Josh Mortensen (00:00)

Camille Fioranelli, welcome to the Explorer Poet Podcast.

Camille Fioranelli (00:03)

Thank you so much. It’s very ⁓ humbling experience to be here, honestly.

Josh Mortensen (00:10)

⁓ it’s, yeah,

it’s a pleasure for me to have you and I think you’re fully qualified. We’ve met in person actually, which is kind of rare for me for this podcast is to first meet people in person. ⁓ Usually I come across people online and kind of, or you know, they’re writers or whatever. ⁓ But you do have an online presence. You go by a slightly different name online, but you’ve got a cool sub stack called Contra persona.

Camille Fioranelli (00:16)

Ha ha!

Josh Mortensen (00:39)

and I am curious to hear a little bit about what you write about. What we were just talking about before we kicked off actually was your, I guess it is kind of a persona. It’s like your pen name or your pseudonym. You go by Allora Faust.

Camille Fioranelli (00:55)

Yep, yep.

Yep, Elara Faust. And it’s funny. Yeah, well, it’s very much a persona, because I created it when I was in school for ⁓ clinical mental health counseling. And I wasn’t sure, like they have like different rules about social media use and things like that. And I knew I wasn’t crossing any boundaries, but ⁓ it was just like the screams had gotten so loud in my head during school.

Josh Mortensen (01:01)

Yes, tell me a little bit about that.

Camille Fioranelli (01:28)

that I didn’t have any outlet for them at all with some peers, maybe a little bit, but it mostly was me teaching then it was a collaborative just back and forth. So I created this website that I could let the screams out so to speak. And it was ⁓ primarily ⁓ dissecting Yogi and psychology ultimately and archetypal structures and going into that. I created this name.

Elara Faust and why I did was because Elara, that name, that first name means ⁓ something along the lines of coming to light or bringing to light. Whereas Faust, as you will recall the play, the very famous one, ⁓ it’s basically making a pact with the devil, ⁓ which I related to coming to consciousness. You have to go through the depths of hell of shit of everything.

in order to see the light. So it’s this purposeful confrontation with the shadow. That’s what it is, ultimately. And that’s what the name depicts. And that’s what all of my work is about that’s on there.

Josh Mortensen (02:45)

Yeah, very cool. it’s very light and dark. Yeah, light and shadow. The Alara. I don’t know if it’s exactly Alara, but do know the movie Willow?

Camille Fioranelli (02:48)

Yeah.

Yeah, I just

watched it like a few days ago.

Josh Mortensen (02:59)

Is

that the little is that the little baby’s name the little girl that he has to save isn’t it a Laura Downing

Camille Fioranelli (03:04)

Is it? my God, if it is, that went right over my head. I watched it with my baby and I was like, I don’t know if I should be watching this.

Josh Mortensen (03:07)

Yeah. That’s the, I

don’t know if it’s exactly the same name, but when I saw your pen name, that’s what popped into my mind at first was a Laura Downing. Willow is a funny little kind of like hero’s journey movie written by ⁓ George Lucas. so kind of, I have no idea whether it came before or after Star Wars, but it’s like kind of the silly ⁓ fantastical world, but it’s actually a really good.

Camille Fioranelli (03:18)

interesting.

Josh Mortensen (03:37)

hero’s journey story.

Camille Fioranelli (03:39)

It is. with Lucas too, that dude, he knew about the narrative folding too. That’s really demonstrated in all stories. So you have like, take the adventures for a prime example. You have the main story of like, they’re defeating the bad guy. Cool. That’s like the point of it. But then you have the narrative folding behind it.

where you just keep going beneath the surface and there’s something more. There’s something more to dissect. ⁓ Whether it’s relating it to another archetypal structure or another story, there’s always something more than just a hero’s journey. There’s more to it and it’s more… How do I describe this? It’s like our… It touches our souls in a way because all humans have this like…

aching to like find more, to do more. That’s why we like Heroes Journey so much. And Jung knew this. ⁓ Video games are modeled after his like archetypal structures, things like that. You always have like the sage, you have the warrior, or you have the king, you have these different archetypes, and they’re all shown within this. I also like to bring in like the tarot as well, the Major Arquina especially, where you have like the hangman, the fool.

of the priestess. all matter and they’re all characters that are demonstrated within this narrative folding that humans are so drawn to in the films that we watch and that we enjoy and don’t totally necessarily, I should say, know why, I guess.

Josh Mortensen (05:28)

Yeah, something I think it’s something about these archetypal forces or energies or characters, whatever they may be. think there’s honestly, I think they’re coded into our genetics. think it’s, we’re only kind of just starting to see that this is actually just how our operating system is programmed. It’s the way that we interact with the world. Like if you think about it in the same way that a video in a video game, these characters you’re talking about, they have to go through the game and they like,

They have to interact in some way. They have to process what’s happening to them in some way. Us in the real world, we have to do the same thing. We have to go out into the world, interact with the world and process it and conceptualize it in a way. And it seems to me that these archetypes are part of this story coding that our brain is constantly doing. And it kind of tricks us into thinking that we’re experiencing.

I don’t know, experiencing our reality in one way ⁓ when similar to what you’re describing, is, there are further layers, they go deeper. It’s like deeper inside of us than actually what we’re experiencing out there in the world.

Camille Fioranelli (06:36)

Right? It’s two things came to mind there. The first would be a shroom’s trip that I heard about. I did not experience it, but I heard about it in which somebody took a hero’s dose, which is four or five grams, and started to see everything around them turn to code. It was very fascinating to listen to him tell me the story about this. I was just beyond intrigued by this, that coding might be at the crux of

this, you know, of everything. ⁓ And then the second thing that came to mind kind of escaped me because I was thinking about coding there and the imagery that was behind it. But yeah, I lost the second thing. Shoot. It was a good thing, too.

