A coffee-fueled round-table discussion about the book, "The Alabaster Girl" by Zan Perrion. Listen in as Zan and his guests explore the themes and concepts of the book in immense and surprising detail. The episodes will be released on a regular basis, so don't forget to subscribe!
In this episode: Part Three of the discussion on the chapter: The Way of Love __________________________________________________
"In Search of the Alabaster Girl" Producer: Zan Perrion Director: Ioan Bati Editor: Gabriel Coroiu Sound Editing: Nikolaos Spyratos Original music: "Tango del'Amor" by DaKsha & Nandi With: Zan Perrion, Jordan Luke Collier, Rich Thompson, Owen Davis
Ars Amorata is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.
Zan Perrion is internationally recognized as one of the most original and insightful voices on relationships and seduction in the world today. A regular media commentator, he has been widely featured in the international press. Zan is the founder of the Ars Amorata philosophy--a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure. He is also a co-founder of the Amorati network of men. Zan divides his time between Canada and Romania and can be found at www.zanperrion.com and www.arsamorata.com
A coffee-fueled round-table discussion about the book, "The Alabaster Girl" by Zan Perrion. Listen in as Zan and his guests explore the themes and concepts of the book in immense and surprising detail. The episodes will be released on a regular basis, so don't forget to subscribe!
In this episode: Part Three of the discussion on the chapter: The Way of Love __________________________________________________
"In Search of the Alabaster Girl" Producer: Zan Perrion Director: Ioan Bati Editor: Gabriel Coroiu Sound Editing: Nikolaos Spyratos Original music: "Tango del'Amor" by DaKsha & Nandi With: Zan Perrion, Jordan Luke Collier, Rich Thompson, Owen Davis
Ars Amorata is a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure.
Zan Perrion is internationally recognized as one of the most original and insightful voices on relationships and seduction in the world today. A regular media commentator, he has been widely featured in the international press. Zan is the founder of the Ars Amorata philosophy--a celebration of the art of seduction, the rebirth of romance, and a lifelong quest for beauty and adventure. He is also a co-founder of the Amorati network of men. Zan divides his time between Canada and Romania and can be found at www.zanperrion.com and www.arsamorata.com
So let's kick off more or less where we left it last time. No warm up for us this morning. We're in love, yeah, we're in the way of love, and we've been talking a lot about the way of being in a relationship which, on the one hand, is very honestly sharing how you feel that relationship is and what's happening and what it means, but not planning for it to go in any particular direction and not being attached or trying to force it to go a certain way. And there's a little paragraph here where you say, oh, chiara school, to a lover there. Let us not let you and I be different. Let's never analyze this as let's just be. Let's just trust our love, let us not expect or demand. And it's like there's lots of lofty statements in that paragraph of what I think a lot of people would hope a relationship would be. You know, to continually live out those beautiful summer days of when it first happened. But I wonder, what is it in your experience that has people start to get derailed from those early house-y days of a romance?
Speaker 1:
Well, I think that's been commented on a lot. Why does love not last? Why is they say it's 18 months, 18 months, and then it kind of drifts away, and I don't know. Biology, routines, sameness, lack of variety, yeah I don't know. But I know that, I know that, I know that if it descends into just routine and the mundane and the normal and there is no, like I said in our earlier session, there is no spiritual yearning then it will devolve into just the sameness of days, and so the whole idea and the whole concept of this book is how to move towards beauty and adventure Adventure is the word that we don't use enough, and it could be adventure in one place and you have to like go around after the safari, and I'm saying it could be, but it's still an adventurous spirit and seeking actively to maintain that and to revive that and to hold that adventurous spirit until the day you die.
Speaker 1:
I guess you can. Yeah, big questions here.
Speaker 3:
How and why. That 18 month fixed window seems to be what evolutionary science is suggesting that hormones run out on a given day after we first meet, and that's it. Do you think that even that will be?
Speaker 1:
I don't know there's a whole biological aspect to looking at copulation and that is, and there be some very smart and intelligent and well studied people who say that you know, that is the natural life cycle of Enough to make a baby, hmm, have time to make a baby, care for it just enough and then go off and make another baby, right? So anybody's anthropologist is can study tribes or say, yeah, that makes that aligns with this. Or or animals, I Don't know. I Don't know if I believe it or not. I just know that I Know. I know that I don't know, but others comment on that.
