Transforming Ourselves and Our World in Dark Times with Andrew Harvey

• Learn about Andrew's devastating experience within a spiritual community and the growth that arose from it. 
• Discovering the love, joy, power, stamina, passion, and beauty within yourself that connects you directly to your divinity. 
• How we can move through this time of global peril to become a world with extraordinary new powers of love, compassion, and justice.  
• The ways your individual dark night of the soul can lead to a more expanded, authentic, creative, joyful, regenerated self. 
• Exploring the radical regeneration map available to us all that offers hope for personal and global transformation. 

Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed writer, poet, translator and mystical teacher. He is the author of over 40 books, including Son of Man, The Hope, Love is Everything, Turn Me to Gold, and Engoldenment. He has taught all over the world, given over 20 courses for the Shift Network and is the founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism. 

Andrew’s Website: https://www.andrewharvey.net/

Andrew’s book, Radical Regeneration: find it here 

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*Music by Sam Murphy*
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Transcript

Jessica Hornstein: Hi everyone. I'm Jessica Hornstein. Welcome to the No, Not Crazy Podcast where we explore the invalidating messages we internalize, their effects on our lives, and the ways we can free ourselves from them. We've all had those experiences that make us question ourselves and even sometimes feel a little crazy.

Let's stop accepting the idea that there is something inherently wrong with us and begin to appreciate that actually there is something fundamentally right. So, join me and together we can all feel a little less crazy.

So, today I am joined by Andrew Harvey. Andrew, it's wonderful to have you here. Thank you so much for joining, for joining us. 

Andrew Harvey: It's my great joy to be here with you. 

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you. 

Andrew Harvey: Lovely to be with you. 

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you. I'm just gonna read your bio and then we can get to all the things we have to discuss, if that's okay.

All right. Andrew Harvey is an internationally acclaimed writer, poet, translator, and mystical teacher. He is the author and editor of over 40 books, including Son of Man, The Hope, Love is Everything, Turn Me to Gold, Engoldenment, and Radical Regeneration. He has won the Christmas Humphrey's Prize, the Nautilus Prize twice and was the subject of the BBC documentary, The Making of a Modern Mystic.

Andrew has taught all over the world, given over 20 courses for The Shift Network, and is the founder of the Institute for Sacred Activism. 

Andrew Harvey: It's exhausting, isn't it? 

Jessica Hornstein: It's ex, exhausting. Are you, are you exhausted, Andrew? 

Andrew Harvey: I am. I'm not exhausted. I'm thrilled. But it's so strange to hear your life being read out like that.

Jessica Hornstein: I bet. And it's, I mean, what an incredible life. 

Andrew Harvey: Oh, wow. Yeah. It's, it's been wild. 

Jessica Hornstein: You've done so much. 

Andrew Harvey: Thank you, darling. 

Jessica Hornstein: It's amazing. So, so thank you for joining us here on, this topic of invalidation and validation on the other side of it.

And I know you've, you know, this touches you both in your personal life and in your professional life. So, I'd like to get to both of those if we can. 

Andrew Harvey: Of course. 

Jessica Hornstein: So in, in your book, Sun at Midnight, you talk about your experience in a spiritual community, with a spiritual leader, that was an incredibly invalidating experience and really, one of those situations that we, I think all experience at some level, but this was a pretty dramatic one where, you know something's off, you know something's wrong, something doesn't feel right, but you keep kind of twisting yourself and twisting yourself, and you're trying to find any sort of answer to what you're experiencing then what the truth is, right?

That was— 

Andrew Harvey: yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: in front of you, right? So I, I was wondering if you could just talk a little bit about that experience and, what that was like. 

Andrew Harvey: Yeah, the Sun, Sun at Midnight is my memoir of my dark night, and that was brought about by my teacher, a woman who claimed to be the divine mother, whom I'd been the leading disciple of for 15 years, telling me that I couldn't be with the man I loved, I'd fallen in love with because there was no place for gay people in the queendom of the mother. I'd given my whole life, my whole heart, my whole soul to Mother Meera and I had devoted myself, really devastating my life in order to do so for her. And I'd had some absolutely life-transforming mystical experiences through that devotion. So, I believed completely that she was a living incarnation of divine mother. And then I met this extraordinary man who was later to become my husband and fell very deeply in love with him and knew that that love was holy and sacred and transforming and something that I'd yearned for and long for, for so many years and never believed that I would find and had found and was longing to share the beauty of it with her.

And she turned around and said you have to leave him. You have to abandon him. You have to. There's no place for gay people in the kingdom of mother, and I realized she cannot be who she's claiming to be because there's no way in which the mother of the cosmos would be in any way destructive of real love, and there's no way right, which the mother of the cosmos or anybody possessed by authentic divine mother consciousness would be homophobic.

So, then I had to really announce what she'd said, which was devastating because I'd been somebody who'd written a book about how she was, who she claimed to be. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.  

Andrew Harvey: And so, I had to really honor all the people I now knew I had misled by telling the truth. But that plunged my life into absolute boiling chaos and madness because she lied.

And a great many people refused to believe me because like I had been, they were so addicted to her and to what they were imagining they were receiving from her and to the propaganda around her that they couldn't surrender that to this devastating new version that I was presenting. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. 

Andrew Harvey: And so, my life plunged really into three years of agony. My husband nearly died. We had death threats. Bombs were thrown through our window. People who found me the flavor of the month of the year before, when I first went to San Francisco—I was in San Francisco at the time—denounced me as the antichrist, which was in some ways quite fun because it's, it's a not insignificant figure to be denounced as and that at least was something, if you're going to be denounced, be denounced as the antichrist. But the inner experience was one of absolute agony, horror, devastation. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Harvey: But what I learned through the process, and this is I think what's really important about Sun at Midnight is what everyone learns through an authentic, dark night. That the most terrible thing that can happen to can be the birth canal of a holy, larger, more expanded, more authentic, more creative, more joyful, regenerated self.

