128_Charles Eisenstein
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Monica: Welcome to the Revelation Project Podcast. I'm Monica Rogers, and this podcast is intended to disrupt the trance of unworthiness and to guide women, to remember and reveal the truth of who we are. We say that life is a revelation project and what gets revealed gets healed. Hello everyone. And welcome to another episode of the Revelation Project Podcast.

Today. I'm with one of my favorite writers and thinkers and believe it or not, he is also my neighbor. Charles Eisenstein. Charles is a speaker, a writer, and is often described as a counter cultural philosophy. He's the author of several books and covers a wide range of topics, including the history of civilization, economics, spirituality, and ecology.

Key themes include how myth and narrative influence and shape our culture. And much of his work draws an Eastern philosophy and the spiritual teachings of indigenous people. You may have heard of a few of his books, or even have read them. They include the Ascent of Humanity in which he begins to describe and explore what he calls the story of separation.

When humans became separate from nature beginning with the emergence of agriculture and accelerating into our present day, he also wrote a book called Sacred Economics, where he explores the new economy movement and invites us to rethink our current money system and reintroduces the gift of. One of my personal favorites is called The More Beautiful World our Hearts know is possible in it.

He posits an emerging of a new cultural story, a story he calls inter being his newest book will be released actually this summer and is called the coronation. And as our interview evolves, I'll share the synchronistic way we met. In the meantime, please join me in welcoming Charles Eisenstein. Hey Charles 

Charles: Hi Monica.

Monica: Oh, it's so great to have you on the show, Charles. And as I alluded to my listeners, you and I discovered we were neighbors and actually funny enough, we live just minutes from each other. So the fascinating thing about meeting Charles as my neighbor is that, you know, in the past few years, Your work took on tremendous meaning for me, especially during the pandemic.

And of course, someone we both adore and share in common is Lynne twist, who had turned me on to your work several years ago. Anyway, last summer I had had some mercury removed from my mouth. I was experiencing some detox symptoms and a friend of mine referred me to your wife, Stella. And I'll never forget the day that I kind of put it all together because I had also sent this friend, Megan Greer, your article, actually, it was one of your coronation essays.

And I'll never forget just having this moment where my friend said small world. Huh? And I was like, what are you talking about? And she's like, you just sent me Charles Eisenstein's essay and you're seeing his wife. And I was like, wait, stout. And it was just one of these moments where I was like, mind blown.

So, you know, and then of course I'll never forget standing there explaining it to Stella when you Charles walked into the room. So, yup. It was like, the universe was completely punking me in the best way. So anyway, there are two things that come to mind, Charles, when I think about you and one is your capacity to synthesize so many different threads of thought and communicate your ideas in ways that really seem to resonate for a lot of people.

And then the second thing I think about is your courage. Your courage really stands out to me because. You're always willing to say the unpopular things and ask the questions that often seem to ruffle the feathers of consensus culture. So I really do experience you as somebody who models this way of being that allows us to ask these deep questions as well as kind of be in the paradox and the polarity of all of it.

While authentically navigating your way. You seem to express yourself with both confidence and humility. So anyway, I thought maybe a good place to start today would be just where we are in this moment. It's of course, a moment in time. Like to call the apocalypse another way of putting it would be that we're in a great period of revelation that's happening.

And I'd love to just know where are you at in the moment with all of it? 

Charles: Well, thank you, Monica. That's very kind of you to say all those things. May it be so may it be so while I've been dipping in and out of commenting on what's going on in our world, sometimes this has happened a lot in the last few years.

It's happening again right now where the public is so fixated on a certain divisive, polarizing issue that anything you say gets put through the filter of that side's taking and in such time, Usually my tendency is not really to engage that energy and not put my weight, as it's said on one side or another, because so often the two polarized sides are not actually in disagreement on a deep level.

They're both taking something for granted that isn't true. So I like to point out that deeper thing and I might not be able to do that directly. So, uh, right now, like I am purposely not taking a public stand on one side or another of the V debate, the debate as it is called, where the issue, because why X, like who decides that, that is the issue that everyone should focus their attention on and what gets left out when we focus on the thing that the news tells us to focus on when we buy into their.

Their idea of what's important and what is not. Yeah. Cause you know, I mean, I know that your, your show is a lot about empowering women. Well guess who has been considered not important for an awful long time? Not only because of your biological sex, but because of the kinds of emotional, spiritual orientation that women typically have, like those in the patriarchy are considered unimportant.

So I guess, I don't know. Maybe that's I answered a little bit too much, but that's kind of where I'm at right now. Yeah. 

Monica: That makes sense. And yeah, the debate. That keeps us in a constant position or opposition, which actually brings me to something that you talk about and write about quite often, which is kind of the dominant story that we've been living in.

And this time period that you refer to as the space between stories, I'd love to actually have you share more about that concept with our listeners and how we might begin to start thinking about how that concept applies to our lives at this time. 

Charles: Right? So the space between stories. So normally we are.

We human beings operate with a story that tells us who we are, the story of self, uh, the story of the world, the story of what's real of what's important and what isn't of who's reliable, what consists of, of true knowledge, how to live a life, how to do it, how to be a man, how to be a woman where we're coming from, where we're going, a whole story that makes sense of the world and one's own place in the world.