Josh Mortensen (07:26)

I it was. just, okay, I do have a question because when we first started, you were talking about how the idea for your sub stack, came to you while you were in school and you said it was, there were all these voices or, I can’t remember exactly what was, these voices screaming in your head, screams in your head, yeah. So help me understand what you mean by screams in your head. And then, yeah, yeah, maybe start there. What are these screams? What do you mean?

Camille Fioranelli (07:26)

It’ll come back. Yeah.

Yeah, screams. Yeah.

gosh.

So how I think about things, it’s very much through images. Like when I was just explaining the coding thing, like that’s what kind of came into my head and I just kind of imagined life as code. What I meant by the screams in my head is I have a picture that I created on my anxiety post where it’s this guy seemingly just calm still, but like in the corner you see like this.

face of his morphed and like screaming and uncontainable basically. And that’s how I felt. ⁓ My persona is to be very observational, very quiet. I don’t like rocking boats. I hate confrontation. So I just kind of sit back and I listen. And I don’t agree often. I disagree with most people a good chunk of the time, especially

in an academic setting, I think it’s very ⁓ two dimensional. I mean, they just flatten reality and the depths of human existence, especially when they go from a behavioral lens. So that’s what I was mentioning, the screams, is that I’m just so quiet. this thing that I’ve always done throughout my life is make myself small to appease others. I don’t.

Again, I don’t to rock any boats. I also had very angry parents growing up. So that’s like, that’s where it stems from is, oh, I don’t want to piss off my parents. So you got to be quiet. Well, I realized most people are like that. And I’ve also noticed that when you’re quiet, most people will project something onto you. It’s their own because what human interaction is, is it’s inner worlds interacting. So, and we have no control over the person that’s sitting across from us or next to us or anything.

their own inner world is occurring that is entirely subjective and separate from my own world. So I noticed that by my being quiet, I can let others project what they may on to me. And normally if I’m quiet enough, it’s a positive that they’ll project on to me. And pretty soon, maybe they’ll become intrigued or maybe ask a question about some little flippant thing that I interjected into the conversation and…

I like that. I like the mystery behind it. But the issue is, is humans are social creatures. We all, we all need an outlet and we all have shadow work that needs to be done. And for someone like me that just remains quiet, I’m not actively doing anything. I’m not integrating. I’m not especially integrating with other folks because I’m kind of afraid of what that, that darkness may be.

So within my writing, that’s like my rage against the machine in a way, ⁓ against society and its bullshit. And it’s very two dimensional thinking that just does not make sense. And it’s like the same hypocritical bullshit over and over. And it just got really frustrating for me. So I made this website to argue.

Josh Mortensen (11:09)

Yeah, I can see where

you’re coming from. if I was to maybe say it back to you in the way that I’m understanding it, it’s almost as if you’re obviously gray rocking. you don’t want to draw attention because there’s people around you who, you know, it may not be pleasant attention. And so the persona that you’re putting out is this little gray rock and you don’t want any attention. But

Camille Fioranelli (11:25)

Great rocking.

Exactly.

Right.

Josh Mortensen (11:39)

Internally, this is causing some kind of a storm. Even though you’re not saying these things out loud, there’s an internal dialogue that’s going on and you’re going, you’re screaming it. You people are crazy, but you can’t actually say it to them. Yeah, it’s interesting because I’ve experienced something very similar and I actually went through this really challenging time. ⁓ This was years back and it was shortly after my first experience with psychedelics and ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (11:48)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (12:07)

As usually happens, you only fully understand it much later. I’ve heard people talk about how one thing that happens when you try psychedelics particularly for the first time is that you have an encounter with the ego and you have this encounter with the unconscious in such a way that people often talk about psychedelics as something that obliterates your ego or you have an ego death. But in a real sense, you can also have a

It can also cause you to have a very strong identification with the ego because suddenly you feel like you’re more aware than everybody else. You’re smarter than everybody else. You can see things that not everybody else can see. And so what you end up doing is having these conversations in your own head because you can’t talk to people about this stuff because like you were saying, they think in a two dimensional world and so they’re not seeing anything that’s beyond their own experience. ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (12:45)

Yes. Right.

Exactly.

Josh Mortensen (13:03)

Yeah, so I’ve had that experience as well where you just find yourself yelling at people in your head. ⁓ I had to really work on it. And the thing that helped me was to first realize that it doesn’t matter how much I think I’m addressing these people, it’s all happening inside my own head. And so the only people that I’m yelling at, the only person that I’m yelling at is actually just myself.

Camille Fioranelli (13:07)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (13:30)

And it is like this big, you know, just like you say on your sub stack, it’s like a mirror that reflects both ways. And so you are, you think you’re interacting with the world, but you’re just interacting with yourself in a very, so yeah, kudos to you for starting this sub stack and getting it all out there. But also I think your writing is fantastic and you do a good job of going really deep on all these archetypal characters and forces. And then also tying together a lot of

Camille Fioranelli (13:38)

Exactly.

Exactly.

Thank you.

Josh Mortensen (14:00)

There’s a lot of different myths that you tie together through similar ideas. think you do a great job.

Camille Fioranelli (14:05)

Yes, that’s my goal. Something popped up when you were ⁓ explaining ⁓ your resonance basically with what I was, what I am trying to portray basically in my website. So Jung has this quote, ⁓ I’ll probably just be paraphrasing it. It’s, the thing that upsets us the most about others can lead us to a deeper awareness of ourselves. And I may rage.

Josh Mortensen (14:08)

Yeah.

Camille Fioranelli (14:32)

hard at the world around me. Like I think everybody, it’s rough. It’s very bleak in my head and my perception of reality, especially when I very easily slip into a nihilistic frame of mind. ⁓ But just knowing that it’s like, okay, what is this person telling basically me about me? ⁓ Because they’re a mirror. Everybody is a mirror.