So, when I look back on the experience, I am supremely grateful. To it, not to her for giving it to me, but she was the unwitting agent of an evolutionary will of the divine mother to spring me free of my addiction to her so that I could discover in myself what I projected onto her. 

I could discover the love and the joy, and the power, and the stamina, and the passion and the beauty in my own self rather than be condemned to project it on someone else and always be separated from it, So my greatest invalidation led to an experience which has only grown in the years since of being divine, of really not needing a guru that is divine, to become divine, but acknowledging my own and everyone else's divinity. And that led to 30 years of wild creativity, which has culminated in this new book of mine, Radical Regeneration, which is actually grounded in that experience of Sun at Midnight because in this book, which I wrote with Carolyn Baker, I've really tried to make as clear as possible that the whole world now is going through this global dark night experience.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: And that it is as painful, as terrible, as bewildering, as anxiety ridden, as devastatingly, strange as the experience I lived through. But because I was graced to live through that experience to its end and be birthed by it into a whole new level of consciousness and a whole new level of creativity, of passion and insight and knowledge, what I have come to understand is that this terrified process that we're in, is actually a birthing process—a process in which if we can endure it, if we can align with its laws, we can become a different humanity, a new humanity, an embodied divine humanity, capable of co-creating with God. A whole new world with extraordinary new powers of love, passion for justice and compassion. that's what my book is dedicated to, celebrating in all of its different facets. It's a huge book and it's very wild and it's very unflinching in how it faces the dark because— 

Jessica Hornstein: It is. 

Andrew Harvey: what I knew when I was going through my own personal doubt, right, is that there is no way out, but through. 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Harvey: You can't bypass it. It's happening to you like cholera, like typhoid, like a terrifying illness. You can't just scrub yourself free of typhoid or, or take, drink a Coca-Cola and cure AIDS. You've somehow got to find the way through. But what I learned in my own dark night was that if you follow the great mystics who know this process, if you really let them speak to you and say to you, look, the dark night is terrifying, but it's terrifying with the purpose.

It's, the purpose is to strip you of your illusions and fantasies and everything you cling to so that you can discover your far larger, far greater, far more magnificent, far braver, far more spacious than anything you ever imagined when you were in what you thought was yourself, which is just a small ego created out of convention and karma and neurosis and trauma.

What a wild, wild adventure. Dark night. My dark night was, but what a wild adventure we're on— 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: in the world at the moment. Yes. But there's a great possibility being given to us through it just as it was given to me. 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. It's an interesting question because getting to that point, where you can see it, where you even see that there's that need for transformation because even in your personal experience with that, it took some time—

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: right? Before you saw what was really going on and could sort of acknowledge it and deal with it. 

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: You know, taking it at face value.

Andrew Harvey: This is taking a lot of people, a lot of times to realize that systems are bankrupt, they're corrupt, and that we really are in a, a suicidal matricidal, downslide, into the abyss.

It's a very frightening realization. No wonder we avoid it. But when we wake up to it, extraordinary new insight can be given to us by those who've already been through a dark night experience who can say, “Don't be afraid. This is the sign that a massive evolutionary transformation is going on.”

That's why I wrote this book, because what saved me in my dark night was my passion for Rumi, my passion for the Christ, my passion for mystical literature, and what I learned from that passion was that the dark night is the birth canal. And I clung to the poems in the tradition, especially to Rumi's poetry as a drowning man would clinging to a raft because I realized the mystics are the ones who know the truth of this process. Not the psychologists, not the scientists, not the economist, not the politicians, but the mystics who are one with the savage, relentless passion of divine love itself, which uses darkness and light, chaos and order, agony and joy to work its extraordinary alchemy. And because I was able to cling to them and to their amazing maps and words, I was able to stay sane and able to allow myself to be dismantled and remade. 

And that's why Carolyn and I decided to write this book in the way that we wrote it, because so many people, are now waking up to the extremity of the situation and rushing into despair and paralysis and, “Oh my God, it can never get better. This is the end. This is the end” without knowing what only the great mystics who have lived through this process can tell them as they told me in my dark night, which I what I've written about in Sun at Midnight. Which is that what Rumi says in this amazing poem, "The grapes of my body can only become wine after the wine maker tramples me. I surrender my body like grapes to his trampling, so my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy. And although the grapes go on sobbing blood and screaming, I cannot bear any more anguish. I cannot bear any more cruelty. The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears and says, it is I who I'm the master of this work.You can deny me if you want. You have every excuse, but when through my passion you reach perfection, you will never be done praising my name." 

I clung to that poem with every breath of my being because I knew he knew, and I didn't know. But if I just trusted and surrendered and abandoned and loved the divine enough, the divine would find a way through for me.

And that's what I have expanded tremendously with Carolyn in this book, Radical Regeneration to show three things: that we're in a potential extinction crisis. A global dark night. That that global dark night has two faces. One of utterly terrifying final destruction of everything we love, everything we care about, which could come soon if we continue to go out doing what we're doing, but also of an unimaginable possibility of a new kind of human being, being born out of horror and chaos, an embodied divine human being just as the kind of being that's born out of a mystical dark night is. And the third thing is that this is a process which is ordained and has this goal of a divine humanity as its radiant possibility, but we must choose it. We must become conscious of the real map, and we must align ourselves with the law of the dark night.

We must hold two vast opposites of potential extinction and potential transfiguration in our heart minds and we must learn as much as we can about this divinization process, which is what I've been devoting the last 30 years to, to be able to be here at this moment offering this truth. And I wouldn't have been able to do any of this without having gone through it myself. 

Jessica Hornstein: Through that. Mmm-hmm.

Andrew Harvey: You have to go through it all to be able to say to human beings at this moment. Don't be afraid. It's terrifying, but there's a meaning. This is the meaning. This is the way through. This is the five laws, as you probably have gathered from this book, of what the dark night does. And there this is the way to transfiguration because I'm beginning to experience the beginnings of the beginnings of it in myself.

