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There’s a lovely quote by Jung where he says freedom is to do gladly that which we must. It’s a beautiful image. The way I think about it is you have the freedom to create wildly, freely within the parameters that are given by your inner multiplicity.
Achim Nowak 00:20
Welcome to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. I’m your host, Achim Nowak, and I have conversations with exceptional humans who have created bold and unexpected lives. If you like what you hear, please subscribe on any major podcast platform so you won’t miss a single one of my inspiring guests, and please consider posting an appreciative review. Let’s get started. I am just delighted to welcome Laurence Hillman to the MY FOURTH ACT PODCAST. Laurence became immersed in archetypes at the age of 16 as a professional archetypal coach, he specializes in helping his clients understand their deeper purpose and their life’s calling. In his role as a consultant, he helps leaders and organizations understand their archetypal patterns and advises on high level decision making in organizations. His tools for mapping archetypes include archetypal astrology, for which he is one of the leading voices worldwide. Laurence is a sought after teacher and lecturer. He is the author of planets in play, how to reimagine your life through the language of astrology. He also co authored two other books, including archetypes at work, evolving your story one character at a time, which he wrote with Richard Olivier and me, being a former theater director, I just get them tickled with the choice of language in that title. He and Richard co created archetypes at work, a new cutting edge method to assess and develop people and organizations to become fit for the future. There’s lots more, but I’m gonna stop here, because we’re gonna talk about stuff. Hi, Laurence
Dr. Laurence Hillman 02:20
Hi. How are you? Achim, thanks for having me. Oh, it’s
Achim Nowak 02:23
it’s a pleasure to to have this conversation with you. We’re going to talk a lot about archetypes and astrology and psychology and all those connections. But as a starter, I know you grew up in Zurich. Your father was very well known psychologist when you were growing up as a young boy, I mentioned your interest in astrology started soon or early. Is that what you thought you wanted to be as an adult in astrologer? Or how did that emerge for you?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 02:58
Considering my father was the founding voice of archetypal psychology, that I was marinated in archetypes all my life. I think that’s kind of a funny image, and it’s true, my mother was very interested in astrology. So there was a family friend who used to come and visit us, who had spent many years in India. He was also an architect, and he was from, he was Dutch, and he used to come and stay with us when I was a little boy, and and I called him uncle, and he would teach him all kinds of carpentry skills and other things. And but he was a professional astrologer for decades. And when he was in India, my parents were in India. They all met over there in the 50s. So one day when I was a bored teenager, my mother said to me, why don’t you go learn astrology? And I’m like, whatever you know, 16, I was bored with school, and I knocked on his door, and he said, so you want to learn astrology? I said, Yes, I guess within 10 minutes of my first lesson, I knew crystal clear, this is what I’m going to do the rest of my life was one of those extraordinary moments that some of us are fortunate enough to have. Yeah, and you know, my calling, calling, if you want, and my second thought was, and I’ll do it full time when I turn 40, which was just came into my head. Then I ended up doing it full time when I turned 38 before that, I did a lot of other things, yeah, but I always did astrology. I’ve never stopped. So that’s not been 48 years, considering I’m 64
Achim Nowak 04:25
because astrology has is popularized, probably trivialized in many places. So if you were to explain to somebody who doesn’t fully understand all the dimensions of astrology, what are some misconceptions that people have that maybe don’t fit what it is you actually do. Well, the
Dr. Laurence Hillman 04:45
biggest misconception is that it’s a typology, that I’m this type, which is basically what sun sign, astrology says. You know that I’m in Aries and you’re this I’m not in Aries, but you know, let’s say I was in Aries and you’re a Libra, and therefore we’re different. That kind of a sense of. Of differentiating people based on types, a simplistic way of saying. It’s like saying and therefore, because we are a type, we do things a certain way. The extraordinary thing about astrology is that it is a map for inner multiplicity, for complexity. Because actually, in the model, there are 10 different inner characters that we all share, and I have them, you have them, and anyone else all over the world has them. And so if we see these figures, these characters or planets as universal, as archetypal, then suddenly we have a shared language, instead of a language that separates us, as in I am this, and you are that, and so we’re different. Instead, I can ask, you know, me having I have a son, you have a son? How is your son? S, U N, how is it different? How does it express itself differently? And I can be curious. So it opens up imagine in an imaginal way, to connect with other people and to be curious about the multiplicity of ways that we sort of all cook different meals using the same ingredients.