I don’t fucking care how monstrous they look. They’re a mirror to you. Anyone who says, I could never do that. I could never murder. I could never hurt this poor little creature. Fuck you. Yeah, you could. Like, you have to realize that in order to grow. If you want to be whole, you have to acknowledge the monster that you are and the monster that already resides within, or else you’re going to keep striving for this myth of

goodness that is just so ingrained man and our society and our culture everything it’s just be good be good just be good no be you and who the fuck is that no one knows who we really are we’re all wearing masks that are blinding us to who we truly are so this is a part of of the rage my rage against the machine is I think there’s other people out there that think

even a little bit like me or are curious and maybe something has piqued their interest about Zeus or about Hercules or Athena and maybe they’ll google it and maybe somehow come across, you know, my website and be like, shit, I’ve never read it this way before. Because all we remember is in high school going over some myths and it was ridiculous. It didn’t mean anything. But my goal is to show like

Each one of these myths are a part of us, men and women alike. It doesn’t matter what gender you are, what you identify as, it doesn’t matter. We’re part of all of these. We just have to get to know it and understand it better, to be whole.

Josh Mortensen (16:40)

You’re familiar with Rumi, right, the poet. He’s got this great quote where he says, you are not a drop in the ocean, you are the ocean in a drop. And for some people, that might be hard to wrap their heads around, if you think about it as, you know, it’s easy to say that you’re a drop in the ocean, because you’re just one person among however hundreds of billions who may have existed at some time.

Camille Fioranelli (16:43)

Yeah, I am, yes.

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (17:10)

But at the same time, like you’re saying, you have the ability to do good things and everybody has the ability to do evil things. so you have, inside each one of us, we have the total potential of almost the entire human race, right? Like all of the archetypes are inside of us, good and bad. And so depending on your time and place and the environment and the needs, the necessities of your situation,

any one of these archetypes can seize you and take control.

Camille Fioranelli (17:43)

Exactly, exactly. love, ⁓ what really opened my eyes initially to psychology and my love of it was an Eastern religions course. I did not want to go way back. I did not want to go back to school, hated academia and I didn’t like ⁓ how just close-minded it was with a guise of open-mindedness. I didn’t like it. ⁓

and they had screwed me over too when I did college early on. So I had to redo classes and I didn’t want to redo them. But I eventually was like, you know what, I’m going to get over my own ego and I’m going to do it. And I took an Eastern religions course and an English course and my God, it was amazing. Especially the Eastern religions course. Cause in Hinduism, the belief for at least some, I don’t want to say everybody by any means, but for some it’s

The gods represent kind of emotions. That’s what they really are. It’s not necessarily a literal being, a literal deity at all times. They represent aspects that are within each of us. And I just think that’s so astounding. And that really struck me. And it kind of coincides with, I believe, Jung said, or it was Joseph Campbell. It was someone, some brilliant mind.

that said complexes are ⁓ like upset gods or distraught gods and same with emotions, something along the lines of that but it’s really always just kind of stuck with me. So whenever I feel very upset, it’s like, ⁓ what is this trying to tell me within myself? What complexes is stirring up? If that makes sense.

Josh Mortensen (19:30)

That makes a lot of sense. I think about the, it’s interesting you talk about the Hindu people in the Hindu faith who they don’t see their gods as external realities, but as representations of emotions or some kind of sensation inside of themselves. I think the Greeks also figured that out pretty far back that these stories were not literal, but they were representations of the inner world. What was going on inside of all of us. It’s interesting how it’s interesting how literal.

we take our God in the modern day, right? We look back on people in old myths and old stories, ancient civilizations, and we kind of mock them for believing those gods in such a literal way. But I think in reality, they would look at us and just shake their heads and think, wow, I cannot believe you take that so literally.

Camille Fioranelli (20:02)

Right?

you

I think ancient civilization would see us and be like, the fuck are these people doing? Like it just as a whole, it’s, we’ve lost touch with, with kind of everything. And we’ve so like, so many of us, so many of my clients that I talked to, because I specialize in working with men and I can’t tell you, it was like every single one. I can’t think of one actually that didn’t do this, that absolutely kept emotion separate.

Josh Mortensen (20:29)

Yeah. Yeah.

Camille Fioranelli (20:52)

from logic. That’s at least what they thought they were doing. It was not what they were doing at all, but my gosh, it was only one client that I could actually have a conversation with him about it. And he said, it’s comfortable that way. I don’t, I don’t like emotion. It’s deeply uncomfortable. And the thing about me is I’m very much the same, even though I’m a female and I’m very much emotional. That’s like a key piece of my personality type too is I’m feeling based. But

Emotions are horribly uncomfortable for me, any kind. And it’s like, God, tears? No, what is this? let me logic my way out of it. Let me intellectualize my complexes instead so I can get away from this emotion. And I feel like, I read this incredible book ⁓ called The Conflict Between Word and Image ⁓ by

Leonard Schleen, I believe his name is, and incredible book that goes over, honestly it may have been his thesis actually, but he discusses what occurred when we started to put writing over image. We started thinking that held more weight than images did, ⁓ such as like paintings and things like that. Like they held such incredible weight and now it’s just

you know, you can stick a tampon to a board and call it like beautiful artwork. And it’s like, okay, well, I think that’s lacking a little bit, but you know, okay. But what he discusses is that that conflict between emotion and logic. That’s what we have. We’re separating the two and we like to do that. You look at our workforce and it’s like,

tell me about the analytics of all of that. It’s like, no, tell me about how fucking miserable you are in this job. Like that’s what I’m intrigued about. What keeps you here? Are you motivated? Like what keeps you from, you know, not quitting every second of the day? Is it just money? Like that’s what I’m curious about, your humanity, not the data analytics. Does that make me excited about my job? know? And I, again, to go back to ancient civilization, you know.

People were more illiterate. They didn’t know how to read, but they had image. They’ve always had image. Cavemen, you know, the drawings. We had image that held weight. That was something. And then eventually down the line, we had philosophers that were like, no, write it all down. It needs to be written. Same with religion. It was like, write it down. This is the best thing in the world. And it’s like, no, that’s going to fuck it up. The ego is going to cloud.

everything about it, the human, the unconscious humanness of us is going to cloud the beauty of this like religion at the crux of it. When it’s saying basically there is no you or I, there’s just us, there’s humanity, yet we are like no, now we need to show how we are a Christian or show how we are a Sikh or how we are Jewish, you know, I mean it’s just…

We’ve gotten away ⁓ from ourselves. I think that’s the best way of putting it. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (24:25)

gotten away from some semblance of a whole self rather than these parts that have been spread out and kept separate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. So ⁓ I think we might have talked about this before, but when you talk about separating logic and emotion and how word is superior now to image.