Well, there comes a time in life when that story stops working. It's not necessarily a sudden event that the story stops working, but it might, it could be, but often it comes as a growing sense of futility or depression or. Like, it just doesn't make sense anymore. A feeling of alienation feeling of not belonging here of nothing working that's part of a breakdown process.

Often then there will also be some sudden event that has been built up to, through that growing alienation. Uh, the event could be health crisis or a marital crisis or some other disruptive event that, or it could be something social and political too that's happening. And it unravels what had seemed so real and so permanent and so unquestionable.

So you enter that into what I call the space between stories. In which you just don't even know who you are anymore. You don't know what's real anymore. The ways that you've navigated life don't work or they don't make sense. And you have even a feeling of vertigo and there's, there's different phases of the space between stories sometimes.

Um, you might be terrified and want to crawl back into the room, so to speak. Sometimes you might feel exhilarated and excited about what's on the other side of this, what is the new me and the new world that is going to arise from the ashes of the old. Sometimes you might feel both of those things at once, but that process of truly letting go and entering into the unknowing is usually necessary in order to step into a truly new story.

There has to be that plunge into uncertainty, into the empty space. It's like a vacuum in which something new can arise and it's scary. But on the other side, Often like the breakdown. And a lot of times we'll try to prevent it from happening, but we'll cling on to the shreds of the old story. But on the other side of it, usually it turns out that it wasn't as bad as we thought it was going to be.

The worst thing in the world turns out sometimes to have been a blessing. 

Monica: Yes. Like a disguised gift, and this breakdown is necessary. It leads to transformation. I love this unknowing. It's similar to what I refer to as the unbecoming. And I don't know, you know, recently it was proposed that masculine and feminine energies are a construct of patriarchy and I tend to.

Really look through that lens quite a bit, especially with where we're at right now. And I understand that language can sometimes be very limiting, but I also really see that without these energies, we can't really create something new. So I believe that these energies exist within us. And I believe that they exist in everything actually.

It's like that microcosm macrocosm as within. So without, um, I love there's a chapter in your book. One of my favorites, which is. The more beautiful world our hearts know is possible. And in it, you talk about this idea of being one, being, looking through many points of view. I'd love to hear your thoughts on masculine and feminine energies and what I call the unbecoming or the unknown.

That's typically what I would consider a very feminine energy kind of like that death and rebirth. So it's no wonder we're resisting it. 

Charles: Yeah. So yeah, a lot here, it's politically fashionable right now to repudiate duality and all binaries. And to say that, that even the idea that there's some essential.

Quality called femininity or masculinity is itself a relative patriarchal mind form. I think it's actually kind of the opposite that the final victory of patriarchy over the feminine would be to deny that the feminine exists as its own domain entirely like to abolish it completely. And you're right.

These so, so it's not the only way of looking at the world, but it is not a mere artifact of patriarchy to see the world in terms of self and other inner and outer light and dark, feminine and masculine in and young. These are our primal forces, electrons and protons, you know, The I I've been met, I've made a study of the diverging, the Dallas classic, which represents a dare.

I say, a feminine stream in Chinese culture, as opposed to the more highly patriarchal Confucian stream. And there's one part where there, where, where aloud is describing these polarities. And it's so beautiful. It's like, if I, if I can, I can't remember on the spot, but it's something like long and short depend on each other, something in something leaning on each other, something in something like they're all, they only exist in relation to the other.

So on some level. That means that they're not separate opposites, but they're interdependent and mutually creating and mutually defining. So, you know, I'm just like really wary of any modern post-modern and Western philosophy that discards that cavalierly discards thousands and thousands of years old traditions like Taoism and like shamonic traditions.

I mean, I've talked to doggone elders, you know, who, who are carrying a 70,000 year old lineage. They don't say that gender is a mere social construct, et cetera, et cetera. So, you know, like, okay, we might be able to see some things through a non-binary lens that we can not otherwise see. Uh, but let's please understand. All of these different lenses have their utility. Yes. 

Monica: Agreed. And at this time, while we may still find utility in the uses of lenses, such as masculine and feminine, as it relates to energies, we're also seeing a time where masculine and feminine as gendered roles are being discarded or perhaps re-imagined, which seems to be getting a lot of folks really riled up.

It would seem that while many systems and structures are in this state of breakdown or unbecoming, we're also seeing a breaking away from limiting roles and constructs. I just kind of wonder where you see all of this headed or what you see in all of this. 

Charles: Uh, again, you're, you're there, you've packed a lot here into, into this question about let's go back to.

Non-binary beings and so forth. Like it's another one of these divisive things that it's almost designed to get people really angry at each other. It taps into a deeper patterning, which is you could call it personal blame or the concept of fault and the concept of right and wrong. That seems to say that, that, so, you know, these, these non binary folks have been oppressed and persecuted in a lot of ways for a long time.

And that for people of compassion and conscience, that that hurts, you know, and we want to validate their choices. And it's like the only way we know how to do that, culturally is to normalize or draw some broader principle, some, some big intellectual construct. About binary ism in the abstract, and to try to make sense of it all in some moral framework, but I don't think we can necessarily do that.

And the danger in doing that is that, and this is, this is what's tearing one of the things that's tearing society apart. You know, you by establishing some moral principle, then you're going to put other people outside of that moral principle and make them wrong. Right. So now, like, you know, in the whole trans issue, you have a lot of women, a lot of gay people getting feeling themselves really marginalized and invalidated by the new ideology.

