in Ohio taking care of my 80-year-old dad and doing some caregiving and so I'm thinking about the next moves. And you know, that whole idea between career and survival and running a nonprofit is not, you know, not for the faint of hearts man, because you've got to always put yourself out there. And homelessness is, you know, it's not, it struggles because it's everybody's so tired of talking about that narrative. Unless we get to the root unless we get to, you know, having the conversation about what happens before conception and what happens in utero, then I feel then we can have a real in-depth conversation about homelessness and mental illness and an addiction.
Speaker 1:Yes, have you tried to write grants asking for grants from various foundations?
Speaker 2:I have not. But right now what I've got is I've got a wonderful endorsement from Bruce Lipton on my book and I've got, of course, this wonderful podcast with you. I'm gaining validity, claims for the work and putting individuals around it, like Gene Houston, who gave me a wonderful forward from my book, and Bruce Lipton and others who see the value in this outrageous idea, this unreasonable position. But you know what, man, I'm excited and I know I'm at the beginning and I know that I've got the rest of my life to go to work towards this. And, boy, like you said, if I can be a drop in the ocean of healing and restoring that which has been, you know, denied and separated and ripped apart, boy, what a wonderful life that would be Well perhaps by way of this podcast, which will be also on YouTube, so it will be both audio and visual, perhaps we can get some more support for you.
Speaker 1:But let me just continue with a few more questions. So you have a curriculum for the child in the womb, I believe, right A nine months class designed by parents or for parents.
Speaker 2:That's right. The Children's of Creation is a father's role in pregnancy and mother's journey in becoming, and that starts nine months before conception and goes nine months in utero. So we can, a heal the intergenerational wound and, b talk about the genius. There's the wound and the gift, or archetypal pairings. So we don't want to just, you know, talk about the wound, the wound, the wound. There is a genius that wants to come forward as well.
Speaker 2:So, and you had asked, well, what's the significance of the nine months?
Speaker 2:What do you ask? That to me? And you know, the best that I could come up with was the intuition of the nine months in the womb, and so I thought that that happens biologically, psychologically, even socially. So I thought, well, I was trying to find how many months it would take to have the mother and father get clear about their wound and their gift before conception. Because right now, thomas, what we don't have, what I'm not seeing right now, is an intersubjective work booklet that allows a psychologist and psychotherapist to go back and say, well, what was happening on the second month of the, on the third week of that, on Tuesday, you could go to Legends of Creation and you could actually read the entry that the mother and the father put in about what they were thinking and doing and feeling as well at that particular time.
Speaker 2:And so I feel that there is a, there is an importance, an umbilical that needs to happen, and again, the healing of the wound, the amplification of genius, the before conception, and then when the child is conceived, then the mother and the father and the coach, the life coach, the coach of Legends of Creation helped the mother and the father design a learning and utero program for the child based on you know, very possibly the mother was a famous pianist and the father was a great painter and so they want to cultivate that. So they actually designed the learning and utero program with the help of the coach. So the 18 month class is is just that it's the nine months of preparing, of healing those intergenerational wounds, and then an amplifying the geniuses, or talking about the geniuses, and then, after conception, then really focusing on the bond of the mother and the father and the pre-nate you mentioned pianist in your bio.
Speaker 1:I believe you said that you were a professional pianist, songwriter and singer. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, sir, yes sir. I I taught myself how to play when I was 18 and I've been playing ever since. And it's just. I play every Friday from my community here in Columbus Ohio. I wheel out my piano. I'll send you a little video. I wheel out my big piano and I invite the community to come and I play for the community every Friday. Have you got?
Speaker 1:a piano behind you somewhere in your office.
Speaker 2:No, no, but I have a. I have a piano in my dad's garage and anytime, if you would like I can, I can perform a little show for your audience and it's my music's. A little bit like George Winston. I'm not as good as George George is a master, of course but I've been playing for a long time. My music is very soundtrack-ish, it's very movie-like, it's like very emotional and I just I don't know what I would do without music. It's definitely guided me for sure. Well, can we do that some other time? For sure I would love that. Yeah, and I've got some songs. You know I I'm a humanitarian, so all my songs are about healing and helping and growing and being challenged and and overcoming the adversities.