Achim Nowak 06:04
The phrase multiplicity of things is really appealing to me, because one stereotype that I might carry in my mind is I think of what you’re describing as this hidden, invisible language that’s larger than me. And the fear could be that because it’s this invisible language or system, that my path in life is written and I can influence it, because all these constellations are there, and, gosh, there I am. To what degree can we play with this, with these elements?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 06:38
Yes, very good question, and that is a big pushback that astrology gets. Yeah. So this brings in the question of fate and free will, yeah. So the way I think about it, first of all, there’s a lovely quote by Jung where he says, freedom is to do gladly that which we must. It’s a beautiful image. And so the way I think about it is you have the freedom to create wildly, freely within the parameters that are given by your inner multiplicity. But there are certain rules that apply. I compare it to, if you’re, you know, six foot eight, you’re not going to be the best jockey, you know, riding horse races, and if you’re four foot three, but you might be a really good basketball player. If you’re four foot two, you’re not going to be the best basketball player, but you might be really good as a jockey. In other words, there are limitations and gifts that come with any constellation. The problem only arises when I’m four foot two and I’m insisting that I want to be a basketball player, because which, in other words, I want to be what I think is the best thing, which to me, is where Astrology can be really helpful to figure out what my talents and my gifts are and where my strengths are, and how I can best play out the hand that I was dealt. If you want, it’s not true that everyone can do everything. That’s a fantasy, knowing where my gifts lie and what I can do with what I have, what would be the best meal I can cook with. This is something I certainly want to know, which is why I think astrology is a useful language. It’s a tool to understand that question. Well,
Achim Nowak 08:15
you use a beautiful phrase earlier, and it’s a way in which you describe the work that you do, which you talked about, I found my calling, or I found it quickly. I found it so fast. I believe that part of what you do is through the tools that you have available to yourself. As somebody who serves others, you help people get closer to their calling. How do you do that?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 08:40
The calling question actually is my greatest interest. Because once I figured out that Astrology can answer the question of, What is my calling? Not as a job description, yeah, but as a area of life that I came here to explore, I was hooked. It’s like, what an amazing tool to be able to do that. I don’t know of any other tool. I’ve looked at lots of other things. Therapy can’t do that. Can’t really tell you why you’re here. There’s lots of other models. But if I really want to know objectively, you know, what is my learning this lifetime? What is my calling? As in to learn something? It’s an extraordinary tool. It’s why my first book I ever wrote was about the calling back in, I think, 2002 you know, a while back. And so I think the calling question, it’s my main interest in astrology. It’s what I’m known for in astrology, is to help people find their purpose or their calling, again, not as a job description. Hey, go do this. It’s not imperative in that way, but it’s to learn, to help people recognize if they’re aligned or not with what they came here to learn, and if they’re not, then we feel very misaligned, and we feel something’s off and wrong. And if somebody just confirms that, hey, you’re doing what you came here to do, that can be really relieving. And I’m objective, I’m just the reader, I’m the messenger, I’m not the judge. And so people can. Those own decisions for themselves, but it can be very helpful to have access to knowing what a person’s what my purpose is. It certainly helped me, for the last 48 years to align my life. You
Achim Nowak 10:13
use the word play in your book title, and you just use the word exploration. And you know, I’m a former professional theater director. That’s what actors do. You know, the actors like to play. They like to explore. They don’t like to get stuck in one understanding of something. If you were to give any guidance to any listeners, or also, if you were to apply this to yourself, how? How do we make sure that we don’t get stuck in a in a rigid sense of who we are, and we get to the multiplicities that we talked about, how do we avoid rigidity?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 10:47
