March 25, 2024 • 43 mins
In this conversation, Baruch and Ariella Halevi explore the journey of personal growth and transformation from the prince/princess to the king/queen. They discuss the process of shedding old beliefs and masks, embracing shatterings as opportunities for growth, and returning to the true essence of who we are. They emphasize the importance of taking responsibility for our actions and choosing how we want to live in the afternoon of life. The conversation also touches on the differences between men and women in their approach to the shattering and the importance of finding inner power and acceptance.
Takeaways
- The journey from prince/princess to king/queen involves shedding old beliefs and masks and embracing shatterings as opportunities for growth.
- Taking responsibility for our actions and choosing how we want to live in the afternoon of life is essential for personal transformation.
- Men and women experience the shattering and the journey to becoming a king/queen in different ways, but both involve finding inner power and acceptance.
- True intimacy is achieved when we understand and accept each other's journeys and strive to return to the divinity within ourselves.
Chapters
00:00 Introduction 00:28 The Evolution from Prince/Princess to King/Queen 01:25 The Journey of Growth and Learning 02:52 Becoming Wisdom-Filled 03:20 Carl Jung's Morning of Life and Afternoon of Life 04:17 Choosing to Answer the Knock on the Door 04:46 The Threshold of Menopause 05:33 Metamorphosis on Multiple Levels 06:02 From Caterpillar to Cocoon to Butterfly 07:00 Returning to Who We Truly Are 07:56 Releasing the Stories of Brokenness 08:26 Shedding Layers and Masks 09:23 Taking Responsibility for Our Actions 10:19 Shatterings as Opportunities for Growth 11:14 Rooting Down to Rise Up 12:41 Avoiding the Shattering and Recreating the Past 13:37 The Light Within the Darkness 14:33 Honoring Our Cycles and Inner Cycles 15:30 Defining the Inner Kingdom 16:26 The Shattering as Birth and Death 18:25 Returning to Wholeness 19:25 Defining the Kingdom by the Inner Kingdom 20:50 Men's Physiological Changes and Finding the Inner She 22:17 Finding the Inner He and Inner She 23:43 Releasing Co-dependence and Taking Responsibility 26:40 Numbing and Avoiding the Shattering 28:07 Releasing the Void Dance and Finding Inner Power 30:30 Grief and the Desire for Quiet in Women 31:30 Avoiding the Shattering and Recreating the Past in Men 32:59 Finding the Inner She and Inner He 35:21 Returning to the Divinity Within 37:17 Avoiding the Shattering and Recreating the Past in Women 39:07 Understanding and Accepting Each Other 40:36 Striving to Return to the God Within
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
Welcome to the Defiant Spirit, a podcast about meaning, purpose, and resilience.
I'm Dr. Baruch Halevi, also known as Bea, and now let's discover your Defiant Spirit.
So welcome to what we call He-She Spirituality. I'm Baruch Halevi,
and I'm here with the one and only Ariella Halevi.
(00:24):
Hello, Baruch Halevi. How are you? I'm good. I wish we could be in the same
place, but our busy lives just don't make it possible.
So we're together in our virtual studio.
We are. We are. Well, let's jump into an important conversation that you and
I have been exploring for at least our 25 years together.
(00:47):
I imagine it's been a work in progress for both of us since we can remember,
and that that is the evolution or the transition or the transformation from
what we can call in developmental terms,
the prince to the king or the princess to the queen. What does that mean?
So basically what that means is that when we are younger, we are the princess
(01:15):
and the prince, and we have to grow, right?
Part of being here is, and being younger is the idea that you're in school.
This is an education and you have to learn things in order to gain wisdom.
You don't, yeah, a lot of us pop in with a lot of wisdom. You can probably,
you know, we used to say our son was an old soul, right?
(01:38):
And so you see those old souls and you recognize them, but they still,
all, we all have to learn lessons here. It's why we came here.
And so we become this, this younger version of us becomes an older version of us.
And I like to think of it as the cocoon phase versus the butterfly phase, right?
So there's so many ways we could look at this, but when you're in the cocoon
(02:00):
phase, you are, it's gooey, it's sticky. It's, it's kind of gross.
And you're just But peeling back as we enter into this more butterfly stage,
which is queen king, you're peeling back the layers and the masks and the inauthentic
pieces of you that no longer work.
In fact, sometimes it's not even a choice.
(02:23):
A lot of us have, what did we used to call them? Trials, tribulations,
traumas, your three T's.
I still call them that.
You're the one who left me. What did you used to do?
Life's tease, transitions, tests, trials, traumas, tragedies.
I've never said tribulations. You keep adding that and I don't even know what that is.
Okay. So I like that word, but what, what we used to, what I used to,
(02:47):
and you still do call life brings us an opportunities to grow and to release
those masks and let them go to be more authentic.
And as we enter into midlife, we become those queen and Kings.
As we, as we age, as we go into the wisdom, we become more wisdom felt.
We become more soul than body.
(03:08):
So I said, said probably like 20 things we could go and run with.
What would you like to run with?
I just want to maybe clarify. That's great. That was very well said.
Maybe just adding something that we did used to say together,
and I still say, getting into some abandonment issues here.
And that is Carl Jung's morning of life and afternoon of life,
(03:29):
if that's another way for somebody who wants to think about it,
where these are just two different phases of our life.
Jung Hung said there's a third one called the evening, but that's somewhere
down the road. And so the morning, he divides it.
He tends to divide it as 40 years old. It's not a hard and fast rule,
but there is something hovering around there.
I think of it as a bell curve. Some people might be a 40.
(03:52):
Most are going to be somewhere in there, but it can happen earlier in your 30s.
It can happen later, but it also can never happen.
We're not talking about, I think you'll agree, biological, physiological change only.
Now, there's, I think, a lot of intersection in there, but I do know some people
who are in the afternoon of life who still act like the morning.
(04:14):
So I do believe there's a consciousness or a choice element to get you into
the afternoon or at least get you there fully. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I do think. I think what happens when we ignore the knocks on the door, right?
I think Brene Brown said it, like, sometime in your 40s, the universe starts
(04:37):
to knock at your door and say, this is not a dress rehearsal.
Like, who do you want to be?
And at some point, we choose to answer that knock on the door or we ignore it.
And so that's what happens when we go into the afternoon of life and we're still
acting like we're in the morning of life.
I think physiologically, we all have those awakenings and it's just if we choose
(05:03):
to, so it's a choice to step into it.
I think a woman, you know, every woman is going to go through menopause and that is a door, right?
That's a door that you can walk through.
You can choose to do it consciously or unconsciously, but it is the threshold
through which we walk through to become what I call wisdom keepers.
(05:25):
And that is the queendom, right?
And, but it is a, it can be a total metamorphosis physiologically,
but also emotionally, spiritually, mentally.
Absolutely. Can you still hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay.
Hopefully we got rid of our feedback for our listeners. Well,
(05:48):
good. So there's a conscious element.
There's also a natural component of this that happens sometimes in spite of us.
But the bottom line is, you know, we, we go from one reality to another.
Well, it's not so different, I think, than the way you're describing.
And that is switching like clones. And that is from the caterpillar to the cocoon
(06:11):
or chrysalis technically, and then into the butterfly stage.
And it's the same me. It's the same essence. It's the same Ariel.
It's the same NUOS. Frankl calls it spirit, whatever you want to call it.
So that's the only thing really that makes the continued journey, the outer form changes.
And in some ways I think of it as almost, You know, like we talk about even
(06:35):
the caterpillar cocooning thing as if the butterfly is the end stage,
but I think that was the original stage.
Like, I think we are the butterfly prior to this world. You got butterflies behind you.
And we come into this world almost like it's not fully who we are.
Are to me that's very different than i'm becoming
(06:57):
someone else versus i'm returning to who i
am or what i am in the afternoon as the
king and as the queen and we'll come back to that absolutely i
love that idea because i truly believe that we are not i think that if we live
long enough we can see ourselves as broken and what what you've said really
(07:19):
is returning and remembering that that butterfly is who we are, what we came here to be,
and we're always whole, right?
And so we're not our, if we've lived long enough on this earth,
we've had things happen, it could cause us to live through our stories and through
our stuff and our wounds and our stuff, right?