Speaker 1:And could you, could you give us a little preview?
Speaker 2:Oh, man, you're on this spot. Hold on for a second. Hold on, here we go. Here we go.
Speaker 1:Okay, hey, wonderful, he's bringing out his guitar, lovely.
Speaker 2:Thomas, I love you, bro. You're awesome.
Speaker 1:Thank you, so are you.
Speaker 2:Okay, we're rocking man. You asked for it, here we go. That's right, Okay. This song is called Be Love People and it was basically about the fact that you know, that's what we get to aspire to. I call myself a neomethologist and in my architecture, my social architecture, I foreshadow the world's noon, and this song is called Be Love People. Can you hear it? I can hear it. Here we go.
Speaker 3:A little train. Be Love People. Now is the town you got to find your truth and see the sign. Travel to the heart, from the head to the greek food and from the greek food. Hear the call From a leader inside. Our question is true and our truth is wide and children will follow. See how you be A rising tide of solvents. See the captain. See the captain deep inside.
Speaker 1:I don't hear the guitar. I don't hear the guitar.
Speaker 3:Oh, no, no, I don't know how to do that.
Speaker 1:Oh, is it a microphone? That's better, that's better.
Speaker 3:I'll do that first one more time. Here we go. Ok, be Love People. Now is the town you got to find your truth and see the sign. Travel to the heart, from the head to the greek food and from the greek food, hear the call From a leader inside. Our question is true and our truth is wide, and children will follow. See how you be A rising tide of solvents see the captain.
Speaker 3:That's right, thomas, see the captain deep inside. See the people, see the people, see the people, see the people. I said, I said feel love. Feel love, feel love, feel love. Now is the time. You got to find your truth. You got to see the sign. Travel to the heart, from the head to the greek food and from the greek food hear the call From a leader inside. Our question is true and our truth is wide and children will follow. See how you be All right. See the captain.
Speaker 1:See the captain.
Speaker 3:See the captain deep inside. Everybody sing.
Speaker 1:Thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Well, we'll do it better next time. That sounds great. The microphone didn't quite pick it up, but thank you for doing this, oh you're welcome. So my question is was there anything? Was there anything, Joseph, in your background that anything contributed to your interest in this whole subject of bus and womb life and street people?
Speaker 2:You know, I just I really felt called to the humanitarian archetype. I've just felt drawn to serve people and getting and playing a role of serving the homeless and playing a role towards helping those that are on the streets. I'm like, well, if I'm going to reduce home, if I'm going to really play a significant role, that means I'm going to get to the core root and, like our good friend, our late and great David B Chamberlain wrote, emrology, properly understood, can contribute to the intellectual revolution of how we see ourselves as human beings. So that really resonated with me and stuck with me in the work of Piaget. And if I'm going to make a significant shift on this planet in my time, in taking the work of your work and everybody else's work and all my mentors and put it all together in this beautiful tapestry of love and connection and community and the rest of my life doing it that's my goal Is to weave all those things together and to make the world a better place, as sappy as that sound, Sounds fine.
Speaker 1:So tell me, was there ever a homeless person that really touched your heart? I mean, is there one homeless person that over the last 15 years kind of stands out in your mind as really affecting you deeply emotionally?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be my best friend, aj Lovewinds. He was a producer director in Hollywood, the coolest guy in the room, just the coolest guy still is the coolest guy and Hollywood took him down. The drugs, the addiction took him down and he was pushing a shopping cart around LA and Seattle and San Francisco and highly addicted he. I would come to him with all these transformational ideas and quotes and Joseph Campbell and this and that, and Tony Robbins and I would. I would be that that positivity in his life and I would give him, you know, these great quotes about you can do it, you can transform your life, you know, and, and so we would have these conversations, knowing that he could in this life, the next day, you know, through addiction and through overdosing and and it was just scary, it was scary for me, it was very scary and I said, listen, brother. I said I, I would love to work with you, I would love to do something with you Once you're clean and whole and you feel complete with that particular journey, I'd love to work with you. And he, he called me from a soup kitchen one day and he said Joseph. He said I, I'm in clean.