And so then they start fighting with each other. Meanwhile, the planet proceeds toward ruin. Again, it's like this issue of what gets left out, what is not talked about when we focus on the hot button issues and what defines these issues and what, what power channels, so much of our psychic energy toward these contentious issues.

Monica: What do you think does that? 

Charles: Well, there's some deep threads here. One of which I wrote about extensively in the last couple of years, the pattern of mob morality, kind of tribal ingroup outgroup dynamics that are still very much in human society where the, this, so I, I drew a lot from the work of a philosopher, Rene Girard.

He was, I guess, a philosopher slash anthropologist and he described the original social problem as being retributive violence. Blood feuds tit for tat violence that escalate. So somebody, you know, wrong, somebody else and they, or there can get revenge. Uh, but the original party feels that they were in the right, so they get revenge back on them and it just escalates and everybody has to choose sides.

And you know, which side are you on? You have to demonstrate that, that you're not with them. Otherwise, you know, I'm, you're my enemy too. So this, uh, sides taking this violence spreads like a disease until it engulfs the whole society and rip society apart before it even really has a chance to get established.

So the, the ancient solution to this existential crisis was to turn on escape. Or a small class of scapegoats people who are semi outsiders in society and for everybody to get together and to kill them and step in an active unifying violence in the process, also discharging the desire for vengeance, the desire, the plod lost the desire, the desire we've got to do something about this.

We can't just let it slide. So everybody goes and turns on the witch or the Jew or the misfit or the weird kid, the kid, a class that has acuities. Did you ever have that in your classroom? Yeah. And if you touch, remember if you touch that kid, you've got cuties too. Yeah. And you get ostracized. So even if you don't believe in cooties, you're still going to keep your distance from that person.

Okay. So that basic social dynamic has. Um, just really deeply to, with an instinct to orient toward which, which way is the wind blowing who's on the end. Who's who's on the outs. Who can I associate with, how can I demonstrate my belonging to the good people? Yeah. So this, you know, in our current age leads to all kinds of virtue signaling and identity politics.

And I mean, and it can be manipulated by governments. So this is one of you asked what are these forces that are channeling our psychic energies into conflict. This is one of them and it makes us very susceptible also to totalitarian control or fascism. That's it? You know, all you have to do as a fascist leader is point to the, the filth and the scum and the whatever bad people they are.

That are threatening our society. And then everybody falls into lockstep around that. Or it could be the unvaccinated, or it could be the white supremacists, or it could be, you know, the Antifa, I mean, left and right. Do the same thing here. So I'm not aligning with either of the sides. And this is one of those filters.

People might be listening. Okay. Which side are you on? Is it okay to believe, to, to listen to what you say, Charles? Because are you one of the good guys and one of the bad guys, let me figure out if you're one of the good guys and one of the bad guy, we're one of the bad guys by decoding the hidden messages and what you were saying, you know, when you said white supremacists, was that with disgust or with a little bit of sarcasm?

Like, how are you, which side are you on? Is it okay to be associated with you? That is one of the patterns I'm talking about. Yes. And that is almost universal. And if our society is ever going to change for real. We're going to have to transcend that. 

Monica: Yeah. I would like to think that we all have an intimate experience with this, you know, like or where we all have our own story of what it felt like to have the cooties that we all have our own story of what it felt like to be othered to get kicked out of the garden.

And, you know, that's actually how I came to pay. Very close attention to you. And to your work was watching that happen to you in a very public way, seeing you having a very intimate experience with that kind of event. It's really, I don't know. It did something to me. I was always that kid in school that.

I dunno, it was like, I was simultaneously heartbroken to see it happening to another kid, but simultaneously grateful. It wasn't me, you know, it was such a messy mix of emotion. And I dunno, in those moments, it really calls me to take a stand. It calls me to open my arms or to just hug someone that I see just deeply in their own human mass, I guess, is what I'd call it.

I actually think of one of your essays. You talked about a woman in a grocery store during the height of the pandemic who was just kind of breaking down and crying with the social distancing and the masking. And, you know, finally, just this woman. Who kind of said, screw, it just kind of went against all the protocols and went to this woman and just held her and that woman turning to her and saying, thank you.

It's the first time I've been hugged or touched in 10 days. It's just such a sad state of affairs. What we do to each other. It reminds me of something I used to say to my kids, if they were fighting and one of them would tell on the, the other and say like, she started it and I would say, and who ended it?

Tell me who ended it, who stopped the war? That's the person I want to hang out with. So it's like, who opened your arms? Who opened their arms? Who saw your humanity? I wondered if you could share with me and with our listeners a little bit more about. What was it like, how did you deal with having the cooties? How did you allow yourself back into the garden? 

Charles: Yeah, it was quite a process. So, you know, one of the essays I published described how these mob morality dynamics were hijacked by Adolf Hitler and drew on an historical precedent to, to make the Jews into the, you know, contagious underclass that the end and the sacrificial victims to resolve this crisis and society and so forth.

And I was like, these forces come up again and again and again, and they're coming up again now. So that was one of, so, you know, the article got, uh, you know, and, and today it's the unvaccinated who are getting ostracized, who are getting blamed, you know, scapegoated and so forth. So this infuriated a lot of.

On the one hand, because they're like Charles you're literally killing people by promoting vaccine hesitancy. But then another criticism was that I was an anti-Semite by drawing a false equivalency to the Holocaust and insulting the memory of its victims. So, which, you know, my point though, is that anti-Semitism was not the deepest force underneath the Holocaust.