Speaker 3:
It's not. My Seems like we're moving into the portion of this project.
Speaker 1:
Because this the journey of this Gentleman is basically. As you see, the last chapter is called you know, the way of the way of love, the way of salvation is an excellent salvation of what? Salvation of us in general, or salvation of him, you know, like, like, where's it? How could he be saved From mediocrity and from what's? What's his journey? Where's he going next? So yeah, you're getting to the end of the book, which becomes more questions, which becomes more philosophical, which becomes less practical, which becomes a big bunch of I don't know. So get ready.
Speaker 3:
Let's let's talk a little bit about intimacy.
Speaker 1:
Regions the next thing.
Speaker 2:
Yes, as you know, I like my analogies and metaphors. This is one of my favorite ones. You talk about a relationship like swimming in the ocean and the surface level is very free, it's gonna energy or by the surface very fast moving. And if you go deeper so people scuba diving seal the richness and the vitamins for colors. But there's more pressure, you're more submerged. And you say, people like their different depths, some people like to go shallow, some people like to go deep and even a relationship.
Speaker 2:
One of you wants one level, another one it's another one. Yeah, it's difficult. I guess this is true Not just for the depth, and as people in relationship with things like their journey, their personalities have, people evolve over time. You may start off in the same and people, that's true, drift apart. Things drift. But I guess for many people they say I gotta make this work. It's working relationship. That's kind of one level. Another level is oh, we're just apart, now let's leave it. What? What's your view? Do you have a balance field?
Speaker 1:
to try and to try and you know, sometimes, things in, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, we, we, we drag it out and we fight for which is a noble thing to do to try and really understand. You know why. Why are you having this dysfunction? Why are we having this disconnect? You know why have I been concentrating on my career so much that I've forgotten to to have fun and play with my, my wife, right, and those examinations are good, those like life exam.
Speaker 1:
What is priority to me, what is what is my heart says? I'm what I love the most. What do I not want to lose here? What's most important? And those mindful choices are fantastic. But to to Artificially trying to keep things dragging along when the depth shifts. I mean that the whole point of this talking about the different, the analogy of the different depths that we like to swim at is no one's right, no one's wrong, and and that's our feeling, you know relationships. Why can't you be more like this? I'm more, I want to have more meaningful conversation with you. Why can't you be more like me, which is the right way?
Speaker 3:
Why can't you be more fun and take it easy and just enjoy?
Speaker 1:
like I gotta be so heavy all the time.
Speaker 1:
Which is the right way. See, we're all saying that, that that we need counseling or we need you need to change. You need to change because you're not doing relationships right. It should be more Right, exactly. You said that's where we're looking at the relationship as a third entities is a key. Yeah, excellent, yeah, so, yeah. So I mean, like, the whole point of that is that if we recognize that it's not a bad thing if somebody wants to swim at a light depth where it's fun and easy and they can breathe, doesn't?
Speaker 3:
mean that their commitment is any less.
Speaker 1:
Doesn't mean that their commitment to their, the relationship, or their love for their, for their spouse or their, their, their woman or their man, is any less than somebody who likes to swim really deep and have profound conversations, profound meaningful experiences. It just means that we just have different levels and we try and force that person and they'll do it because they love you, but it's not the natural feel.
Speaker 3:
This has been one of the most Important insights I've got from you over the last year or so, because if you say it's it's a good thing to be light and at the top of the ocean and it's a good thing to be deep, and it depends on the person, there's no shaming in that anymore right.
Speaker 3:
And it's like at least the kind of places that I've been to lately there's been an assumption that deeper is better and that the more intimate, the deeper you swim in that ocean, the better You're doing in the art of relationship.
Speaker 1:
Right, and actually that's a very um, it's just one perspective of things exactly because it's also beautiful and Just as life, affirming good things about having it that light and easy breezy, no relationship, and it could last forever too.