I know this birth of a new humanity is real because I'm living it. Hundreds of thousands of people on the earth are living it, and what we need to do now is not to be cowed and depressed and broken down by the horror of what's happening. That's inevitable in the dark night process. We won't get out of it, but to grow birth eyes, to grow eyes that are soaked with illumination and can see the signs of radical regeneration of the birth happening in and through the death and encourage the heaven and the hell out of it.

And dedicate our lives to be born as much as possible and helping others be born into their essential self and their essential mission, and their essential passion and their essential service. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes, and I, I agree with everything you just said. When you are not preaching to the choir, right? So, I am open to this, as many are.

It seems to me one of the challenges we face as a society, as you know, as a planet, is if people are not at that point, what you're calling for is a really, is a radical approach— 

Andrew Harvey: We're two minutes to midnight and that's a conservative estimate, 

Jessica Hornstein: right? So, we need everybody, right? It's not about us, you know, shouting obscenities at our TVs while we watch the news. 

Andrew Harvey: That helps sometimes. 

Jessica Hornstein: It does. It does feel good, but I don't know how effective it is. And it's, you know, and it's not about, hoping that the, the corrupt forces suddenly have love in their hearts. 

Andrew Harvey: Oh my God, that's fatal. 

Jessica Hornstein: I think, you know, we've— 

Andrew Harvey: That's a complete fantasy. 

Jessica Hornstein: passed, passed that point. Yeah. So, we're really, it is about everybody needing to do this within themselves.

Andrew Harvey: I have also in these last years, made a study of evolutionary science. And one of the things that I've learned is that species only mutate in extreme convulsions In extreme crisis, for example, millions of years ago, there were lots of fish in a toxic sea, and some of the braver and madder fish jumped out of the sea and found themselves in a completely alien element on the burning sand, and they couldn't breathe because they didn't have the lungs yet evolved to breathe.

But a great force in them drove them to, over time, evolve those lungs and the organs that would enable them to survive in this completely unfamiliar dimension. And believe it or not, those fish became birds. So massive mutations are possible under extreme pressure. 

And there is a great spiritual awakening happening on the planet. It's chaotic and there are a lot of bad teachers and they're being told a lot of garbage through new age. But there are some of us on the planet who've been through authentic transmutations in the authentic mystical systems who have really done everything we can to make available to everyone who's awakening the kinds of practices, the kinds of maps, the kinds of truths that we have won for ourselves so that they can use them. And that's what we've put into Radical Regeneration. So it's, it won't be much use if you haven't had any kind of awakening to go to a book like this, but if you are beginning to see how dreadful the situation, but also beginning to guess that so extreme a situation must have some kind of goal within it or could have some kind of goal within it then this is your book because this is the book written by two elders who've been through and continue to go through massive transformations who've rooted everything they know in the ancient systems, but also in political, and social, and economic understanding. It's a very broad book and brings together all forms of human knowledge, and there is a map. There is a way through. It's not an easy way through, but there is a way through. We know because we're on that way through and we can offer it in the clearest possible terms we are capable of. That's what we've tried to do. 

Jessica Hornstein: It's a, it is, it's a brilliant book and it is very thorough. And covers, it really covers so many important aspects. 

Andrew Harvey: The only thing it doesn't cover is the recipe for celery soup, which I don't know. 

Jessica Hornstein: Do you see this as a moment in time that, this is a, a sea change, you know, that— 

Andrew Harvey: Oh, yes.

Jessica Hornstein: because I, you know, I look at human history and it does seem that from the beginning of time, people have been fighting for power. People have been killing each other. People have been doing horrible things, 

Andrew Harvey: I, I don't think that's completely true. 

Jessica Hornstein: You don't think that's true? 

Andrew Harvey: No. I think there are great elements of truth in that, but I think if you look at evolutionary history, you see that humanity began in an essentially matriarchal culture and an essentially indigenous communion with the whole of nature, worshiping a mother goddess.

And that worship gave a very deep, reverential, compassionate sense of unity with nature. There was killing, and there were struggles for power, but there was also a massive reverence for life. Then that was fractured, and then there was another set of revelations in which humanity broke through into divine transcendence, which was a massive breakthrough, but then that became an addiction.

So, people dropped nature, dropped life, dropped sexuality, dropped the body to go off into the light, and that's why great prophets like Jesus and the prophet came who tried to marry the great ancient vision of communion and unity with the mother, with this great transcendent realization. So, within all this chaos and horror, there has been this evolutionary adventure, which is culminating now. It's culminating now in two very extraordinary ways. 

On the one hand, you can see it's culminating in a massive explosion of interrelated crises, which are the results of our hubris and our passion for domination and our drunkenness on separation and, uh, patriarchal addiction to hierarchy and power over. That's obvious. That's what's happening. They're all interrelated, they're all intractable. They can't be solved within the existing consciousness, and they're all in an orgy of massive global destruction right now, getting worse as we speak. That's one side of it. 

And the other side, is that this is the moment in which humanity can actually bring together all of the great advances in evolutionary knowledge that we have actually achieved this band of radiant adventurers, this band of what Betty Kovacs calls the merchants of light that have been struggling in age after age, to divinize the human, while their wisdom, their knowledge from all the traditions along with all the practices, all of that is now available to us.

So, at the time of our most extreme danger, we have within our power, through divine grace, the capacity to bring together, to synthesize, to integrate the most extraordinary vision of who we are essentially, and who we could be that we ever have had. How astounding this moment is. But if you characterize human history just as a long saga of chaos, horror, and murder which is one way of looking at it, but while forgetting this— 

Jessica Hornstein: The other part. 

Andrew Harvey: in this tremendous adventure, you've only seen one side of the picture. And that won't help you now when both sides are coming together in their fullest intensity. Full intensity of the dark with the fullest imaginable intensity of the light.