Right? The pattern is you have to find somebody who is in, but not of society or make them into somebody who is in, but out of society to prepare them for sacrifice and the Jews. Yes, they were. They occupied that position, but these forces go far, far beyond historical anti-Semitism. And if, you know, Combating antisemitism is not going to eradicate the Gerardi and mob morality impulse.

So anyway, the, the, the nuance of this point was lost on a lot of people. So I got denounced by my publisher in a very, very public prominent way. And like all these people piled on and I got canceled from all kinds of events and I was supposed to speak at a nonviolent communication summit, you know, and they in very NVC language wrote to me and said, you do not meet our need for integrity and stuff like that.

And it was just, and I'm still to this day, like on like some kind of blacklist for. Uh, events that a lot of the kinds of things I used to speak in, because I've always been identified with the left, you know, and now all of a sudden through like a chain of association, all of a sudden I'm a Trumper or something, so, okay.

Like that, that happened. But what was really interesting beyond the social phenomenon was internally. I noticed that there was part of me that, well, for one thing, it brought up a primal fear. I mean, I'm chronically enough, I'm Jewish, or I have like Jewish I'm half Jewish. I have significant Jewish ancestry, Jewish relatives.

My grandfather escaped Russia during a pogrom by hiding in a haystack. I mean, like, this is not theoretical. I mean, I've got family member, you know, relatives who died in the Warsaw ghetto. I mean, come on. Like, are you calling me an anti-Semite? So that, that made me angry actually. Uh, but, but since, so I noticed there was, there was a part of me that was always afraid that this would have.

Maybe because of my ancestral, my ancestral experiences. And I noticed how much of my caution and cowardice was because of this fear, which is not an imaginary fear. I mean, people have been like literally burned at the stake for being associated with no, but for having cuties for being in the victim class.

Monica: Well, I think what you're pointing to is like, we're all afraid it's going to happen. It's the thing that lives underneath it all that keeps it status quo. Yeah. That, that what you were doing was questioning the dominant narrative that, you know, it's like the overstory, you were questioning the overstory. And so it was like you were on a hit list 

Charles: And not signaling my belonging in the majority safe group. But there was another level that I discovered too, which is that part of me agreed with the critics 

Monica: Say more. 

Charles: So it's not that I actually thought that I'm antisemitic, but it's that like the deeper criticism of there is something wrong with you.

You deserve punishment. You deserve death because what happens in these, in the original sacrificial violence is that the victims become memorialized after the fact in myth and legend as the bad guy, because you killed the Sacra, the sacrificial victim and the social tension is dissipated. It's gone. So if that was the solution, then the victim must've been the problem.

So there's part of me that identifies as yeah, there, right? Like I am a horrible person. So it feeds into another of these. Governing powers of our civilization, which is self-rejection that in which we constantly wage a war against ourselves, a pogrom, an inner pogrom in which the true self is a fugitive, that part of ourselves.

It's like, I'm good. I'm, I'm love. I'm divine. That, that part is a fugitive from this, this posse, this psychological posse, that's hunting him down and trying to pin him down. Or her actually it's even more with her. Well, actually it's not. I mean, this is one of the misconceptions of patriarchy. Men are as oppressed as women and just in different ways.

And this is one aspect of it, like this deep seated conviction that there's something fundamentally wrong with me that I am unacceptable and I better not let anybody find out about it. 

Monica: Yes. 

Charles: And so the more insecure, the more. I am in this self-rejection the more amenable I will be to this social role, uh, that will have me signal my virtue and identify with a politically favored, a socially favored some group.

It feeds off the self-rejection. So a lot of what I've been doing in the last couple of years has been exploring and healing this primal wound of self-rejection. And it's just so deep, and I'm sure many of your listeners identify with this. Like, you know, like you'd think that in our society in patriarchy, women would have a lot more body image issues than men, you know, hatred of your own body.

You know, I'm fat, I'm this I'm that ugly, you know? I mean, I've I noticed like so much in myself as well, all of these judgments, all of this like conditional approval, but if only I, you know, had more muscular arms, you know, or if only I had a hairier chest or if only this only that, and my hair is turning gray and like all of these it's like this constant anxiety from not being okay.

And I, at one point I I've actually turned this into an occasional meditation. I touched back in, through, through medicine work actually on like the primal infantile delight in my own body. That is totally without judgment. You know, it's just taking to white and learning about this, this flesh and it's me, you know, me and, and there's in, in an infant.

There's no trace. Of self-rejection and even to momentarily touch that state was very healing for me. And now I returned to it from time to time, uh, on this long road back. 

Monica: Thank you for sharing that because I deeply resonate with it as well. And that, that was going to be, you know, my next question was like, how did you love yourself back into the garden?

Because that's, I think, and part of what I want to ask next is like, okay, I feel like what we just surfaced was kind of this existential human truth that we all experience. And it's what keeps the status quo in place. And yet part of what I witnessed in you was it didn't shut you down. It didn't Sophie strand always talks about, it's only an issue, an initiation.

If you survived it, like you survived. Horrible initiation, whatever this was. And, and so I wonder, like, what did it teach you? What are, what have you learned and how have you learned to be with yourself that has allowed you to continue on? Because it's, it's where I find so many people have that fear of annihilation and they don't believe they can get on the other side of it if they dissent, or if they say the real truth, 

Charles: You know, Monica, it wasn't, that fordable actually the whole time. I had some awareness of just the farcical nature of the whole thing. 