Camille Fioranelli (24:28)

Yeah. Yes. Yeah, and rated, know, weighed differently.

Josh Mortensen (24:50)

It makes me think, and also earlier when you were talking about how we’re so focused on being good and so focused on the light and we’re so afraid of anything bad or being bad or having the darkness, I think it’s all connected because, well, in the Western world where we live, and we’re pretty far West, even if you think about,

interesting thing about the world is that the farther west you go, the more western it gets in a weird way. Yeah, so we’re pretty far west in the western world being out here in the mountain west. In our western world, there’s this underlying myth. It’s like the foundational myth of our world, which is the Garden of Eden. In the Garden of Eden, Adam and

Camille Fioranelli (25:24)

I know what you mean.

Josh Mortensen (25:45)

Adam and Eve, eventually they partook of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And in partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they and then all of their predecessors, all of their children and grandchildren, great grandchildren, all the way down to us, we all in the Western world have this idea that we know what’s good and we know what’s bad. in some ways, it has been helpful. We have brought a lot of good things to the world. And when I say like,

the most west you go, the most western it becomes. It’s in San Francisco, California where they’re developing artificial intelligence. So it doesn’t get any more western than that. It’s almost treating consciousness as pure logic rather than the entire experience. And so it’s so separate. That’s an artificial intelligence conversation. But the way I see it is in the Garden of Eden.

Camille Fioranelli (26:26)

Seriously. Very true.

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (26:44)

partaking of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, meaning you think you know what’s right and what’s wrong, that in and of itself is an identification with a certain part of ourselves. And I would say that that’s an identification with the ego. And then to take that further, and then in the opening chapters of the New Testament, rather than the Old Testament, it talks about how in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

And in the Western world, that’s who we’ve identified with. We’ve identified with the word, we’ve identified with this rational, like what we think of as intelligence, this ability to know good and bad. And then if you, at the same time that everybody in kind of our world is trying to be good and trying not to be bad, the entire Western world for almost all time has been a competition of morality. Like who’s more moral? Who’s?

Camille Fioranelli (27:14)

Mm-hmm.

Exactly,

yes.

Josh Mortensen (27:44)

who has the right law and we should all follow that law. Whereas in the Eastern world, they went the complete opposite, they obliterated their ego and they hardly even debate morality, they hardly even think about it. And ⁓ it’s just such a, I find it fascinating actually, to see the entire world as a giant yin-yang symbol, going back to this imagery that you’re talking about. ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (27:50)

exactly.

Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Mm-hmm.

Josh Mortensen (28:13)

But yeah, I think that’s what it is. And so when you talk about a complex being some form of a previously like permitted God who’s now being suppressed or oppressed, I think that’s why people like, know, Freud and Jung, they popped up in Europe. They didn’t pop up in India or China or Japan. They popped up in Europe because in India you can still worship thousands of gods. They’re all available, they’re all permitted.

but in the Western world, we identified one that we cared about and all the others, know, thou shalt have no other gods before me. And so you take all of these emotions and impulses and images and instincts and drives and you suppress them, you know, you put them into your shadow and you suppress them and then they become complexes. Yeah, yeah.

Camille Fioranelli (28:46)

Yeah.

And then what happens?

Exactly. To build off that too, a lot of things came to mind, I don’t have to kind of organize it. All of existence mirrors each other. It mirrors itself, right? So how did America start? It was religious, basically. We were fleeing religious persecution.

many immigrants that came here like the Mayflower things like that and it’s like well we’ll create this Constitution you can worship whoever you want. Sure that’s a guys though we still put this one faith above all others all others are incorrect even though they fucking mirror each other at the crux of them ⁓ we won’t we won’t acknowledge that though it’s still this big daddy in the sky that we’re gonna worship that sees the superior being.

And we still do that to this day. Like it’s still the exact same thing. We rate sins. We just don’t call them sins necessarily. We a lot of the time say, I believe in science. Well, A, science is writing. That is what it is. It’s data. You can say, did you look at the data? ⁓ But data can only tell us so much and research is created to be, to disprove something else.

perpetually disproving itself. So how the fuck can I believe in science when at the crux of it, it’s to disprove something else? ⁓ It’s kind of silly. We’ve really morphed it into believing, no, this tells us the end all be all of what sins we should rate, what we should put above another thing. And case in point ⁓ research when it is just a case study, when it’s on one individual.

For some reason, it holds no weight. Jung, all he did was case studies. mean, he just said, like a mountain of paperwork this man did on his clients, it’s astounding. And yet, it’s not Freudian, because Freud believed in the model that we have now of research and how it’s this umbrella that needs to be assessed and applied to everyone. ⁓ When Jung was like, nah, every human is…

very uniquely themselves. Like, yeah, there’s similarities. There’s the collective unconscious that applies like archetypal structures and like the shadow aspect of the self, this perpetual fight between light and dark. Yeah, I mean, that’s there. But the individual experience is subjective. Reality is subjective for each human. Humans arguably cannot perceive any objective reality. You look at a tree.

We labeled it a fucking tree, like that name in and of itself. And not to mention, we may not be able to see colors attached to that tree because we’re limited in our eyesight compared to even other animals. Like, it’s just kind of funny how much we’re striving to know everything, yet the very thing that we do know, such as our emotions, we ignore.

Like, shit, that made me sad. Why did that make me sad? Like, why am I crying over watching that commercial about a dad and his daughter? Like, why did that make me cry? I don’t know, fuck it. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. Science matters. That’s what matters. That’s what makes sense. And yet it’s emotion that’s always made sense. Yet we just shove it down. Image has always made sense to an extent.