And what's so amazing when you really dive into it is that it's, they're interrelated. The very intensity of the dark is compelling. People like you, people like me, people like Jeff, people like Aurobindo, all the people who for 150 years have come into this knowledge to make this knowledge as real, as practical, as helpful, as grounded, as relevant, as exciting, as thrilling, as encouraging, as empowering, and to live it as intensely as possible of ourselves because we know that we're part of a great evolutionary shift.

So, the dark is our friend in that transformation. It's compelling us, forcing us, like leaping out of that toxic sea forced those fish to develop new organs or die, And some of us are developing the beginnings of the new organs of perception that allow us to get a taste of what this new human is like.

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. And thank you for that perspective, because it's, it is encouraging, it brings hope and— 

Andrew Harvey: Yes, of course, but there's always hope and there's most hope—and again, I think that's what Sun at Midnight taught me.

If, if, if you'd met me a week into the dark night when my life was in danger, my husband had been diagnosed with cancer, everything was falling apart. My love of 15 years. The great devotion that I'd had to a divine human, I thought, was in tatters and said to me, this is going to be the most wonderful, extraordinary adventure of your life. I'm going to bring you things you'd never even begin to imagine. I would've thrown you out of my home and said, “How dare you talk to me like that? Look what's happening.” And I would've been right in the state of consciousness that I was in. But from where I am now seeing that time, I say, thank God I went through that.

Jessica Hornstein: So, you feel like what got you through is because it always interests me you know, some people go through that dark night, right, and they don't come out the other side—

Andrew Harvey: Right 

Jessica Hornstein: and, they, some don’t come out at all, some don't come out in good shape. Some—

Andrew Harvey: Some go mad, some kill themselves, turn bitter, some turn out, turn to the dark. Any possibilities. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. So, it's so interesting to me when people have gone through something like that and have been able to get to that other side.

And so, I'm always asking, what you think it was for you and you just answered some of that, like unique about your, either your internal world or your external world, that could get you through that.

Andrew Harvey: I think the answer is actually simple and it's not just about me, it's about everyone I think who does get through, can get through.

I think it is a passion for the spirit. A passion to stay somehow unified with love, somehow unified with the mystery. I think those who get through the dark night are very often those who are so in love with the mystery that they learn how to bear, what the mystery has to do to them to bring them closer into its truth.

Jessica Hornstein: Right, right. And I think also understanding probably that that mystery. the, the darkness is part of it, right? It's not, we don't get to pick and choose. It's not an a la carte kind of situation where, you know, I want to experience all of life and the, the mystery and the, the magic and the depths and the beauty of it, but, but not this stuff over here.

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: You have to embrace all of it. 

Andrew Harvey: It is the dark night and the birth. because the a, the highest mystical reality and how life works are, one, they're not separate.

So, looking into the actual ways in which your life has been shaped by loss, by betrayal, by pain, by ordeal, by suffering, and how it's sometimes been shaped from the immeasurably better and richer and deeper. It's not all trauma and horror. It can be revelation and much greater love and much greater empathy.

Realizing that then you begin to understand that this great mystery of life that we're in, whether you'd call it divine or not, is a mystery that works in this extraordinarily and extremely paradoxical way. And that I think, is a wonderful way to start to try and help people to understand the great paradox of the great evolutionary definitive crisis that we're in.

Does that, does that speak to you? 

Jessica Hornstein: That does speak to me. I think that makes a lot of sense. I think it's hard for people to look, look that in the eye, to face that, that paradox and to face all the pieces.

Andrew Harvey: It's extremely hard. for people who have bought the Kool-Aid of life, having to be beautiful and wonderful and— 

Jessica Hornstein: Right. 

Andrew Harvey: You're failing if you are unhappy or you're failing if you are in pain because you're somehow not spiritual. All the nonsense of both of the new age and the capitalist, fascist cheerfulness. It's even more difficult for us than it is—for example, for, I've just been in India. If I was to say that to my great friend who is a rickshaw driver who works his ass off every day for $5 in order to be able to feed his five family members and doesn't have anything left and has to do the next day. He says, “Of course I know that I, I live that and I've learned that and I trust that and I work with that.”

So, the poor know it, it's the rich who don't know it because they bought a fantasy of being safe. 

Jessica Hornstein: We are, yes, we are focused on money and power and, you know, appearances and, and all of these things. 

Andrew Harvey: Comfort. 

Jessica Hornstein: Absolutely. and I think, you know, I wonder if one piece of how we get ourselves beyond where we are now as a species is somehow by offering an alternative that is, accessible.

To people, and appealing, but more, more accessible. I mean, it has to be, I feel like sometimes, we have to offer some, some small step for some people. Like, maybe some people are like, “I'm all in. I want to evolve and, you know, give me the whole, the whole thing.” But I think we have a, a large group—

Andrew Harvey: You, I think, forgive me darling. I, I love what you're saying. I can hear the mercy and sweetness in But we're, we're like somebody in the third stage of cancer. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: There's not going to be a, a sweet cure now. It's going to be a fierce cure. 

Jessica Hornstein: Do they have to be mutually exclusive, I guess? can we offer the, the, you know, Hail Mary, this is it we're, we're going off a cliff kind of medicine but also do something to shift whatever percentage of the population of, of people, um, you know, maybe aren't ready to go there yet.

Andrew Harvey: The majority of people will never be ready. They'll only be ready if they ever are through extreme crisis and extreme suffering. That's been the case throughout human history. But for this kind of transformation, we may not need a great majority.

We just need a determined minority. All the great shifts in human adventure have come through a minority taking very urgently and seriously the predicament. and in evolutionary terms, if enough people change in all kinds of ways, those changes will inevitably ripple up and across the interdependent web that we're all connected by. 

Jessica Hornstein: What you're saying I think is really important about the, if enough people do that there will be this, this ripple effect. 

Andrew Harvey: There could be. 