(07:42):
And I think that the queendom or the kingdom, the essence of that is returning
to, I was never broken in the first place.
It's almost like this aha moment as we start to unpack the cocoon, right?
And release the stories of who we thought we were.
We root into the remembering of I was never broken.
(08:05):
I came here whole. I'm here to learn.
And those stories don't define who I am.
They're just parts of me that can choose to stay and still be part of my story,
or they can choose to be that that peripheral stuff that then gets to fall away.
It's the gunk right of the cocoon and, and to become and return to the butterfly.
(08:29):
It's the, you have to shed some layers, right?
Don't you see in your clients or do you see in your clients a fundamental,
I think, false belief until they learn something else that they've become someone else, right?
They want to become a butterfly. Now I am the versus this.
Actually, this is just returning to who you are. You know, the morning of life
(08:52):
and the world we live in teaches us become someone else.
And it just changes the people I guide their journey when it's not,
you're not becoming coming you're returning this is
your true state because it changes the way
like they look back i talked to somebody recently was talking about
so much regret over the person he
(09:12):
was and i don't say this to like get rid of responsibility i say to explain
right that wasn't you yes you need to take responsibility for your actions that
was you trying to become a return to the true you and all all that stuff,
all that junk was getting in the way.
Do you find that or how do you find that in your clients' journeys?
(09:33):
I definitely find that. I mean, I think that's why when you're talking,
what I keep hearing is like what I talk to people about is how do we root down to rise up?
And to me, that's the transformation of growing up on this earth, being young,
going through our stages stages of physicality and letting things,
(09:55):
understanding that as we go through the cycle of life, we get to choose how
do, how do we want to return, right?
Some of us don't return until we die.
And then we die and we realized, oh my God, it was all a facade.
I am whole, right? And the second, like, I know some people and I know some
(10:16):
people who will realize that when they pass.
And I think the goal to life is to, is to uncover that and to shed those layers of,
old beliefs, ancestral beliefs. It doesn't matter what our parents or grandparents
or great-great parents.
Some of those are really beautiful, those things, those beliefs,
(10:38):
those rituals, but what are the ones that we need to shed and stop?
And I think midlife and beyond especially is the invitation to deepen into, if I am whole, right?
If I remember now that I am whole, then who
is this wholeness and i liken
(10:59):
it to like i'm a book reader like i love to
do research that's how i integrate right and
so i have like a million books like all really i didn't know that amazon coming
every day i know that you don't know that but look around my desk it's always
around my bed so for me it's like i feel like these books and they always for
(11:21):
me it's always been books but but that's my thing, right?
I pick up books to help me remember and put the pieces back together again.
Oh yeah, I am whole. So let me pull those pieces of those things that I love
to remember and root down into that.
Well, I mean, that's an interesting metaphor too, because you do talk about
(11:41):
Brene Brown tapping on her shoulder.
I don't know. I don't remember what she says, but Kabbalah says,
that's great until we just don't listen.
And it's hard to listen to the the taps, but the universe, God,
source has a way of getting your attention one way or the other.
And if you don't listen to the taps, eventually you have no choice,
but at least to look at the shattering. That's what Kabbalah calls it.
(12:04):
And the shattering can come in any of those life's teas or else I call them
the dark teas, divorce, death, disease, despair, whatever the shatterings.
And I think that's the best word I can think of for it because there's a shattering that that happens.
Now, you know, I want to get to, well, to become a king and a queen,
you have to choose what happens on the other side of the shattering.
(12:27):
But tell me, tell me your thoughts and feelings about the shatterings.
I think that it's scary to talk about shatterings and not, not for me,
cause we've been through them, but like, but I think that that image is so actually
quite beautiful, right?
So I don't think the word shattering has to scare people when they're listening to this.
(12:49):
A lot of people will say, I don't want that. I don't want- I don't want it either.
I don't want that. And sometimes you don't have a choice and sometimes you do have a choice.
I think when we consciously move through life, then the shatterings become-
(13:10):
there's always like putting our, right, you say like there's shatterings and
there's light within the shatterings, right? There's light within the darkness.
And that's how, like, what is it? That's how the light gets in.
Can you fill that in for me?
The crack is where the light gets in from Leonard Bernstein,
but truly taken from Kabbalah. Thank you.
(13:31):
So I think what happens is we can look look at these shatterings as something
that are like, are we going to walk through them? Are we going to fight against it?
And the harder we fight, the harder it is.
And if we can walk into life, understanding that, that we are in this earthly
(13:52):
plane to learn and to grow, then we can grow with it.
I mean, my, I don't ask for it, right? Like my deepest moments have been yes,
in those darker shatterings, but I actually think life is a mini shattering
in a really beautiful way.
Like as, I mean, I teach people that the monthly, and I'm not a big astrology
(14:14):
person, but like we, we just had spring equinox here, right?
And so the spring equinox or solar eclipses every month in the Jewish calendar,
there's probably a holiday for every month.
If you follow just the new moon and the full moon, everything has an energy to it.
Your body has an energy. It has an ebb. It has a flow.
(14:36):
The earth turns and turns and the moon rises and falls and everything is based on an energy flow.
So when we feel slammed or shattered, perhaps we can enter into that shattering
in a softer, kinder way to go with the flow, right?
Like Wayne Dyer, I think, And he probably quoted somebody else says,
(14:58):
row, row, row your boat, not gently down the stream, not up the stream.
Like, which way do we want to flow?
I feel like I'm pulling pieces of what you and I used to talk about. I never talk about that.
I feel like, you know, we used to work together and we used to talk about this all the time.
And she used to talk about all these things she's referencing and I still talk
about them all the time. And that's bringing up my shattering.
(15:20):
Okay. So, and that shattering though is the, I think the defining thing between
prince, princess, king, queen is I don't believe you can have,
you can become a king or a queen without the shattering.
And again, the shattering doesn't imply that you are necessarily a king or queen.
It's what you do with the shattering.
(15:41):
Just one other idea is that, and you touched on this, is that the word for shattering
in Kabbalah, Shvirat, it's the same word as Big Bang.
If we talk about the explosion of life in this universe began with the Shvirat, began with the Big Bang.
Or it's the same word used for birth in ancient Hebrew, Mashber or Shvirat.
(16:02):
So it can be a shattering i mean it was
and still continues to be one of the most dangerous days in a
woman's life when she gives birth so and it can go
either way obviously now it tends to go more in the way of life but certainly
it can go in the way of death and and that's that liminal that like transition
that that moment where something is born and something dies and that's That's the shakira.
(16:29):
That's the shattering. And something has to die on our journey to become the king or queen.
We have to leave something behind to become or to return to that king or queen
that's been waiting for us.
Go. I can just see your wheels turning.
Okay. So you've sparked this like ha moment for me.
(16:52):
Once again. You're amazing. Did I tell you what a king you are?
You are. Anyway. So what like that sparked to me was this idea of our physical body.
You know, there's this belief and, and it is in some ways it's true.
And other ways it's, it's completely false.
As one of the major, if you want to call shatterings is to, to grow old.
(17:19):
If we are blessed enough to grow old, we will not be the same body.
Our cells replicate every day.
We will not be in the same body that we, that we started in.
Everything looks different. And if, you know, everything feels different and
we, it's actually, it is a deep, it's a deep shattering, I think, especially for a woman.
But I think men don't deal with it. Mostly on the physical, they deal with it
(17:44):
like they move kind of by fancy cars or have those big major life transitions.
But I think for all of us, it's like this awareness that our bodies are not
going to be here forever.
That is a shattering. And how then?
Do we want to live? That is the biggest thing I think is like the morning of life is I'm invincible.
(18:07):
My body is this way. It looks this way. I can use my body in this way.
And as we grow older, the question is, do we really put the body as important?
If we are whole and we are those butterflies and we return to those butterflies,
why can't I believe that we can give our bodies the chance to truly be in mastery
(18:32):
by remembering that there is divine divinity inside of this,
this vessel that we live in every single day of our lives.
That to me is queendom and kingdom.
Like the vibration and the healing and the magnificent part of our bodies doesn't
(18:54):
mean that we grow old and get old and that's it.
