Hi, Everybody -

It's time for this week's archetype, and I'm doing the hedonist. This is a fascinating archetype because it gets such bad press. People think of the hedonist as someone who only seeks pleasure and will do anything to indulge in a good time and avoid any responsibility. But the hedonist gets a lot of bad press, and I wanted to discuss that.

As I was doing the hedonist, I realized that the last thing people associate the divine with is pleasure, answering prayers for assistance to show you the beautiful side of life, the lightness of creation.

The hedonist represents the love of the good life and what we are willing to do to get to the good life. If you look historically, though, it's that part of life that causes people to lose control. Too much of the hedonist causes people to lose contact with their senses. And so that part had to be regulated.

I hope you think about this because Western society, especially its puritanical roots, struggles with balancing pleasure with everyday life. I encourage you to indulge your hedonist; that's where I'm going with this. Indulge the things that you enjoy in your life. It should be as ordinary as everything else.

Okay, that's my words of wisdom. Thank you, guys, bye.

Love,
Caroline
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When a pattern becomes excessive and goes into the shadow, no matter what side it is, whether it's a mother, you become a smothering mother.

And the same thing is true with the hedonist.

When someone's motivation in life is only to have a good time, is only to have pleasure, and that they'll do anything to accomplish that.

Hi everybody, it's time for this week's Archetype and this week I'm going to do the Hedonist.

I think this is a fascinating archetype because it gets such bad press.

I mean, people think of the hedonist as someone who only seeks pleasure and will do anything to indulge in a good time, anything at all, and avoid any kind of responsibility.

But I think the hedonist gets a lot of bad press, and I wanted to talk about that.

But the hedonist represents the love of the good life and what we'll do, what we are willing to do to get to the good life.

I mean, think of all the movies that there are, that there's that 1 TV series, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and you just see more and more and more of more.

I just can't get over that people want to live in these houses that go on forever and more of this and less of that and just bigger and bigger and bigger.

When it comes down to it, Most people come into their house, go to their kitchen, go to their TV room and go to their bedroom.

But that's the idea that my ego is just, it just needs to have all this.

The hedonist, you know, you go all the way back to the god Bacchus, the god of fertility, the god of, of wine, the god of good times and people who have Bacchian personalities, you know, they're like bigger than life and they have an attractiveness to them because you want to be around them because these are the people that know how to throw huge parties.

They know how to have a good time and they light up a place when they come in because they have a bar about pleasure that seems to be much grander than most people have.

They know what, like my brother would say about this 1 friend, he knows how to have a good time.

It means that he just doesn't have the same restrictions on him that so many people put on themselves, which is where I want to talk about, which is the puritanical roots of why we often see hedonistic tendencies as something negative instead of saying, you know what, there's nothing wrong with having a pleasure driven instinct in ourselves and indulging that.

It is It becomes a problem when the hedonist in someone is an excessive characteristic, as it does with any of the archetypal patterns.

I can't think of all the many, many movies, but like the Wolf of Wall Street, I think it's the Wolf of Wall Street, the idea that everything is money for the taking and all that you can do with money and that movie, that series Billions, where nothing is enough and everything is then what you can have and the privileges that just pour in when you have that and what it's like to live life at that level.

It just becomes about life at that level.

It's always amusing to me because no matter how much money you have, you can't stop aging and you can't stop the inevitable.

You can't stop the things that people think inevitably that enough wealth can stop.

Like I'll just freeze my body and I'll just wake up when they have technology that can reboot and I'll have all my money in the bank and by that time it will have earned trillions and I'll just pick up where I left off.

The outrageous outlandish ideas that people have when the pleasure factor gets out of hand, just gets out of hand.

And that hedonistic tendency becomes the factor that drives a person just to have a good time, just to avoid pain, is not a realistic position.

It becomes destructive, ultimately destructive, because you can't live your life in just avoiding pain.

But I want to just discuss the conflict people have with their own hedonist archetype.

And I think some people have the hedonist and it's in them, it's part of their contract.

And others of us, we have hedonistic episodes, let's put it that way, or we have hedonistic leanings, or we want to just enjoy something and there's a there's a pleasure barrier And that's what I want to talk about because it stops you from activating and enjoying the other side of life.