Jessica Hornstein: Hopefully. And I think I, I'm not gonna quite give up on that, that piece of it yet. And I think, you know, in my, in the context of what I do around validation— 

Andrew Harvey: Oh, I think it's very important what you're doing.

Jessica Hornstein: some of my belief people is that if people, if we really had a change in our orientation of how we approach each other—

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: right. How we speak to each other, you know, which really right now the, the reflex is to be invalidating rather than validating. 

Andrew Harvey: Yes, yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: And I think if we really shifted to being a more validating culture or species, I think that would really, I mean, first of all, it would preempt a lot of the problems we come to. I think if people felt valued for— 

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: things other than money and success and looks and this and that and the other thing— 

Andrew Harvey: As themselves.

Jessica Hornstein: I think it would, it would heal. Exactly. It would heal a lot of, just feeling accepted.

Andrew Harvey: Yes, I hear you.

Jessica Hornstein: So, you know, that's kind of the ripple effect. I'm hoping for.

Andrew Harvey: I think it's wonderful. I want to validate you. I want to validate you. Of course. 

Jessica Hornstein: I wanna validate you. 

Andrew Harvey: It's a one—in a way, what we're doing is having this, um, father, mother dance. The mother is saying, we have to really tend to people where they are right now because their crucial pain comes from feeling unseen, unheard— 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: devalued on every level in this culture. So, let's start there, because from that healing of that terrible psychic wound, so many things can flower. And the father is saying, it's very urgent. We have to do it. Now, if you marry those two things, if there's a marriage that—it doesn't happen in the mind, cuz it won't be a mental marriage—but I, I marry it by trying to say that the, the new human will be a midwife warrior.

Jessica Hornstein: Hmm. I love that. 

Andrew Harvey: So, both can be true in us. On the one hand, we can be constantly doing what you are doing to me and I'm trying to do to you is encouraging, loving saying, yes, you're this is right. Go for it. That's the midwife that is tender and nourishing and protective and encouraging and meeting people where they are.

But the warrior is saying there is an immense battle and the future of the world depends on it. So, the two can feed each other, the two can nourish each other. They don't have to be opposite. 

Jessica Hornstein: Well, I guess, which was my point, right? That they don't have to be mutually exclusive.We can— 

Andrew Harvey: No, they don't. 

Jessica Hornstein: we can have both sort of in play at the same time, and hopefully the breadth of who we can reach would be greater. 

Andrew Harvey: Yes. I, I think if we don't have the both of those two things in play, we're not doing her work. We're not doing the work of the divine because when you look at the great divine beings say, I'm thinking of Jesus. You think of someone who is really doing both all the time. On the one hand, Jesus is reaching out with this unbelievable tenderness to absolutely everyone. The drunks and the prostitutes and the crazies and the tax collectors. Everybody is his buddy, is his beloved.

And he shows, he shows that, and it gives them incredible, miraculous chance to change, to wake up to who they really are. And on the other hand, you have the Jesus who's saying, it has to change. This is madness. This is crazy. So, both voices, inter penetrate in the divine human, don't they? 

Jesus can be very ferocious, and that's an important aspect of all of this. If we're too all accepting, we lack discernment. There are sometimes when we need to be, some rare times, we need to be very ferocious and tell the truth with enormous clarity. in a way that makes the floors tremble. Right? 

Jessica Hornstein: Absolutely. And you know, I'm in, I'm in my nice, my nice side today, but—

Andrew Harvey: Oh, show me your other side.

Jessica Hornstein: I'm not gonna get angry on you, but yes, I can be tough when I have to be. Yes. I, I agree. There is a time and a place for all of those aspects. I mean, there's, there—things are not okay. You know, and there's a time to say, that's not okay. 

Andrew Harvey: Well, it's not loving to convince people that they're actually safe when they're not. It's not loving. If your child is going towards the edge of a cliff and you scream, you are actually doing the work of love, aren't you?

Jessica Hornstein: Or you grab their hand. 

Andrew Harvey: Or you grab their hand. Yes. And they may cry because it, yes, it may hurt them, yes. When you grab them, but you're trying to save them going off a cliff. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. You're not gonna stand at that moment and say, “Sweetie, look, here's why we don't jump off cliffs, because , you know, you're gonna…” 

Andrew Harvey: No. Can I ask you a question? Because you are interviewing me, but I would love to ask you to acknowledge you. What made you so passionate about validation and invalidation? What gives you that particular desire to turn up in that hospital?

Jessica Hornstein: Well per, I mean, as you, as you're saying, you know, personal experience. Yes. so yes, I've been through my own experiences. I, have done my work to come to a place where I know my own mind. and, you know, I always had a sense of it, but it, I had to fight for it, right? You know, there were, there were a lot of forces at work trying to tell me I was something else. You know, or that's not how you feel and, all the usual things. You're too sensitive. and you know, not being seen for who you are. Right. And I've seen that in a, in so many other people as well. I just, I mean, I think it's, I hate to use the word epidemic now because it has a whole new meaning these days—

Andrew Harvey: Oh, it is. It is.

Jessica Hornstein: after covid, but I really feel like it is an epidemic of people feeling invalidated. People feeling like they, they cannot be themselves, or they are not seen. For themselves. They are not acknowledged, they're not accepted, you know, and that it slides into every piece of our day in some ways, you know?

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: Of something trying to tell you that the way you are is not right, or it's not enough, or it's not what you think it is, and, and trying to convince you of something else, Yes. I just think we, we have to lift the veil here— 

Andrew Harvey: Yeah, yeah. Sorry darling. When you're talking, it's so thrilling because when I'm listening to you, what I'm experiencing is that without that validation, none of the rest of the journey can be possible. 

Jessica Hornstein: That's right.

Andrew Harvey: Without believing that you have the right to become a divine human, how could you ever even start to believe that it was possible? When everybody's telling you that the normal way you are is totally unacceptable, it's almost impossible for you to believe what the mystics are asking you to believe that you actually have these extraordinary powers, this incredible consciousness, this great passion. 