I’m not a good drawer at all. I suck, but I try and I’m able to make abstract art. And that matters to me. That always actually reflects my inner world when I make abstract art, whether it’s the colors I use, the shapes used, if they’re more fluid or if they’re more rigid, that matters. That’s something. And that’s something about me. And it’s nothing that’s rated.

It’s just me and especially what I’m feeling and perceiving necessarily right now. And we’ve just, we’re so disconnected from everything and ourselves and from others too. And everything is a battle. ⁓ One thing that’s really been sticking with me lately that I’ve been thinking about is the number of people that say they hate sports. There’s a lot of them. I love baseball.

I love sports. actually for Halloween went to a rave in Seattle and I was distracted watching the baseball game with my friend. So we were a friend center. I love it. But I don’t also feel competitive with everybody around me. And I’ve noticed that a lot of the people that say how much they hate sports are horribly competitive human beings. It’s just not pertaining to sports. It’s about, I’m smarter than them or

I’m prettier than them. It’s, I’m this, I’m that. I know how to do this. I know I can do my job better. It’s like, okay, well, you’re just mirroring the sports that you hate so much. Do you see this? Like, again, it goes back to the mirror that all of existence really has with itself. It’s wild to experience, and it’s really sad as well because so many people just don’t see it at all.

Josh Mortensen (34:45)

think they don’t see it because they’re not supposed to see it actually. So yeah, in a weird way. Yeah, it’s it’s it’s hard to like you obviously see it. And so it’s difficult. Even though you see it, it can be difficult to explain exactly what you’re seeing. And one of the ways I think about it is in the same way that you were talking about looking at a tree, and you’re trying to you’re trying to say

Camille Fioranelli (34:51)

supposed to.

Mm-hmm, very much so.

Josh Mortensen (35:14)

Even though we’re seeing this tree, this is a subjective experience for me. And even if you’re standing next to me seeing the same tree, it’s still a subjective experience for you. We’re not actually having the same experience. And I think there’s a number of reasons for that. One of them being that ⁓ we identify so wholly with like the image of ourselves that is created.

through our psyche, or through our, not even our psyche, but through our mind, our brain, this persona that you talk about, this mask that must be put on. And the interesting thing about the mask itself is that you perceive your own mask in such a way that nobody else could possibly perceive it. It’s just so ironic, right?

Camille Fioranelli (36:02)

Mm-hmm. It’s very funny.

Josh Mortensen (36:04)

But we do this because again, I think it’s because of the way we’re programmed. It’s the way that we are adapted to exist in a world, right? So most animals have sight and sound, like touch and smell and taste, and that’s how they navigate the world. They don’t necessarily navigate the world through thoughts. They might have images that pop into their head, some kind of something symbolic of another thing that triggers a reaction or a movement inside of them.

but they’re not formulating sentences and paragraphs in their head and they’re not playing out scenarios in their head like it’s a movie like we might. But they do have these sensory organs that are adapted to helping them perceive their environment in such a way that is beneficial to their survival. And our sensory organs are the same thing. When I think of the human species, I think of us as like,

We’re just this set of sensory organs. Those organs are being used to navigate an environment and what they’re doing is they’re projecting onto us what is beneficial to navigate that environment. So when you see a tree, in a weird way, you’re not actually seeing the tree. You’re seeing a representation of the tree that your eyes in

connection with your mind are creating for you. And that’s how all the senses work. You don’t actually touch a table, even though there is a table there, you’re not actually feeling the table because what you’re actually feeling is the nerve endings in your body reacting to coming into contact with something. It’s not actually the table you’re touching. And so there’s this weird, so our entire experience is created for us by our own bodies.

And so in that way, everybody’s experience is subjective. And when I think about thoughts themselves, I think that thoughts are no different than all of these other senses. They are also just inputs. It’s just that there are these kind of abstract inputs that come from within us. And so rather than seeing a tree and saying, that’s a tree, the thought comes to you as, what if the tree was like this? Or what if the tree did this?

or what if, you know, it’s these what if questions, these what if statements, which is also in a weird way, kind of the underlying power of fairy tales and myths is it’s all these what ifs. What if this happened? What if that happened? What would you do? What would we do, you know? And so in this way, we are just this strange kind of…

See, it’s hard to put it into words. We’re just like a bunch of sensory inputs. ⁓ because of that, none of us actually, and this is honestly my brother and I both, grew up LDS or Mormon, and we both since stepped away from the religion. But I was talking to him recently and he was saying that one of the reasons he decided to leave religion was because he realized that he was sitting in church one day looking around and he realized that it wasn’t possible.

Camille Fioranelli (38:58)

Yeah, that’s good.

Josh Mortensen (39:23)

that everybody in that room believed in the same God.

Camille Fioranelli (39:28)

Yes.

Josh Mortensen (39:29)

even if they’re saying that they have the same belief in the same God, they all have a different image and a different relation to that image, different expectations, different experiences, and so they’re not actually worshiping the same God ⁓ in the same way that they’re not actually looking at the same tree.

Camille Fioranelli (39:37)

Yes.

Mm-hmm. I completely agree with that. I just watched a really funny video earlier today. This guy conducts like interviews on the subway in New York and he interviewed a comedian and she said Basically in a nutshell, she doesn’t believe religious people anyone who is religious isn’t really religious That was her hot take and he said I disagree and she said no unless you are a fundamentalist and you are bombing yourself for some

Some deity or some God and you are preaching to everybody that they need to believe in God You’re not religious. I don’t believe it and it was very funny to me because like a part of me was like I kind of get it ⁓ and to go back to your point What drives a lot of people to religion is a religious experience that they they ⁓ experienced again but

They didn’t understand it. And the thing that helped them to understand was a religion. And it’s a big daddy in the sky that’s like, I get it. It was God. I understand now. And it’s like, we’re not okay with not knowing. None of us are. We just are like, no, give me more, give me more. ⁓ To go to, ⁓ gosh, what’s her face? In one of the… ⁓

gosh, with Harrison Ford, Indiana Jones. It was one of the ones with the alien, not Kate, was it Kate Blanchett? Yes. So people hate that movie.