In all the research that I do on these archetypes, many refer to the puritanical roots that collide with our understanding of pleasure or of enjoying ourselves.

And I think, I don't think we realize or appreciate how influential the puritanical history in this country has been.

Well, the United States has been in the formation of our thinking about sexuality, about morality, about pleasure, about it has formed, for example, how people think about God and how people think prayer should be answered.

And if a prayer is answered, I remember someone saying to me, I love this, do you have any prayers that work, that actually work, operative word work, which means I need the answer now because in the puritanical scheme of things, Everything has to be practical.

There has to be a practical outcome to everything you do and that practical means financially secure.

So that in the puritanical cosmology, The nature of God is practical and profit-driven.

And the idea that someone could do something that is not practical and that might risk money, cost too much money, or not make money is a baffling thing for people, for so many people.

And I remember even in my own family growing up how when someone was taking a vacation, my 1 aunt and uncle, and they would go out to Arizona for a vacation.

And inevitably my aunt would have to make this kind of public statement to her, my grandparents, saying he just works so hard and he's so tired and he's earned this.

I mean and even as a child I would think why can't you just go on a vacation?

Why can't you just go because you want to go?

Why do you have to be burned out, exhausted, depleted?

Why do you have to practically destroy yourself before you will give yourself permission to simply kick back and enjoy an afternoon or enjoy a week or decide you know what I'm out of here I'm going to take the month off.

Why can't you just decide you know what I want a month off or looking through a magazine and deciding you know what I want to visit that place and I'm going to make arrangements to go.

I don't have to go through the puritanical nonsense to say I've earned this.

So now I can have pleasure in my life because I've had so much exhaustion.

I've abused myself sufficiently so that I qualify for some time off.

But that thread is so in this Western society that you may think it's not, but it is.

And really, I'm going to ask you to take a thought about it and think, you know, look at the word deserve.

The 2 words that I think are absolutely horrendous.

And therefore they have now earned time to sit on the beach because they are simply exhausted.

But you just can't decide, what have you done to earn that?

What have you done to earn this privilege?

As if pleasure is a privilege, a privilege.

As if enjoying life is on the privilege side of it, and work is on the obligation side.

And I think that that still remains an active thought agent in us, which makes the way in which we structure our relationship with time off with pleasure driven choices like for example it you know everything doesn't have to be high up on the hedonist list.

I love to walk and walking and I love to take my dog for a walk and I love to just be especially out in gorgeous weather and it's just a pleasure it is a pleasure for me it's a pleasure for me and yet I I still find that I have to think, well, did I get enough work done before I will let myself do that?

I am well past the age where I have to make an excuse for any choice I make.

If I want to take a year off, I'm well past the age where I need to account for anything, but I still do.

And it is that kind of, well, I don't know if I've earned it yet.

So I'm, in a sense, I'm very much talking to myself as well as to you because I realize how deeply embedded this is in us and I see it in like the advertisements for for vacations you can go here after you've worked so hard and nothing is working here.

And so to that, what I would say, honestly, is that I would suggest that each person take a look at how it is they've structured their own relationship with how they, if they've set it up where in order for you to have free time, in order for you to do what falls under the category of pleasure for you, whatever that is, that do you put up obstacles that say, well, I have to earn this.

I can't just decide, you know what I think I need right now is this.

Think about how many times, even in the dessert fact, I will hear people say, I've had a bad day, I deserve this.

That's the hedonist in them that says, I can't go near the pleasure factor unless I've had a bad day.

And if I've had a bad day, then I can have a good dessert Because I've just had such a bad day or I've had such a good day that I'm going to celebrate that This is how we do this kind of calculation of I can have this much pleasure because I've had this much good time or bad Time or horrible time or whatever We just don't know how to deal with the pleasure, enjoyment side of our lives.

And then it occurred to me that I've never ever had anyone ask me, do you have a prayer for pleasure?

Does God answer prayers that say, I need fun in my life, can you help me out?

Is there any way heaven can become an ally to lighten my load and help me enjoy the other side of life?

