Show Notes

• Kari Hohne Website – Cafe au Soul
• Tao te Ching – The Poetry of Nature book
• Essential I Ching Book
• The Mind’s Mirror Book
• Mythology of Sleep Book
• Nothing Bad Happens in Life – Nature’s Way of Success Book
• The Common Archetypes of Tarot book
• Decoding the Night Sky book
• Dream Dictionary on website
• Julian Jaynes – The origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind book

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] – Introduction and Acknowledgment of Traditional Custodians
• [00:02:30] – Exploring Balance and Connection to Nature
• [00:03:45] – Introduction to Guest: Kari Hohne
• [00:05:00] – Kari’s Background and Work on Nature’s Laws of Success
• [00:07:54] – Dream Analysis and Common Hero Cycle
• [00:11:59] – Introduction to Taoism and Its Principles
• [00:17:47] – Understanding Yin and Yang in Life
• [00:29:02] – The Role of Dreams in Self-Discovery
• [00:34:24] – Mythology of Sleep: Insights from Different Cultures
• [00:41:35] – Language, Consciousness, and Ancient Wisdom
• [00:44:26] – Lessons from Nature: Trees, Water, Mountains, and Wind
• [00:50:17] – Practicing Taoism to Relieve Stress and Live Joyfully
• [00:57:35] – The Importance of Celebrating Our Uniqueness
• [00:59:04] – Conclusion and Closing Remarks

Unlocking Ancient Wisdom: Kari Hohne on the Power of Dreams and Taoism

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. I’d like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast. The Gadigal people of the Eora nation, who for over 65,000 years have been the custodians of the land on which I am recording this podcast. I’d like to pay my respects to their elders past, present and emerging, and acknowledge, as I often do, that we have much to learn from our First Nations people about connection and respect. And today’s programme is very much about that. Well, isn’t it nice to explore the idea of balance in our lives, the boundaries of truth being not absolute, of the wonder of life? Being a guest on this planet, not the host of not knowing, but exploring and this return to wonder and joyfulness. What lessons can we learn from nature? Well, my guest today explores all of these themes. My guest is Kari Hohne. Now, Kari teaches worldwide how nature’s laws of success can unleash greater human potential. And her website, Café au Sol, is in one of the top 20% of websites popularity worldwide. So there is something really inspiring about what Kari talks about and has to offer. She’s an expert in comparative symbolism and Eastern and Western archetypes behind the I-Ching, tarot, dreams, astrology, and myths. We explore Taoism as well. She’s passionate about keeping ancient wisdom relevant in our modern times, and this is a theme we’ll be exploring in the coming weeks. She’s the author of Tao Taking the Poetry of Nature, a popular translation of the Tao teaching a fundamental Taoist text. Now let’s take a oh to the uninitiated, pronounced Taoist. She’s also the the author of the essential I Ching. And we talk about the 64 Degrees of Nature’s Wisdom, a translation of ancient Chinese philosophical and divination texts, and the all and one of the oldest of the Chinese classics. Now, Karis also, another focus for Carry our Dreams. And let’s face it, we all have dreams. And it’s a very interesting discussion that about whether you remember them or not or how important that is, but certainly what dreams can tell us. She’s got four decades of experience analysing dreams for people around the world. Her pioneering work in dream research explores the common hero cycle of conflict calls and resolution that take the dreamer on an adventure of self-discovery. This type of dream analysis explored in Kari’s Dream Interpretation books, which we talk about the Mind’s Mirror, a dream dictionary, and the mythology of sleep. The waking powers of dreams. Look, she’s written so many books and the titles are really, explanatory in the self. Nothing bad happens in life. Nature’s Way of Success, which explores nature as the ultimate teacher of how to overcome obstacles. And we talk about the lessons from nature, from trees, from plants, from the water, from mountains, from rocks, from the earth, the sun. And another book that she’s written, The Common Archetypes of tarot, dreams, myths, and the Hero’s Journey, which examines the ancient, Western stories that inspired the archetypes of tarot and how we can gain valuable insight into the terrors, dream, and meaning. Her latest book, Decoding the Night Sky Ancient Babylonian Astrology, is another thing we discussed. Look, it’s such a wonderful and wide ranging conversation. Really inspiring. I hope you enjoyed this conversation I had with Kari Hohne. Welcome to the show, Kari.

Kari Hohne [00:04:14] Thank you. Doctor Ron. It’s nice to meet you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:18] Well, I’ve been so looking forward to this conversation because we really have been, at the beginning of every podcast, I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land, and I do say that I think we have so much to learn about connection and respect for people and country. And of course, today we’re going to be talking about Taoism and I Ching and a whole range of other things. I was wondering if you could tell us how you got into this and tell us, give us a bit of background.