Josh Mortensen (41:22)

Yeah, I walked out of that one, but it was so bad. But George Lucas is awesome.

George Lucas is awesome again, but that was bad. Yeah, I walked out of that

Camille Fioranelli (41:31)

So people

hated it, right? But what’s funny to me is if I’d be goddamned, if not every human being is a Cate Blanchett being like, I want to know, give me all your knowledge. Yeah, she’s saying it to a blue alien. I get it. Ignore that. Ignore the goofy effects. That’s everybody who’s like, I will read this book. Give me all this knowledge. I will listen to these podcasts. Give me all this knowledge. That’s not everybody I should say, actually.

A lot of people want fear, like those that listen to like, that are obsessed with like criminal, real crime, true crime podcasts. That has always fascinated me, especially the number of women that are wildly into true crime. It’s very concerning to me, but it’s also really interesting. ⁓ But I think a part of us is like, I want to know. We’re not okay with the not knowing. So that’s why no.

There is an objective reality. That tree is what everybody is perceiving. I’ve gotten into arguments with some people about this before. ⁓ One of them being a date, which I had to leave early because I just couldn’t take it anymore. This conversation with him, because he was just so not okay with this idea that reality is subjective and my own and his own. Like he wasn’t okay with that because then that…

kind of goes against this drive for logic. No, logic. ⁓ This one God, we worship this one God, and this one God is correct. And this is the one ticket to heaven for us or to some paradise or whatever it may be. And it’s just so fascinating. One thing though that you’ve mentioned is, I think you said ⁓ not everybody should know. I think that’s like kind of

to go way back what kicked us off. I’m very curious about that. What you meant about why shouldn’t everybody know?

Josh Mortensen (43:39)

I think fundamentally as humans, we’re a social species. this may have occurred over time in different times and places where there were people who suddenly realized, whoa, this is what’s actually going on. We talked about the people from India, the Indians understanding that their gods.

are most likely just some kind of internal force or emotion or something like that. And the Greeks kind of figuring the same thing out. But in general, ideas are what unite people into groups. And I don’t think that it’s inherent in the adaptation that everybody

has either the capacity or the courage ⁓ to achieve a state where they’re aware of themselves. I think that’s what the psyche as a whole, say the psyche of the whole human species, I think that’s what it’s been driving towards. It’s hoping to get us to a state of consciousness. And I think that as much as I can sit here and talk about the ills of monotheism or the…

the literalization of the Christian myth and how it’s actually, I can talk about all this stuff, but at the same time, I do believe that

It’s not that we’re at the end of history, but we’re the farthest history has ever made it so far. Right? And so I do believe that the myths that we have in the Western world, particularly the Christian myth, it is the most advanced myth that the psyche has ever put together to drive us towards consciousness.

Camille Fioranelli (45:17)

Right. ⁓

Interesting.

Josh Mortensen (45:35)

Yeah, so you like Joseph Campbell and ⁓ he’s got this big long series called The Masks of God and that’s when I really became a fan of Joseph Campbell when I read like 1200 pages of Campbell. He’s got just like this fat stick. Yeah, but he basically starts at the myths, like ⁓ ancient myths and then he goes into… ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (45:38)

Yes.

Thank

Mm-hmm.

That’ll do it.

Josh Mortensen (46:00)

goes into Eastern myth, then he goes into Western myth, and then he goes into modern or creative myth. And that’s kind of where we are today is in this kind of romantic individualized creative mythical space. he kind of shows through this how there are various ways of reading myths. in some of the esoteric Judaism as well, they’ve come up with this. And they actually have

four terms for it. I don’t know the Hebrew for it, but they have it in Hebrew as well. Joseph Campbell lays it out in English where you can read a myth literally, which is like the going concern. how most people do it. Reading a myth literally gives everybody this idea that they’re all sharing the same objective reality and then they can all become aligned with each other. It’s beneficial for groups and tribes.

I mean, it’s what holds the United States together is this big collective literalization that we are an actual country, even though we just invented our borders. And so in a sense, again, this is just how humans operate. And so there’s no reason to be bitter about it. But also, if you get too many individuals in a group, if you get too many people who realize this is just how we operate, then the whole thing starts to fall apart. It’s the same reason why

Camille Fioranelli (47:04)

Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (47:24)

there are no atheist churches because atheists, they all think they agree, but they all think something, they all disagree. so, ⁓ yeah, and so the other ways to read myth are, there’s the literalization of myth. Another way that kind of comes along with the literalization is the moralization of myth. It’s like trying to tell you what’s good and bad and those kind of pair together. There’s the allegorical.

version of myth or like the metaphorical way of reading myth where you’re saying, well, I can apply this to another situation, but usually it’s two externalized situations that you’re comparing, you know? But then the fourth and ideal way, as far as Joseph Campbell’s concerned, the fourth and ideal way of reading myth is to read it as mystical or psychological, right? And the purpose there of any myth is to bring you closer to consciousness. And

Camille Fioranelli (48:01)

Right, right.

Josh Mortensen (48:20)

I think that if you look at the evolution of myth over time with our current kind of Western Christian myth, is, I mean, this kind of is, it’s kind of silly to even say, but in our time and place being the Western world in the modern era, it is the most effective myth that the psyche has ever been able to come up with as far as pushing us towards consciousness. But you have to read it in the right way.

Camille Fioranelli (48:49)

interesting. See, I’ve always

Josh Mortensen (48:50)

But

I guess that’s also to say, just real quick, is that the majority of people are going to read myths literally, which means they’re going to accept them as if they’re some concrete physical reality, or they’re gonna reject them wholesale. So that’s the Christians and the atheists. They’re doing the exact same thing. They just think they’re different. ⁓ And so most people are never going to approach myth from a psychological perspective.