Speaker 3:
And it's so easy to carry this like this un, unconscious cultural norm, which is you get into a relationship and it's like that, and then, as every month that goes by, you've got to take it A layer down into the depths of the ocean. And if you're falling behind because you don't want to see the other person as much as you the couple should at that point in their relationship, then you're, you're keeping things up because of fear. Or if you're going too deep down here on in the first month, you're, you're too deep, you're too demanding, you want in too much like this is the summer, you've got to keep it light, yeah it's beautiful to get rid of those cultural constructs.
Speaker 1:
I think that's the heart of it there, and we cast a lot of blame, we have a lot of anguish and we think if only things would change. But if we recognize that's how we flow, that's how it is, then the trick and the art is to try and find, or try to align yourself with, something that likes the same depth as you. Right, good luck, a good luck.
Speaker 3:
Exactly Same depth, but also with the same rhythm, right yeah, because you in the summer might be very different to you in the winter.
Speaker 1:
That's correct. That's correct and maybe we can take this analogy in all kinds of directions, expand on it, but I think the idea is sound.
Speaker 3:
So is there an optimum depth for success and length in a relationship or an optimum depth for beauty? No, I don't think so.
Speaker 1:
A relationship that is like fun and light and easy can last for years, for your whole life, and even though we think, oh, it has to be profound and have a lot of meaning. But I don't buy that. I think any depth is like. You can go forever, as long as you're aligned with who you are and you're shifting over time.
Speaker 3:
So yeah, I remember having a conversation with you on this subject, like when I first got back from America last year, and it was like you and Hans were, at least in that moment, talking up the virtues of staying in the surface and Knut and I came back from this big trip talking the virtues of actually touching that ocean floor and getting our hands cut to death with the coral down there and we say like this has got to be the way. And you said something like in your life you've seen a lot of relationships that because of the belief that depth is good, they go right down to the bottom of the ocean. But because they do that heavy lifting or that work or that processing, it's almost as if by going right to the depth of that, right to the depth of the ocean together, it's almost as if people can learn their spiritual lesson or take their spiritual lesson from that relationship really, really quickly and they're done and it vanishes.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I think that's a statement you did me.
Speaker 3:
I have no comments. You don't want to commit to that from this Well yeah, because I don't know.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, but yeah, it seems to me that that is. That seems right, like relationships and love. It's such a I don't know how to talk about it. I don't know how to write about it Not really, because I write about it in circles too. Everything I wrote is all kind of circular and just like and repetitious, and trying to poke at it and trying to see it from different angles and perspectives, and I don't know if I was successful or not, but it feels like that was my best attempt at writing about this incredible, glorious concept of love which is near and dear to everyone's heart.
Speaker 1:
It's always the number one conversation In every circle that I've been in on earth. Every culture you can talk about. I don't know boats you can talk about, you know music, but when it comes to the art of love and relationships, everybody's interested. It always becomes the center of attention when that topic comes into the room, every guy and every girl has what. Because I want to know about this too, I want to have something to say about it. It's always the number one subject, this when it's brought up.
Speaker 2:
I think it's interesting, though maybe a clarification point people reading this. This seems because of the genre of the book. It's very, very deep and meaningful and we meet in person, kick back off camera very light and having fun and joking around People reading this. It's not saying the way relationships have to be like this. Deep and meaningful it can be either. That's the point. The important thing again is the spirit of it, not the depth, or that comes down to your own personality.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, contradictions are. Because I'm very surface and fun and laugh and you guys always see me in the same mood, right?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I'm always joking and in my relationship too, and yet it's very meaningful, it's strong, profound and I think about it a lot. That's interesting. I joke and I have fun and I play with you guys and I talk to all the girls and smiling and winking at everybody all the time and I always take my time. You know, I don't have to take the time. It's like it's an automatic thing of me that I sit back virtually and wonder about the whole thing wow, what does that mean? That's kind of cool.
Speaker 1:
I'm always like philosophizing about something, always, even though I'm like jumping around strange, isn't it? So this kind of stuff that I'm writing here, it's things you know. I wrote in here that on a balcony, every man is a philosopher, everybody becomes spin-o's. When you stand on a balcony and it's, or at a window, you know, just looking out and standing for a long time, it just contemplates and yeah, so I do a lot of that. I don't meditate, I don't think about meditation. I'm not a meditationist women. It gives me a lot of peace in my heart that I had. It holds right for the world.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you do say that you have a ritual and every morning you consider who you are and what you want your life to be like. Yes, which seems like a serious, almost discipline. Well, this is true, I suppose.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it is a.