Kari Hohne [00:04:46] Well, I was lucky to have a mother that really, taught me a lot about nature, so I feel like she has inspired a lot of my appreciation. And. And everything I do is really kind of rooted in nature and the idea that we’re natural creatures in a natural world no different than every other entity or creature species. And I kind of was working on dreams pretty much my whole life. I mean, I always say I was a poet, and I don’t know if that gave me more of an appreciation for the metaphorical language of dreams that they speak in symbols. They evoke the same sort of emotional resonance that poetry can. When you’re not speaking literally, you’re speaking symbolically. And I think all my work in dream research, I kind of had a website that was available to people all over the world. So that was really fascinating to see. That didn’t matter what culture we’re from, we’re having very similar dreams. I sort of, you know, I obviously studied psychology in school, and I but but I always felt like I had to choose either young or Freud, but I really kind of like them both. I mean, I really, you know, Freud’s idea about condensation and also the genius of of how the mind can take a very complex idea and wrap it in these, this layer of, like an onion, you unpeel these, these, these. I always say the part of the dream that most people think is the most ridiculous, it’s got the most importance. And so working with a lot of, dreams and understanding like archetypes and looking at I’ve pretty much translated a lot of our ancient texts. I mean, I have translated Babylonian astrology the using the daodejing. I’ve worked with Mayan, I’ve worked with shamans all over the world. So I really have an appreciation for the wisdom that, that comes from, like you said, our indigenous cultures, you know, which takes you to nature much more of an appreciation for nature. And also that part, that dreaming, you know, plays for us and somewhere and all that. I started to see that, you know, in the West, they were trying to understand the world in human terms, but in ancient China. And when I say ancient China, I mean way back before Buddhism came into China, as a form of Hinduism, blended kind of, I think, with Taoism to become Buddhism, the ancient Taoist that go way back, like Guangzhou and Lao Tzu and, they were looking at nature to understand the human journey. So they were like, you know, what can water teach us about, you know, success or you know, how to not embroil and shake up everything just to rise in our power to where we can overcome obstacles or, and and it was I don’t know, I just feel like it seems like because I’ve written so many books about different subjects, they they share that common theme of the idea that we we have access to a wisdom, whether it’s through our dreams or through our ancient ideas, that’s timeless and has relevance today. So that’s kind of I don’t know if that answers your question.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:07:55] Wow. Wow. Yeah. That a there’s a lot to unpack there in terms of, what you’ve been going through and what you’ve been exploring. And, I mean, we all dream, whether we remember those dreams is certainly, something that is a challenge to many people.

Kari Hohne [00:08:11] I think that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:12] We need to.

Kari Hohne [00:08:13] I just can’t say I don’t think we were designed to remember our dreams. You know, which we can talk about later. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:08:20] Yeah. Interesting. Because, you know, that is one of the things about dream interpretation is, well, you’ve got to have something to work with.

Kari Hohne [00:08:28] Actually, which is why I have the oracles on my website for people that don’t remember their dreams. I feel that when you approach kind of an oracle, which might be the edging tarot, angel cards, whatever, when you approach it with the same, objectivity, willingness to know, you know, not using it to answer questions as you love me or, you know, that sort of thing, but to sit down and have just a quiet conversation with the unknown self. And at the end, when we dream, that’s exactly what’s happening. So, you know, when we dream, aspects of the body abate. You know, consciousness is different. It’s not that we’re it’s not that we’re unconscious. We just don’t have the sense of ego logic, you know? So we’re so we walk into a world of wonder. We think it’s real. We don’t know. It’s a dream when we’re dreaming. And so, you know, since people don’t remember their dreams, you know, sometimes just working with oracles, you can get the same sort of insight.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:23] And the oracles being the sort of Taoist, I Ching, this whole approach to what, what do we mean by oracles?

Kari Hohne [00:09:31] Okay. So, oracles, like in the Western world, we would think of like the oracle at Delphi, the people would travel to speak to one of the, a Titan, Pythias or whatever, to get an answer to their destiny. And what I see in tarot. Tarot, Terra, I don’t know, tarot. Tarot, is that it’s sort of like houses a lot of our Western archetypes, you know, the empress, the emperor, and then the ageing would be an oracle where each of the elements are really drawn from nature. And, and when you if you do a tarot reading, you’re going to get a set of information that you might not have thought about. It’ll tell you a little bit of story about what you’re going through, what your challenges are, how it might and what you can do to change it. And with the edging, I feel like you’re working more with a master. Is it because the answers are different in there? It’s constantly throwing you back into your own, you know, helping you see that? Maybe that’s a silly question. Why don’t we really talk about what’s going on? It just has a completely different way of interacting. And the easing is basically you can throw coins or you can throw Euro stocks and it’s based on, hexagram. Well, there’s eight trigrams. They come together to form a hexagram. There’s a total of 64. But each of these are composed of a yin or a yang line. So it could be like an open line or a solid line. And then it can be an old yang or an old yen, which changes it. And and it’s just phenomenal that out of two lines that, you know, you get like four different, chances of something and then six lines that describe something. And, and, and they say that it describes the 10,000 things and the 10,000 things, and Taoism would be everything in life, you know, and which is, you know, kind of Taoism. I don’t know if this would be a good place to sort of talk about. Well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:36] Let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s talk about it. Give us a brief history. You know what it’s about. What it. Yeah. Because I think people know the word Taoism. T I o Taoism. But but, they and they’ve heard yin and yang to, you know, the kind of it’s a throwaway line art making my yang blah, blah, blah. But what do we really mean? What is it? Give us a bit of a history 101.