Camille Fioranelli (49:09)

Yeah.

very true. It’s funny. ⁓ So Taoism, I integrate that a lot in my writing, because I perceive that as kind of the closest to helping us integrate actually to consciousness. I love Taoism. think it’s beautiful ⁓ in its like abstract ways basically. ⁓ But also like

you mentioned like the other, our tribalistic nature and everything like that. And I have to say, I think I truly believe everybody should come to consciousness. That’s my idealistic ⁓ view, but I’m not going to force everybody. You know, I’m not sitting here from a high horse believing that everybody needs to read Jung and do this because they wouldn’t understand it. And I’ve seen what people have done to

Jung and it’s rough. And like in the words of Jung, he said, I love being Carl Jung, but I’d hate to be a Jungian. That’s for a reason. Like we’re all individuals. And I actually had to like lay off ⁓ reading as much as I was both of Jung, of Marie-Louise von Franz, of James Hollis, especially Campbell. I had to lay off because I realized that I was starting to regurgitate instead of speak my own voice. ⁓

I still integrate Jung into my writings and everything like that and into my speech, but it’s I’m more willing to Be uncertain I guess with my words because a lot of it is so ⁓ abstract and image based as well as ⁓ Feeling based as well. And so again, I think with people

I think you are very much right. I think it would fall apart, perhaps, but in my little idealistic chamber of my mind, there’s this idea that maybe if we were all just unique individuals roaming around, that we’re conscious of ourselves and thus conscious of others, like, cause that’s the ultimate way to build tolerance is by being conscious of yourself.

Like if you see something that’s pissing you off, again, dissect it. Why is it pissing you off? Because it’s telling you about you. That’s a chore for you to figure out. So my hope was like, I don’t know, people would be more aware and thus we’d have a better world. I, know, like much like a disease that is idealism as well. it’s, you know, it’s my own individual view of it.

⁓ Also, to go back again a very long time what you said, you mentioned about animals and how they don’t necessarily think in paragraph or sentences or anything like that. It’s funny. I was talking to my psychoanalyst earlier actually about this because I was telling him about this study that I had recently learned about this year, even though it was done in like the 70s I think. Maybe you’ve heard of it. It’s like this rat utopia that was created where they have just

as much food and water as they want. Unlimited. ⁓ What do they do? Well, they just procreate. They just keep boning and having babies. And things are great until they’re not. And it goes downhill real quick. And it’s very fascinating. Like, cannibalism ensues. All this craziness happens. And my analyst was like, they’re an animal. That’s about a mouse. They’re not a human, though.

They can’t, they don’t have consciousness. And I couldn’t help but say, how do you know? So, because we don’t. And I’ve always been so awestruck by animals. I adore animals. I am far from a vegan and far from a vegetarian. There is a guilt behind that to an extent, because cows are just so precious to me. But my God.

I can’t just absolutely say that there’s nothing behind those eyes, any eyes, whether it’s a dolphin, which we know are highly intelligent whales who communicate with each other. ⁓ Of course, they have their own language, but they still communicate. There’s animals that even cry. think it was just recently found that octopus, I believe, like have emotion and they have memory. Like they’ll get back at another one. That was a new found,

revelation to scientists. I recently read that somewhere, don’t remember. ⁓ But I just, I like to think humans aren’t the only ones. I think maybe we’re more advanced. Like, of course we have skyscrapers, like, come on. Clearly we have a little bit more something, like opposable thumbs that help us do a little bit more. But ⁓ I just can’t say that humans are wholly

separate from animals. And like when I listen to my dog cry in his sleep, I can’t say that’s not because of a bad dream, you know? And it’s like, if so, what the fuck is he dreaming about that’s making him cry? Like that flips me out. I’ve had another dog that was like running full bore in their sleep. And it’s like that that’s a dream. And I know the way I view dreams with humans, we’ve talked about this before. ⁓

It’s your unconscious communicating with you, at least with humans. It’s trying to tell you something, and it’s trying to ⁓ lead you to wholeness, ultimately, in a very small nutshell. ⁓ Because again, dreams are highly subjective to the dreamer. That’s why you work with any analyst. They’re going to try to guide you through your own dream, because it’s not them deciphering it. It’s ultimately the person dreaming it. ⁓ And it can have a million and one different interpretations.

So yeah, it’s so funny. I have been studying Jung for God since I was 19. It’s been a long time, over a decade now. And there’s the saying, of course, the more you know, the less you do. And that’s just, that embodies it all. I feel like I know absolutely nothing.

And I’m okay with it, actually. In fact, I love writing because I can sit there and work on a paragraph for like five hours, whereas speaking is way harder for me because I’m just like, but it could be this. I don’t fucking know. I just don’t know. I don’t know. I have my own views. Could totally be different from yours. I don’t know. ⁓ What about animals? I can’t discount them.

Josh Mortensen (56:31)

Yeah, what about animals? I mean, the irony, the irony

of what you’re talking about, ⁓ about not knowing the irony there is that you are like the seeker archetype, similar to me, like I just, I, I want to know and the collective consensus is never sufficient enough because you can just poke so many holes into it. And so you go looking, you know, you go

You go read somebody, a Carl Jung type or a Joseph Campbell type, and then you find what they say interesting. It’s not like you’re converted to it. You just find it interesting. And then you read their influences and you kind of go down these chains of influences and just trying to understand. And the more you go, the more you realize how many different angles people have already looked at everything from, all these different viewpoints. And you realize, yeah, yeah, that’s the kind of the great David Deutsch kind of ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (57:06)

Right. Right.

Josh Mortensen (57:28)

He’s like the physicist thinker and he says the same thing that you said. The more you discover, the more you realize you don’t know. There’s like a never ending possibility of information because every new discovery opens us up to a bunch of new discoveries, like future potential discoveries. Yeah. So the irony there is that by being one of those people who you wish everybody else would be, you’ve avoided the trap that everybody else has fallen into. ⁓

Camille Fioranelli (57:39)

exactly.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Maybe I fell into a whole different trap no one knew about, I don’t know.