Speaker 2:For a year he said I've been bringing musicians to a soup kitchen and and the musicians that we're singing, they were singing about love and joy and hope and possibility and renewal and these themes, and he said I noticed something. He said I noticed that the music and consciousness from the music was just as nutritious as the food that they were serving, and I want to be the help that I wish that I had on the streets. Will you co found and start harmonic humanity with me? And I said, of course, and you did, and we did, and we've, we've, we created, we create music compilation albums and we invite musicians, musicians to come and add their music to the albums.
Speaker 2:Our latest album is called hero. We have an album featuring Jason Maraz, michael franti, maroon five and Sarah McLachlan, so we got some of the top musicians in the world to be on our on our album, for Grammy award winning artists to be on our album. And the homeless, through our program, since 2009, have made for themselves close to a half a million dollars selling, selling art and music on the streets for themselves. And here this is called the. It's called the heroes game book. It's a little bit, it's how you can't see it that well.
Speaker 2:But, anyway, yeah, it's, it's a this is an inter subjective work booklet that holds, like we were talking about earlier, holds the individual, in support of them, moving from disempowerment to empowerment by using the heroes journey and guiding them through the stages of the hero journey to realize their full potential. And that's really exciting because we really, you know, we really want to let go of those things that no longer serve that individual and start to bring in the things that do.
Speaker 1:Are your? Are your parents still alive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, my dad's still alive, my mom's still alive and you know I love them so much. They've really guided me towards such a beautiful life.
Speaker 1:So is your. Is your dad still looking for gold?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is his own way. He was such an adventure and he was such a. He inspired me to do something completely unreasonable, and starting a scuba shop in Ohio in 1968 was a pretty radical move, but he made a whole career out of it and I traveled with him All over the world, because there's no scuba diving here in Columbus, ohio, so you know the Bahamas and the Caribbean and the Red Sea and and just different places. I was able to go with him on some of those trips and experience the scuba diving and diving in different places all over the world and so it was such an adventurous life and I've I've led that kind of adventurous life so far.
Speaker 2:I'm able to go and go to places and see people and, and you know, I just I really appreciate the adventure of what I've done with harmonic community because it, thomas, it's humbled me, it makes me grateful for life working with individuals that are in adversity. It really it has you present to how precious and beautiful life is, and I say this that some of the homeless that I've worked with have taught me humility and gratitude like I can. I can, I can. It's just it's reason I keep doing it because I'm humbled by their level of gratitude that they have and they have nothing. Do you have children? I do not. You, don't.
Speaker 2:I'm, I'm always in prayer and I've got my spirit children, aliyah, jack and the vesica, who are keeping their eyes open for my, for mom, and so I say, please, my prayers, please create the situations of circumstances, the events and the relationships that allow me to meet mom and I. I would love your support in that. So I pray to my spirit children and and and know that when I do meet mom, that I'm, that I'm ready to go, that I've done my homework and and I will be the best, best father I can possibly be.
Speaker 1:If, if you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, who would it be?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh. Oh, you're good, you're good. I like these questions. I would David B, because he was such an angel.
Speaker 1:David Chamberlain.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was awesome. I don't know if I told you this, but we knew each other for 15 years.
Speaker 1:No, no, I didn't know that. I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he was. I sent him my paper when I was about 26. It was the paper that was basically about all of this that I've evolved into now and we became real good friends. I'd call Donna. Donna would be like David. David would come in and we have conversations on Saturday and he actually would send me chapters of his book. Oh gosh, it was Windows to the Womb. He said, joseph, you mind if I send you some chapters of my book? I'm like, oh my gosh, I'd love that. So he'd send me chapters Windows to the Womb and I would review them and then we would just talk about them. You know, like what's the? You know, it was just awesome. So David B would be one of them, gene Houston, because she's such a. I just love her energy. And who would be the other person? Who I would? And Joseph Campbell, that would be. That would be a wonderful trilogy of myth.