Kari Hohne [00:12:00] Okay, so I always say Taoism is a philosophy of removing boundaries. That’s kind of the easiest way to describe it, because you you get to a place where you’re not separate from anything going on around you. The moment you took your first breath, you started sharing it with the trees. You know, the you know, when you stand in an environment that is cold and you’re warm, it’s there’s going to be an osmosis that’s going to go on and you’re going to start sharing energy with the environment. Every bit of what we’re doing is this flow of balance, you know, so Taoism, it’s not a religion. I mean, it has been made into a form of religion in some aspects, I guess. But the real the original idea of Taoism was that there is just a flow which we know is maybe from, from Tai chi, chi chi, or, feng shui. So there’s this flow, this this flow that presents itself in yin and yang. And I can give you a good example of that. So I know I love this, I love physics. And you’ll you’ll find physicists love Taoism. And there’s a reason. Okay. So if you think of electromagnetism, electro, the idea of electricity and magnetism got blended together at one point. Because when there’s a force, it creates a field. And then the field pulls the force which creates another field, and it just you can’t have one without the other. You can’t have electromagnetism without the magnetic field and without electric force. So I think that’s kind of a really good picture of yin and yang and even the water molecule, how it behaves. You know, from a scientific standpoint, you know, it’s the probably the most bizarre thing. And there’s so much of it, it’s in our body everywhere. It’s but it has these properties that are opposite. And I like to think of them as yin and yang, a positive negative. And because it’s always looking to grasp on to something. It breaks everything apart. You know, it’s it has this weird surface tension. It can go up into a tree and, and and move against gravity basically because of these properties. So this idea of yin and yang, there’s this positive and negative, or force and field expression of Tao. So Tao is the one which expresses itself in the yin and the yang. And and then when we look at the yin and the yang, we start to see that things that like we look at life as a picture when it’s really a movie. I don’t know if that I wanted. That’s a really important concept, right? Because we can see something. We can see something. Oh, that’s really hot. That’s really hot. Oh no, that’s really cold. that’s how I that’s low. It’s good. It’s bad. You know, we rush around between these extremes of, of judgement and and Taoism really is the idea that, hey, give it a moment, it’s going to change. So there’s a, there’s a really just one thing changing shape like we see with the seasons, you know, hot and colder are just variations of what the temperature, you know, or things can look different, but they’re really the same. The light’s there, the light’s not there. And so it’s a, it’s a practice of removing boundaries. It’s learning how to not rush to judgement and how to kind of stay in the middle. And there’s the idea of Ming, which is be objective, like give yourself permission not to know. And if someone was to ask me who my favourite Chinese philosopher is, it would be wrong to not laugh too, because he wrote, identify with the infinite and wander in the unfathomable. If that’s all you remember throughout your day, how can you not live joyfully? Because you’re you have no boundaries. You’re not in judgement. The people you meet, there’s a reason you’re coming together. And I love I love this part because I work with a lot of people. I work with a lot of spiritual teachers, artists, you know, all different types of people. But a lot of times people on a spiritual path think that they should get to a point where there’s no more conflict in their life because they’re so enlightened. And if you look at nature, nature brings opposites together. If you’ve got yourself so balance that your resonating light, chances are a little darkness is going to come your way. You know, don’t take it personal, but there’s this sharing of energy. So, so I just, you know, I think Taoism, I always say it’s a way that you can live joyfully because you can start to see that things are unfolding perfectly. You know, there’s the idea of Wei. I don’t know if you ever heard that Wu way. Yeah. A lot of people think Wu Wei means don’t do anything. Like just meditate, negate the world. And in some ideas, like in Buddhism, I think the world can be illusion. So just to meditate, close your eyes. Don’t. That’s not what one way is. Wu way is effortless action. So there’s there’s that word embroil. Like when things are happening, stay at the threshold of perception. Observe. Don’t judge. If you treat everything like it has a reason or purpose, you know you’re able to kind of flow more. Life is constantly unmasking us, right? And we think that we’re we can get to a point where we’re stagnant and we can’t, because for billions of years, life has been trying all sorts of things. And we know that everything that is existing right here, now in the earth is in a state of the best that it can be. And it’s and even though chaos, because that’s what it looks like. Chaos order, chaos order, chaos order, even though we can be in this picture of chaos, it is going to transform again and again and again, and we’re going to go with it. And and I guess just to sum it up, nothing’s wrong. It’s perfect, you know, and that’s what you start to see when you practice some of the principles.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:48] I love the fact that, you know, these things like one way which I. Thank you. You mentioned effortless action or you use the word flow, which is a very trendy new thing. You know, let’s all get into the flow. But actually it’s been around in, in this other form for thousands of years is a bit like recently we did a program on sleep and and on non-REM non sleep, deep rest. You know the fact that this is very powerful and it’s a new way of thinking about resting. And yet yoga nidra is really non sleep depressed. So that’s been around for ages as well. And this is precisely why I think we have so much to learn from you know ancient wisdoms. And I, I also I find it really interesting that people in the West get very sceptical about oh this energy, this Chey, this, you know, but actually everything is, as you point out, energy, everything. I mean, every cell in our body is energy. You know, we are affected by energy and yet and and understanding that and incorporating that into our life. I also love the the fact the truth is an absolute. That’s something in the West that we are very, uncomfortable with.

Kari Hohne [00:18:59] So what I think is most fascinating is that, nature like when it moved from binary fission, which is how we see bacteria reproduce, still does it today to sexual reproduction. It started to bring in the new variations. This is what proves to me that today is better after billions of years. Everything that is on this planet today is the best to what nature could create. But what’s most interesting is that as a variation of our mothers and fathers DNA, we’re different from them. But even among our siblings, you know, we think we should be like them. We’re not. We we will not unless it’s like identical twins. We’re not going to have the same variation of the DNA. So. So nature’s like trying all these things to, to see, to see what it can create. So why would it create us and then just stop, you know, why wouldn’t it continue to shape us through our dreams, shape us through. There’s something I call tranquillity and disturbance, which is, don’t you know when things start to test you, shake you, and unmask you? That’s really what’s happening, you know, it’s because life is continuously trying to pull out the best that we can be. I always say life only meets us halfway, because the other part allows us to discover what we’re capable of. And so if we didn’t have these challenges, we wouldn’t be reaching deeper and deeper within ourselves to see what what we’re really made of, you know? So I don’t know if that answers your question.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:25] Yeah. No, no, I mean, I think what I find interesting, too, is this sense of wonder rather than certainty, you know, this, sort of, this and, and we really are faced with so many. This is part of what I think is polarising. So many people in our society now is because we are constantly offered the right and the wrong, the good and the bad, the, you know, this kind of binary idea of, of life. And yet it’s so more, much more nuanced than that. I also love one of the things that you’ve said in, in your work about where we’re a guest here on Earth, not the host. And this this sits in so well with some of the programs we’ve done on regenerative agriculture, where we’ve tried to talk about enabling rather than dominating nature. So being a guest rather than the host. I love that idea.