Really good question. I love that. Thank you. The differences is what happens when we don’t think in multiplicity? Which is the common way of thinking? Which is the common way that psychology defines us, which is as a single individual with a single identity, and in a developmental model. So first we crawled and we sit, then we walk, then we run. That’s how we develop. That’s what psychology, basically, you can take 90% maybe of psychology that’s out there, how people think about human development and human growth and so forth, without ever even reflecting on it. It’s based on that idea. I don’t agree with that idea. Archetypal psychology does not think think in that way. And archetypal astrology is based in archetypal psychology in certain ways. Archetypal thinking says, Actually, I have 10 inner characters, 10 inner parts, inner voices. This is reflected in some psychological schools, like internal family systems and parts work and this kind of thing, you have this inner multiplicity. You have these inner characters, these inner voices that are distinct. And by the way, how do we know that’s true? Yeah, that’s what we actually experience. If you’re having a fight with your significant other and the phone rings and it’s your boss, we’ve all immediately, within a split second, become a different person, just like that. How is that possible? If it’s that singular identity, we step into a different role. We step into a different mindset. Sometimes it has its own tone, its own language, its own tempo, all these kinds of things, just like actors. So I think of these as inner actors, inner characters that we can step into and that we do anyway. The more conscious we are of them, the more aware of that we are of them, the more developed we have each character, the better we can respond to any given situation with the appropriate character. So if we have to defend somebody who’s being attacked in a meeting, then I want to be able to step into my warrior and defend them, or defend myself in a situation, if I am trying to get a message across, and write a good email to 10 employees or to my best friend or to somebody, I want to get something across. I want to make sure my storyteller, my inner mercury, is doing pretty well, because that’s the one I want to call on to be present, because that’s what that part of me knows how to do, and so on.
Achim Nowak 13:08
And I am so chuckling inside as you’re describing the landscape, if I’m going to translate into Achim languages, and I want to just test it with you, is the characters as described, are aspects of ourselves that we can activate in situationally helpful ways, and part of it is having access to these characters and having a strong sense of which character to activate when that will help the situation. Am I understanding that correctly,
Dr. Laurence Hillman 13:38
absolutely perfect? That’s just what I’m saying, and what the astrological chart can do is describe and introduce you to those characters in a greatly detailed way. Not only can it introduce you to those characters, I think of our inner life as a play, as a stage with these 10 characters on them, but it can tell you in your inside story, who’s getting along with whom, who’s kissing whom, who’s slapping whom, who’s stabbing whom. What’s that inner drama that we all experience that’s very useful to know? Yeah, every time this one says something that one gets upset. Well, that’s an interesting psychological pattern. What do I do with that? How can I make that productive rather than destructive for me and so on? That’s what we can do when we imagine that inner life as a theatrical
Achim Nowak 14:23
here’s something I hear on occasion from people, and I think I probably said it myself, which was somebody says, well, that’s just not me, or that’s just not the kind of thing I would do, or that’s not my personality. You know, again, we put usually, my interpretation is we hear that when somebody asks us to do something that might feel uncomfortable or something that we don’t normally do, May
Dr. Laurence Hillman 14:52
I respond to that, because that’s such a great point. So what I would say is, if somebody says that to me, then I would say, can you remember. Or a time when there was a part of you that was comfortable with that situation, let’s say we’re going to do a free dance in the room, right, right? And I can’t do that unless it’s waltzing, or maybe I can do a, you know, a Jitterbug, because it’s sort of, I know what the steps are, but if it’s free form dancing, no, that’s just not me. I don’t do that. So then I would ask, So do you remember a time when you did do that? And I can tell you right now that when you were three, you were very good at that, and then, and so that there is a part of them that knows and that remembers how to do that. At some point, that part got put, got told not to do it for some way. So there’s a developmental aspect to each of these characters. I’m not saying developmental psychology is wrong. I’m saying that we have to see developmental psychology applied to 10 different figures, not to one. That’s the difference. And so it’s both. It’s it’s developmental and archetypal. Our model and astrology is that as well. And say, and would it be useful for you to have access to that wildly dancing part of you again today, where might that be helpful in your life? And if it would be, then the work, the psychological work, the developmental work, becomes how to reactivate that part of you. Everyone can do that. I’ve seen it. I believe
Achim Nowak 16:16
that to be true, first of all, and such a such a hopeful statement, because we spoke about having a calling or sensing that something’s a calling. What I see, however, again, I want to test this with you. Sometimes we may have something that may have felt like a very strong calling when we’re 28 but at 45 the urgency of that calling is gone and we are, however, living in an old calling, how do we notice that things want to change, or what kind of signals to get people get around that? Or how do we navigate around stories of calling that may have outlived their purpose for us.