Well, it's a very important point. That is a necessary condition to become a
king or queen is you must start defining your kingdom by what inner kingdom, not outer kingdom.
Because again, everything you're describing, if it's an outer kingdom,
you're not really king, you're prince or princess.
(19:14):
And that is that you don't have power over those things.
Those things are all going to be stripped from you or shattered and taken away
at a moment's notice. And they're not not yours.
You know, you're nothing wrong with using them and borrowing them and as a means,
but it's not, it's not an end.
And then in the, to become a King or Queen, you've got to shift from the outer
(19:35):
kingdom to the inner kingdom.
I, maybe this is where we talked about some differences between Kings and Queens,
but you know, with men it's, it is also physiological change,
but it's different for men.
I mean, yeah, I grapple with, you know, the lack of hair and and the spare tire in the midsection.
However, that's not the thing. Your dog is really noisy. Just kidding. It's fine.
(20:00):
So the king or queen, so the king, I see it with men physiologically,
and that's partially why you're not supposed to study Kabbalah until you're 40.
I think it's why Jung talks so powerfully about 40, because 40 is when a man
physiologically starts going through changes, roughly thereabouts.
Primarily, testosterone starts to decline.
(20:22):
And finally, a man has the chance to get out of the outward kingdom where he
judges based based on the way things look, the way things stimulate him,
particularly the she in his world.
And he can only think with one head and it's not the one up top.
And so as that starts to diminish, there's something that powerful starts to
(20:44):
potentially rise in a man, which is diminished testosterone.
I think also increased estrogen.
He starts to get in touch with his she on the inside, side, not looking for
her on the outside. At least that's the potential.
Although not all guys want to become Kings or pursue the right Kingly things.
(21:05):
Just so you know, you're still on mute. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. I do think it's, it's physiologically different, right?
With men versus women. And I think ultimately what you're, what we're both saying
is in a different way, We come to it differently, right?
Like the testosterone decreases, you know, we have our own hormones that are
(21:26):
going crazy and, and continue to change over time. And that's not even it really.
What we're, what you're saying is, you know, it's, you know,
your hair's different and you, and you look, you look so different.
But it's to me it's discovering
what is on the inside which is the divine within
(21:48):
and that's shattering right it's it's
yeah it's earth like an earthquake your body
shatters literally physically figuratively and
either you know it's humpty dumpty trying
to piece it back together again or it's taking
you said this before beautifully it's taking the pieces and deciding
(22:09):
what to design right like what kind of
life to design am i going to just constantly try to
defy gravity try to avoid the
inevitable which is you know ashes to
ashes dust to dust or am i going to allow that to no longer be my kingdom put
my power on the things that are mine which is my ability as frankel says to
(22:30):
choose my response my power of choice right will i control my breath will i I control my attitude?
Will I control my focus and place it on things that I find valuable and meaningful?
That's mine that the shattering doesn't get to take away.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I do think it like we are physiologically different,
(22:52):
but it is the ultimate shattering of it.
I don't even think it's putting us it's, it's returning.
So it's not even putting those those pizzas back together again.
To me, it's like, oh my God, I was whole all along.
It's releasing and letting go of,
it's like, I see like, you know, when you let go of the butterfly, when you're,
(23:15):
you know, I don't know, I think our kids in classes at school used to,
you know, the cocoons and the caterpillars became butterflies and then they
released them out into the wild, wild into the sky.
And to me, it's shutting layers and layers of the facades that we thought we were.
And returning to the divinity means that.
(23:38):
There's something else besides our physicality that is running the show.
Okay, but let's talk, you're enlightened, and let's talk about unenlightened,
and we are also unenlightened.
There are times when I don't walk my talk, and I need to, but clients that come
to you, the vast majority of clients who aren't coming to you,
because lots of people try to be humpty dumpty, right?
(24:00):
They try to make it better, to fix it, to piece it back together again. in.
And so they don't really listen to the shattering or learn from the shattering.
They try to recreate what was before the shattering.
So maybe we talk about ways that people do that, but also I think it's interesting
when we talk about the differences between the way you see women doing that
(24:21):
and the way I see men doing that, or the way, I don't want to get and put this
like we're righteous, the way we do that differently as a man and a woman. Yeah.
I mean, I think as women, we get attention in our younger years for what's on
the outside versus what is on the inside.
And I think as we go into our queendom, we start to.
(24:44):
Mourn. What I have found with women and all different stages of midlife and
beyond, because I work with women that are in their seventies and 78, so close to 80.
But what I have found across the board with women in their midlife is a level of grief.
I used to do it this way and it's the fight within.
(25:08):
It sometimes is a battle, but ultimately underneath that is just the deep grief that the ultimate,
I mean, I think ultimately what we're, what we are scared of and what we're
grieving is that like, we're not going to be here forever.
That's the underneath part. Like, holy cow.
I mean, we turned 50 and you know, a couple of years ago, and it was this deep
(25:34):
understanding and grief that we can no law.
I could no longer do life the way I used to do it. And physiologically,
my body wouldn't allow that.
So I think as women start to put themselves back together, recognize that they're
whole, there is a level of grief.
There is an invitation to take deeper responsibility for ourselves.
(25:54):
You have something to say?
There is. But I just want to come back to and challenge you a little bit.
That's where we can get to. But where do you see a lot of people taking the off ramp to queendom?
And behaviors are they, are we acting loud? out of?
Yeah. Where does she want to go to get back to life before the shattering or
(26:15):
to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
How do most women try to numb the shattering, avoid the shattering,
go back to recreating to life prior to the shattering?
I mean, you'd have to say that's the vast majority of women.
Yeah. Okay. So without judgment, because we've all done it.
(26:37):
I think that there's, I think anything on the outside of us that we use to cover up the, the, the grief,
you know, Netflix, too much TV, overeating, a lot of women that I've talked
to, you know, we're using food to cover up the pain or the frustration that we're not who we were.
(27:01):
I think often it can be alcohol, shopping, money, anger is a huge one.
It's this rage that comes out of us that we don't quite understand, or maybe we do.
And we, we use it, we fling it without really deepening into like,
(27:22):
what are we really feeling?
Busy-ness is a huge one. Busy-ness. You just busy yourself and that makes you
feel important and exhausted.
And so if I keep myself running on the hamster wheel, I wear my busy-ness as a badge of honor.
Right. And it's what we used to call the void dance, the void dance,
the dance around the void. And some of us still use that.
(27:43):
And it's void dancing, right? It's around and around and around and around the shattering.
And that's everything you said there is the same, I think, between men and women.
One of the things I see with men is because if testosterone is dropping,
then we're getting into like sexual prowess, like virility, core,
(28:05):
you know, male stuff of if I don't perform.
If I can't have an erection, if I don't want it as much, if she doesn't want
me as much, you know, am I the same man?
And I think a lot of men have learned to identify who they are and what they're
here for and what they're after from this confused sexual pursuit in the morning of life.
(28:29):
And I see a lot of guys who are at the crossroads and either they just try and invent a new her,
like replace the current her they're with, with a new trophy her,
or they find it outside of their marriage or they find it on porn or they find
it in a thousand other versions of her,
of that thing that gave them their feeling of power, of identity, of potency.
(28:55):
And I see that there's a crossroads of guys who try to keep recreating the morning
or the prince in the afternoon versus the guys who say, what's next?
Because it doesn't mean you can't have sexual relations. It doesn't mean any of that.
It just means it's no longer how I define myself. And I feel like,
especially for men, that's one of the big shifts into becoming a king.
(29:19):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because what I hear you saying is if you're
in a relationship with a woman, right, a marriage, a relationship,
a long term relationship,
and you're going you as a male, men are going through these changes of am I
still good enough if my testosterone isn't like, you know, so big?
And how do I, how do I come to that relationship?
(29:42):
And instead it's easier to just get your ego fed by maybe going outside of the
marriage or, or getting it fed from the outside in.
And in the same, it's interesting because I haven't thought of it that way in
the same energy, a woman is going through so many changes in her body.
All she wants is, no, she may not be getting this, but all she wants is quiet.
