Episode 16: Caroline Casey – Spiralling Out of Conflict

In this episode, Caroline Casey discusses:

• Living with a coyote for 19 years, from which she got first-hand experience negotiating with a trickster
• The unexpected link between irony and compassion
• “Cooking anger” into desire and composting the word “trigger”
• Being deconditioned from the modern world’s addiction to certainty
• Linguistic aikido and being creatively suspicious
• Metaphoric agility
• Turning trauma into our “dangerous, beautiful assignment”

More about Caroline

Caroline Casey is the founder of Coyote Network News – a mythological news service – as well as the creator and host of “The Visionary Activist Show.” Caroline acquired a BA from Brown University in Myth, Fairy Tales and World Religions, studied Grail Legend with the late great mythologist Joseph Campbell, and cahooted with late Jungian Trickster James Hillman. Her unique art of astro* mythological* political* guiding* meta-storytelling is presented in a myriad of multimedia venues. Caroline offers Trickster Training Council weekly teleclasses as well as online councils. She continues her studies of magic, mythology, literature, and social activism all over the world.

Resources

• Websites:
  • The Coyote News
  • The Visionary Activist Show
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Book: Making the Gods Work for You: The Astrological Language of the Psyche
• Winter Medicine Show, featuring Micah Nelson from www.al-qemi.com/

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THE PODCAST

• Lewis Hyde
• Black Orpheus (movie)
• Mary Oliver
• Robert Bly
• Neil Douglas-Klotz
• Capoeira
• Vermin Supreme
• The Yes Men
• Dr. Andrew Weil
• Morihei Ueshiba and The Art of Peace
• John O’Donohue
• The Lives of Others (movie)

 

CAROLINE CASEY – Quotes From The Episode

(Anything uncertain is either replaced by ellipses or put in square brackets, and some quotes are shortened using ellipses  )

