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 Eight 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 Eight 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
I think it's a title of the book and I think possibly the driving force of every man's exploration in the land of women, somehow to find this beautiful, true, deep sense of love.
Speaker 3:
Since we're talking high philosophy, I've got a little theory on this that I'd like to share, and something I read about along the way has been the idea of the anima complex. What I basically understand about this is that all human beings are born whole and complete and we've actually got our masculine and our feminine sides. But as soon as we hit two or three or four years old, we realise that actually we're little boys and we start to disown all the feminine traits of ourselves, like our femininity as men just gets shoved into our subconscious, and the idea of the anima complex is actually who we're looking for. This perfect image of a woman that we're looking for in the external world is a reflection of our own inner femininity that we've cut off and abandoned along the way, and if only we could find a woman that would reflect our inner anima, then we would finally be whole and complete, like we were when we were born into this world.
Speaker 1:
The way it works. You sort of find that in your shadow, that is, your blind spots, in a way, like we did with the circuit, you're looking intimately to find that in that feminine party itself, and the only, way you can do that is through that community that we talked about earlier with other people. Because, you're right, we do shove it away, we hide it, we suppress it, we're taught to suppress it, whatever.
Speaker 2:
That's a Freudian thing. Young Kalliang, yes, Kalliang.
Speaker 1:
And did you?
Speaker 2:
you said you had a theory.
Speaker 1:
You wanted to share. Is that the one?
Speaker 3:
Well, that was a theory.
Speaker 1:
You said it okay, yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yeah and like. For me that was like, ah, so maybe it's true. Because I read you say every man has a vague notion of the perfect girl, a subconscious image that he carries in his heart from his earliest years to his dying day. And that resonates completely true in my experience, although the curious thing is that if I sit in daydream about a perfect girl, for me her image changes every single year.
Speaker 3:
That's why I said big yeah because you can't really put a picture on her or put an image on her. Her base qualities, however, don't Right, well, the way she makes you feel doesn't.
Speaker 1:
No, the way she makes that would make you feel, if you had that around your life that you were imagining, right, and how you would feel alive and inspired and full of energy and full of life. That's for sure. That doesn't change. Yeah, why be a bikini model when you're young, or a movie star that you like? That's my ideal girl. That's the perfect girl. There might be any variation across the spectrum of women too, and, like you said, it changes all the time. It's for sure, there somewhere in our heart, you have that feeling, the vague image of that ideal girl.
Speaker 3:
The animal complex teaching is interesting because actually it means we're us, we're just looking for ourselves. Wow, maybe like that concept of the fourth stage man, where you cross-dress at weekends, then you can be an iterated whole. I'll stay without. You're still going to continue to hold a hair on the outside right Searching the world. What country has got the most aligned girls with the awesome girls? I'll be there for my animal complex, yeah but Young's interesting because he goes really deep.
Speaker 2:
His psychology is about mythology and archetypes and all this raw primal energy stuff. That's definitely something to it.
Speaker 3:
I don't know where it is but there's something to it.
Speaker 3:
Well, something that I've got interested in over the last year or so is like all these myths and legends and heroes, journeys, and there's mainly masculine ones, but there's some feminine ones as well and nowadays, when I sit with this is something I got from some friends, actually, but you can actually pick out the different archetypes and characters of people. If I sit with a woman for long enough, I can be like there's a little bit of this thing here, a little bit of this, or like someone who reminds me of a movie character, somehow like the purity of Snow White, but then there's, like you know, the film Snow White and the Huntsman.
Speaker 1:
I've heard of it. It's a new one, right? Yeah, a couple of years old.
Speaker 3:
He talks about all the different feminine archetypes and, like the witch who would? Who eats beautiful young women so that she can maintain her beauty for longer, talks about this size of the feminine. It's incredible.
Speaker 1:
Archetype. Yeah, I mean I said in here, you know, assign me an archetype.