Speaker 1:
It's strange because there's almost a reverence. About the who's sound strange to say it. There's almost a reverence about the way I move through a day, you know.
Speaker 1:
Like I'm laughing joking have coffee's with you running around. But if I'm walking somewhere, I'm never thinking like I, I Got a biting shirt. I don't think these kind of things, obviously. I think the kind of things like I'm in Bucharest here and what, what was the glory of this beautiful city at one time, you know? And what are the people doing it? What do they love.
Speaker 1:
I'm thinking these things all the time, all the time. So there's a kind of it like. So the ritual, like is they do in the morning that I wrote about in the book here, which is just a quiet get up in the morning, be grateful for the new day, consider who I am and what do I want and and and what kind of memories you can make today and that kind of. That kind of flowing, but that same kind of and I lack a better word that same kind of reverence and gratefulness can flip. It is in beauty all today. Even you guys may not see it on me, I'm thinking it all the time.
Speaker 1:
All the time I'm thinking you know when I'm not talking, which is Most of the time Rest on the thing. Wow, how do we get to do this? We get to sit in the conversation here. That to me is like a powerful thought gives me that, gives me wheels, wings, gives me motivation to like you know. You know I'm thinking wow, because there's a lot of people that don't have opportunities that we have. There's a lot of. You know, I'm trouble in this world, as we know, and I'm just talking, you understand what I'm trying to say. Yeah, but I do have a lot of contemplation, I guess our introspection. I'm always thinking about everything, my past, where I want to go. I'm staying connected to that ritual all day.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
Yes, no matter what happens in the day something, some plan gets gets broken or something I always think, hey, I'm on the path. I Don't know, I don't see the end from beginning at all, but I just relax and, like as Casanova said, just flow, just relax and let let life take you. That's where your mindful choices come in. Yeah, right from that question, yeah, so mindful choice to relax, right and trust, as opposed to mindful choice to Go, go, go, go go.
Speaker 3:
So, by and large, we're on the theme of intimacy, like I think the biggest thing I'm getting from this is that Relationship doesn't have to have a particular formal style to be beautiful in and of itself. It's much more. What I'm getting is this idea of actually its Beauty of a relationships in the eye of the beholder or the beholders and I don't want to be shamed because my last relationship Lasted a month or two days or or a week correct and you did it and you did it wrong.
Speaker 1:
Obviously you couldn't make that last, you know yeah or you, you or what we tell ourselves. As I fell in love with the wrong person, that didn't work right. All these things are like that second guessing, yeah.
Speaker 1:
Something to realize, too, is it's To takes to the finger and Australian, but the other party's got their own Mind, their own free will. Yeah, they've got freedom to choose as well. And we don't we don't often take, we all put the blame on ourselves, yeah, but it's the third. They need to be there for that third and third relationship. Yeah, so this is the levels of intimacy, which goes along with everything we've been talking about in earlier episodes, which is vulnerability communication. I mean, these are cliches. You know, any marriage counseling would be okay. How's your communication? But there's a reason that I mean that is a. This is a profound thing I think we're not doing is communicating. Communicating our desires to someone we just met, communicating our confusion, communicating our hopes and dreams. Not communicating anything. We're just hoping that they get it, their actions.
Speaker 3:
There's an alabaster story here in this section which I think I guess I could say seems like a profound feature of intimacy that I haven't seen talked about. You know, on YouTube videos of the counseling advice for relationships and you say you're with a woman and you comment on a sadness that's in the rails from a betrayal that she had from a man before, and she's talking about this past boyfriend, but her history of men that has left like a sadness, and you talk about how her anger comes and how whole mixture of emotions, from despair to betrayal, flash across her face.
Speaker 3:
And the last paragraph you say did you notice, then, how I softened your countenance with the tip of my fingers? Did you notice that I stayed? You resisted, looking away, shaking your head a little, tearing up a little, just a little. But I stayed. I stayed right there with you, calming you down with the warmth of my eyes and the warmth of my voice and the warmth of my fingers, tracing lines on your cheek.