• [2:46] “We [the coyote and I] were great buddies, and we created a coyote creation myth. A trickster resolving conflict creation myth. Which is: long before there was humans, there was trickster who set the whole shebang going with a sizzle of lightning, and this uniqueness, this against-all-odds triumphing quality moves through all the plants and animals, and every now and then it gets trapped, you know, inquisitioned, orthodoxed, so it becomes a great escape artist, or escapade artist. As Lewis Hyde says, ‘Coyote is lucky if enough con men come to school her.’”
• [3:26] “I love thinking that it [trickster] moves into each one of our hearts, now, as an evolutionary assist that comes alive, you know, the powerful magic that comes alive in dangerous times. And so it knows how to spiral and let all natural facts be social strategy metaphors. So in nature, when conflict comes together, nature creates spirals to resolve those, whether it’s hurricanes or galaxies or hair patterns or hot smoke into cool evening air or cold cream into coffee – spirals. So we get to tease this into aikido, linguistic aikido, story aikido.”
• [4:20] “With tyranny all over the world…dominance is an evolutionary dead end.”
• [4:41] “It is the evolutionary necessity for humans to have manners. We go, ‘What is unique to our species aside from our rudeness?’ And I think it’s our opportunity and responsibility to cahoot and to borrow qualities of intelligence from the plants and animals that we share this beautiful earth with.”
• [5:18] Julia asks Caroline to speak about what “the internal dedication” means to her. [5:47] Caroline: “Jupiter would say to each one of us, ‘What do you want to feel like, and what do you want to feel like to others?’ […] For myself and for others, there’s no right or wrong answer. […] We might want to feel replenished, and replenishing to others.”
• [6:26] “If we treat each other well, as equals, if we embody this democratic ideal, and that means respect for animals and plants as well, then there’s the magic. Then we’re tapped into the synchronicity. And I like saying, it doesn’t mean being nice. Because the word nice comes from nescient, which means ignorant.”
• [8:23] “I actually like being challenged. And I think a great wealth for all of us is to have equal friends who hold us to our ideals. That we trust their heart, but they go ‘Hey, you’re out of line there.’”
• [9:11] “To not challenge someone we would like to ally with is to infantilize them, to say ‘Oh they couldn’t handle the truth,’ and right away, we’re in a no-magic zone. We’re looking down. And the word ‘condescending’ means we all going down together. And the fuel we run on […] has an addiction to snark and condescension. […] Snark is a very gummy fuel. It’s the energetic equivalent of tar sands. […] Irony is quite liberating. Sarcasm means to harm and bite. Irony – I love this psychological study that was done to the extent that people are ironic is the degree to which they can have compassion, and I love it because it’s unexpected. […] If we excavate, to be ironic is to be holding at least two stories at once.”
• [12:10] Gord asks Caroline to speak to what she means by “cooking anger” and “cooking attitude.”
• [15:19] Caroline talks about asking questions and being deconditioned from the modern world’s addiction to certainty. “The ancient world goes, ‘Certainty is a booby prize!’ And not knowing was considered a fantastic accomplishment. ‘Look! Julia and Gordon have run out of certainty, and Caroline too!’ No. Now mystery can find them. The noise and the conflict are a fending off of mystery, of the thing that we really do want. […] There’s nothing more satisfying, really, than kind of almost crossing the line in a truth realm and the other person could be offended, but they like it.” Caroline then tells a story about a woman who heard Caroline speak and came to tell Caroline how offensive she was, and how Caroline invited the woman to join her by diving into a metaphorical cauldron with the dedication to collective good and curiosity.
• [19:07] Julia asks Caroline to elaborate on how she responds rather than reacts: “Where are you that you could not be hooked by that bait that is thrown in front of you, or that barb that’s seeking to penetrate into the other and that often seems to find its place in me or others? How do you manage to shift that in yourself so that they don’t seem to land on you?”
• [21:05] “The sharing of metaphoric skills in a community helps everyone to be responsible for their own well-being.”
• [22:08] Caroline discusses the origin of the expression when somebody “gets our goat,” and how she believes “everybody’s responsible for retrieving their goat.”
• [27:06] Gord comments on Caroline’s metaphor “spiralling out of polarity,” and asks her to expand on it. Caroline compares it to capoeira and mentions humour and authenticity.
• [30:27] Caroline refers to The Yes Men, and says “I’m all in favour of ‘what is my dedication’ and ‘what do I want to connect with’ people. People who are engaged in liberating cultural hijinks. And some of the liberating cultural hijinks actually reveals hidden goodness.” She tells a story about The Yes Men’s “warm-up exercise” of swapping the voice boxes of Barbie and G. I. Joe’s and putting them back on the shelves.
• [32:40] In response to a story that Caroline told about helping a woman connect with “the hidden forces,” Julia tells Caroline about how her brother, in his grief for their mother who recently passed away, said that he feels so alone and isn’t in touch with hidden goodness and the belief that we’re all connected. Caroline responds with:
  • “Live the desirable story and see if it is real. That’s always been my practice.”
  • “A poet says, ‘Solitude is the cure for loneliness. […] Solitude is freedom. Hiding and aloneness is prison. They can look the same.”
  • “My buddy Andy Weil, Dr. Andrew Weil, an integrative medicine guy, he got given a grant to go around the world taking drugs in the early 70s, and he said ‘There are no drug-free cultures, but there are cultures with no problems.’ Caroline explained an analogy: “What we kind of cooked together is when you take anything into a white powder – sugar, crack, heroin, morphine, anything – you’re taking it out of its alkaloid community, so it will take you out of community. So I think a useful thing is, what supports our participatory kinship is tonic, and what takes us into alienation is toxic, whether it’s a movie or a TV thing or a teaching or anything.”
• [35:01] Gord asks Caroline to explain the statement “The oppressor is seeking the medicine of the oppressed.” In her response, Caroline discusses:
  • [37:14] trauma, “trauma competition,” and how she’s said “How about, next time you’re tempted to use the word ‘trauma,’ you replace it with the phrase ‘my dangerous, beautiful assignment […] redemption lies in brewing medicine for others.’ […] What if whatever we’ve survived is an assignment to brew medicine for those undergoing similar things? And it gives it a liberating nobility and something to do. The Parkland youth in Florida did this. They took trauma and turned it into their dangerous, beautiful assignment. Fabulous.”
  • “The ‘What if the oppressor is seeking the medicine of what he or she is oppressing’ is a working experiment for people to go, ‘Hm, well what would that be? And what is it that this tyrant really seeks?’ That’s an ongoing kind of like – let’s put that on the table and see if that is useful and interesting. I find it – because we’re turning a polarity into a dance, and it’s surprising, right?” Caroline talks about time she spent in Syria and tells a story about an immensely warm and welcoming experience she had with the Bedouin culture. Caroline says “If we reframe refugees as pilgrims, and for us to become more Bedouin, it would be, ‘Please, welcome. You must have traveled so far and endured so much, and you must have so many stories to tell, and they must be the stories we need to hear. Please, come in.”
• [41:03] “I go hang out with right-wingers across borders because we need a common story and we want to talk across borders, and it’s a really good training about responsive not reactive.”
• [42:12] “If you tell people something true that they have never heard before, everybody’s liberated.”
• [42:24] “To cultivate this takes training, but to not be offended is often a surprise, when somebody’s looking to bait one, and that’s the aikido, and I do love The Art of Peace, and Morihei Ueshiba says, ‘Do not stare at your enemy’s eyes. He will mesmerize you. Do not look at his weapon. He will terrify you. Create your own magnetic circle, and then you can sit anywhere you like.’ And that whole beautiful dynamic, the resistance, the conflict, the opposition, is the losing position.”
• [44:14] “In all Indigenous – well, or as many as I know of, Indigenous cultures, we don’t source power. We invite it. And the modern world has mistaken dominance for power, and that’s a crucial mistake. We say dominance is the toxic mimic of power, and so is control. Let go of control so real power can come on in.”
• [45:36] “Blessings count on metaphor. There is no blessing without a metaphor, because the metaphor is the sensual, the incarnational garb whereby power enters the world.”
• [47:40] Caroline asks Julia and Gord if they know the movie “The Lives of Others,” and says “It’s about the Stasi, the secret police in East Germany. But what it’s really about is how the sociopathic heart can bloom again, and how the torturer’s heart can reopen, and it’s through Venus and through beauty and art. It’s a fabulous movie, and it’s got the texture that within like two minutes, you can go, ‘Ooh, people who made this movie are dedicated.’”