Monica: Like the comedy kind of behind it. 

Charles: Yeah. I like the drama, you know, that we all buy into it, but compared to the things that can happen to a human being, it wasn't very bad compared to, I mean, you know, some of the horrors that are going on on this planet, I mean, it's not even as bad as a two thing.

As far as like, for me, I still had lots of happy moments during that time. And it was an incredible learning experience. 

Monica: Well, it does. It's, like you said, it was an incredible learning experience. So, so what were some of those things that were takeaways? And I think, again, the reason I'm asking is for me, the revelation project is revealing those things that are hidden, those narratives, those human moments that we're not necessarily allowed to talk about because they're so vulnerable.

Charles: Yeah. Another thing, here's another thing that is unearthed in me. And again, this wasn't some totally new revelation, but it really brought it to the surface. When I, so I wrote about this mob morality, scapegoating, et cetera, et cetera. And then in a very ironic demonstration of the thesis. Of the essay. It just, you know, it's like, it was demonstrated on my person and it made me really sad for the state of ours, of our planet.

I'm like, oh my God, have we learned nothing? We're so deep in it. Like the hardest part of it, wasn't my personal indignity. It wasn't personal actually, why it was hard. It's that it's plunged me into a state of pretty deep despair over this, over this situation in Narcan, you know, over the state of our society.

Because as long as this mentality is present, we are going to enact in one form or another repeated holocausts and witch hunts and genocides and persecutions and programs in one form or another, they may not be as brutal as, you know, death camp. But when you have dehumanized another person, then there's really no limit what you can do to them.

You can deprive them of their freedoms. You can exploit them economically. You can enslave them. You can imprison them, you can destroy them. And that pattern of dehumanization, which is closely related to the Renee Gerard scapegoating pattern. That's another one of the governing forces of our society.

That, and that's why like, instead of directly engaging current issues, I often, even if I do engage them, I try to take it down to that level again and again and again, because even if you win a temporary victory on the superficial level, maybe using the tool of dehumanizing your opponent, Stirring up outrage against those, a horrible, horrible people.

On the other side of the issue, you might win the battle, but you will lose the war. You will perpetuate the circumstances that cause one horror after another, after another. Yeah. That's why I, um, sometimes pull back a bit when it's just like, when I can't say anything that doesn't feed into that dehumanization.

So yeah, it, that was sort of like the sadness that are brought up in me that at times veered into despondency, you know, I recognize also that comes from, from a wound and it's an invitation to healing because actually I also know that there are healing powers and capacities and principles in this world that are like miracle level.

You know, I see it in installers practice all the time. People come in with medically incurable conditions and sometimes decades long, and they can be healed in one or two sessions, not every time, but sometimes, and still like, know things about their body or medical history that, you know, or scientifically there's just like no way that she could know those things.

I mean, I've seen that, not just with Stella. I mean, I've seen that kind of thing in my life so many times. So am I actually willing to take those data points in? Where does my despair stand when I take those data points in? Right. And the fact that I still can go into despair means that I'm not fully integrating all of reality.

There, there are buffers that separate my experience from. Yeah, prevent me from integrating. And so that's another yeah. Healing opportunity, 

Monica: Right? It's like that what I call the forgetting, it's like, oh, I forgot again. You know, that, that it all gets to belong. And there's, I'm telling some story of separation again, that you point out over and over again, which I love.

]I love what you shared, Charles. I love what you're pointing to. Is it relates to your own healing and identifying some of these primal wounds. Perhaps some of them are ancestral wounds that we carry, that we have that opportunity to heal, to reveal and heal, to reveal and feel and heal. These are some of my, my wonderings, as it relates to like, why are we here?

You know, what are we doing? You know, is it. Is it earth school, you know, is this our opportunity for healing? Like there's so many moments where the tools right. Are so simple and yet I forget them over and over again, like just coming back to my breath, just coming back to my body, just practicing those moments of self approval and self love, you know, and noticing for example, that I've tasked myself out of the garden again.

And I get to let myself back in whenever I want this, I want to go back to kind of what you talk about, which is the story that we live in or this story of separation that we've been telling since what feels like the beginning of time. And this time that we're experiencing now, which I loved discovering as people were referring to this time as an apocalypse, that it actually meant to reveal that we are in a time of great revelation, that this is the time where we are.

I think being shown maybe to go back to what you just talked about with Stella, you know, that there's some other presence or capability here that's making itself known and giving us the opportunity to tell a new story that we're between stories, as you say, and we're being given an opportunity to create a new story.

And I wondered if you have some thoughts on that, as well as anything that you practice that you'd like to share with us that would help us through this time. 

Charles: Yeah, I think we are going through a collective version of a space between stories where, as I was saying before, who we thought we were as a species even, and our formula for progress for living a good life, our sense of what's real, all of this is falling apart.

Uh, one of the ways that it's falling apart is, is so one of the main threads of the narrative was life is getting better and better. Thanks to science, thanks to technology, reason, democracy, et cetera, et cetera. Life is getting better and better, you know, and it sure seemed that way in our parents' generation, when they were comparing themselves to their parents, you grew up in the great depression.