Dr. Laurence Hillman 17:01
So for me, there is only one calling, and it does not change throughout your life. However, we have things we want to do, and we have directions we want to go, and we have priorities. We have all kinds of other personality, things that have to do, you know, parts that we want to develop, ambition that comes and goes, relationships we desperately want absolutely can’t stand. All of these things happen throughout life, but the calling is on a soul level, is much deeper, and some people don’t even notice their calling. And again, it’s not a job description, not an action, it’s an area of exploration. So let me tell you, for instance, what a calling could be. Let’s use an example of place, because I’m talking about place. Let’s say I tell you that your calling is to explore Paris. That’s a place. So you can say you have the right as a human being, with a with a with a sense of me and a self to say, I hate the French. I’m not going there. I’m not going to explore Paris, right? The French stink. That’s a choice, and stupid choice, in my mind, but it’s a choice, and you don’t have to go there. Or you could say, since I’ve given you a place to explore as your purpose, you could say, I’m going to spend my whole life walking the streets of Paris. I’m going to go to every restaurant I can afford, every museum I can find. I’m going to learn the language as best as I can. I’m going to jump in the sand a few times, and I’m going to fall in love in the spring, I am fully going to do Paris as well as I can. The calling Paris, in this case, doesn’t care which of those two you choose, yeah, because Paris is a place, it’s not a part of you. It is something. Whereas you know ambition and wanting to do something in life and these kinds of things, those are parts of you that may or may not activate that calling that may or may not take you to Paris. So distinguish the personality from what I call the soul’s longing or purpose.
Achim Nowak 18:49
That was very clear. I love that example. Again, with my theater background, when I first met you, I was tickled by the fact that you partner with Richard Olivier, you have one background. He is a theater guy, actor, teacher. Would you just describe to us? How did that partnership happen and evolve, and how did you decide to take it beyond? Oh, great to meet you too. No, let’s create some stuff together.
Dr. Laurence Hillman 19:19
Yes, lovely question. So Richard developed this thing called mythodrama, which is an embodied form of understanding development through story, and particularly applied it to Shakespearean stories, which was easy, natural for him, with his background and but other big, powerful mythological stories as well. And so he developed models and ways to explore leadership development, particularly based on these stories, how to lead a team through a really difficult time. Is a good parallel to Henry the Fifth, having a small group of men standing up against 1000s of Frenchmen. You know, that kind of a thing. He. Used stories that have the really good leadership lessons in traditional stories that was his model, and he also used to explain what he was doing. He used archetypes. He was a fan of my father’s work, and was in the men’s movement in the early 90s, and was doing all kinds of interesting work. He used four archetypes of Moore from Chicago, the four union archetypes, and he kept feeling that they were limited. They didn’t give him enough range. They were too they were too narrow having those four. But he used them for many, many years. Did a lot of work with those. And then when he heard about astrology and heard about my work and and we met up. We actually met at my father’s 70th birthday in 1996 which is next year. That’ll be 30 years. We immediately hit it off, just as friends. And then I went to London and did a workshop at the Globe Theater on archetypes and using, I think, as you like it, the play, and how those 10 characters really well represent the 10 planets, something like that. I don’t remember exactly, but it was sort of and Richard was there and Mark Rylance was there. So it was just an extraordinary sort of awakening of this work. And increasingly, Richard and I started to do workshops where we played with the astrological model and the theatrical model together in certain ways, and then finally, in 2016 so nine years ago, 20 years after we met, we did a workshop in France with about 20 people in a chateau, and we used Hamlet as the play. We use archetypal astrology for every person’s chart. We also used constellation Work hellingers Work, which we’re very much into as well, in our own way, systemic constellations. And we had a third friend with us, Michael from London. And the three of us led this workshop, and it was an extraordinary event. And at the end, we were all on this hire, and we were just, how do we make this into a leadership development tool, because this is really good stuff. And so essentially, Richard expanded his model of leadership development from those four archetypes to the 10 archetypes of the astrological model, and that became archetypes at work, which is now being used all over the world, and some very large companies and very small companies as well. No teams or singular people, all kinds of people in not just leadership development, but also personal development. It’s a very easy to understand and yet highly rich tool. So it’s simple in its simplicity, it is it can do extraordinary complexity. It’s a joy to see that people can understand and do soul work in environments that typically don’t speak about soul.