Jessica Hornstein: You don't believe in your right. And I think most of us don't. I think so—

Andrew Harvey: Right.

Jessica Hornstein: or so many of us don't believe in that right. And don't, don't believe in our right to our feelings and our, our wisdom and our beliefs. We're always justifying and, explaining everything away. And then even after that, after you maybe do feel you have the right, you have to then figure out, okay, now what does that mean for me? 

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: Like, right? We're so, you know, we've been twisted and turned that there's, there's just so many layers I think of, other like crap we have to, like, like old clothes we have to peel off. And you know, without those steps, without really the acceptance that we have a right to that, and then some real hard work, figuring out what that is, we can't even begin to take the steps towards a life that is authentic to us or a life that's meaningful for us or, you know, any of that. it just feels like we're very, um, we're very removed. 

Andrew Harvey: Yeah. We are, it's also a kind of, it's one of the ways in which the society has desperately disempowered people for its own purposes. And just the way you are analyzing it is itself an act of great courage and of liberation because you're showing people the way through. You're showing that there is a way, it's painful, it's difficult, but it's accepting that this pattern of discouragement is at the essence of this kind of authority, this kind of power that we're under.

But if you were, then if, if we were to take that, which is true, and to say to people, look, in my experience, the most helpful way that you can empower yourself is having a simple spiritual practice. that enables you progressively to get in touch with something larger and braver, calmer, wilder than the person you now know, this process of disentangling, everything will go much faster.

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Harvey: And be less complicated and less zigzagged if you simultaneously plunge into deep practice belief and faith in the mystery, and also start to help others. not, you don't have to be healed to help others. Helping others is part of the healing.

Jessica Hornstein: Healing. Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: Because the danger of so many people that I come across in the spiritual world who say things not as eloquently as you, but similar to you, is that they spend 10 years unraveling themselves without connecting what they're going through to the agony the world's in and without responding to it—

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Harvey: in sacred action because they still don't feel powerful enough to actually begin to. How do we help them get into a spiritual connection that gives them a greater level of wisdom and also help them to understand that it's often by reaching out to others and really faking it until you make it, in some ways of, of being compassionate and generous, that you learn how to escape your own limitation.

Jessica Hornstein: And I wonder if those people you said, you know, may take 10 years or whatever unraveling themselves, I wonder actually if they're even really unraveling themselves. Right. Because— 

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: you know, there's the bypassing and all of that. 

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: And so, you know, you can spend a lot of time and it seems like you're, you're doing the work and you're looking inside and you, you know, can list all your traumas and everything very, very nicely but to really find that, that core, right, that space within is a, is a different situation. I think that's, you know, your point to the having a spiritual practice or, is a way—

Andrew Harvey: That's essential to connect 

Jessica Hornstein: yes, to connect to that. 

Andrew Harvey: It's not enough to do the psychological shadow work. You, you must combine that with the mystical work that will uncover your true self beyond good and evil, beyond the opposites, so that you can face what you have to face about yourself. Because one of the paradoxes is that I've discovered, I'm sure you have too, is that you can only go down deep and as deep as you've gone up high.

Otherwise, it's too frightening to actually look at the shadow. What, what in my life has happened is that the further I have seen into my light, the further I have been exposed to the depth of my shadow. And I know that I would never have been able to bear what I've seen in my shadow and on the torments and horrors that created it and creates it in the world.

I would have to look away if I didn't also have a sense of the light that was also me and was I was also part of 

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Harvey: So, there's a new shadow work trying to be born, which is a fusion of psychological and mystical understanding. And which we are working out. And this will help the process go faster because the truth is we just don't have time for everybody on the planet to be validated. The planet is dying and burning. We must go as fast and as tenderly and as strongly and as urgently as possible to be as empowered as possible to start acting from the deepest consciousness right now if we're going to have a chance to turn this madness around.

Jessica Hornstein: So, what would you if, if you, if somebody's listening and they, they hear that this is an emergency, “yes, I need to do something now.” What is the one thing? 

Andrew Harvey: Well, I wouldn't say that actually. I, I would, I, I, I would. 

Jessica Hornstein: Ok. 

Andrew Harvey: No, darling, no, no, no. I'm, I'm just going to throw something out and see if it, if it resonates with you.

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm.

Andrew Harvey: Cause I'm loving this conversation with you, 

Jessica Hornstein: As am I. 

Andrew Harvey: What about saying to them, look, it's an emergency. What are you going to be because the doing that you'll do will flow from the being that you become, So, how are you going to live this emergency? Are you going to live it as a terrifying, desperate, utterly unwanted, disgusting ordeal? Or are you going to live it as an assignment, as something that has been given to you to rise to? First question. 

Second question: How are you going to rise to that assignment? You may rise to it eventually, and I hope soon by doing something, but you won't be able to rise to it without actually working on your being, really trying to discover within yourself, levels of power, levels of compassion, levels of energy that you may not even suspect you had, but which there are practices for, and there are ways for. Then when you're beginning to discover who you can be and that you can rise to this assignment, then choose something wisely that you can do to be of help, because then you'll be really able to be of help because you'll be strong, you'll be calm, you'll be peaceful, you'll be joyful.

You'll be agonized sometimes, but you won't be paralyzed by your agony. So, there's, there's a complex movement that's necessary to bring people to this stage in which they can truly do the work of sacred activism, do the work of radical regeneration, and it requires, I think those, those, those steps. But they're not rocket science.

This society has done a huge job of dumbing us down and of making us feel, in your words, invalidated. And part of the brilliance of that is it means that we feel powerless, impotent, and unable to, to rise to anything. Taking out the garbage, let alone going out to save the whales. What about treating people as you are advocating so beautifully with the tenderness and the respect that speaks to them as already partially empowered people, which they actually are, which this society is trying to pretend to them, make them believe they're not.