And world war one and world war II. And, and, you know, we overcame Nazi-ism, you know, and we have a free society and, and all of these inventions have made life so much easier. And life expectancy was increasing rapidly in the mid 20th century. It looked like, like this story was very, very strong and what wonders there on the horizons space travel, you know, there's no limit and, and that story, I mean, it's a whole mythology, really.

It is in tatters right now. Nobody thinks that they're going to be better off. I mean, it's a very for Lorne cope that we're going to be better off than our parents and that things are getting better and better. You know, in the fifties and sixties, a single high school educated wager could support a family of four and even have like a little cabin by the lake somewhere.

And go on vacation, a single high school wage earner could support a family of four and public school university education costs like $30 tuition a year. Like that was a rich society. So today, I mean the whole COVID moment was a demonstration of that, just like this kind of dystopian feel, but it's not just COVID.

I mean, life expectancy was already starting to decline before the effects of COVID and then the response to COVID with the substances that shall not be named, or, you know, was just like the deaths of despair caused by lockdown and not seeing each other's faces, you know, and like the separation. I mean, one of the main things that I write about is that health wellbeing.

And even like existence is a function of relationship. The more we cut off our relationships to each other and to nature, the more alone we are and the less healthy we are, the less happy we are. So this was COVID. Was this enormous exercise in how far can we take separation? How [far of an extreme, extreme in China right now?

It's even to a further extreme, you know, where when they lock you down, you cannot leave your apartment. Sometimes they even like, well, the doors shut. You're not even allowed to open your window for weeks at a time. So in the, in the story of the separate self, there should be no problem with that. In fact, you should be safer.

What's wrong with that? Here's you here you are. You're fine. But then that's the root of the old story as I call it the story of separation, it's the separate stuff and the new story. Which I use Tic Naht Han's word for inter being understands that the self is fundamentally relational. And when these relationships are cut off, you die, parts of you begin to die, you begin to wither away.

So, okay. So we see our society has become more and more proficient at separating ourselves from each other and from nature from all of the beings around us, from place from community. So we get less and less helpful, no matter how many technological interventions we impose, and no matter how much control we impose on our environment and on ourselves, we get less and less healthy.

So life expectancy was already dropping before COVID and in the last year it's dropped like by a lot, by like over a year in the United States, it was that wasn't supposed to happen. You know, you read futuristic stuff from the fifties and sixties, we were going to have 200 year life spans by now. All disease was going to be conquered by.

That didn't happen. And where's our flying cars and our space colonies. None of, none of that. Do you hope you envision has come to place, come to come, come to pass. And despite like the, the lingering promises of genetic engineering and, you know, neuro link implants and a nanotech that can go into your brain and tweak your serotonin receptors so that you're going to be happy all the time.

No one really believes that anymore. Okay. Maybe not, no one, but the general public consciousness, no longer worships at the altar of technological progress. And that leaves us law. Because that is what defined to find our civilization. It defined a progress and it gave people in their personal lives, something to strive for something to be a part of in order for life.

And that's another requisite for happiness. You have to have life. You have to be doing things with your life, energy to have meaning to you. And we derive meaning in a large part from the grander social project, from our participation in the aspirations of the tribe. So when that larger story falls apart, then we too, as individuals are lost, what is my contribution to the world?

We need to be able to participate in a story. Now, a new story is emerging based on the intervene of the self that recognizes that our purpose is to serve life and beauty. To contribute to the healing of the planet and the healing of society, but that has not yet jelled into our collective defining story.

You don't hear presidents and pundits saying, this is what purpose of humanity is right now. And because of that, we also don't have institutions to hold us in that endeavor to support us financially in that endeavor, you can still make the most money by contributing to the of the planet, not as healing garden, plant some trees.

How much money are you going to make from that compared to digging a lithium pit mine to make, you know, electric vehicle batteries. It's the pit mine where the most money is not in the wetlands restoration project. And that's because our society collectively does not value the ladder, but only the former much as we might say, otherwise are institutionalized.

Economic value system does not support as much the healing work that needs to happen. So we're lost ideologically lost and economically lost. And this is another aspect of the space between stories and it culminates when we really, really admit to it, acknowledge it, acknowledge that we're lost and stop thinking that we know how to do this, then we'll have the humility for something new.

Monica: Yes. I love that. That idea of like the admission. In fact, it's something that I outlined that you quoted. Oh, here it is. In order to find your way, you must first get lost and admitting that you're lost. And I know that wasn't your quote, whose was that? 

Charles: That's, Biocom a latte according an African proverb.

Monica: Yeah. It's beautiful. You know, you had also said, you know, about being lost in these certain ways. Do you think there's also a component of spiritual spiritually? We're lost that. There's also this breakdown of kind of the story or the stories, which is part of the overstory. I say, you know, that comes from the Bible, let's say, but there's this way.

I think we've, we've also been entranced, deeply entranced in this story of salvation. I'll call it and. Again, it's kind of, I feel like I'm seeing it in some ways, losing its potency in so many areas. And then in another way, I see this like doubling down on it. 

Charles: Okay. There's an awful lot there I'm so spiritually lost. What does spiritual even mean? You know, the whole concept of a separate, holy realm. That's not material is actually part of the problem. 

Monica: Yeah. Great. Say more 

Charles: So like that idea of spirituality is that, you know, that it's in contrast to materiality and that our progress comes through becoming more spiritual and less material.

That is part of what enables the destruction of the material, the dishonoring of the material. So really now a spirituality can mean other things, but what I would like it to mean is that we re-invest the material. The flesh, the alive with sacredness. Now we understand that the things that we exported onto the spiritual plane actually are everywhere and in everything.