Speaker 2:
I don't know what it is.
Speaker 1:
Wizard king, poet lover rogue. I don't know, and you know it's. It's an interesting concept and I like that. I like the, the young and this ideas, but I don't know it very well, but I think it's interesting.
Speaker 2:
So there's anima thing you're talking about.
Speaker 1:
I've heard of this too, but it's like everything's plausible when you get to the quantum level right, but what's what's in your discovery about the Anabasca girl? What does that mean? What does that?
Speaker 3:
question mean. So where? Where are you now with this idea Like what's the point of pontification of the day?
Speaker 1:
What's the answer to the book? Is that the question?
Speaker 3:
Well, I don't think there's an answer, but you might have a couple of favorite. Like I just named the anima complex right, it's like you mean like the theory. It feels like a fashionable interesting point. Today might not be next year, and I wonder if you've got some kind of equivalent, that you think, yeah, maybe it's that I like that.
Speaker 1:
Oh, I have a lot of maybes, yeah, but they're all in here, right, they're all like, as I said, I mean, maybe it's a science thing, maybe it's strictly science, maybe it's mathematics, maybe it's chemistry, maybe it's stardust, but you get to the quantum level, like a molecular science of love, and nothing's measurable and nothing is. You know, everything's a wave in a particle at the same time.
Speaker 2:
You can't figure it out.
Speaker 1:
Our minds can't comprehend it, so you can't comprehend eternity. What does seem cool?
Speaker 3:
though, is that it doesn't seem that you've grown up into. You know a healthy, functioning adult, and seen that there's no Anabasca girl. It's all pragmatic, like there's still a belief in a wonder.
Speaker 1:
That's exactly Like I'm still. I still identify. I'm still that little boy who's like sneaking through the forest and looking for treasure and and seeing what magic I can find. For sure that's not, that, doesn't. That has never gone away from me, that spirit that I've never become. This, I've never become jaded or seen at all, or there's nothing more for me to learn, or I've never become this. All seeing I either, where I see everything and I get it now and like part from in the club.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it's over there. I can see everything there.
Speaker 1:
I miss nothing in a club. You girls just arrived and I didn't even see him come in, but I can tell they're there. Yeah, I mean, like you never arrive. That's the whole point of this journey you never arrive. And for this guy on the train, where does he arrive to? It's a beautiful thing. The mystery is incredible, so I can't answer it. Like you said, where am I sitting now with my concert in the Alamabasa girl? I'm sitting in large, large questions and that are fantastical to me, that are just that give me, that make me feel that, whatever else, I'm living a life that's seeking something. So, yeah, like I'm excited by it, I said by the confusion and they're not knowing.
Speaker 3:
I've got a way of seeing it that I guess has emerged these last few days of making this film and I like it, so I keep it for now. Like we talk about three stages of everything right now. In the first stage the man thinks Three stages of hornyness. It's like there's a stage where we blindly believe and hope that there's an alabasta girl and we project her onto all of our girlfriends and the women we approach and hope for and never lives up to those expectations. And then it seems like there's this mature phase where we know that the alabasta girl doesn't exist. So we'll see the women that we're with, or who they are, and know that that's a much more pragmatic way about doing, about it, going about things, and we can construct a healthy life, yeah a more realistic, yeah.
Speaker 3:
And then I think there's this third phase again, which is tapping into the Jungian archetypal nature of things, where we tap into, as men, our own Gypsy pirate, magician, lover type, energy and our way of being and interacting and seducing and romancing our women has them tap into the archetypalness of their alabasta girl or that. That fullness of woman, that fullness of love, devotion, beauty, is something that we can draw out again of many different women.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I like that. You said that in that third stage you are identifying and discovering and exploring your own archetype. To me, that means you're trying to understand yourself for the reality of who you are, the beauty of your wholeness, for your goods and your bad and everything, whole and complete, and accepting yourself, saying that's a good man in this world and do my best to do good things in this world and leave magic where we're gone.