Speaker 1:That would be interesting. How did you ever sort of get into Joseph Campbell? It's so different from the others that you have mentioned.
Speaker 2:Well, I love, like I said, I call myself a neomethologist and I host social theater, I teach social theater and I offer that to the community. And social theater is really the core of social theater is the power of expression. And so in this power of expression and in, through this, the storytelling elements, joseph, really you know, that was it for me that really got me centered towards the death, birth and rebirth, and I feel that if we are going to heal, we have to really let that part of culture die so we can be reborn again, because we have a lot of things that are playing themselves out without proper transformational technologies. And if we have a rhythmic transformation in our culture and our society, then we have the ability to shed our skin or the crab molds or the spider, you know molds. Then we can embrace that part of ourselves that is new and whole and born again in a sense.
Speaker 1:What is the best advice you ever received?
Speaker 2:Best advice I ever received.
Speaker 3:Boy, best advice I ever received.
Speaker 2:Where we end up on life's journey depends upon the map we carry with us, and that was Gene Houston. And where we end up on life's journey depends upon the map we carry with us. Also, another one is she said the patterns of an emerging psychology are offered in the knowing that as we go inward we can access the depth structures of our being and build bridges to the great archetypal realms, where and why the dynamic designs that form and reform our reality. That was from Gene Houston as well. So those are two quotes that I just love because that sacred psychology speaks to me and having a map is key. But also, Gene says, because she's such a beautiful soul. She says two questions. You want to ask yourself what map are you using? And the other question is what was the story that influenced you to use that map?
Speaker 1:And what was the story that influenced your map?
Speaker 2:It was love, it was community, it was healing. To heal means to make whole. So I was. I love that, and so my guide is love, unconditional love, unity and healing and helping others to find their empowerment and to help them transform and to keep transforming. We're always transforming, so I'm excited about that message and I've seen it work. Tom, so many times over and over again. To that community, that's just. That is beaten up by life.
Speaker 1:Did you have I don't know how to put this tactfully did you have any like formal, formal university education?
Speaker 2:No, none. Earth, Earth 2.0, life 2.0 and 2.2, 2.3. You know, it's just, I've always been hyperly aware and I've always been very good at chopping wood and carrying water as doing the work and making sure that when it came time to it, I could be in a conversation with somebody like you as a very heightened intellectual way of being, and we could have a conversation, because that has been probably the greatest joy of my life is getting in conversation with individuals like you. And you know what you talked about earlier is like, hey, we can do this, and you know you're my mentor, so you're like you push me over there, push me over here, you can kind of see the. You can see I'm kind of on the edge of that, but you're wanting to bring me to the center of it and I want to get there as well.
Speaker 2:And even in the book Legends of Creation, the nine months before conception, I'm asking individuals, culture or creators like you if you want to add a two-page exercise that could some exercise that you would add, that would inform the mother and the father before conception. What would that exercise be? And so I'm wanting to make the book an anthology of writings, because I'm not the intellectual expert on all of it. My God, I'll never know all of it. But I can at least ask the right questions that can put them on the path, and I can bring and invite people in to make the book an open source anthology of writing. So there'll be an exercise from you, if you know, if you're, if you're excited about that, an exercise from Gene Houston, an exercise from Bruce Linton, you know. So. It's a group of writings that will shape the awareness of the mother and the father. So they have all of the distinction and tools and the skills and the philosophies when they step in to playing that sacred spiritual role of being parents.
Speaker 1:Well, I just wanted I don't know whether you know of my most recent book, the Embodied Mind. Ah, you have it. God bless you, good man, good man, good man, good man, I am involved in, I've been invited at, a very large conference next year in the Czech Republic, in Prague probably, and they are doing a very large conference on trauma and I'm going to recommend them that they invite you. Is that okay with you?