Achim Nowak 22:46
How explicitly do you and Richard go into soul stuff? Do you use the word soul with clients? Or you, do you keep it a little more
Dr. Laurence Hillman 22:55
tactical? No, no. Depends on the client, but usually we don’t. I mean, if we do working with an NGO or a or, you know, a group that that is specifically into soul work, then we will, but it’s not that I’m talking to you like that, into your audience like that. But basically, in a corporate setting, there are certain rules, and you follow them. You know, you don’t talk about death, you don’t talk about sex, you don’t talk about these things that are very human, but you can’t bring them into the corporate world because there’s rules. And so you follow those rules, you you respect those rules. But by doing this kind of work, the nature of the work is soulful, and so you’re bringing soul into an environment that isn’t used to that. I’ve had more people tell me, No one’s ever talked to me like that, that at work than I can count. That is an extraordinarily rewarding to me, because people, increasingly, especially younger people, are interested in meaning making. They don’t want to work 40 years and then retire and then start to make meaning of their life. They want to make meaning of what they do their work. Wants to be meaningful. There’s very little in meaning making in typical work environments, and so making meaning of why answering. I mean the whole movement from zenak, that great book, you know, start with why is about meaning making. And that had a huge success, because people were finally being asked to make meaning of what they do every day and spend so much time. And we have tools to deal with that and to respond to that, and brings on a lot of smiles, which makes me very happy. Good.
Achim Nowak 24:22
I’m curious in your partnership and collaboration with somebody like Richard and she moved me to know that you’d known each other for 20 years before you took a deeper dive into this professional collaboration. But how? And maybe this is a tough question, but how has your sense of things, of how you see the world, been influenced or expanded through a collaboration with a theater guy who uses improv the body Shakespeare, I can’t imagine that that hasn’t changed you and your lens and how you see things.
Dr. Laurence Hillman 24:58
Remember it. True, but remember that I was using a theater metaphor as well for astrology. We both one of the things that brought us together is the planets in play is essentially a way to understand your chart as a stage where the planets are the actors, the signs are the clothes the actors are wearing, the relationships or aspects between them or how they’re getting along or not, and the houses are where in your life, this part of you acts out. So it’s a theatrical model I’ve been using for a long, long time before I knew Richard. So we both have something in common, which is also what brought us together, amongst other things, just the friendship and the camaraderie. But there’s also that that we both use theater in a non theatrical context. He uses Shakespeare for leadership development. I use theater to explain an astrological chart, to understand an astrological chart. So that was an easy meet. However, Richard brought something very unique, and I brought something very unique as well, which we have learned from each other, from and have developed each other. I learned the embodiment, more of a sort of a heady guy, the embodiment and the stepping into the archetypes and the activation of an archetype in a physical way. To me, I had done that kind of work, but more intellectually as an intellectual size, to actually embody it has been huge for me. And that’s him is he’s a trained theater director, so him helping me become more physical and more embodied with the work has been huge for me, my personal development, and for him, I think it’s just having access to the grand spectrum of the 10 planets is an extraordinary expansion of his mind. So it’s helped him a lot in understanding and having that finer tool to understand his life and his world and his work that he maybe didn’t have when you only had the four before.