Kari Hohne [00:21:20] Right. And, you know, I think that, you know what? One thing I wanted to mention too, before I forget, because we were talking about earlier, that that I, the ageing we were talking about, it was composed of these lines that become hexagram. Leibnitz was a scientist in the 17th century, and he took one of the hexagram and sort of put, you know, looked at the how how is it possible that one open mind and one closed line, which would represent yin yang is the open line. Yang is the closed line. How could you do all these variations and get all these 64, you know, things. And then from the 64 you can have, you know, multiply that by this and you’re going to get like thousands and thousands of of answers or results. How is that possible from just starting with two things. And that’s where he came up with the binary code. Our binary code is basically X’s and O’s or open and close signals. And so, you know, here we are today using this technology that is based on one of the most I think that is ING is one of our most ancient works of literature. So I think I think that’s kind of, you know, phenomenal. And you were you were mentioning too, how we’re polarised, you know. Well, that’s what life is that life. You know, it does. It’s bringing opposites together. And and what’s most challenging, I think today is the way media has become kind of, you know, it’s it’s, business model is fear, right? And yes, because in the old days we used to turn on the television and we kind of all saw the same story. Yet today we can go and find exactly what we’re looking for. So when we were talking about how do you not get into self-defeating or stagnation, how do you not get into stagnation if you’re just feeding what you already know, and then you keep shutting yourself down from possibilities, other people’s perspectives or whatever? And that’s where I think that nature kicked in the stream thing. It’s almost half of our lives that we experience ourselves in a different landscape. But, you know, it feels real to us when it’s happening. It’s, where I what I’ve noticed because I’ve been working with people with dreams for a long time, is it can be like two weeks before the things that they’re exploring in their dreams start to become part of their experience or reality. And that’s where you get synchronicity, because all of a sudden it’s like, why is this seem familiar? Like, you know. And I feel like then they have the opportunity to experience something that allows them to either say yes and embrace this new idea or keep fighting against it. So on one hand, you’ve got life feeling very chaotic and very polarised. And we’re probably all I mean, if really if we could look at into the night sleep which dream time for you. Yeah. Britney’s in Australia, you know, you could see that. I bet you everybody’s dream life has really kicked up because I think the more we close our mind, the harder we dream or the more colourful our dreams become. Yeah, yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:24:27] So how do you. How do you work with. Yeah. Do you work with a client? You know, with your dream? I mean, what’s the process? I think that that’s fascinating.

Kari Hohne [00:24:36] Well, you know, people, people will send me their dreams. And I always, I always address nightmares right away because I know people are afraid. But in my opinion, nightmares are a positive sign that there’s that, like an earthquake in the psyche, that there’s something, you know, that has been maybe repressed for a long time, that’s really starting to get get a voice, because that’s what we dream about, what we’re not facing. You know, it’s a it’s, maybe when we were young, there was as we start to go through conformity or try to be like everybody else or get love or acceptance, whatever it is we’re doing, we start to shun those wonderful little things that nature designed us, that make us unique, you know. And so, you know, I’ll do dreamwork with somebody and then if they want to and I feel it’s appropriate, I, I do like a very comprehensive program and I’ve worked with, you know, like I said, people all over the world and I do this in writing. So we do it actually by email because I use the dream content to ask them questions and give them exercises. So like I always say, it’s like I’m Sacajawea. I don’t know what that is, but I think so. That led Lewis and Clark through the the Native American territories when they were exploring and was able to translate the language for us, the natives, you know. So I feel like I’m just an interpreter, you know, just like it is. And it’s interesting that your psyche, you know, is telling the story. Let’s go. Let’s see where it’s taking us. Oh, it’s it’s saying this or, you know, so it’s very profound, you know, if, in that really comprehensive dreamwork that we do, you know, people can really get at the root of why they may, I mean, I could give you a million examples, but why they are not able to not have anxiety, not live in joyfully, not fear of intimacy. I can’t tell you how many people that are married with children, our family dreamwork that we did, where you start seeing some of the symbolic language of their fear of intimacy. So again, I was saying before it was like a poem, you know, I don’t know if you had if you ever had to do poetry appreciation in school, which most people don’t like.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:45] Oh yes, yes, yes, I you know, I did. And you’re right. I mean, yeah, it wasn’t something that I really should, but I realise I probably should have and probably realising now even more talking to you.

Kari Hohne [00:26:57] Exactly. And so that’s kind of, you know, so, so first of all we don’t, we weren’t really designed to remember our dreams. And I think it’s because there’s this bigger picture of time, of the time it takes for us to go through transformation. And if we, were we met remembering our dreams and getting stuck in whatever it is we’re looking at today, we might miss what we’re looking at tomorrow. I mean, however it’s designed again, I think if we go with the flow, it’s just perfect. There are times when we do remember our dreams, and I think that that’s when we are supposed to really, like, try to try to get at the root of it. And some of it’s just like digestion. Good things stay bad, things are eliminated, you know? So, but when people, you know, what I notice is that the dream starts to describe how a person constructs reality. So their idea of life and the things that they think they’re facing as challenges, or it all starts to come out in the. Symbolism. And it’s different for, you know, there’s definitely some common symbols. Transportation symbols seem to tell us a lot about a person’s motivation. The house can embody different aspects of the psyche at higher ideals. The front yard, sharing the backyard, what we’re kind of keeping private or, so just, you know, and again, I just feel that through, through that nightly excursion into experiencing us ourselves differently in this dreamscape. In fact, I wrote a book called The Mythology of Sleep, which is basically the hero’s journey through the dreamscape. So it’s kind of like looking at the different archetypes, the different themes, like the survivor versus the person who has fear of intimacy. I call it to call him the negotiator, or at least the, you know, so I use like mythology from around the world to sort of paint a picture of these different dream dreamscapes.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:28:52] So, I mean, you know, when you say we’re not designed or we haven’t evolved to, to remember our dreams, that poses quite a challenge to the interpretation of me.

Kari Hohne [00:29:02] I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean to say that we aren’t evolved. I think.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:07] That.