Speaker 3:
Well, if I don't spend as much time thinking about my own archetypal nature as I do with the woman I'm with, and there's no symmetry in that there has to be an inward search there's? I mean, I said it is here, it's out with all the.
Speaker 1:
I mean maybe this is what you're talking about, where I talk about those stages where we're trying to figure out in our stages of love, of man's understanding of relationship and love, we start out thinking it's the one, get our heart broken and then we get something in our system. That's as you said, jordan. You become more pragmatic, more realistic, you date it in a more practical way, you relate in a different, you need a more reasonable way and you can still build a constructive life. And then the third stage that I described here for a man and his discovery is that now he wants to discover the essence of women, the archetypes of women, what is the driving force of nature that comes from the feminine, and really try to understand that spirit and looks on that level which most men will never get, will try and have that conversation with themselves or with the world.
Speaker 1:
What is that we either stay in level one or level two. Stage one or stage two, which is fall in love, think it's the one, get our heart broken, start dating around a bit, get another relationship you know forever. And that third stage is saying what is my role as the masculine and the feminine? And then, beyond that, exactly what you said. You come to this realization that it's a full circle.
Speaker 1:
You're back whole and complete with yourself, without all the baggage and neediness and naivete and all that kind of stuff, and the woman that you love and who loves you represents all that great exploration of feminine spirit, and it's her, so I mean there's an entire world out there, this entire society out there, that really has tossed away the side, or this concept of monogamy and that a man and woman can be joined and stay for years together in a loving embrace because they've only seen destruction. So there's all kinds of different types of relationship now.
Speaker 1:
But I think in a full circle. You could stay with that woman for the rest of your life, because that is the most glorious woman on earth and she represents it all. So back to the simplicity of a man and woman who, like each other. She's as simple as it gets. Otherwise we wouldn't be here, none of us would exist, if somebody didn't say hey, something about you I like. Would you like to have some mead? Whatever they did in medieval times, mead yeah, mead is beer and honey or something like that. Whatever they. I'm just trying to say something before. Is that a go for coffee? What's the invented coffee? What did they go for?
Speaker 3:
We went for a mead and read a sonnet and sat in the cup.
Speaker 1:
Let's go to the square down Do-si-do. We're going to partner around, around.
Speaker 3:
You know, over the years, having been involved with this message with you, I've been reading all kinds of stuff from psychology to spirituality and wanting to really understand thoroughly. Well, how does this all fit together? Because, you know, wondering if there is a notion of this romantic part of the man who's longing for this alabaster girl. Is that like an immature Peter Pan type fantasy thing, or are we all going to have to as men grow up and become adults? I've been struggling with that.
Speaker 3:
A few reasons wrong, yeah, like, is this romantic notion something of my past that should outgrow, like these kinds of questions? And as time goes on, my understanding improves, I start to see more of that third phase, which is actually you can completely become this functional adult, have relationships, do the whole independent thing, and then, on top of that, there is not a return to the fantasy of before, but a grounded adult right, moving beyond, yeah, the sensibleness, moving beyond into something much bigger, and it's a recuperation of all of the romantic dreams of the past. Yeah, and it's rooted in complete real life and it's and it's possible to create, to create yourself into a person that's able to draw forth this alabaster nature from the woman that you're with. That's well said.
Speaker 1:
I have no comment on that, because that's very well said.
Speaker 2:
I was thinking, taping a bit deep. You look at lots of the spiritual leaders. They have this big theme. They're teaching about returning to this child like one dinkurosity. Yeah, so you want to. Even though you're going to grow up and you're going to get more mature and more realistic, you still need to retain that childlike and it's like a little boy energy, that fun, that big smile that eases the light, that when you see a puddle you want to jump into it and not, you know, walk around it and don't have to get your work crowds as dirty there's. There's something to that. I've always different people are saying this childlike wonder, curiosity, this naturalness I don't know what else to say, but yeah, I feel it come full circle that the whole book is like talks about smaller, very definite things, grander, larger things.