(30:05):
Quiet her body is screaming to be
quiet to have more space for
herself to listen and to go within
it is the cocoon face going right to
head into queendom and kingdom we're doing
it differently but we're I think the question
is right like so the woman is going like this this
(30:26):
is my body who am I in my body what
am I doing with all these changes in my body I suddenly
like chocolate and i never liked chocolate like i
i all these different things are
happening how do you relate to each other i'm going to ask you that how as we
go into our queen king then how do we come together and relate to each other
(30:48):
when you're going through all this and and the the woman is going through all
different vastly different things by the way her quick drive is totally different too.
I mean, there's a thousand things,
but here's one is the one thing that one of the things I help men even just
realize they've never even thought about it is if testosterone is dropping and
(31:10):
estrogen is rising and testosterone is particularly male and estrogen is particularly,
Not in a man. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about women.
I can't. I can't. I know nothing about women. 25 years later,
married to you, I know nothing.
But I know I'm wrong even when I'm talking about men, I guess.
My estrogen levels are higher. I know that because my doctor said so.
(31:33):
My testosterone levels are lower. I know that because my doctor said so.
And if we listen to nature, and men are good at listening to their bodies and
listening to nature, right?
We've been taught, look, not even taught. I don't have the same connection to my body as you do.
I can't bring life into this world. I don't have that capacity.
That doesn't excuse me to not listen to my body. I need to start listening.
(31:55):
And if I listen to my body and I listen to what that testosterone and that estrogen
change is about, it's saying that that masculine drive to go out into the world
and find it is not the same.
And maybe it's pointing me in a different direction. If that estrogen is calling
me more inwards, that feminine, not finding her out there, but finding her in here.
(32:16):
So I teach men to find the her, capital H, her, not out in the world because she's not out there.
It's not even your wife. As much as I love my wife, you can't be my her if we
want to have a healthy, full relationship.
I've got to find her inside. inside.
(32:37):
One quick idea, if you want an example of this, watch American Beauty.
It's the quintessential man who is midlife and he has this breakdown, this shattering.
And then he goes looking for her and that character, I forgot her name,
Mira Savino, whatever her name is.
And he's pursuing her because it's just a new version of her, a young version of her.
(32:59):
But when he gets to her and he realizes she's just a young girl and that's not
what he wants. He was looking for what she represented. And then he goes inwards.
And to me, that's how a man becomes a king.
And I would say very similar, except not the same hormones, right? Like just different.
A woman gets like, she starts to feel hot and sometimes angry and she starts
(33:27):
to explode or feel angry at the people around her because all she wants really.
So she's acting out just in a different way, right?
So there could be rage or anger or feeling like she can't breathe and she needs to be more quiet,
but she gets, she ramps up, she gets busier and all the caretaking and all the
(33:49):
things that she's done outside of herself feels like just running on a hamster
wheel because she's never felt so tired.
And so what she comes back to Instead of being angry and snappy and resentful
and not speaking her truth,
she no longer can use her spouse or anybody outside of herself.
(34:12):
She can no longer define herself by the outside.
She has to release codependence, release and take responsibility for her own
life and her own energy field and her own body, physiologically, emotionally,
energetically, and come to the her that you're talking about.
(34:34):
Well, I would say she's coming to he.
He's coming, he's finding his inner she, and she's finding her inner he. that source of power.
In Kabbalah, it's the sun and the moon.
One is not better than the other. One produces, creates, and one receives.
The moon receives the light of the sun. And in the first half of life,
(34:58):
a man is the sun and the woman tends to be the moon.
And what happens in the afternoon is she starts looking for the sun,
for that energy, that power or inside of herself.
And he starts looking for the feminine, the ability to receive and soften inside of himself.
And so they're really looking for the opposite energies and to become a king
(35:21):
or queen, you got to find it on your own inside of you, not outside of you. So true.
So true. Yeah. I do think it is when you're talking, because I'm so energetic,
I can feel it's a lot of it is in the third chakra, which is the chakra of power.
It's that that solar power, right? It is, it feels like a more masculine energy,
(35:43):
but I don't even think it's masculine feminine to me.
It is raw connection to both the integration of masculine and feminine.
It is not getting your energy from something outside of yourself.
It is, a lot of it is releasing the codependence of feeling important because
(36:04):
of these accolades on the outside and and really coming back into.
Your own power. And I think for a woman, sometimes it is he, and sometimes it is she.
And it is that dance between the two, because sometimes you need the power and
sometimes you need to sleep and go back into that cocoon.
(36:27):
And I think for all of us as humans, that shift into to king queendom really
is honoring our cycles and our inner cycles.
Here's one thing though that I will say that I think is profoundly different is that women.
On every level, this is just scientifically factually true, have an easier time
(36:50):
connecting at all ages in life with the people around them, especially with other women, right?
It's just a natural direction women go to make relationship.
Chip. We can talk a thousand reasons why men have a harder time making those true intimate bonds.
I'm not talking about the bullshit of golfing or hunting buddies,
like truly opening your heart to another man from as a man is it's cultural,
(37:15):
but it's also biological. It's harder.
But the point is, is that in the afternoon life or is becoming a King, I've seen it.
Men now have the ability as they're softening, as the testosterone is dropping,
is that estrogen is rising as they're working on I'm becoming the moon of receiving
and not just creating and doing.
I've seen it in the men's groups that I'm a part of now, man uprising where
(37:36):
men are sitting around in a circle and they're seeing each other and they're
hearing each other and they're,
they're not competing with each other and they're, they're receiving one another
and you can just see the softening, you know, I wouldn't say this in the wrong
context, but they're becoming Queens, right?
And they're, they're really owning that inner queen and they're not outsourcing
(37:58):
it to to their wife or to sex or to something outside of themselves.
It's truly a beautiful thing to see he move into that she energy.
That's beautiful. I mean, I would say it's, I hear what you're saying.
I think it's very familiar in a different way, right?
The women's groups that I lead are, they have a hard time showing up to actually
(38:22):
release all of that doing and that busyness, or it reminds me of men who have
a hard time coming into that softer place.
Yeah, but I've seen it in your groups and I've seen it in you that it's not a,
oh my god i've never experienced this it's
hard and what you said was a male masculine thing
which is you know you're coming more into i am alone
(38:43):
dealing with this shit inside of me right like that's how men live the first
half of their life or all their life they've never had the the luxury or the
beauty the benefit of having another besides potentially a her and so to have
male male, you know, counterparts,
friends to sort of experience this with is novel to these guys.
(39:05):
It's just mind blowing how different they are than their, than their wives.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think of like the idea of the red tent, right?
Like for women, it's natural to gather.
And I think for all of us in general, just to kind of wrap it up,
it is, it's not natural to, to bully yourself through life, whether you're male
(39:29):
or female, it really doesn't matter.
We go at it different ways, but ultimately I think what we all want is to find,
you know, you can say it in a different way, but I think we're looking for,
for the God within the divinity within and sharing that from that place,
right? Cause then you're right. You release competition.
You release the busy, you release the, the morning of life belief that you just
(39:54):
have to go, go, go, go, go, go.
And you come to a slower place where you can listen. And we do that in different ways, yes.
But I don't think the afternoon of life needs to be lonely, right?
I think that's a really big thing because as for women, we're going through
all these changes and the people that we've raised are either gone and doing their own thing.
(40:18):
And it is this question of how do I want to live? somebody asked me this and
she asked me at a few times, who do you want to be and how do you want to live when you're 75 or 80?
And that has been such a big thing for me to think about as I move through my 50s, right?
And plan for, God willing, my 70s, my 80s, and beyond.
(40:41):
Who do I want to live and how do I want to live it?
And that takes care of the loneliness, right?
Because I know and I have a vision. And if you don't have a vision,
it's great to sit down and think about, okay, like I've shattered and now who
do I want to be? Who do I want to return to?
So do you want to add anything as we close no that's a beautiful ending i just
(41:05):
i love it you know to me i know this isn't necessarily your language but for
me i use it every day now of becoming a king becoming the queen and i think
this you know podcast will help me.
Expand the definition of what that means because these are terms that some people
might have a lot of hang-ups with but they're quite beautiful but it doesn't
matter what you call it all that the matters is in the second half of life that
(41:28):
we strive to return to it.
Yeah. And then I just have one little thing. Think about how beautiful it is.
If you're, you know, if you're a king or a queen and you've shattered and you've
done, you've explored and you you're in it like, right.
