2025 Reflections: Musical Flow, Carl Jung, & Being Skeptical of Skepticism (#41)

2025-12-25

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This episode is another attempt to keep the podcast on life support. Like last year, our busy musician schedules (and lack of proper planning) made it difficult to publish several episodes throughout the year. With a few free days left in 2025 before some traveling, I gathered my thoughts and reflections from the year 2025 and tried to make them into this stream of consciousness style of episode.The first topic I talked about was my musical reflections from the year, with one of the primary ones being my thoughts about how psychological flow works, aka, that...

The first topic I talked about was my musical reflections from the year, with one of the primary ones being my thoughts about how psychological flow works, aka, that "being in the zone" feeling. I reflected on the following quote, which I love:

“Flow is found at the intersection of discipline and surrender”

On the theme of surrender, I also explored the topic of duende, a concept my wife Yankı read about in the Edward Hirsch book linked below on artistic inspiration. Duende introduces a mischievous, mysterious, and almost demonic force behind artistry. A quote referenced in this book is another one that stuck with me in my performances this past year:

“All truly profound art requires its creator to abandon himself to certain powers which he invokes but cannot altogether control.” —ANDRÉ MALRAUX, "GOYA"

Carl Jung

I really want to devote a whole episode series to what we've been reading and thinking about regarding Carl Jung over the past year. Perhaps that will happen. However, for this 2025 reflection episode, I introduced some of my favorite concepts that I've learned from reading Jung or reading about him.

I covered what Jungian synchronicity is and a few possible examples that happened to us this past year. I also talked about coincidentia oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites, a mystical and philosophical concept crucial to Jungian psychology and also something I've wrestled with over the past year.

I gave several Jung quotes throughout the episode, with this one probably being my favorite:

“The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. Or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.”

The Problem With Skepticism

Lastly, after probably getting a bit too wiggly in my thinking, I closed the episode with some thoughts about skepticism and how it can go too far. Being completely naive is bad, but it is also sad to have your skepticism dial turned up too much and miss out on some of the magic and "wiggles" that make life meaningful. Maybe the point is to find a balance between skepticism and the instinct to believe and to play.

Timestamps:

[02:55]Musical Lessons & Reflections
[10:07]Carl Jung, Symbols, & Syncronicity
[25:37]Carl Jung and Coincidence of Opposites
[39:13]The Problem with Skepticism

Links:

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Affiliate Link)
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's TED Talk
The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist (Affiliate Link)
Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung (Affiliate Link)
The Demon and the Angel: Searching for the Source of Artistic Inspiration by Edward Hirsch (Affiliate Link)

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