So for example, I mean the, these, these questions of the story of the self, who am I, why am I here? What is a human being? How shall we live life? These are, if anything is a spiritual question, these are spiritual questions there. And they're very much of the world and of the flashing of the FIDI. So I want to establish that if we're going to be talking about spirituality.

Monica: Yeah. 

Charles: As for like the Bible and salvation, there's a certain amount of distortion that has come into canonical texts. But if you look at them carefully, you can find encoded within them, very important teachings. And one of them, you know, with the, uh, Christ story directly addresses the. Pattern of sacrificial violence, because in that story, Jesus is all set up to be the scapegoat

and normally what would happen is, you know, the crowd would turn on him. And originally I think a POTUS pilot wanted to offer him up to the crowd, but either way, like, you know, like you have a public execution is the same, same idea. Here's the villain, here's the cause of all the problem you kill him and everybody's satisfied and then remembers him as evil as the cause of the problem, because the problem was solved by killing her.

But the Jesus story turns that on its head and it makes it obvious, not only that the man was innocent, but also that it could have been anybody up on the cross. If holy man. Could be crucified as evil, then you and I could easily have been crucified as evil as well. So it's a bridge that whole way of thinking of that.

There are some bad people out there because it makes it obvious. And those are the ones that get crucified. Those are the ones to get the platform to counseled, et cetera, et cetera, because it makes it clear that that could have been me, could happen to anybody and therefore it upends that whole lot. Uh, so yeah, I wouldn't, I wouldn't write off any religious tradition, all these ones once something's written down, you know, uh, and, ahcrews, uh, layer after layer of culture and interpretation, it can get twisted and used for all kinds of ends.

It's some, some Eastern traditions talk about that, you know, the, the obstacle of the teachings. Yeah. Don't, don't fix on anything that is. 

Monica: Yes, Charles, one of the things that I've also noticed that you do that I love is you have a way of offering your services, your inquiries, your workshops, in a way that you allow people to determine after the fact their worth their value.

And it's a way that you get compensated. We were kind of talking about money and economy, and of course you've written extensively on sacred economics. And I wondered if you could talk about what you're modeling there and maybe what you're inviting other people to do. 

Charles: Okay. That's, that's a pretty long topic, but I'll just say for, I'll start with digital, digital commerce, digital stuff, where it wants to go is to free.

We, we recognize this instinctive, like, like you, you know, on some level, when you download a song that it costs virtually nothing for the provider to give you that download, you know, whatever hosting space, whatever, it's, it's less than a penny, which is different from a physical record, uh, you know, there's materials there.

And, uh, but, but when it's, when it's an online, anything like a substantial post, a podcast, anything online, the first copy takes a lot of work to. You know, we're spending a lot of time doing this and years and years of thought and development have gone into the words that are being shared here. So that first copy takes a lot of work, but the second copy takes no work at all, or the third or the fourth or the fifth, which in economic parlance is to say that the marginal cost of production is basically zero, which means that the natural price point is zero as well.

Which means that if I want to charge money for it, I have to create artificial scarcity with a paywall digital rights management, that kind of thing. Or I have to use it as a freebie to entice you to buy some other product. So I'm like, there's gotta be a better way to do it. And the model that I've turned to is the gift model where.

I make everything that I produce online courses included available by gift and like my sub stack, you know, if you a paid subscription gives you the exact same content as a free subscription. So I'm not in a place of, I'm not going to give it to you, unless you give me something. It's, it's the gift model where here I'll give it to you.

And if you feel moved to give me something to support my work, um, my life then that is welcoming. And how much should that be? It depends on your level of gratitude and your desire to support me and your financial means. You know, like if you're living paycheck to paycheck and wondering where your grocery money is going to come from, I don't want you to give me money.

You come on. And if you have, uh, lots of surplus. And you're not sure what the most beautiful use of that money is then. Yeah. I welcomed that, you know, because that supports and nourishes me and enables me to continue to thrive and to, and to do my work. So I'm happy to receive that, so that that's, um, how I would like the world to work.

Yeah. So I do my little part to model that and yeah, I mean, I could say a lot more about it. I made an online course called living in the gift that goes a lot more into detail about it. And when you get into like physical in-person events, then all kinds of new issues come up. 

Monica: So tell me a little bit more about that, because I also wondered how long have you been using this? What you're calling the gift model. 

Charles: 10 at least 10 years. Maybe more. Yeah. More than that. Yeah. 

Monica: And what is the typical response? I'm sure you get a lot of response to it. 

Charles: I mean, some people like basically like, oh, it's free, great. You know, they don't really understand and that's fine, you know, like whatever. And some people, they resonate with it. A lot of people really resonate with them and they're happy to give something. And some people are like, oh my God, thank you so much. I usually can't take online courses because I can't afford the $299. You know, thank you so much for offering it this way. Uh, and like, those are the letters that make me know that this is the way to do it.

Yeah. I just have no doubt that this is the, this is, this is right for me, you know? And, and this is not, I'm not making a moral prescription here. I'm simply orienting by what makes me feel good. And if it makes you feel good and you really check in with yourself, And you get full body yes. To charging a thousand dollars per person.