We're no, nobody's perfect, but think about how beautiful it is to understand the other,
(41:50):
together right to understand like wow that king may not the king in my life
may not be expressing what he's going through but understanding that he too
is going through physiological changes.
That he too experiences things just in a different way and then having the king
understand the queen of all of the things you may not understand it but like
(42:13):
admiring or releasing judgment for all all that she is going through and then coming together.
You know, I think our last podcast was on intimacy.
To me, that defines true intimacy is when you can see somebody for the deeper
parts of themselves and accept them and love them and understand them and surrender
those pieces and become and rise together, but separately, right?
(42:37):
It's like that interdependence, not codependently.
Well, that'll be our next podcast. How to support your queen to become a queen
or how are your princess to become a queen and how to support your prince in
becoming a king until the next time i don't even know how to sign off because
we need he she spirituality sign off what do we say namaste you later bye.
(43:02):
Thank you for listening to the defiant spirit podcast with me your host dr baruch
levy if you like what you heard please consider leaving a five-star review and
share this podcast with others.
To learn more about the Defiant Spirit, get more inspirational content,
or see how we might work together to live your Defiant Spirit,
visit DefiantSpirit.org.
Music.
Welcome to the Defiant Spirit, a podcast about meaning, purpose, and resilience.
I'm Dr. Baruch Halevi, also known as Bea, and now let's discover your Defiant Spirit.
So welcome to what we call He-She Spirituality. I'm Baruch Halevi,
and I'm here with the one and only Ariella Halevi.
(00:24):
Hello, Baruch Halevi. How are you? I'm good. I wish we could be in the same
place, but our busy lives just don't make it possible.
So we're together in our virtual studio.
We are. We are. Well, let's jump into an important conversation that you and
I have been exploring for at least our 25 years together.
(00:47):
I imagine it's been a work in progress for both of us since we can remember,
and that that is the evolution or the transition or the transformation from
what we can call in developmental terms,
the prince to the king or the princess to the queen. What does that mean?
So basically what that means is that when we are younger, we are the princess
(01:15):
and the prince, and we have to grow, right?
Part of being here is, and being younger is the idea that you're in school.
This is an education and you have to learn things in order to gain wisdom.
You don't, yeah, a lot of us pop in with a lot of wisdom. You can probably,
you know, we used to say our son was an old soul, right?
(01:38):
And so you see those old souls and you recognize them, but they still,
all, we all have to learn lessons here. It's why we came here.
And so we become this, this younger version of us becomes an older version of us.
And I like to think of it as the cocoon phase versus the butterfly phase, right?
So there's so many ways we could look at this, but when you're in the cocoon
(02:00):
phase, you are, it's gooey, it's sticky. It's, it's kind of gross.
And you're just But peeling back as we enter into this more butterfly stage,
which is queen king, you're peeling back the layers and the masks and the inauthentic
pieces of you that no longer work.
In fact, sometimes it's not even a choice.
(02:23):
A lot of us have, what did we used to call them? Trials, tribulations,
traumas, your three T's.
I still call them that.
You're the one who left me. What did you used to do?
Life's tease, transitions, tests, trials, traumas, tragedies.
I've never said tribulations. You keep adding that and I don't even know what that is.
Okay. So I like that word, but what, what we used to, what I used to,
(02:47):
and you still do call life brings us an opportunities to grow and to release
those masks and let them go to be more authentic.
And as we enter into midlife, we become those queen and Kings.
As we, as we age, as we go into the wisdom, we become more wisdom felt.
We become more soul than body.
(03:08):
So I said, said probably like 20 things we could go and run with.
What would you like to run with?
I just want to maybe clarify. That's great. That was very well said.
Maybe just adding something that we did used to say together,
and I still say, getting into some abandonment issues here.
And that is Carl Jung's morning of life and afternoon of life,
(03:29):
if that's another way for somebody who wants to think about it,
where these are just two different phases of our life.
Jung Hung said there's a third one called the evening, but that's somewhere
down the road. And so the morning, he divides it.
He tends to divide it as 40 years old. It's not a hard and fast rule,
but there is something hovering around there.
I think of it as a bell curve. Some people might be a 40.
(03:52):
Most are going to be somewhere in there, but it can happen earlier in your 30s.
It can happen later, but it also can never happen.
We're not talking about, I think you'll agree, biological, physiological change only.
Now, there's, I think, a lot of intersection in there, but I do know some people
who are in the afternoon of life who still act like the morning.
(04:14):
So I do believe there's a consciousness or a choice element to get you into
the afternoon or at least get you there fully. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, I do think. I think what happens when we ignore the knocks on the door, right?
I think Brene Brown said it, like, sometime in your 40s, the universe starts
(04:37):
to knock at your door and say, this is not a dress rehearsal.
Like, who do you want to be?
And at some point, we choose to answer that knock on the door or we ignore it.
And so that's what happens when we go into the afternoon of life and we're still
acting like we're in the morning of life.
I think physiologically, we all have those awakenings and it's just if we choose
(05:03):
to, so it's a choice to step into it.
I think a woman, you know, every woman is going to go through menopause and that is a door, right?
That's a door that you can walk through.
You can choose to do it consciously or unconsciously, but it is the threshold
through which we walk through to become what I call wisdom keepers.
(05:25):
And that is the queendom, right?
And, but it is a, it can be a total metamorphosis physiologically,
but also emotionally, spiritually, mentally.
Absolutely. Can you still hear me? I can hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes. Okay.
Hopefully we got rid of our feedback for our listeners. Well,
(05:48):
good. So there's a conscious element.
There's also a natural component of this that happens sometimes in spite of us.
But the bottom line is, you know, we, we go from one reality to another.
Well, it's not so different, I think, than the way you're describing.
And that is switching like clones. And that is from the caterpillar to the cocoon
(06:11):
or chrysalis technically, and then into the butterfly stage.
And it's the same me. It's the same essence. It's the same Ariel.
It's the same NUOS. Frankl calls it spirit, whatever you want to call it.
So that's the only thing really that makes the continued journey, the outer form changes.
And in some ways I think of it as almost, You know, like we talk about even
(06:35):
the caterpillar cocooning thing as if the butterfly is the end stage,
but I think that was the original stage.
Like, I think we are the butterfly prior to this world. You got butterflies behind you.
And we come into this world almost like it's not fully who we are.
Are to me that's very different than i'm becoming
(06:57):
someone else versus i'm returning to who i
am or what i am in the afternoon as the
king and as the queen and we'll come back to that absolutely i
love that idea because i truly believe that we are not i think that if we live
long enough we can see ourselves as broken and what what you've said really
(07:19):
is returning and remembering that that butterfly is who we are, what we came here to be,
and we're always whole, right?
And so we're not our, if we've lived long enough on this earth,
we've had things happen, it could cause us to live through our stories and through
our stuff and our wounds and our stuff, right?
(07:42):
And I think that the queendom or the kingdom, the essence of that is returning
to, I was never broken in the first place.
It's almost like this aha moment as we start to unpack the cocoon, right?
And release the stories of who we thought we were.
We root into the remembering of I was never broken.
(08:05):
I came here whole. I'm here to learn.
And those stories don't define who I am.
They're just parts of me that can choose to stay and still be part of my story,
or they can choose to be that that peripheral stuff that then gets to fall away.
It's the gunk right of the cocoon and, and to become and return to the butterfly.
(08:29):
It's the, you have to shed some layers, right?
Don't you see in your clients or do you see in your clients a fundamental,
I think, false belief until they learn something else that they've become someone else, right?
They want to become a butterfly. Now I am the versus this.
Actually, this is just returning to who you are. You know, the morning of life
(08:52):
and the world we live in teaches us become someone else.
And it just changes the people I guide their journey when it's not,
you're not becoming coming you're returning this is
your true state because it changes the way
like they look back i talked to somebody recently was talking about
so much regret over the person he
(09:12):
was and i don't say this to like get rid of responsibility i say to explain
right that wasn't you yes you need to take responsibility for your actions that
was you trying to become a return to the true you and all all that stuff,
all that junk was getting in the way.
Do you find that or how do you find that in your clients' journeys?