Speaker 3:
I have no answers for you, I said. Love is a mystery, I said, but I stayed. And well, first of all, the way that's written I found incredibly touching. The first time I saw it Like I felt there to be an immense truth and it's something to do with that. Got no answers, I've got no idea what's happened with you before, Got no way of making that better, Got no intention actually of changing that, but that staying seems really poignant in a way that I think a lot of men maybe women too, but a lot of men when things get tough emotionally with their partner, will either try and fix it or run away Right, and I think that there's a magic there and intimacy that you're touching on with this piece.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's some passages you're very close to my heart, obviously, and I've seen it. I mean, like there is no way of like, say, a man's natural impulse is to solve it for her or to check out. I can't handle it. Yeah, yeah, I haven't comment, but it's true.
Speaker 3:
Well, it's in that staying.
Speaker 1:
It's the same thing as we've been talking about all this time. There's an imitation in it, there's an empathy in it, there's respect, there's honoring her choices, honoring her and just saying that I'm in this with you. I can't pretend to understand what has happened to you in your past or you know, and I can't solve it. You said it. All I can do is stay, and stay is the only word. So what's in the staying? Staying?
Speaker 2:
is in the staying.
Speaker 1:
I guess Just staying, oh no, I mean, like that's the best I can say is right. There can't describe it any deeper or further, because I don't know how to say it in words that are that have any meaning so poetically it makes complete sense.
Speaker 1:
But then instructionally coaching by a fermented you see me struggling in these last episodes here in the port, with poetic license, I feel like I get, I can. I can do my best to capture the spirit of that concept that you just talked about, for instance, but to say it in an academic way or in a instruction way or a clear cut, it's this and here's an answer. And here's, here's the way I see it. I just can't, I can't put words. I struggle here. I, the only way I can do, say that kind of thing is the way it makes me feel and the in, for instance, that instance there, and all I can imagine on her face and what I can see. And I can only put it in that kind of way without saying there's any instruction.
Speaker 3:
I don't know how to do it and I'm starting in here does it appear to you because it does to me that that concept of staying without fixing or changing or running away, appears across the board in meeting, dating relating with women, like I think of being on the corner of that bar the other night with the bitchy girl behind me and and I stayed with her through all of that and allow that to continue and then something else unfolded out of that.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, so I think there's something very powerful and persistent, like it is the principle of remember what I said in an early episode, which is there's a quiet assurance not assurance of an outcome this girl might like slap you and run away you're still no right but there's a quiet assurance that you are doing your job as a man, you are showing up. That's that's the consistency, and that's the persistence, and that's that is never dialed down. It's who, it's who you, who you become, who you are, as opposed to something you're trying.
Speaker 1:
So that that observation, jordan, that there's a consistency and a persistence and a staying is a presence staying true you have staying true to who you are without, without pulling it back, without apology that's the thing that shows up across the board across the board.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, it's what it's. It's the authenticity, the attraction that you have, attractive quality. That's what it is. There's no discrepancy between the way, between the way you you move through the earth, your words and your actions, and what you and who you really are, and I think that's it. I think that's the biggest thing, because everyone's different personality. Some people are quiet, people are loud and funny and some people are every kind of variation you can possibly imagine. But when there's no discrepancy between the way they represent themselves and the way they they are internally, the way they feel internally, there's an alignment and that you can. You can feel that we say the word presence.
Speaker 1:
A man like that can walk into a room and there's, there's something about him. He's not there to show off, to dominate, to be interesting, to try and be cool. None of that, none of the hand of those, none of those things exist. He's just as who he is and he's inviting everyone to meet him on the same level, and it's a rare thing because we're always trying to shift a new mask. I'm hanging out with these guys and they're cool. I want to look like I'm cool too, so so I act cool.
Speaker 1:
The girl's really pretty and I'm, I'm gonna be him. You know, I don't think I'm good enough for her, so I'm gonna act like I'm indifferent. Right, we all do it, but that just can. Just that's why I say to blur, to follow your gut, your instinct, because that is who you are, and then what people comment on you is Jordan. You know what you're. You're a very generous guy or you're always something. That's how you, the way people see you, the way you really are. That's the truth, not the way you see yourself. You got a skewed vision of yourself. That's the trick. Yeah.