Achim Nowak 26:49
Makes total sense to me. And there’s a power in knowing in the body, when knowledge goes there, I like to pivot to I met you a few weeks ago and when you were in Lisbon, and one thing that I remember very much is you talked about this as the time for Renegades to be more active and to be connected to our in our renegades. And Renegade is a word that I’m sure the moment I say, everybody has their own meaning attached to it already. It’s not a neutral word. So could you talk about the character of the renegade the importance of renegadeism?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 27:31
Thank you. Great question. So I’m talking about astrologically. I’m talking about the planet Uranus, which is the planet that rules or is connected to or akin to the sign of Aquarius. And so many have heard that, you know, this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. Generally, I can say that from an astrological perspective, we live in the most Iranian time that I’ve ever, certainly ever witnessed, but that I’ve ever even seen, if I go back in time, 1000s of years of looking at, you know, astrology. So this is an extraordinarily Iranian renegade time. That means that all things that we thought were for sure are no longer sure. Everything is sort of deconstructing. Everything is collapsing. Everything is breaking down. There is, there is a breakthrough breakdown, collapse, kind of energy everywhere. We’re questioning everything that seemed to be sacred or certain or for sure, chaos is everywhere, and people are freaking out. And so the the response to that, most naturally, is to try to go back to, you know, I don’t know, 1950s let’s put women back in the kitchen and have babies, because that’s what we thought we knew and was safe. It’s idiotic. It’s not understanding the extraordinary energy that is active at this time. So rather than saying, Well, this is really freaky stuff, this is, you know, I don’t like this. I’m uncomfortable following what we have just said up to now, we all have an inner renegade Uranus is in every one of us. And the question is simply this, how comfortable are you with that part of you that actually loves this time? And that’s the part of you that not only loves this time, but can relate to this time and is very happy in this time of breakdown and breakthrough. And so the work to become future fit, as I call it, is to activate, become aware of your own inner Iranian energy, or Renegade, or that part of you that sometimes tongue in cheek. Pardon my expression here I call Uranus the third finger planet. You know, it’s the part of us that says, Don’t tell me what to do. I’ve got my own rules. So wherever in your life, where people think you’re a little weird, where people think you’re a little different, where you have blue hair and you do, you know, you walk against the grain. You move against the masses. Everybody walks one way. You walk the other way, wherever that part of you is you might have to do. Dig really deep to remember it. Maybe it’s sort of been repressed since you were 10 years old. Who knows? But we all have that part in some way, shape or form. That’s the part that understands these times, and that’s the part that we can now bring to the forefront, make center stage and make a, shall we say, a lead character in our lives, so that we can co create with these times, because that’s the part, that’s the way the wind is blowing. And so why not set our sails accordingly. We all have those sails.
Achim Nowak 30:33
How do you, Lawrence, activate or dance with your own inner Renegade? How does the renegade show up for you? Or how do you bring him forth or her forth?
Dr. Laurence Hillman 30:44
Do it and thanks for saying him or her. Because planets are not gendered. There’s no male or female planets that show up in all forms the way. One of the things I do is I challenge myself to do something unexpected and uncomfortable every day. Silly thing. I’ll just make an example. I don’t actually tie my shoes anymore. I have slip in shoes. If I tied my left shoes first every day, yeah, I would, for a while, start by tying my right shoe, little things like that. Habits. I break my habits. I change things. I do something that’s uncomfortable. Somebody invites me to something I would automatically say no to. Last year, I now say, Oh yeah, I would love that. I do things. I go out of my comfort zone. I practice and exercise that part of me like it’s a muscle that I haven’t used for a while. I happen to have used mine all of my life, so I’m not that uncomfortable with it. I love my renegade but I also have plenty of other actors on my stage who are not so happy with all that renegade energy that I have and that try to hold that part of myself down at times and says, Hey, don’t do that. That’s too risky. Or people will look or if you stick your head out, people will throw eggs. Tone it down a little bit. Don’t forget, I was born and raised in Switzerland. Lot of rules about what you can and can’t do. To not get into trouble is just easier to conform. But that’s no longer enough, and to push back and to do things that are uncomfortable and different, and to accept that we can speak up and say something and the chaos is sometimes a good thing. Is really important at this time, we all have to find that part in ourselves, otherwise other people will define it for us,
Achim Nowak 32:23
because you you drive the time of disruption so beautifully that we’re in. Are you somebody who makes future plans, who goes I’ve always wanted to do this, or I’ve always wanted to go there, or how do you think about your own future. If you do.