Is there any way I get out of this burdensome thing that says life is just work, I just want to enjoy the other side of life as well?

And I don't think it occurs to people that the nature of life and the nature of nature and the nature of the divine includes, includes recharging our batteries.

It includes all of the pleasures of life that we have restricted because, if you look historically, it's that part of life that causes people to lose control.

Like with Bacchus, to drink too much, to have too much alcohol, too much pleasure, causes a person, too much of the hedonist, causes a person to lose contact with their senses, to lose their common sense, to do foolish things, too much of the gambler, too much of the addict, Too much causes a person to lose, to get off of their common sense.

And so that that part had to be regulated.

It has to be regulated in every single person, but not to the place where it's so restricted that in order to go anywhere near the pleasure factor in your life, you have to first earn it, break down, suffer, get to a place where you're on a respirator before they'll send you to the islands.

But I really think it just, it is, it occurred to me as I was doing the hedonist that the last thing people associate the divine with is pleasure, is answering prayers for assistance to show you the beautiful side of life, to allow you to experience the lighter side of life, the lightness of creation.

The divine is always associated with, but get me out of pain, get me out of suffering, get me out of this heart difficulty.

Never is heaven associated with abundance, with just those evangelicals.

You have a right to money, I know they're talking about me on that stage, give me some more money while those TV evangelists.

But I'm talking about really reorganizing your whole inner cosmology and theology to realize that the nature of the divine is balance.

And part of balance is the pleasure factors of life, is relaxation, is that inner time to incubate when you need to create, when you need to just enjoy people, when you need to enjoy love, when you need to enjoy the companionship of others.

That in fact, that's how life should be woven together.

That those are the elements of life that make life so rich.

And that for example, praying for companionship or saying, you know, I could use a little more love in my life.

Those prayers are answered as well as any of the petitions that 1 asks for in terms of guidance for life direction.

And the nature of the sacred is that it operates according to the laws, according to the mystical laws, according to the laws of creation.

And part of those laws, 1 of the core laws, is the law of balance.

Everything about our life drives us to balance.

And when we push ourselves too hard, we fall off the cliff.

And so what you wanna strive for is a sense that I need to work, I need to weave together a balance of as much enjoyment as work.

Now, someone might say, oh yeah, but I have bills to pay and all.

The bills to pay school of reasoning is very puritanical.

And we'll always have bills to pay but we can't use that as a way to say and therefore I can't enjoy anything in my life because I have bills to pay.

I need to encourage you to indulge your hedonist.

To indulge the things that you really enjoy in your life, but in a balanced way, so that you don't say, I get to eat a gallon of ice cream because I've had a bad day.

It's not the way of the balanced hedonist that says, I need to cap this day off with a little bit of joy here, with a little bit of, I need to blend it together.

And it reminds me of another deep archetypal pattern that is the separation of body and soul, the separation of church and state, the separation of these 2 forces inside of us that, let's say, they can't meet together.

You've got to keep the church away from the state.

You've got to keep the state away from the church.

You've got to keep the body away from the soul.

You've got to keep heaven away from earth.

This separation is, that's not the nature of life.

Life is a holistic design and you will thrive much better when you welcome all the parts of yourself, all the fragments, into a working inner community.

And when you feel that need to lighten up, you don't say to yourself, I haven't worked hard enough or I'm not suffering enough or and if you catch yourself at that, I beg you hit the pause button and say this is just puritanical nonsense.

I need to take that moment, hour, day, afternoon, whatever it is, to give myself a different experience of my own life that I don't have to suffer to earn.

That's my little words of wisdom with the hedonist.

I hope you think about this because I really do think that the Western society, especially with its puritanical roots, has a real struggle with balancing pleasure with everyday life.

And it makes it something you have to buy, something that comes on a special day, something we have to go on a vacation, you have to leave your house and go somewhere else.

It's not something you can just work into your life like a an ordinary part of your day.

It should be as ordinary as everything else.

Okay those are my words of wisdom and thank you guys.