And it's, it's, I've noticed for example, around the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama doesn't tell people, “Oh, you're so unempowered, you don't know how to do this, and I'll tell you how to do this.” The Dalai Lama speaks to the divine that's already in the person. And the greatest teachers are speaking directly to the divine in the person which the person may not yet be recognizing, but will definitely hear in the voice that's full of love and belief in them, and respect for them.

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Harvey: And that's why we, we labored so hard to make it so clear in Radical Regeneration, cuz we believe that for all of these terrible forces that are arranged against human beings claiming their power, that there is a divine consciousness in every single human being that knows he or she is powerful and is waiting for that tender, clear, welcoming, invitational, generous voice that says, "Ok, here are the stages and we're with you. We'll help you. This is how we do it.” 

But we can't do it separately. I think we have to do it together. We have to do it in a kind of process, like we're doing it. A dialogue process, a process of friendship, a process of mutual listening. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yeah. 

Andrew Harvey: And amazing things can happen in that process. Imagine if there were 10 of us in the room right now, and we were talking at this level, and we could go through these stages together, acknowledging our fragility, our shadows and everything, but also pressing onward. By the end of two, three hours, we might come to an extraordinarily new level of awareness. 

Jessica Hornstein: Well, creating that, that kind of space. I, I can't tell you how many times, in the first session with a client, within five minutes they start talking and just having somebody there. And they can feel me, I guess loving them and, and accepting them and, you know, they're, they're crying. Like right, it's all just coming out and they've been holding it for so long. And without the opening, we can't, we can't make any progress. We, we need to be open to connect and to—

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: to grow and all of that. So, so we have to see each other and send that sense of acceptance, I think to some extent.

Andrew Harvey: Absolutely. I think that's the basis and that's, we really need to retrain ourselves to do that. This is obvious from what's going on in the world, but I think what we're also talking about which is really, the ancient tribes were very good at this because they had tribes come together to talk.

People come together to process. We need new forms of processing with great elegance and tenderness and communion, helping people, and it's terrifying to think of the human race going through this global dark night and everybody's on their own suffering instead of being together. These new structures are coming and they're here already. There's, they're circles that do this. There are what I call networks of grace that do this, seven to 15 people who come together to help each other, and it's astonishing what can be done like that. You know how astonishing it can be between a client and a therapist, and I know because I do spiritual, but I also know the astonishing power of loving groups that come together for this purpose. It's incredible what can happen with the combined wisdom and love of 10 to 15 people. No more because then it gets crazy. 

Jessica Hornstein: Well, right. So how do we scale that then? I mean, we, it's wonderful to do it in groups, and. as you say, hopefully like one group would connect with another group and, and have healthy dialogue and process and work things out.

If we're looking at, at wanting to really change society, we need to scale that. It has to, you know, it has to be pervasive that that's how things get done for the most part, So how, how do you see that happening from, from groups to, to that place where everything functions differently?  

Andrew Harvey: Well, I think to do the kind of healing that you're describing, that I'm describing, we need what I call networks of grace—

Jessica Hornstein: Mm-hmm. 

Andrew Harvey: to be formed right now. People, everybody to start forming a network of grace between eight to 15 people. People who are aligned with them in the deep mission and to come together regularly. They can do it on Zoom, they can do it, best of all, to do it actually, to, to celebrate together, to pray together, and to sit in a circle and really ask what's going on in each other's lives. What's, what is their cutting edge? What is the kind of service that is emerging from them? How can they be supported by the other members of the group in that service? and then when you have a network of grace, for example, working on working with racism in a community. There are some that I've started that are doing that.

Then through Zoom, through the internet, they can be connected with other networks of grace all over the world doing that same work because that problem of racism is obviously everywhere and amazing things can then happen because the different discoveries of those networks of grace, that, of what works in this situation can be shared That is one way in which it can happen. It has to happen like that because it can't be institutionalized. It has to happen as a personal communal adventure, interconnecting with other personal communal adventures, sharing pain, sharing discoveries, sharing revelation, sharing techniques and bonding in this great shared work of sacred action.

Jessica Hornstein: I love that. I love that phrase, network of grace. That's beautiful. 

Andrew Harvey: Thank you. Which came in a vision actually, I— 

Jessica Hornstein: Did it? 

Andrew Harvey: Well, it was a very funny story. I was in a convent. I love convents. I love nuns for some reason. And one of my favorite nuns is a nun called Sister Rosa, and she's in her eighties and she's been arrested endlessly for telling truth to power, and she's a wonderful, feisty black woman of great passion and great beauty and great heart.

And she's one of my favorite people. but I was with her one day and I said, “Well, how are we gonna organize this?” And she said, “I don't know, but go and ask. Go ahead and do it right now.” So, I mean, you didn't disobey Sister Rosa. So, I did and I asked and asked and asked and prayed and prayed and prayed feeling rather ridiculous. 

And that night I had a dream and there were two banners being unfolded in the sky. And on one, on one banner it said, “Joy is the power.” Joy is the power. Not blame, not fury, not anger, joy, the joy that comes from knowing that something amazing could come from joy is the power. And then the other one said, “Networks of grace.” 

Jessica Hornstein: Wow. 

Andrew Harvey: And because I'd been studying right wing organizations and how successfully. they operate because I was studying terrorism and they operate in cells, it suddenly came to me, oh God, oh yes, it’s cells. But radiant cells or what they call the imaginal cells that wake up in, you see when the caterpillar goes into the chrysalis and dissolves in the soup of the caterpillar's decayed being, imaginal cells, they're called imaginal cells wake up and they come together and they form the body of the butterfly that breaks out. This is actually what happens. And I think of the networks of grace as the imaginal cells waking up in the decaying body of the human race to build the butterfly of the divine human. 

Jessica Hornstein: That's amazing. What a great story. well, that fits in really nicely with the quote from Radical Regeneration.