Josh Mortensen (57:59)

Yeah, well I grew

up, you know, I grew up religious and my wife and I, we were married in a religion and so we spent a good chunk of our lives as people trying to live like a certain way. And now looking back on it, I mean, we could never go back. Like we’ve kind of experienced too much and seen too much and kind of investigated too much. But there is a part of us ⁓ where my wife will say, I wish I could go back to being ignorant.

And I will say, and I say the exact same thing, I just say it in a different way, where I say, I wish I could go back to being converted.

Camille Fioranelli (58:30)

Agreed.

I say I wish I could go back to being happy.

Josh Mortensen (58:41)

Yeah, that’s an interesting one because okay, so

this will take us down a completely different rabbit hole. But I’ve had a similar conversation with one of my brothers where I tried to tell him like, hey, man, like, you could become more conscious. And by becoming more conscious, you kind of you are able to set more boundaries in your life. And you’re able to identify who you actually want to give your energy to. And you’re, you’re able to kind of choose the projects that you want to focus on.

because you’re aware of who you are. So like there are all these benefits to being conscious. I mean, setting aside just that you stop hurting people as much just by being more conscious. ⁓ But his response was, yeah, but I’ve read that the more conscious you become, it doesn’t necessarily make you happier. And that is, mean, to me that is, I would love to be happy all the time, but happiness, eternal constant happiness is kind of a childish notion because happiness is just an emotion.

Camille Fioranelli (59:27)

It’s so funny.

Eight.

Josh Mortensen (59:39)

And

Camille Fioranelli (59:39)

Exactly.

Josh Mortensen (59:40)

yeah, then you need that light and that dark a little bit.

Camille Fioranelli (59:43)

Exactly. recently actually talked to my husband about that. Because I was like, babe, it sounds like you’re just like kind of hoping our relationship will be like a fairy tale and nothing but joy and happiness. And I’m just kind of confused. Can you explain this to me? And he’s like, yeah, you know, I just I just want to be happy. And I was like, you know, just so you’re aware, life is a tragedy. Like we all have the same end game of death. That is not

joyful. Okay, that is not a happy place to end up in this idea of there’s fucking nothing. Imagine that no more living, no more of this. Nothing, just nothingness. Your life is gone. It is one of the most uncomfortable thoughts to just sit in ever. And I was like, and you’re worried that you just want to be happy all the time.

when growth, especially in relationships, especially when you chose to marry one person. Are you kidding me? No, that’s such ⁓ a naive thought. It’d be like, well, we can just be happy all the time. When you look at the very concept even of monogamy, it’s a joke. Like it’s just, has roots to possessiveness, to religion.

to keeping order amongst the chaos that is a growing society. Like, no, it’s all fucking bullshit. Stop trying to be happy and be whole. So that’s where our conversation ended up. But yeah, it’s fun being married to me, let me tell you.

Josh Mortensen (1:01:15)

Yes.

Yeah, that sounds like a fun conversation. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, ⁓ I mean, yeah, if you want to, yeah, just we’re up at about an hour. So I, we should try to find something positive to end this on. But, what you’re saying is true. It’s like we have these, you know, we are existence or our reality is based on these myths and they’re these layered myths and romance and monogamy and maintaining us like a large scale society. It’s all just part of these layered myths that keep us where we are.

Camille Fioranelli (1:01:34)

Yeah

Josh Mortensen (1:01:54)

Yeah, I think it’s probably good that they’re as difficult as it is to try to have relationships with these people. And I’m not talking about your husband, but I’m thinking more like in the line of like my parents, but as difficult as it is to have relationships with certain people, it’s just not in the, it’s not in the cards for everybody to have some kind of conscious awakening. And in a way it’s probably good for some semblance of society that,

Camille Fioranelli (1:02:05)

He’s one of them.

Josh Mortensen (1:02:23)

people buy into a lot of things cohesively.

Camille Fioranelli (1:02:26)

Yeah, I think to end on a happy note, even so with the knowledge that life is a tragedy, I think what’s beautiful about it is that it’s okay to not be okay. It’s okay to be miserable. It’s okay to go through the ups and the downs because it was like one of my writings, it’s depression is a descent forward.

You’re not going backwards. That’s actually another step towards integration and towards wholeness. And it actually is pretty fucking beautiful, especially when you allow yourself to do it. ⁓ It’s not a dead end road. It’s your body, your individual essence, trying to cope with the duality of life, the yin and yang, and trying to integrate itself and not really knowing how just yet. And some people

don’t know how until they’re given the tools to know, to see those archetypal structures, to integrate them and be like, my god, I’m infuriating the gods within myself basically. I’m not living my truth or ⁓ one thing or another. Even when I say not living my truth, that doesn’t always mean an external means. We’ve really distracted ourselves with externals.

such as like different identities that we identify as and things like that. That’s fine, but it’s all within. If you are okay with yourself within, you can take you anywhere and be okay with it. And I think at the crux of it is loving yourself and that’s the ultimate goal of learning to live through a love-based lens. I think that should be the goal of everybody too.

because it’s far more beautiful than being fear-based and ⁓ worried about what’s around every corner instead of just being like, I love life, I love myself, let’s do this. That kind of feeling.

Josh Mortensen (1:04:35)

Yeah, agreed. And going back to this two way mirror that we were talking about earlier, if you can do it with yourself, you can suddenly see it in everybody else and you can, yeah, life can become much more compassionate and empathetic. You can have a little bit more patience with people. Hey, consciousness, that’s the point, right? ⁓ Yeah, thank you so much, Alara Faust or Camille Fioranelli.

Camille Fioranelli (1:04:49)

Exactly.

Exactly. Yes.

Thank you. Yeah.

Josh Mortensen (1:05:02)

I really appreciate it.

anybody listening wants to find your work, where would they go?

Camille Fioranelli (1:05:08)

It is ContraPersona.com. thank you. Yeah, thank you so much.

Josh Mortensen (1:05:13)

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much. This is lot of fun. Yep,

bye.