Speaker 0: When a pattern becomes excessive and goes into the shadow, no matter what side it is, whether it's a mother, you become a smothering mother. I mean, any excess is a problem. And the same thing is true with the hedonist. When someone's motivation in life is only to have a good time, is only to have pleasure, and that they'll do anything to accomplish that. Hi everybody, it's time for this week's Archetype and this week I'm going to do the Hedonist.

I think this is a fascinating archetype because it gets such bad press. I mean, people think of the hedonist as someone who only seeks pleasure and will do anything to indulge in a good time, anything at all, and avoid any kind of responsibility. But I think the hedonist gets a lot of bad press, and I wanted to talk about that. But the hedonist represents the love of the good life and what we'll do, what we are willing to do to get to the good life. I mean, think of all the movies that there are, that there's that 1 TV series, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, and you just see more and more and more of more.

I just can't get over that people want to live in these houses that go on forever and more of this and less of that and just bigger and bigger and bigger. When it comes down to it, Most people come into their house, go to their kitchen, go to their TV room and go to their bedroom. What the heck do they need all that for? But that's the idea that my ego is just, it just needs to have all this. It needs to have all this.

The hedonist, you know, you go all the way back to the god Bacchus, the god of fertility, the god of, of wine, the god of good times and people who have Bacchian personalities, you know, they're like bigger than life and they have an attractiveness to them because you want to be around them because these are the people that know how to throw huge parties. They know how to have a good time and they light up a place when they come in because they have a bar about pleasure that seems to be much grander than most people have. They know what, like my brother would say about this 1 friend, he knows how to have a good time. What does that mean? It means that he just doesn't have the same restrictions on him that so many people put on themselves, which is where I want to talk about, which is the puritanical roots of why we often see hedonistic tendencies as something negative instead of saying, you know what, there's nothing wrong with having a pleasure driven instinct in ourselves and indulging that.

It is It becomes a problem when the hedonist in someone is an excessive characteristic, as it does with any of the archetypal patterns. When a pattern becomes excessive and goes into the shadow, no matter what side it is, whether it's a mother, you become a smothering mother. I mean, any excess is a problem. And the same thing is true with the hedonist. When someone's motivation in life is only to have a good time, is only to have pleasure, and that they'll do anything to accomplish that.

I can't think of all the many, many movies, but like the Wolf of Wall Street, I think it's the Wolf of Wall Street, the idea that everything is money for the taking and all that you can do with money and that movie, that series Billions, where nothing is enough and everything is then what you can have and the privileges that just pour in when you have that and what it's like to live life at that level. It just becomes about life at that level. It's always amusing to me because no matter how much money you have, you can't stop aging and you can't stop the inevitable. You can't stop the things that people think inevitably that enough wealth can stop. Like I'll just freeze my body and I'll just wake up when they have technology that can reboot and I'll have all my money in the bank and by that time it will have earned trillions and I'll just pick up where I left off.

The outrageous outlandish ideas that people have when the pleasure factor gets out of hand, just gets out of hand. And that hedonistic tendency becomes the factor that drives a person just to have a good time, just to avoid pain, is not a realistic position. It's not possible. It becomes destructive, ultimately destructive, because you can't live your life in just avoiding pain. But I want to just discuss the conflict people have with their own hedonist archetype.

And I think some people have the hedonist and it's in them, it's part of their contract. And others of us, we have hedonistic episodes, let's put it that way, or we have hedonistic leanings, or we want to just enjoy something and there's a there's a pleasure barrier And that's what I want to talk about because it stops you from activating and enjoying the other side of life. In all the research that I do on these archetypes, many refer to the puritanical roots that collide with our understanding of pleasure or of enjoying ourselves. And I think, I don't think we realize or appreciate how influential the puritanical history in this country has been. Well, the United States has been in the formation of our thinking about sexuality, about morality, about pleasure, about it has formed, for example, how people think about God and how people think prayer should be answered.

And if a prayer is answered, I remember someone saying to me, I love this, do you have any prayers that work, that actually work, operative word work, which means I need the answer now because in the puritanical scheme of things, Everything has to be practical. There has to be a practical outcome to everything you do and that practical means financially secure. So that in the puritanical cosmology, The nature of God is practical and profit-driven. And the idea that someone could do something that is not practical and that might risk money, cost too much money, or not make money is a baffling thing for people, for so many people. Like what are you doing that for?