Speaker 2:My friend. That would be the coolest thing I could ever imagine.
Speaker 1:Because I tell you honestly, no bullshit I'm very impressed by your work, very, very impressed. I think that you're doing the kind of work that scientists don't do, because they live in these ivory towers and you are doing the hard work. You are doing the work on the street, which is where it has to be done.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I got goosebumps on goosebumps, my friend. I just you know, when I picked up your book, man, I got to acknowledge you again. I'm sorry. I just got to keep doing it because you're in the room and I got to do it. You changed my life, buddy. I was praying, I was praying, I was praying and there you were. And when I read the Secret Life of Menomorch, I only imagine this is how it is for a lot of people. I mean, maybe not.
Speaker 2:Listen I just, I am. I see it, I felt you, I felt your words, I felt the power, I felt the intuition, I felt it all. And from that book I dedicate, I said I'm dedicating my life to this. And here I am, you know, and it's just, it's very exciting, and I will always remain a humanitarian. I'm not sure how much longer I will go with harmonic humanity, because I would like giving a job to the homeless and teaching the homeless.
Speaker 2:Transformational education is absolutely essential and I think that it should continue.
Speaker 2:But me, as a director, I'm thinking of stepping down and then putting myself full time into the legends of creation so I can say in 20 years or even after I'm dead that this work has, has, has done what it's supposed to do, and that is to alleviate, if not 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%.
Speaker 2:I know it's unreasonable, but I'd like to shoot for the stars and I want others to see, to shoot the stars with me and say we can end, we can get away from this polarity consciousness, we can get away from this red versus blue team consciousness and we can get into the fabric of a moral imagination and we can start to tell a new story of a world in transition, this story based strategy, of this great mythos of how we start from the beginning and how we bring love and connection and community to this beautiful work, and how the last piece of this, last piece of this, thomas, is a lot of billions and billions and billions of dollars are going to the homeless.
Speaker 2:Through this work, and maybe through this study that we're talking about, perhaps we can have some of those hundreds of millions go to prenatal, like Apple, I told Sandra when I first met her. I said, sandra, my job is to figure out how we're going to bring millions and millions and millions of dollars to you, and if we can do that through saying, hey, the homeless situation is great, but let's shift the conversation to the core root, which is preconception, education and prenatal bonding, and let's funnel hundreds of millions into that, if that can be one of the outcomes of this work, boy, I would be so excited and I'd feel like Santa Claus.
Speaker 1:Well, that's great, like you are really doing the heavy lifting, and I want to recognize that, I respect it and I want to honor it. So, my friend, you are doing a very, very important job and let's stay in touch. I will. I will recommend that you participate both in the Denver Denver Conference, the Upper Conference, and the one in Prague, because we need people who are doing the work, you know, not just the intellectual work, which I am good at, yes, and it's hard. It's, you know, like the last book that you have shown took me seven years, seven years of hard work, you know. So my work is difficult too, but it's different, it's different and we need both. We need people like you and we need people like me, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, my God. Well, you know, and if my dream is to work with people like you and to move forward, and if I keep doing my homework and I keep showing up, and we keep showing up, we can make the world a better place, and that's the goal is to, you know, to serve others. So we can. We become greater expressions of ourselves when we serve others. I feel.
Speaker 1:We can do it and we must do it, because the world actually is in pretty bad shape right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So my friend, my friend, we need to come to an end here. This broadcast will be live, as they say, in two weeks time. Okay, so I will let you know when it's on and I'll send you all the links and you can use it any way, which way you want.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Thank you very much, and I'll leave you with this quote Okay, it's by Derek Wolcott. He said the time will come with elation. You will greet yourself. You will greet yourself in your own door and in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome and say sit here, eat. You will love again the stranger that was once yourself. Give wine, give bread, sit and feast on your own life.
Speaker 1:Amen, take care and good luck, and we shall meet again, I hope. Thanks, thomas, have a beautiful night you too. Bye.