(09:33):
I definitely find that. I mean, I think that's why when you're talking,
what I keep hearing is like what I talk to people about is how do we root down to rise up?
And to me, that's the transformation of growing up on this earth, being young,
going through our stages stages of physicality and letting things,
(09:55):
understanding that as we go through the cycle of life, we get to choose how
do, how do we want to return, right?
Some of us don't return until we die.
And then we die and we realized, oh my God, it was all a facade.
I am whole, right? And the second, like, I know some people and I know some
(10:16):
people who will realize that when they pass.
And I think the goal to life is to, is to uncover that and to shed those layers of,
old beliefs, ancestral beliefs. It doesn't matter what our parents or grandparents
or great-great parents.
Some of those are really beautiful, those things, those beliefs,
(10:38):
those rituals, but what are the ones that we need to shed and stop?
And I think midlife and beyond especially is the invitation to deepen into, if I am whole, right?
If I remember now that I am whole, then who
is this wholeness and i liken
(10:59):
it to like i'm a book reader like i love to
do research that's how i integrate right and
so i have like a million books like all really i didn't know that amazon coming
every day i know that you don't know that but look around my desk it's always
around my bed so for me it's like i feel like these books and they always for
(11:21):
me it's always been books but but that's my thing, right?
I pick up books to help me remember and put the pieces back together again.
Oh yeah, I am whole. So let me pull those pieces of those things that I love
to remember and root down into that.
Well, I mean, that's an interesting metaphor too, because you do talk about
(11:41):
Brene Brown tapping on her shoulder.
I don't know. I don't remember what she says, but Kabbalah says,
that's great until we just don't listen.
And it's hard to listen to the the taps, but the universe, God,
source has a way of getting your attention one way or the other.
And if you don't listen to the taps, eventually you have no choice,
but at least to look at the shattering. That's what Kabbalah calls it.
(12:04):
And the shattering can come in any of those life's teas or else I call them
the dark teas, divorce, death, disease, despair, whatever the shatterings.
And I think that's the best word I can think of for it because there's a shattering that that happens.
Now, you know, I want to get to, well, to become a king and a queen,
you have to choose what happens on the other side of the shattering.
(12:27):
But tell me, tell me your thoughts and feelings about the shatterings.
I think that it's scary to talk about shatterings and not, not for me,
cause we've been through them, but like, but I think that that image is so actually
quite beautiful, right?
So I don't think the word shattering has to scare people when they're listening to this.
(12:49):
A lot of people will say, I don't want that. I don't want- I don't want it either.
I don't want that. And sometimes you don't have a choice and sometimes you do have a choice.
I think when we consciously move through life, then the shatterings become-
(13:10):
there's always like putting our, right, you say like there's shatterings and
there's light within the shatterings, right? There's light within the darkness.
And that's how, like, what is it? That's how the light gets in.
Can you fill that in for me?
The crack is where the light gets in from Leonard Bernstein,
but truly taken from Kabbalah. Thank you.
(13:31):
So I think what happens is we can look look at these shatterings as something
that are like, are we going to walk through them? Are we going to fight against it?
And the harder we fight, the harder it is.
And if we can walk into life, understanding that, that we are in this earthly
(13:52):
plane to learn and to grow, then we can grow with it.
I mean, my, I don't ask for it, right? Like my deepest moments have been yes,
in those darker shatterings, but I actually think life is a mini shattering
in a really beautiful way.
Like as, I mean, I teach people that the monthly, and I'm not a big astrology
(14:14):
person, but like we, we just had spring equinox here, right?
And so the spring equinox or solar eclipses every month in the Jewish calendar,
there's probably a holiday for every month.
If you follow just the new moon and the full moon, everything has an energy to it.
Your body has an energy. It has an ebb. It has a flow.
(14:36):
The earth turns and turns and the moon rises and falls and everything is based on an energy flow.
So when we feel slammed or shattered, perhaps we can enter into that shattering
in a softer, kinder way to go with the flow, right?
Like Wayne Dyer, I think, And he probably quoted somebody else says,
(14:58):
row, row, row your boat, not gently down the stream, not up the stream.
Like, which way do we want to flow?
I feel like I'm pulling pieces of what you and I used to talk about. I never talk about that.
I feel like, you know, we used to work together and we used to talk about this all the time.
And she used to talk about all these things she's referencing and I still talk
about them all the time. And that's bringing up my shattering.
(15:20):
Okay. So, and that shattering though is the, I think the defining thing between
prince, princess, king, queen is I don't believe you can have,
you can become a king or a queen without the shattering.
And again, the shattering doesn't imply that you are necessarily a king or queen.
It's what you do with the shattering.
(15:41):
Just one other idea is that, and you touched on this, is that the word for shattering
in Kabbalah, Shvirat, it's the same word as Big Bang.
If we talk about the explosion of life in this universe began with the Shvirat, began with the Big Bang.
Or it's the same word used for birth in ancient Hebrew, Mashber or Shvirat.
(16:02):
So it can be a shattering i mean it was
and still continues to be one of the most dangerous days in a
woman's life when she gives birth so and it can go
either way obviously now it tends to go more in the way of life but certainly
it can go in the way of death and and that's that liminal that like transition
that that moment where something is born and something dies and that's That's the shakira.
(16:29):
That's the shattering. And something has to die on our journey to become the king or queen.
We have to leave something behind to become or to return to that king or queen
that's been waiting for us.
Go. I can just see your wheels turning.
Okay. So you've sparked this like ha moment for me.
(16:52):
Once again. You're amazing. Did I tell you what a king you are?
You are. Anyway. So what like that sparked to me was this idea of our physical body.
You know, there's this belief and, and it is in some ways it's true.
And other ways it's, it's completely false.
As one of the major, if you want to call shatterings is to, to grow old.
(17:19):
If we are blessed enough to grow old, we will not be the same body.
Our cells replicate every day.
We will not be in the same body that we, that we started in.
Everything looks different. And if, you know, everything feels different and
we, it's actually, it is a deep, it's a deep shattering, I think, especially for a woman.
But I think men don't deal with it. Mostly on the physical, they deal with it
(17:44):
like they move kind of by fancy cars or have those big major life transitions.
But I think for all of us, it's like this awareness that our bodies are not
going to be here forever.
That is a shattering. And how then?
Do we want to live? That is the biggest thing I think is like the morning of life is I'm invincible.
(18:07):
My body is this way. It looks this way. I can use my body in this way.
And as we grow older, the question is, do we really put the body as important?
If we are whole and we are those butterflies and we return to those butterflies,
why can't I believe that we can give our bodies the chance to truly be in mastery
(18:32):
by remembering that there is divine divinity inside of this,
this vessel that we live in every single day of our lives.
That to me is queendom and kingdom.
Like the vibration and the healing and the magnificent part of our bodies doesn't
(18:54):
mean that we grow old and get old and that's it.
Well, it's a very important point. That is a necessary condition to become a
king or queen is you must start defining your kingdom by what inner kingdom, not outer kingdom.
Because again, everything you're describing, if it's an outer kingdom,
you're not really king, you're prince or princess.
(19:14):
And that is that you don't have power over those things.
Those things are all going to be stripped from you or shattered and taken away
at a moment's notice. And they're not not yours.
You know, you're nothing wrong with using them and borrowing them and as a means,
but it's not, it's not an end.
And then in the, to become a King or Queen, you've got to shift from the outer
(19:35):
kingdom to the inner kingdom.
I, maybe this is where we talked about some differences between Kings and Queens,
but you know, with men it's, it is also physiological change,
but it's different for men.
I mean, yeah, I grapple with, you know, the lack of hair and and the spare tire in the midsection.
However, that's not the thing. Your dog is really noisy. Just kidding. It's fine.
(20:00):
So the king or queen, so the king, I see it with men physiologically,
and that's partially why you're not supposed to study Kabbalah until you're 40.
I think it's why Jung talks so powerfully about 40, because 40 is when a man
physiologically starts going through changes, roughly thereabouts.
Primarily, testosterone starts to decline.
(20:22):
And finally, a man has the chance to get out of the outward kingdom where he
judges based based on the way things look, the way things stimulate him,
particularly the she in his world.
And he can only think with one head and it's not the one up top.