And I remember even in my own family growing up how when someone was taking a vacation, my 1 aunt and uncle, and they would go out to Arizona for a vacation. And inevitably my aunt would have to make this kind of public statement to her, my grandparents, saying he just works so hard and he's so tired and he's earned this. I mean and even as a child I would think why can't you just go on a vacation? Why can't you just enjoy yourself? Why can't you just go because you want to go?

Why do you have to be burned out, exhausted, depleted? Why do you have to practically destroy yourself before you will give yourself permission to simply kick back and enjoy an afternoon or enjoy a week or decide you know what I'm out of here I'm going to take the month off. Why can't you just decide you know what I want a month off or looking through a magazine and deciding you know what I want to visit that place and I'm going to make arrangements to go. I don't have to be sick to go. I don't have to be exhausted.

I don't have to go through the puritanical nonsense to say I've earned this. So now I can have pleasure in my life because I've had so much exhaustion. I've abused myself sufficiently so that I qualify for some time off. But that thread is so in this Western society that you may think it's not, but it is. And really, I'm going to ask you to take a thought about it and think, you know, look at the word deserve.

The 2 words that I think are absolutely horrendous. Deserve and blame. Deserve and blame. Well they deserve this time off. Look at how much they suffered.

Look at how hard they work. And therefore they have now earned time to sit on the beach because they are simply exhausted. So, see, they earned that. But you just can't decide, what have you done to earn that? What have you done to earn this privilege?

Done to earn this privilege. As if pleasure is a privilege, a privilege. As if enjoying life is on the privilege side of it, and work is on the obligation side. And together, they collide. And I think that that still remains an active thought agent in us, which makes the way in which we structure our relationship with time off with pleasure driven choices like for example it you know everything doesn't have to be high up on the hedonist list.

I love to walk and walking and I love to take my dog for a walk and I love to just be especially out in gorgeous weather and it's just a pleasure it is a pleasure for me it's a pleasure for me and yet I I still find that I have to think, well, did I get enough work done before I will let myself do that? I am well past the age where I have to make an excuse for any choice I make. If I want to take a year off, I'm well past the age where I need to account for anything, but I still do. And it is that kind of, well, I don't know if I've earned it yet. So I'm, in a sense, I'm very much talking to myself as well as to you because I realize how deeply embedded this is in us and I see it in like the advertisements for for vacations you can go here after you've worked so hard and nothing is working here.

And this is that pain-pleasure conflict. And so to that, what I would say, honestly, is that I would suggest that each person take a look at how it is they've structured their own relationship with how they, if they've set it up where in order for you to have free time, in order for you to do what falls under the category of pleasure for you, whatever that is, that do you put up obstacles that say, well, I have to earn this. I can't just decide, you know what I think I need right now is this. Think about how many times, even in the dessert fact, I will hear people say, I've had a bad day, I deserve this. That's the hedonist in them that says, I can't go near the pleasure factor unless I've had a bad day.

And if I've had a bad day, then I can have a good dessert Because I've just had such a bad day or I've had such a good day that I'm going to celebrate that This is how we do this kind of calculation of I can have this much pleasure because I've had this much good time or bad Time or horrible time or whatever We just don't know how to deal with the pleasure, enjoyment side of our lives. And then it occurred to me that I've never ever had anyone ask me, do you have a prayer for pleasure? Does God answer prayers that say, I need fun in my life, can you help me out? Is there any way heaven can become an ally to lighten my load and help me enjoy the other side of life? Is there any way I get out of this burdensome thing that says life is just work, I just want to enjoy the other side of life as well?

And I don't think it occurs to people that the nature of life and the nature of nature and the nature of the divine includes, includes recharging our batteries. It includes the pleasure factor. It includes sexuality. It includes romance. It includes all of the pleasures of life that we have restricted because, if you look historically, it's that part of life that causes people to lose control.