Speaker 1:
We haven't got to the end of this book yet. I mean, you've talked a lot about it, talked about a lot of themes that that end the book, big questions and big mysteries, and in the book is exciting times. Exciting, and I think it's exciting times for all of us.
Speaker 3:
I'm excited, like, like, just what I said, feels nice. Feel like, at least for right now, got something figured out yeah, and that was very well said. Jordan, that was really strong. What it means to me is we don't have to be childish and hoping, or immature, wandering the earth hoping for that magic to happen. We don't have to grow up and become boring adults either.
Speaker 1:
Yeah you make the magic happen. Yeah, do everything at once, yeah.
Speaker 2:
I've got another thought I'd like to throw out there, which is this concept of you talked about earlier a flow. There's been lots of studies into these moments in life where you're completely immersed, completely engaged, you're alive, and I liken this to tennis, which is my background growing up.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes you're playing a tennis match and you're just not playing well. You're going to force it and the more you force it your shots are going out and you're doing second serves like a little pancake. It's still not going in. It's like what is happening. But when you're getting that flow, energy, everything's natural, you're engaged, you're on fire. I liken that to another bit. Sometimes you think, oh, things aren't working out and guys put the pressure on themselves. They're going to do this, they're going to do that.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot of pressure on how do I find this alabaster girl? What we're talking about now is symmetry and ease and light is flow. It's like strip that all the way and become engaged and alive. You're feeling that energy. It's going to be naturally. There is a jigsaw, naturalness about the one or whatever you call it, and if something doesn't feel right, you see that limitation. It's not sophisticated, she's not your girl. It's a lot of pressure off this kind of notion. It is a destiny, it's a free, flowing spirit about it. That was one of my bigger hearts, as well as some of the business mindset Could have made things happen. Made things happen. Made things happen that this free flowing thing.
Speaker 2:
I think there's something to that as well.
Speaker 3:
So I think, in this moment of having it all figured out, we should just go down to the street, and the one is going to appear.
Speaker 1:
I've told the energies were across the room. She looks really like a female.
Speaker 3:
Imagine our heads together for seven days solid. That's too old again. Cloud of horniness now.
Speaker 2:
Stand out in front of your walk on by.
Speaker 1:
eventually, I loved that this conversation is transcending this book and you guys are talking up here Let your own thoughts and realizations and learnings, and that, to me, is fantastic. I like that If we could stem some conversation from this that goes into loftier places and me comes up with more advanced philosophies and ideas than is presented here.
Speaker 2:
That's exciting to me To start a conversation we were talking earlier about young. It seems that all the money rookie in psychology all the psychological trains of thought, behaviorism, whatever they have kind of a final stage with that self actualization of individuation. And what they talk about is common things, about a sense of wonder, curiosity, aliveness and light, loving others naturalists there's no game playing in that there's no inauthenticity.
Speaker 2:
It's a happiness in yourself. There's all these things you talk about. That's the final stage of becoming a whole person. That will obviously attract the alabaster girl. That's interesting to me. Even though you've never read a book, I can do it for your life. You just do intuition. You're finding these same things.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, people tell me there's a lot of parallels with the kind of things you're saying in here and Buddhism. I don't know anything about it In a circular way or a certain spec way. I understand it, but not in a studied way. So, yeah, but it is. It's life lessons. Yeah, it really comes from sitting and scratching my head for long periods of time wondering what happened there.
Speaker 1:
And it seems like I said, a lot of people read this. There's reviews on Amazon where guys go come on. This is like I read this one as all this crap the first pages, it's like just a bunch of repetitive words and it is very repetitive. I know that you could slice this down to just the ideas and you could cut it in half, but then it would miss the musicality that I would like to read. There was something that I would like to read, even though I don't like to read it. Now I can look at it.