And so as that starts to diminish, there's something that powerful starts to
(20:44):
potentially rise in a man, which is diminished testosterone.
I think also increased estrogen.
He starts to get in touch with his she on the inside, side, not looking for
her on the outside. At least that's the potential.
Although not all guys want to become Kings or pursue the right Kingly things.
(21:05):
Just so you know, you're still on mute. Yeah, I know.
Yeah. I do think it's, it's physiologically different, right?
With men versus women. And I think ultimately what you're, what we're both saying
is in a different way, We come to it differently, right?
Like the testosterone decreases, you know, we have our own hormones that are
(21:26):
going crazy and, and continue to change over time. And that's not even it really.
What we're, what you're saying is, you know, it's, you know,
your hair's different and you, and you look, you look so different.
But it's to me it's discovering
what is on the inside which is the divine within
(21:48):
and that's shattering right it's it's
yeah it's earth like an earthquake your body
shatters literally physically figuratively and
either you know it's humpty dumpty trying
to piece it back together again or it's taking
you said this before beautifully it's taking the pieces and deciding
(22:09):
what to design right like what kind of
life to design am i going to just constantly try to
defy gravity try to avoid the
inevitable which is you know ashes to
ashes dust to dust or am i going to allow that to no longer be my kingdom put
my power on the things that are mine which is my ability as frankel says to
(22:30):
choose my response my power of choice right will i control my breath will i I control my attitude?
Will I control my focus and place it on things that I find valuable and meaningful?
That's mine that the shattering doesn't get to take away.
Absolutely. Absolutely. I do think it like we are physiologically different,
(22:52):
but it is the ultimate shattering of it.
I don't even think it's putting us it's, it's returning.
So it's not even putting those those pizzas back together again.
To me, it's like, oh my God, I was whole all along.
It's releasing and letting go of,
it's like, I see like, you know, when you let go of the butterfly, when you're,
(23:15):
you know, I don't know, I think our kids in classes at school used to,
you know, the cocoons and the caterpillars became butterflies and then they
released them out into the wild, wild into the sky.
And to me, it's shutting layers and layers of the facades that we thought we were.
And returning to the divinity means that.
(23:38):
There's something else besides our physicality that is running the show.
Okay, but let's talk, you're enlightened, and let's talk about unenlightened,
and we are also unenlightened.
There are times when I don't walk my talk, and I need to, but clients that come
to you, the vast majority of clients who aren't coming to you,
because lots of people try to be humpty dumpty, right?
(24:00):
They try to make it better, to fix it, to piece it back together again. in.
And so they don't really listen to the shattering or learn from the shattering.
They try to recreate what was before the shattering.
So maybe we talk about ways that people do that, but also I think it's interesting
when we talk about the differences between the way you see women doing that
(24:21):
and the way I see men doing that, or the way, I don't want to get and put this
like we're righteous, the way we do that differently as a man and a woman. Yeah.
I mean, I think as women, we get attention in our younger years for what's on
the outside versus what is on the inside.
And I think as we go into our queendom, we start to.
(24:44):
Mourn. What I have found with women and all different stages of midlife and
beyond, because I work with women that are in their seventies and 78, so close to 80.
But what I have found across the board with women in their midlife is a level of grief.
I used to do it this way and it's the fight within.
(25:08):
It sometimes is a battle, but ultimately underneath that is just the deep grief that the ultimate,
I mean, I think ultimately what we're, what we are scared of and what we're
grieving is that like, we're not going to be here forever.
That's the underneath part. Like, holy cow.
I mean, we turned 50 and you know, a couple of years ago, and it was this deep
(25:34):
understanding and grief that we can no law.
I could no longer do life the way I used to do it. And physiologically,
my body wouldn't allow that.
So I think as women start to put themselves back together, recognize that they're
whole, there is a level of grief.
There is an invitation to take deeper responsibility for ourselves.
(25:54):
You have something to say?
There is. But I just want to come back to and challenge you a little bit.
That's where we can get to. But where do you see a lot of people taking the off ramp to queendom?
And behaviors are they, are we acting loud? out of?
Yeah. Where does she want to go to get back to life before the shattering or
(26:15):
to put Humpty Dumpty back together again?
How do most women try to numb the shattering, avoid the shattering,
go back to recreating to life prior to the shattering?
I mean, you'd have to say that's the vast majority of women.
Yeah. Okay. So without judgment, because we've all done it.
(26:37):
I think that there's, I think anything on the outside of us that we use to cover up the, the, the grief,
you know, Netflix, too much TV, overeating, a lot of women that I've talked
to, you know, we're using food to cover up the pain or the frustration that we're not who we were.
(27:01):
I think often it can be alcohol, shopping, money, anger is a huge one.
It's this rage that comes out of us that we don't quite understand, or maybe we do.
And we, we use it, we fling it without really deepening into like,
(27:22):
what are we really feeling?
Busy-ness is a huge one. Busy-ness. You just busy yourself and that makes you
feel important and exhausted.
And so if I keep myself running on the hamster wheel, I wear my busy-ness as a badge of honor.
Right. And it's what we used to call the void dance, the void dance,
the dance around the void. And some of us still use that.
(27:43):
And it's void dancing, right? It's around and around and around and around the shattering.
And that's everything you said there is the same, I think, between men and women.
One of the things I see with men is because if testosterone is dropping,
then we're getting into like sexual prowess, like virility, core,
(28:05):
you know, male stuff of if I don't perform.
If I can't have an erection, if I don't want it as much, if she doesn't want
me as much, you know, am I the same man?
And I think a lot of men have learned to identify who they are and what they're
here for and what they're after from this confused sexual pursuit in the morning of life.
(28:29):
And I see a lot of guys who are at the crossroads and either they just try and invent a new her,
like replace the current her they're with, with a new trophy her,
or they find it outside of their marriage or they find it on porn or they find
it in a thousand other versions of her,
of that thing that gave them their feeling of power, of identity, of potency.
(28:55):
And I see that there's a crossroads of guys who try to keep recreating the morning
or the prince in the afternoon versus the guys who say, what's next?
Because it doesn't mean you can't have sexual relations. It doesn't mean any of that.
It just means it's no longer how I define myself. And I feel like,
especially for men, that's one of the big shifts into becoming a king.
(29:19):
Yeah, I think it's really interesting because what I hear you saying is if you're
in a relationship with a woman, right, a marriage, a relationship,
a long term relationship,
and you're going you as a male, men are going through these changes of am I
still good enough if my testosterone isn't like, you know, so big?
And how do I, how do I come to that relationship?
(29:42):
And instead it's easier to just get your ego fed by maybe going outside of the
marriage or, or getting it fed from the outside in.
And in the same, it's interesting because I haven't thought of it that way in
the same energy, a woman is going through so many changes in her body.
All she wants is, no, she may not be getting this, but all she wants is quiet.
(30:05):
Quiet her body is screaming to be
quiet to have more space for
herself to listen and to go within
it is the cocoon face going right to
head into queendom and kingdom we're doing
it differently but we're I think the question
is right like so the woman is going like this this
(30:26):
is my body who am I in my body what
am I doing with all these changes in my body I suddenly
like chocolate and i never liked chocolate like i
i all these different things are
happening how do you relate to each other i'm going to ask you that how as we
go into our queen king then how do we come together and relate to each other
(30:48):
when you're going through all this and and the the woman is going through all
different vastly different things by the way her quick drive is totally different too.
I mean, there's a thousand things,
but here's one is the one thing that one of the things I help men even just
realize they've never even thought about it is if testosterone is dropping and
(31:10):
estrogen is rising and testosterone is particularly male and estrogen is particularly,
Not in a man. Oh, okay. I thought you were talking about women.
I can't. I can't. I know nothing about women. 25 years later,
married to you, I know nothing.
But I know I'm wrong even when I'm talking about men, I guess.
My estrogen levels are higher. I know that because my doctor said so.
(31:33):
My testosterone levels are lower. I know that because my doctor said so.
And if we listen to nature, and men are good at listening to their bodies and
listening to nature, right?
We've been taught, look, not even taught. I don't have the same connection to my body as you do.
I can't bring life into this world. I don't have that capacity.
That doesn't excuse me to not listen to my body. I need to start listening.