To lose control. Like with Bacchus, to drink too much, to have too much alcohol, too much pleasure, causes a person, too much of the hedonist, causes a person to lose contact with their senses, to lose their common sense, to do foolish things, too much of the gambler, too much of the addict, Too much causes a person to lose, to get off of their common sense. And so that that part had to be regulated. It has to be regulated in every single person, but not to the place where it's so restricted that in order to go anywhere near the pleasure factor in your life, you have to first earn it, break down, suffer, get to a place where you're on a respirator before they'll send you to the islands. But I really think it just, it is, it occurred to me as I was doing the hedonist that the last thing people associate the divine with is pleasure, is answering prayers for assistance to show you the beautiful side of life, to allow you to experience the lighter side of life, the lightness of creation.

Nobody ever prays for that. It doesn't even associate. The divine is always associated with, but get me out of pain, get me out of suffering, get me out of this heart difficulty. Never is heaven associated with abundance, with just those evangelicals. You have a right to money, I know they're talking about me on that stage, give me some more money while those TV evangelists.

But I'm talking about really reorganizing your whole inner cosmology and theology to realize that the nature of the divine is balance. It's balance. It's not suffering. It's not extremes in that. The nature of the divine is balance.

And part of balance is the pleasure factors of life, is relaxation, is that inner time to incubate when you need to create, when you need to just enjoy people, when you need to enjoy love, when you need to enjoy the companionship of others. That in fact, that's how life should be woven together. That those are the elements of life that make life so rich. That make life so rich. And that for example, praying for companionship or saying, you know, I could use a little more love in my life.

I could use a little more of this. Those prayers are answered as well as any of the petitions that 1 asks for in terms of guidance for life direction. This isn't a puritanical universe. This isn't a Christian universe. Thank God.

This isn't a religious universe. It is simply a sacred universe. And the nature of the sacred is that it operates according to the laws, according to the mystical laws, according to the laws of creation. And part of those laws, 1 of the core laws, is the law of balance. Everything about our life drives us to balance.

The law of balance engages. And when we push ourselves too hard, we fall off the cliff. And so what you wanna strive for is a sense that I need to work, I need to weave together a balance of as much enjoyment as work. Now, someone might say, oh yeah, but I have bills to pay and all. You know what?

The bills to pay school of reasoning is very puritanical. And we'll always have bills to pay but we can't use that as a way to say and therefore I can't enjoy anything in my life because I have bills to pay. I need to encourage you to indulge your hedonist. That's where I'm going with this. To indulge that part of yourself.

To indulge the things that you really enjoy in your life, but in a balanced way, so that you don't say, I get to eat a gallon of ice cream because I've had a bad day. That's abusive. That's actually punishment. It's not the way of the balanced hedonist that says, I need to cap this day off with a little bit of joy here, with a little bit of, I need to blend it together. And it reminds me of another deep archetypal pattern that is the separation of body and soul, the separation of church and state, the separation of these 2 forces inside of us that, let's say, they can't meet together.

They have to be kept apart. You've got to keep the church away from the state. You've got to keep the state away from the church. You've got to keep the body away from the soul. You've got to keep heaven away from earth.

This separation is, that's not the nature of life. Life is about integration. Life is a holistic design and you will thrive much better when you welcome all the parts of yourself, all the fragments, into a working inner community. And when you feel that need to lighten up, you don't say to yourself, I haven't worked hard enough or I'm not suffering enough or and if you catch yourself at that, I beg you hit the pause button and say this is just puritanical nonsense. I need to be kinder to myself.

I need to take that moment, hour, day, afternoon, whatever it is, to give myself a different experience of my own life that I don't have to suffer to earn. So There we go. That's my little words of wisdom with the hedonist. I hope this helps. I hope you think about this because I really do think that the Western society, especially with its puritanical roots, has a real struggle with balancing pleasure with everyday life.

And it makes it something you have to buy, something that comes on a special day, something we have to go on a vacation, you have to leave your house and go somewhere else. It's not something you can just work into your life like a an ordinary part of your day. It should be as ordinary as everything else. Okay those are my words of wisdom and thank you guys. Bye.

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Caroline Myss - The Hedonist (The Power of Archetypes)