Kari Hohne [00:29:08] It was nature’s. You know, if, like I said, there’s times where we do remember our dreams are very colourful, scary nightmares. We always remember the nightmares, you know, and then. But it wasn’t that, I mean, because how many dreams do we have in one night? You know, probably at least a, you know, like, right before waking up is when we have a lot, a lot of the ones we remember. But. So we’re having tons of dreams and. Yeah, there’s times where we remember in the times that we’re not. So it’s not really enough. You know, we’re not evolved. There’s something more we need to learn. I just know I’ve been doing this for decades, literally 4 or 5 decades, and I. And it’s impossible. Like people that do dream work with me, are able to, like, recognise. Wow, I have this inner guru. Some part of me knows me better than I know myself, you know. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they go on to, like, remember all their dreams. They know how to interpret them when they do have them. So it just showed me that, you know, I think that it’s probably, you know, nature, like you said, it has it’s it’s reason for giving us two ways of experiencing ourselves and not making them fully on the, on our plate to like, look at all the time. You know, it’s almost a sacred it’s a sacred thing that we’re doing when we’re dreaming. Does that make sense?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:23] Like, yeah, it does, and I love that. Yeah. No, I love the analogy of digestion. You know, there’s things we use in this, things we eliminate and.

Kari Hohne [00:30:31] We’re not always looking to see what’s the difference. You know, like some things you don’t need to focus on.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:37] And I’m intrigued also because we have done so many programs on sleep, but from a very physiological perspective. And, and interestingly, you know, you do need to, I think, to be in the deeper levels of sleep to experience dreams. And if you don’t go into those deep levels of sleep and you don’t have a dream, then a really serious, it’s a really serious cycle. You know, I mean, psychoses come from not.

Kari Hohne [00:31:05] And that there there are people that have a disease where they can’t achieve R.E.M. and they it’s not good. So and, and I would say more than likely 100% almost that every single night, every single person is dreaming. There are flickering eyelids. R.E.M., you know, they’re having some sort of dream. So yeah, it wouldn’t it be very unhealthy for us not to dream.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:31] But you tortured moment. So you’ve captured my imagination with the title of your book, Mythology of Sleep.

Kari Hohne [00:31:40] You know another.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:42] Go ahead. I don’t know, you know, we’ve we’ve looked at we’ve looked at sleep from from many angles. But I’ve never really gone into the mythology of sleep. And I’m intrigued by that title. Give us a little bit of an appraisal of what that book was about. I mean, you’re talking about dreams, obviously.

Kari Hohne [00:31:59] Yeah, well, I do a lot of work with therapists, you know? So, this book would be more appropriate for somebody that would want to get into dream work or, you know, I have a book, The Mind’s Mirror, which is like a dream dictionary. And I have, you know, obviously Dream Dictionary on my website. That would be for people that just want to understand their dreams. But the mythology of sleep is it’s based on the idea that we are the hero of a, of a fantastic journey. Each night when we’re having a dream and the landscape, the lighting, everything is a mirror of our inner world. Like if somebody told me I’m having a lot of dreams of walking in the snow, I’d know that they’re feeling sort of a sense of coldness in their life and like everything is is reflecting their internal condition. So with the mythology of sleep, I use Norse, Norse mythology of the Norse mythology to look at. The warrior archetype and some of the landscapes from Fire and Ice and, you know, the the tire who’s cuts off his arm. I don’t know if you know the story of Norse mythology, but he has to fight Wolf. And, the sacrifices that are made to be a warrior comes out in the chapter. So we look at the dreams of the people that are like overachievers. You know, the healing process, some of this, some of the symbolism from, you know, Norse. Then we move like to Egypt and look at the survivor. And a lot of the stories that come out of Egypt this season, Horace and Seth is trying to kill him, and, they’re dismembered and then they’re put back together. There’s, you know, so this, this survivor, everything. The world is not safe, you know? So it’s so it looks at these chapters, I think there’s eight chapters, and each one is looking at a mythology from around the world to understand the archetype and also the symbology that the different symbols that appear in dreams and I ended in chapter eight was China. And that was really when I got it was I wrote mythology probably 20 years ago, but it was when I really started. First of all, the eight previous chapters were those trigrams that I had spoken about with the easing and, you know, that was where I got to see, like, these ideas from nature and kind of tied everything full circle for me. But the mythology sleep is great for somebody who wants to really drill into dream work. And, and it’s I think you’d like it if you, if you’re an, if you like, dream.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:24] I that’s going to be on my, my reading list I have absolutely. Yeah. And I think it’s also so interesting to look at Norse culture, Egyptian culture, Chinese culture and see the commonalities and the differences, isn’t it?

Kari Hohne [00:34:39] Because it’s really from an ancient perspective, it does look a little bit at the history. You know, there’s even like, the Britain, what do you call it? King Arthur, you know, the Holy Grail. It it kind of gets into the superego and it gets into a lot of that normal psychological, ideas, but you’d have to follow it. It’s a it’s kind of an interesting journey. But again, it’s like we are the hero. We are going to meet some challenge in our dream, whether it’s a nightmare or, you know, we can’t get out of this room that doesn’t have windows or whatever it may be. And we’re learning about ourselves. We’re seeing ourselves and kind of what happens in any mythical story. What Joseph Campbell would have written about that, you know, there’s the hero and he he meets the call to initiation. You know, he has to maybe unmask is something that that seems like an enemy, the shadow. But it’s really his father, you know, or, you know, so it kind of goes through all that. I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Epic of Gilgamesh or heard of it. There’s even a chapter that looks there’s a chapter that looks at the, would have been like from the Fertile Crescent, a lot of the mythologies that come from Sumerian, Babylon, you know, that sort of thing. Which is why I then I ended up writing that book on Babylonian astrology, which is different from Greek astrology. Like the real like, Libra is not scales. It was called ravenous dogs. And so there’s like a lot of but going I love ancient, I love our ancient ideas. Every time I come into that, a landscape of of ideas, they just, I don’t know, inspire me.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:14] Yeah, I do too. I really and I think this is about and you use the term remaining open and pliable, which is something that I think we are really lacking in our search for certainty in, you know, like we want absolute answers, you know, give me the answer. And I love this idea of remaining open and pliable and the idea that we’re not affected by the planets. Stop. I mean, we I think we can all agree were affected by one big star, and that’s the sun. I think there’s universal agreement that we are affected by the sun. That’s stating the obvious. But to suggest we’re not affected by any other celestial body seems, I think, not naive, I think. Yes, and stupid. And this is a good point.