(31:55):
And if I listen to my body and I listen to what that testosterone and that estrogen
change is about, it's saying that that masculine drive to go out into the world
and find it is not the same.
And maybe it's pointing me in a different direction. If that estrogen is calling
me more inwards, that feminine, not finding her out there, but finding her in here.
(32:16):
So I teach men to find the her, capital H, her, not out in the world because she's not out there.
It's not even your wife. As much as I love my wife, you can't be my her if we
want to have a healthy, full relationship.
I've got to find her inside. inside.
(32:37):
One quick idea, if you want an example of this, watch American Beauty.
It's the quintessential man who is midlife and he has this breakdown, this shattering.
And then he goes looking for her and that character, I forgot her name,
Mira Savino, whatever her name is.
And he's pursuing her because it's just a new version of her, a young version of her.
(32:59):
But when he gets to her and he realizes she's just a young girl and that's not
what he wants. He was looking for what she represented. And then he goes inwards.
And to me, that's how a man becomes a king.
And I would say very similar, except not the same hormones, right? Like just different.
A woman gets like, she starts to feel hot and sometimes angry and she starts
(33:27):
to explode or feel angry at the people around her because all she wants really.
So she's acting out just in a different way, right?
So there could be rage or anger or feeling like she can't breathe and she needs to be more quiet,
but she gets, she ramps up, she gets busier and all the caretaking and all the
(33:49):
things that she's done outside of herself feels like just running on a hamster
wheel because she's never felt so tired.
And so what she comes back to Instead of being angry and snappy and resentful
and not speaking her truth,
she no longer can use her spouse or anybody outside of herself.
(34:12):
She can no longer define herself by the outside.
She has to release codependence, release and take responsibility for her own
life and her own energy field and her own body, physiologically, emotionally,
energetically, and come to the her that you're talking about.
(34:34):
Well, I would say she's coming to he.
He's coming, he's finding his inner she, and she's finding her inner he. that source of power.
In Kabbalah, it's the sun and the moon.
One is not better than the other. One produces, creates, and one receives.
The moon receives the light of the sun. And in the first half of life,
(34:58):
a man is the sun and the woman tends to be the moon.
And what happens in the afternoon is she starts looking for the sun,
for that energy, that power or inside of herself.
And he starts looking for the feminine, the ability to receive and soften inside of himself.
And so they're really looking for the opposite energies and to become a king
(35:21):
or queen, you got to find it on your own inside of you, not outside of you. So true.
So true. Yeah. I do think it is when you're talking, because I'm so energetic,
I can feel it's a lot of it is in the third chakra, which is the chakra of power.
It's that that solar power, right? It is, it feels like a more masculine energy,
(35:43):
but I don't even think it's masculine feminine to me.
It is raw connection to both the integration of masculine and feminine.
It is not getting your energy from something outside of yourself.
It is, a lot of it is releasing the codependence of feeling important because
(36:04):
of these accolades on the outside and and really coming back into.
Your own power. And I think for a woman, sometimes it is he, and sometimes it is she.
And it is that dance between the two, because sometimes you need the power and
sometimes you need to sleep and go back into that cocoon.
(36:27):
And I think for all of us as humans, that shift into to king queendom really
is honoring our cycles and our inner cycles.
Here's one thing though that I will say that I think is profoundly different is that women.
On every level, this is just scientifically factually true, have an easier time
(36:50):
connecting at all ages in life with the people around them, especially with other women, right?
It's just a natural direction women go to make relationship.
Chip. We can talk a thousand reasons why men have a harder time making those true intimate bonds.
I'm not talking about the bullshit of golfing or hunting buddies,
like truly opening your heart to another man from as a man is it's cultural,
(37:15):
but it's also biological. It's harder.
But the point is, is that in the afternoon life or is becoming a King, I've seen it.
Men now have the ability as they're softening, as the testosterone is dropping,
is that estrogen is rising as they're working on I'm becoming the moon of receiving
and not just creating and doing.
I've seen it in the men's groups that I'm a part of now, man uprising where
(37:36):
men are sitting around in a circle and they're seeing each other and they're
hearing each other and they're,
they're not competing with each other and they're, they're receiving one another
and you can just see the softening, you know, I wouldn't say this in the wrong
context, but they're becoming Queens, right?
And they're, they're really owning that inner queen and they're not outsourcing
(37:58):
it to to their wife or to sex or to something outside of themselves.
It's truly a beautiful thing to see he move into that she energy.
That's beautiful. I mean, I would say it's, I hear what you're saying.
I think it's very familiar in a different way, right?
The women's groups that I lead are, they have a hard time showing up to actually
(38:22):
release all of that doing and that busyness, or it reminds me of men who have
a hard time coming into that softer place.
Yeah, but I've seen it in your groups and I've seen it in you that it's not a,
oh my god i've never experienced this it's
hard and what you said was a male masculine thing
which is you know you're coming more into i am alone
(38:43):
dealing with this shit inside of me right like that's how men live the first
half of their life or all their life they've never had the the luxury or the
beauty the benefit of having another besides potentially a her and so to have
male male, you know, counterparts,
friends to sort of experience this with is novel to these guys.
(39:05):
It's just mind blowing how different they are than their, than their wives.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think of like the idea of the red tent, right?
Like for women, it's natural to gather.
And I think for all of us in general, just to kind of wrap it up,
it is, it's not natural to, to bully yourself through life, whether you're male
(39:29):
or female, it really doesn't matter.
We go at it different ways, but ultimately I think what we all want is to find,
you know, you can say it in a different way, but I think we're looking for,
for the God within the divinity within and sharing that from that place,
right? Cause then you're right. You release competition.
You release the busy, you release the, the morning of life belief that you just
(39:54):
have to go, go, go, go, go, go.
And you come to a slower place where you can listen. And we do that in different ways, yes.
But I don't think the afternoon of life needs to be lonely, right?
I think that's a really big thing because as for women, we're going through
all these changes and the people that we've raised are either gone and doing their own thing.
(40:18):
And it is this question of how do I want to live? somebody asked me this and
she asked me at a few times, who do you want to be and how do you want to live when you're 75 or 80?
And that has been such a big thing for me to think about as I move through my 50s, right?
And plan for, God willing, my 70s, my 80s, and beyond.
(40:41):
Who do I want to live and how do I want to live it?
And that takes care of the loneliness, right?
Because I know and I have a vision. And if you don't have a vision,
it's great to sit down and think about, okay, like I've shattered and now who
do I want to be? Who do I want to return to?
So do you want to add anything as we close no that's a beautiful ending i just
(41:05):
i love it you know to me i know this isn't necessarily your language but for
me i use it every day now of becoming a king becoming the queen and i think
this you know podcast will help me.
Expand the definition of what that means because these are terms that some people
might have a lot of hang-ups with but they're quite beautiful but it doesn't
matter what you call it all that the matters is in the second half of life that
(41:28):
we strive to return to it.
Yeah. And then I just have one little thing. Think about how beautiful it is.
If you're, you know, if you're a king or a queen and you've shattered and you've
done, you've explored and you you're in it like, right.
We're no, nobody's perfect, but think about how beautiful it is to understand the other,
(41:50):
together right to understand like wow that king may not the king in my life
may not be expressing what he's going through but understanding that he too
is going through physiological changes.
That he too experiences things just in a different way and then having the king
understand the queen of all of the things you may not understand it but like
(42:13):
admiring or releasing judgment for all all that she is going through and then coming together.
You know, I think our last podcast was on intimacy.
To me, that defines true intimacy is when you can see somebody for the deeper
parts of themselves and accept them and love them and understand them and surrender
those pieces and become and rise together, but separately, right?
(42:37):
It's like that interdependence, not codependently.
Well, that'll be our next podcast. How to support your queen to become a queen
or how are your princess to become a queen and how to support your prince in
becoming a king until the next time i don't even know how to sign off because
we need he she spirituality sign off what do we say namaste you later bye.
(43:02):
Thank you for listening to the defiant spirit podcast with me your host dr baruch
levy if you like what you heard please consider leaving a five-star review and
share this podcast with others.
To learn more about the Defiant Spirit, get more inspirational content,
or see how we might work together to live your Defiant Spirit,
visit DefiantSpirit.org.
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