I'm not going to tell you that you should not do that, but I trust the principle of self-trust that it will eventually, as we heal guide us toward being more and more in abundance. Yes. And being in abundance, like all this new age stuff about, you know, that you're in abundance, when you feel free to give, when you feel free to be generous, if you feel tight, that means that there's still healing to do 

Monica: Well and I think you answered my next question, which was yes. And you've found that to be sustainable for you. And it sounds like you were coming from a place of sufficiency and sustainability when you offered it. 

Charles: Well, it's been a learning process. Yeah. I was coming from a place of more, it was more of. Just like this instinctive rejection and I'm just like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to market myself. I'm not going to manipulate people. I just don't want it. No, it just felt yucky. I just didn't want to do it. I didn't want to build paywalls. You know, I wasn't really so enlightened. It was more of this repugnance, 

Monica: Right? Like more of knowing what you didn't want to do is what guided, what you to try something different. Sometimes that's the barometer, you know, for, for sure. And just to finish up that part of the conversation, I just am so curious about the, cause I know that you're giving an upcoming workshop and I actually just made a donation toward it to attend digitally. And I noticed that. You know, there are certain ways.

I think that you also engage people with certain agreements when they kind of come into your community. You know, that's just kind of like, I think what you're asking people is to just be aware and conscious. And I just wanted to ask you with like your offline retreats, how do you manage the, the investment or are people paying?

Charles: Uh, normally the way I do it is that I ask people to pay for hard costs. So room and board, the rental that's covered. Got it. And anything else? The tuition so to speak is self-determined so they could pay zero, they could pay a thousand dollars, they could pay $5,000. They could pay any amount that again, feels good and right, and clear and respects their means.

Monica: Yeah. It's beautiful. And. Do you find that a lot of people have shared with you that they've adopted that model? 

Charles: Um, some people have, yeah. Yeah. I think it works pretty well, especially if you're not secretly trying to guilt people or manipulate people into giving, like the more authentic, the more sincere you're welcome of any amount, even zero, then it's like people breathe a sigh of relief, you know, cause so many things in the end are all about the money.

And like, even if it's a wealthy person and they pay zero, I've learned over time. I mean, originally I would be seething with judgment, but I've learned over time to trust them. Cause like, what am I really doing this for? And maybe what that person needs is an experience of someone not trying to get their.

And maybe in order for them to know that that's the case, they have to not give and still be welcomed and still be loved. And then, then their unconscious mind is like, oh, I guess it was real. And like, that can be a disrupting point in their story. Their story could be everyone's out for themselves. And everyone's out for my money and so forth.

Monica: I just got like all chills and actually like this welling up of tenderness, when you just said that it was very moving it's also what I'm recognizing in this moment is like, it's your way of changing the story. And I think one of the things that you're inviting us all to do is find our way to change the story.

Charles: Yeah. All of us have. Many opportunities every day to do that. Because any time that you interact with somebody and you don't fit into the story of us versus them, you don't fit into this story of conditional approval of me. So if you offer somebody unconditional approval or unconditional acceptance, unconditional love, kindness, generosity, humor at the right moment, these can disrupt a story of I'm alone. Story of I'm not acceptable. The story of good people and bad people and an accumulation of those anomalous data points eventually can, can be transformative. Yeah, 

Monica: Well, I feel like that is a perfect note to end on. Thank you. 

Charles: Yeah. Yes. Thank you, Monica. 

Monica: And just for our listeners, Charles, you know, I want to invite our listeners to know more about your work.

I know you have a community that I have joined in the last couple of months called a new and ancient story. And I wondered if there's anything else that you want to invite them to check out. Uh, you're welcome to do that in this moment. 

Charles: My writing is mostly on sub stack, Charles Eisenstein dot sub stack dot something.

And my website is Charles Eisenstein dot a org and, um, there's some really good videos. Two short films on YouTube. Um, one of them is the gathering of the tribe. Another is called and the music played the band. Those are both really great. Um, my new book is the coronation coming out. You can get on preorder, yada yada, yada.

Yeah, thanks for the, a promotional opportunity there. Monica, 

Monica: I will be sure to put the links for those videos in the show notes and truly Charles, what I appreciate so much about what you always bring to every conversations is your full presence and your transparency. You are who you are. And I just so appreciate that because you are modeling permission.

You know, you're living a fully permissioned life. You're, you're telling your story. You are conscious of the story that's being told, and you're choosing consciously to tell a new story. And in modeling that you're giving us permission to do the same. And I think there are enough of us that are living fully permissioned lives in this way.

We are going to create a new story. And so this is where race, these conversations. And I embrace this time because it's, it's a very revealing time. And with. Revealing comes healing. 

Charles: Yeah. That's, that'd be another on the list of ways to disrupt the story and see the new one. Just to be yourself, like shamelessly, be yourself that as you were saying, it gives others permission to do that too. Like there's something disarming about somebody who's just not so guarded, it, it does give you permission to be like that yourself. So, yeah. Thanks for mentioning that

Monica: Indeed. And thank you, Charles. Thank you so much for being a guest on the show and for this incredible conversation and especially for your incredible work in the world.

Thank you again to our listeners, and I'll be sure to put all of Charles's links in the show notes, as well as some of my favorite essays until next. More to be revealed. 

Charles: Thanks Monica.

Monica: We hope you enjoyed this episode for more information, please visit us@jointherevelation.com and be sure to download our free gift, subscribe to our mailing list or leave us a review on iTunes. We thank you for your generous listening and as always more to be revealed.