Kari Hohne [00:36:58] This is a good point about astrology. Astrology is not astronomy. Astrology is a lot like dreamwork. Astrology is really based on myth. What I see when I look back into Babylonian astrology is I see the root of our ancient stories. I see that things were happening. That was their television. They were watching the night sky. There was an area called the flood. You know, the the last quadrant of the zodiac was where it was all water and fishes and, you know, and there’s a lot of our stories that were actually coming from what they were seeing, in the stars, like when there was like, there’s the crossing of the celestial equator and how one god then overthrows like a pantheon or all this stuff was happening in the stars. So, I mean, that’s a whole nother topic. And.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:37:48] You know, well, I think before we came on, I. I was sharing with you that I. What I love about indigenous culture. And, you know, in Australia, they’ve been here, for at least 65,000. And in some, in some circles, it’s believed to be up to 80,000 years, years of of continuous culture. I mean, my God, we’ve been you for 250 years, and we make it through a thousand. I’ll be really surprised. But anyway. But I think they they seem to. And you use that word, the sky was then our nature was there television, you know that that was their entertainment. They spent hours, lives, months, years, lives, looking and understanding nature. And if they didn’t, they wouldn’t survive. You know, there were no other distractions. They had to deal with nature or this always, I think they ancient cultures understood quantum physics and biology way before, the West ever cottoned on to it.

Kari Hohne [00:38:50] Have you ever heard of the book by. Have you ever heard of Julian Jaynes? He was a psychology professor from Princeton that wrote a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind? I know it’s like a mouthful, but it’s one of my favourite books. And his premise is that when you look at ancient, the ancient consciousness is comparable to a three year old or up to three, you know, one, two, three. And that that, consciousness develops with language. So as language developed, consciousness changed. And his, you know, he’s saying that, I guess. And just to put it in a nutshell, when we before we had language to communicate with each other, we were accessing the dream world, let’s say, or this highly inspired what would be called the root of our myths and stories. And, we had probably a more profound understanding of what the closest thing to the truth. Right. Or or the sense of maybe that everything has meaning and purpose. So it’s kind of a fascinating book. I mean, I know I just nut child it, but, he and where he got his ideas is people that were having, epilepsy. They were doing split brain operations, and then they were, you know, there’s an area on the right and left side of the brain that, you know, the right eye, I think is on the left side. And, you know, having things kind of compensating. Well on in the left side of the brain, the Wernicke’s area of language, in fact, people that have a stroke on the left side, you know, may impact their language. They were stimulating areas on the right side, during these operations. And they were saying, oh, I hear music. I hear, you know, symphonies. I hear, you know, they were like, it was it was like there was an area on the right side that was giving them visions, you know. So he felt that in, you know, the pre, Homer Homeric periods or whatever that when and, you know, if you go to go Beckley tapi there’s astrological that’s 10,000 years ago. There’s astrological glyphs that that way before everywhere else. Same with areas in India. I mean, there are there’s proof right now that they’re finding that we had kind of ideas that predate. And any idea, you know, by thousands of years of when we think that these, these ideas developed. So I do believe that in ancient times, we and a lot of these cultures that we call indigenous that retain their, that don’t touch, turn on the television to get lost in all the, you know, fear programming that stay true. You know, true to their culture, they have a better understanding which of what’s really going on, I don’t know. Does that make sense? Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:35] No, it does make sense. And actually you mentioning, you know, the development of language and its connection to culture, consciousness is such an interesting idea because of course, I.

Kari Hohne [00:41:45] Love that book. You love it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:48] Julian. James. James. So James.

Kari Hohne [00:41:51] J a y n s.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:54] J y n e is okay. I’ll definitely put that down in my after I read the mirrors mythology of sleep. But but the idea of language and consciousness is so interesting because if we think about our own human journey and whether you think Homo sapiens have been around for 200 or 300,000 years, I think language is a relatively new development of, well, I don’t know what is it, tens of thousands. When did we think language developed? But what was going on in our heads before we had the language to talk, to listen to it? You know, we’ve been exploring the world of positive psychology and the voices that go on in our head, being our best friend or our worst enemy. But putting that aside for a moment as a way of interpreting nature, language is a very interesting it has a very interesting impact on consciousness.

Kari Hohne [00:42:48] Well, if you look at children, right, they would be. Preventative of what we may have been like hundreds of thousands of years ago or whatever. There’s a place where where word starts to take the place of an experience, you know that, oh, that’s just the tree or that’s just, you know, so we start to, like, minimise this wondrous world of nature or life, this, this place of of discovery. We minimise it with all these words and concepts. We just put them in the door, you know, alphabetise them, whatever we do. So, and, and like, if you take, you take like something like a table and then you put a T on it, you get a tablet and then, you know, you get a chair, you start to and it gets so complex, like we get sort of we live in this world of words.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:35] It’s so it is interesting to think about the young child, having five grandchildren, varying in age from 2 to 8. One can’t help but be, in wonder at how a child changes and learns so much before they have language. It’s exponential.

Kari Hohne [00:43:58] And they have and.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:59] Then language comes along.

Kari Hohne [00:44:01] And for me because I work with people which you probably experience too, there’s, there’s this, this authenticity that they’re born with that they’ve already developed right before they even learn to speak or whatever. And then somewhere in that journey of conformity, they lose it. And then we have to help them find their way back to it. You know, like we’re we’re probably more who we are when we’re the youngest.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:26] I love the. Also the fact that we have so many lessons to learn from nature and and you’ve kind of identified things like water, wind, plants, mountains, sun. I wondered if you might share with us some of the lessons we can learn from nature when we think about it.