Andrew Harvey: I'm so happy to be talking to you, my dear. 

Jessica Hornstein: Me too. So, this is from your book, Radical Regeneration, "Everything now it is clear depends on us, on how deeply we open to the heartbreak of a burning world on how illusionless we allow ourselves to be, and how richly and urgently we act from the deepest possible vision of who we are and who we can yet become. Radical regeneration is our invitation to you to live in joy and compassion, whatever now unfolds, and to dedicate yourself to the impossible possible birth of a new world out of the smoldering ashes of the old." Beautiful. 

Andrew Harvey: Thank you. And radical regeneration is really, it's a mystical symphony. It has four parts, and the first part is called Savage Grace, which is a facing of all the crises and a call to really seeing that this is savage grace because it compels us to wake up. 

Then the second part is called Return to Joy, and we wrote a whole, whole long section on joy, because joy is the power. We can't do this work without being grounded in radical joy, through experiencing the fundamental goodness of life, the fundamental goodness of the universe, the joy that is the divine bliss. 

The third part is a plunging into the whole animal situation because both Karen and I are passionate lovers of animals.

Jessica Hornstein: As am I. 

Andrew Harvey: As you as, do you have an animal? 

Jessica Hornstein: Oh yes, I do. 

Andrew Harvey: What do you have?

Jessica Hornstein: I have a, do, do I have right now? I have a dog. 

Andrew Harvey: What's his name? 

Jessica Hornstein: His name is Huey. 

Andrew Harvey: Huey. My cat, Jade, is my beloved. My eternal beloved is lying where she usually lies in resplendent sleep. Has your dog, has loving your dog been an initiation for you? 

Jessica Hornstein: Since I got my first cat when I was four, animals have, you know, have just been, a huge part of my heart and soul and, yeah, really, I don't, I don't know. I mean, it sounds cliche, but I really don't know what I would've done without my, my animal companions over the years. 

Andrew Harvey: Yes. I don't think I want to stay alive without my animals to love unconditionally and be loved by, in that amazing, embodied way that they love. It's so, it's incredible nourishing. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. And it keeps you, you know, all day it, it brings you back, right?

Andrew Harvey: Yes. 

Jessica Hornstein: To that space. You know, you're, something's happening with your computer or this, that, whatever, and you're, ah, and then I see my dog and I'm just, you know, you melt and “You baby”, you know, and it's all a whole different situation. 

Andrew Harvey: They're not not sweating the small stuff.

Jessica Hornstein: They are not. I, I just, yeah. Just love my animals. So, I feel you on that. 

Andrew Harvey: Well, that's why we plunged into, there was a deeper thing too, I think this, which is that. We need to reclaim our animal to reclaim ourselves as animals, because from that reclaiming of ourselves as animals, we get a great deal of energy and passion and strength and eros and joy. And that helps in this great process. 

And then in the last part, we go into all of the difficulties that are facing the process, but we go deeper even into what the actual transfiguration of the divine human looks like. So, this book is a massive map for people and we've tried to make it as lucid as possible to give everyone the chance to embrace whatever they find valuable for them along that journey. To validate them and encourage them. 

Jessica Hornstein: Well, and I think the, the joy is so important. I'm. I'm so happy to hear you include that because it is, I mean, that's the fight, right. That's what we're fighting for.

Andrew Harvey: Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: The way I love my kids, the way I love my dog, you know, the, the joys we can all experience and, knowing that there is all that beauty in the world, that's what we're fighting for. Right? 

Andrew Harvey: Right. When you said it was about 25 minutes ago, you said you've got to give people something to believe in, something to aim for. That's what joy does. I saw Jane Goodall on TV last night at 88. Knowing all she knows about what we're doing to the animals, having gone through all she's been through. There she is absolutely radiant and encouraging. And when you see someone like that, you just think, I want to be like that.

And then you think, well, how do I become like that? And then you think, well, maybe I become like that by giving in the way that she's given, by really, really stepping out of my narrow ego and devoting myself to something larger than myself because it doesn't end in misery and being dead at the side of the road. It ends in being luminous and radiant and enjoying your whiskey when you are 88 and saying things that just take the tops of people's heads of by their love and wisdom. Right. 

Jessica Hornstein: Absolutely. Well, Andrew, thank you for all that, that you have given. I mean, thank you for writing this book. I think it's— 

Andrew Harvey: Thank you.

Jessica Hornstein: so important and I feel better knowing it's out there and I encourage everybody to read it. 

Andrew Harvey: Radical Regeneration: Sacred Activism and the Renewal of the World. Please, if we've been exciting you, please get it because it really is, if I was struck by lightning, it's everything that I would love to be able to say to you.

Jessica Hornstein: It's such a powerful book. It really is. 

Andrew Harvey: Thank you. 

Jessica Hornstein: It does feel a little bit like being struck by lightning reading it—in, in a good way, in a, a necessary way. So, thank you and thank you for being here today. I really have loved this conversation with you so much, 

Andrew Harvey: I love meeting you. I'm glad you, I love the work you're doing. 

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you. 

Andrew Harvey: And I love the voice that you are voicing because you have a gentle voice, but it's very penetrating. It's truly a divine feminine voice, it seems to me, because it's really standing up for the wounded in people and really trying to help people heal so that they can come into communion and start being and doing something wonderful from the fullness of themselves.

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you. 

Andrew Harvey: So, thank you for your beautiful work. Thank you for you. 

Jessica Hornstein: That's, that's lovely. It means a lot coming from you. 

Andrew Harvey: Love to love to Huey. 

Jessica Hornstein: Yes. 

Andrew Harvey: Well, lovely, darling and thank you so much. 

Jessica Hornstein: Thank you for listening and being part of the conversation. Please find a way to validate yourself today. Maybe find a way to validate someone else too. And if you enjoyed the show, please rate review and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. You can also join me at No, Not Crazy on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Let's build this community of validation together.