Dr. Laurence Hillman 32:43
I used to make a whole lot of plans. I make fewer plans. Now. I still make plans. I have dreams and goals and things like that. But lesser and lesser To me, life has become increasingly about showing up to what comes my way. I have three ways. I think there’s three ways to go through life. This is now sort of a philosophical answer. The first way is to say life happens to me. Things keep coming my way. And it’s essentially a way of saying I’m a victim. Lot of people live like that. You know, things happen to me. When I was little, I didn’t have this, I didn’t have that. If I only this or that. It’s a victim mentality. It’s very common and it’s easy, because then I’m not responsible for anything. Second way to go through life is to say I make life happen. I’m in charge of everything. It’s all up to me. Nobody’s going to give me anything. Pull myself up by my bootstraps, go out, win the world. You know, take your gun and go west, young man, take what’s yours. It’s a very American fantasy, but it’s global. That is a different way. That’s an ego approach to life. I have to make everything happen. I don’t believe in either of those. I like the third way. The third way says life is already happening. Despite me, my job is to co create with what’s happening at any given moment. And then the question is, well, what? How do I know what’s happening at any given moment? And then there’s different tools to read the moment. There’s intuition, there’s meditation, there is reading the news. There is all kinds of things. I happen to like, to use astrology as a way to know what’s happening and then to set my sails accordingly. In other words, what’s already happening is how the wind is blowing. I don’t have control over that. I’m not a victim to that. It’s just blowing. It’s just time unfolding. We can read that time. We can read those winds where, at the beginning of the Age of Aquarius is a way to say that’s a particular wind. You don’t have to believe in it. As far as I’m concerned, it doesn’t matter if you believe in it, the wind is still blowing. I just have a tool where I can understand that wind, and now I can set my sails accordingly.
Achim Nowak 34:44
Or any listeners who want to learn more about your thinking, your writing, you also teach a whole bunch. Where would you like to send them to? Like, what resources should they be checking out? Well,
Dr. Laurence Hillman 34:57
these just go to my website, which is Lawrence Hillman. Com. One word, Lawrence hillman.com, and right at the top there’s a link says, tap here to study with me in 2025 that usually has the latest teachings that I’m doing. There’s a whole bunch of recordings there. There’s some free stuff. There’s some for sale stuff. There is a description in great detail of what I do. There are forms to sign up if someone wants a reading with me. So that’s just that’s the easiest to get in touch there. They’re interested in the business work, in the archetypes at work. Then there’s a website called archetypes at work. Just go there and read and find out. And of course, you know, there’s always the possibility of sending me an email, my contact information is there and asking me questions, or suggesting ideas to work on together and things like that. I’m always curious. I’m open to taking this work further. I’m open to people who get what we’re doing and who want to bring it into their environments. To me, that is the way that this work is spreading, and so that’s why I do these interviews. I think it’s a wonderful opportunity to put the work out there, to invite people to think about this. And if somebody is called to this or finds this an interesting way of thinking, then get in touch. We’ll see what we co create. It’s always that there’s not a lot of time on my schedule. I’m a very, very busy person, but, you know, I’m open to I love ideas. And one of the things about the Age of Aquarius, and especially now that Uranus is moving into Gemini in June for the next seven years or so, this is a time where ideas, more than ever will be important. And really new ideas, really different ideas that aren’t just a rehashing or a reshuffling of old stuff in a new form. New ideas right now are really useful and really valuable. And I love to see inventions. I love to see new things being created that can help in all of these crises that we’ve created. And it’s just phenomenal. I read the other day this very Iranian Uranus example. That’s why I’m bringing it that I think it was German car company. I forget which ones. I don’t want to misstep and say the wrong one, but a German car company came up with a paint that’s basically a solar panel. It’s a brilliant idea. I mean, the whole you spray your car, and the whole car is is charging while it’s driving. What a wonderful idea. These sort of ideas, to me, are just beautiful and brilliant and very Iranian. That’s a good example of Uranus, you know, especially around energy and electricity and connection and telecommunications and space flight. And all of this belongs to Uranus as well. I’m big into AI. I’m teaching a course right now, and the intersection between AI and archetypal astrology, Pacifica, and that’s been fascinating to research and to write. And so, you know, there’s we live in very interesting time. I am grateful every single day that I live now and not even 10 years ago. I think these are one of the most exciting times to be alive, fully aware of all the the risks and the edginess of this time and the dangers and the horrors and all of that. I’m not blind to those, but I’m an optimist by nature, and I’m very excited about how this breakdown is bringing out so much newness. That was where we were stuck. So I don’t like chaos more than the next person, but I do like what it produces.
Achim Nowak 38:23
Thank you so much for this conversation, Lawrence, and for just think that the gift of the work that you do, it was an absolute pleasure. Thanks. Well, thank you
Dr. Laurence Hillman 38:33
for having me. Achim. It was a pleasure to meet you in person, and delighted to have been here. Thank you indeed.
Achim Nowak 38:42
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