Kari Hohne [00:44:43] Okay. One of my favourite is the tree. Like trees and plants that that world. Because that shows me the idea of not embroiling. Like, we tend to think we have to chase after our desires. We have to do a lot of things to make it happen, you know? And a lot of times we get we get lost in what we think we want and we miss what’s perfect for us. And so all the time, because we’re in the future and not living in the present. And yet plants, they lay down the roots. They, you know, open up. They’re not afraid when their leaves are all yanked away in a winter storm. You know the what they need. The sun comes to them. We say they’re not conscious, and yet they have a survival instinct. If you watch, one will grow around the other to try to reach the sun, you know. So. But they to me, they teach us about not embracing, trusting that what we need, which is something a spider. Also, I think in Taoism they really Revere the spider because they built a little web and they just wait and blank. Something comes, there’s their food and so, so that that would be like the plant world, and it and always makes me laugh too, when people are like, oh, you don’t eat animals, you have to eat plants. Well, that’s I think in, in some consciousness we could see the plant move, you know, like, I’d get excited when the deciduous trees start to reap bloom. I think that’s like. I feel like they’re my children. Like, it’s so cool. These, like, they’re just coming out of nowhere. They’ve been sleeping for four months or whatever. And all of a sudden, you know, the leaves are back. So the plant world, obviously we talked about water before, you know, the idea that water, when it meets a dam, it just rises and power and energy and overflows the dam. And so sometimes when you when you meet a challenge to giggle and laugh and fill yourself with your own sense of peace and you know, it comes in, your eyes are shining, you know, you know you’re just right. And whatever it is will end up acquiescing. And you know you’re just it’s not like you have to push and and all that. And, and mountains are great because they’ve been sculpted through wind over millions of years and they rise up. They were pushed up. And there they are, this like this monument of allowing life to unmask us and shape us and what we call, you know, difficulty is really like, you know, given given this definition, the sun’s my favourite because the sun rises and it sets off a chain reaction of abundance all across the Earth, from the carbon driven world to the animals to the, you know, and it’s all because the sun shines and and I would say wake up and just shine. Like I don’t really get caught up in. Oh, if you think I’m if I believe I want to have $1 million tomorrow, I’m going to have $1 million. That’s not my idea of abundance. My idea of abundance is just, again, that good joy giggle inside, that everything’s perfect and it’s flowing. And if you go about your day and smile, you will have a completely different experience than if you don’t. You know, if you can just feel yourself with that good, positive, abundant energy. Because that to me, like I wouldn’t say life is good or bad, but I would say it’s abundant. You know, even when it’s in its deficient stage, it’s on its way back to abundance, you know, it’s and rocks, you know, to me, they have a secret of time, you know, of of how, like, you’ll drive through a field and there’s just rocks. How they get there. These glaciers push them there. And, you know, like, I think they’re, you know, so.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:17] Wins and wins. Another one that we confront of.

Kari Hohne [00:48:20] Oh, wind, I love the wind. The wind. It like, you know, we don’t see the wind, but we see the leaves moving like it’s the unseen force again. It could be like representative of Dow how things are being shaped that we can’t see. Yeah. So the wind is like that. But do you think with the wind.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:39] Oh yeah. Well I think it’s got incredible power and energy and and it’s and it unsettles. That’s a little bit too. It shakes us up like it does. Oh, look, I’m getting into Taoism now. Like a chick that leaves off a tree. You know, it shakes us up emotionally. I think, you know, you feel unsettled.

Kari Hohne [00:48:57] Yeah. It goes it goes back to the idea of the high in the low and the good in the bad, and that there is because that the high pressure system in a low pressure system, when they come together, it becomes wind. And that and all nature’s doing is trying to balance out the temperature, trying to make sure it’s optimal for life on Earth. And so when we see wind, we know that the temperature is going to change, you know? So it’s like it can be a reminder of how fluid life is. And also that, that. Element that life is taking care of us. From the moment we took our first breath, when our heart started beating, we go to sleep. There’s a million things our bodies doing that we have no conscious awareness of. You know, why would we have been created to be taken care of at that level and not believe that the same thing is happening as we go on our journey and meet the different things that we meet? You know, it’s taking care of us. Thank you.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:49:52] Yeah. Now you know you. I know one of the things we’re looking forward to talking about, and I think we’ve talked a little bit about it, a lot about it, actually. Why practising Taoist ideas can relieve stress and lead to a more joyful living. I mean, I’m I can see this focus on nature and interpreting of nature as being joyful in itself, but relieving stress as well. Tell us. Talk to us a little about that.

Kari Hohne [00:50:18] Well, well, it goes back to what I was saying once this idea of, you know, identify with the infinite meaning. Don’t think of like if remember, I said Taoism was about removing boundaries. So if I don’t feel separate from everything around me, I’m less likely to be judgemental. Because if so, even if somebody comes on my path that’s having a bad day, I can have compassion for that, you know? And maybe there’s something I can do. Maybe not. But I’m learning. They’re learning whatever it is that’s happening, you know? So identifying with infinite is to not like like I said, be the guest, not the host. You know, give up control. When you identify with the infinite, you’re no longer getting in your little car and driving up that crazy road that well, the rocks are going to fall on you and you’re going to be angry and and move over. I need to get to work. And, you know, you get more into a sense of flow, you know, so obviously that’s not really stress. And then wander in the unfathomable. Another one of long’s, this idea that is letting go of any idea that that something’s absolute, that something’s true, that it’s unchangeable. The only thing that’s unchangeable is change. You know, the idea of change is, is is always changing. And I think I obviously, I love physics, I love a lot. You know, I’ve studied a lot of different, parts of this equation. And one thing that I’ve seen is that we really don’t know anything. You know, we think that the scientists have everything figured out, but every time we we’ll turn a corner and we’ll realise that, you know, I mean, there’s a lot of things that go on in this world that we really don’t understand how it happens or, you know, it’s or ideas like that when they realise the earth was round or all the things, you know. So I don’t think that that’s unfair to say that if you looked at the whole picture of of what’s going on in our universe, I mean, why are we on this rock that is just warm enough and not too cold? Has water had the water get here? You know, like, who knows? Like what? When you start to really unravel it, you can’t find an answer. So who needs an answer? Live the question. The questions rejoice. That’s Eliot or somebody said that. Mary.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:52:32] I love that. Who? Who needs the answer? Just leave the question.

Kari Hohne [00:52:37] The question because that’s where the fun is. And that’s where I think Taoism really opens you to wonder. It returns you to wonder. And I say, like, get at the like, see your nose as the threshold of where you come in or go out, you know, and as you just kind of stay here and witness it unfolding, you know, more in a state of wonder because you don’t know that’s wandering in the unfathomable. So in those two little statements, I really, you know, feel like it sums up how Taoism can lead to joyful and letting go, being the guest. Anytime that you meet a situation, you feel it and you solar plexus, you feel it with your anxiety level. I’m not the host, I’m the guest. Let it go. Let you know where is it? You know. Observe it. Get it. The threshold of perception like, don’t you know. So it kind of helps you relieve stress. I know because I teach thousands of people and I watch how they, you know, are able to remember when I say it’s perfect, it’s just perfect. It just is perfect. And people would think that’s kind of a trite statement. You can get to that place where it feels perfect. How can that be stressful?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:53:53] Yes. It’s interesting, the uncertainty. It reminds me of a very famous, quote from the the dean of the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard or to the graduating years saying, congratulations, you’ve you’ve now doctors. But I have some news. Half of what we taught you is wrong. The only problem is we don’t know which half. And that’s kind of very Taoist statement, isn’t it, really? And another another thing that I love. And, you know, I read a little bit about what you’ve written, Carry Life. Whittles away the unnecessary until the necessary remains and what is necessary can thrive, you know. So this is often people who are faced with traumas, be it a diagnosis or a physical. The trauma will just go. This is just not important in my life. I really realise what is important, and once you’ve actually accepted that, you can really move on and thrive with what’s necessary, I love that.

Kari Hohne [00:54:56] And that’s where I’d use the tree again. I mean, there’s a time of the year where the trees are all of it. It looks like they’re dying. Imagine back, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago when the people on the earth were witnessing the trees all dying, you know, like what? They didn’t know maybe that there’s going to come back in the spring. You know, the deciduous trees and and they teach us about letting go in. There is life is about letting go, holding on and letting go. You know this balance. Yin and yang. Yang holding on, yin letting go, you know, yielding. But, you know, going back and forth. And sometimes we’re out of time with the flow, you know? And so what, what feels like a bad thing is just because we need to let go, it’s time to let go. So somewhere down the path we recognise that it does. Like that’s what I feel like the pandemic did as it we recalibrated our, you know, values and what’s important to us and changed us a little bit. All the things that I, you know, when I look at humanity as a whole and I people think that times are so challenging now. Oh my gosh, look at other centuries. Like, it’s always been crazy, but it’s always gotten better. You know, we’re fatter. We’re we’re we’re loved. I really believe that. We’re we’re loved like everything else on this earth. And we’re cared for. And there’s a reason that these things happen and we’re going somewhere, you know, so that that’s the host. And I’m not the host. I’m the guest.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:56:26] Another another quote I love and and when when I read it, it really resonated with me when you said, when we overcome others, we have power. But when we overcome ourselves, we are strong right now.

Kari Hohne [00:56:38] That’s kind of an idea that comes from the daodejing, because I did a translation of that book. But yeah, it’s exactly the truth because, you know, most of most of our strength building in our inner lion in yoga, too, you know, in a lot of different practices, our strength building has to do with, overcoming our own. Like one thing I find fascinating about yoga is how you can breathe in the pain and make pain go away. You know, you do something. Your body’s saying, no, I don’t do that anymore. I’m too old or I can’t bend that way, and you can breathe into it, sharing compassion, whatever flow and and kind of come through it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:15] So listen, it’s been such a great conversation. I want to ask you one last question, and I want you to take a step back from your role as a teacher, as an author, and all of those things, because we are individuals on a health journey in this modern world. What do you think the biggest challenge is for us as individuals on that journey?

Kari Hohne [00:57:36] I think that it’s been okay with our uniqueness. You know, I always say like, we’re only we know what it means to be fearlessly ourselves. And I really think that our gifts have to do with, being okay with being different, because it’s those things, like I always say, we join groups because of the ways we’re like, but we really discover our gifts in the ways that were different. So what may feel like I’m not fitting in, or so it’s sort of that I think that’s challenging for for most people to find their way to their authenticity and not, not feel like they have to sell out who they are for love and acceptance. And like, for example, that, you know, fear of intimacy. Maybe a person is keeps keeps experiencing relationships that fail when they don’t realise that maybe they have this tendency to not really want it to succeed or, you know, so being willing to look at any kind of challenge of what can it tell me about side of me, I don’t know, you know, that sort of thing. So anyway.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:40] Well, I think the, the idea of, of, of, of celebrating our uniqueness is a wonderful note to finish on. And I knew I was going to enjoy this conversation. I’ve been looking forward to it since we since we connected. And we will, of course have links to your website and all the wonderful resources on there. So thank you so much for joining us.

Kari Hohne [00:59:00] Thank you. It’s really delightful speaking with you today, I appreciate it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:59:04] Well, there it is. And so much to think about. So many wonderful concepts and ideas there. And Carrie’s website again. Cafe oh soul, that’s cafe A.u soul, offers a virtual database of drink dreams, symbols and ancient oracles and archetypal information and a whole lot. More I know I’ll be visiting. I would recommend that you do too. I would also like to do. I encourage you to join the unstressed health community because, it’s so rare, I believe in this world to have health advice that is just focussed on you being healthy, independent of industry, with only one thing in mind, and that is empowering you to good health. And as I often say, is the world we live in becomes more complicated. The solutions are remarkably simple, accessible, sustainable, cheap and most importantly, effective. I hope this finds you well. Until next time. This is doctor Ron Ehrlich. Hey. Well, this podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.