What is a Good Life? #71
Holding The Tensions Of Life with Mariana Louis
On the 71st episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Mariana Louis M.A. Mariana is a professional tarot counsellor, scholar, and creator of Persephone's Sister, a platform for psycho-spiritual education and guidance. Following her academic study of analytical psychology and Western Intellectual Traditions, Mariana integrated her scholarship into her developing expertise in the tarot and formulated an approach she calls Archetypal Tarot. She teaches this approach, which marries Jungian concepts with the symbolic depth of the tarot, in a host of courses for tarot students of all levels.
This glorious conversation touches on many vital themes that contribute to a good life: Mariana’s journey of individuation, the interplay between the sacred and the mundane, the tensions of the human experience between zooming in and out, the balance of masculine and feminine energies within us, and the dynamics of order and chaos, growth and structure. Mariana also shares the significant influence that the Tarot and Carl Jung have had on her sense of experiencing more wholeness in her life.
If you are seeking more movement in your life, if you feel stuck and are lacking the faith or trust to take a necessary next step, this conversation will provide you with much to contemplate, insight, and inspiration for taking that next step along your own authentic path and embracing uncertainty.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (71 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
In this conversation, Mariana reflects on the tensions inherent in life, oscillating between chaos and order, the bigger picture and the individual human experience, creativity and structure, growth and comfort, our masculine and feminine energies, and so on.
When I first began any deliberate form of self-inquiry, it was in my early thirties. Up until that point in my life, I had a very clear idea that life was straightforward: you go to university, get a good job, earn some money, find a partner, buy a house, and start a family. You do all that, maybe throw in a few nice holidays and now you are living the good life.
Whereas my internal perception of life was straightforward, everything was logical and predictable. On reflection, I held very strong views as to why anyone did anything, particularly to me, and I had a large attachment to the notion that “I am right” or that I really know.
When that myth or perspective of life didn’t feel like it was working out—despite projections of confidence (arrogance too), my self-talk wasn’t very nice, my capacity to have healthy intimate relationships was dwindling, and I seemed quite frustrated with life—I sought help, initially through a psychologist.
As I’ve mentioned before in this newsletter, this inquiry then moved into various forms of contemplative practices, and it all became a complete fascination for me. I also did what I tend to do when discovering something isn’t working for me in life: I ran to the opposite pole of whatever I was doing. Too much structure? Let’s try no structure. Quit my job and book a one-way ticket to Peru. Drinking too much on weekends? Let’s not drink any alcohol. Not sharing enough emotionally or holding onto my shame too tightly? Overshare with others at times.
After almost a decade of closely paying attention to my inner world, I see that after usually running to the opposite pole, like a pendulum, my energies settle in the space where it most aligns with whatever I am in a given moment, whatever feels more natural to me. That is not to say some exact midpoint between the two, but whatever feels most fitting to what or who I am.
An expression I heard a few years ago in an interview, that resonated a lot with me, was someone describing their optimum experience in life as having one foot in order and one foot in chaos. Now, chaos in their context and in this reflection of mine refers more to engaging with the unknown, the mystery of life, creativity, etc.
As I’ve found in my experience, this is not some neat equation, and sometimes in order to really discover something new about ourselves or this life, we have to get lost again. Over the last few years, as I’ve more frequently and willingly gone further into chaos with my explorations, whenever I go too far, a tension arises for more structure, consolidating what I now know, taking care of my responsibilities, perhaps building or constructing something.
It is why this project around what is a good life—the initial interviews, the newsletter, the podcast, and the corporate program that it spawned—is very dear and important to me. It gave and gives my explorations a sense of grounded-ness, structure, and even an output. It gives me a sense of wholeness as it represents an experience where I bring all of myself to it, both the order and the chaos.
Paying attention to these tensions within us is incredibly important in us feeling like our whole selves. Too often in life, we get attached to our ideas of what is important, what life is all about, we get attached to what we have said aloud and feel the need to maintain our positions publicly or remain where only we have put ourselves.
However, we are vibrating, pulsing, living things. We have energies that do not yield or submit to the will of our thoughts, no matter how hard we try. We need to pay attention to these tensions and energies as they arise, regardless of whether they are demanding or requesting more order or chaos, more exploration or grounding, more structure or creativity.
As much as I love holding the bigger picture of life in mind—the mystery, a sense of God, creation, the nothingness and everythingness of it all, that we are all connected—I am also a human with a very real sense of living an ordinary life, which requires me to pay bills, keep appointments, file taxes, etc. When I focus too much on one aspect of myself I feel too untethered and I suffer.
The movement between these poles for me is an inherent part of my own good life, and one that only I can acknowledge and fully feel in myself, and therefore answer for myself, just as it is for you to answer for yourself.
One of my favorite spiritual teachers, Ram Dass, said something to this effect when giving a talk to a group of people a few decades back: half of you I want to tell to relax, don’t take this all so seriously, it is all an illusion… the other half I want to tell to know your social security number and take responsibility for your life…
What are your present tensions trying to tell you?
3. Full Episode - Holding The Tensions Of Life with Mariana Louis - What is a Good Life? #71
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4. This week’s Questions
Do you get a sense right now that you need to embrace more order or chaos in your life?
If you are truly walking your own unique path, and therefore nobody has ever walked it before, can you ever fully know what is coming next?
About Me
I am a Coach based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I left behind a 15-year career in Capital Markets after I became extremely curious around answering some of the bigger questions in life. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed around 200 people, to provide people with the space to reflect on their own lives and to create content that would spark people’s own inquiry into this question. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience, beyond the facades we typically project.
If you would like to work with me for individual or executive team coaching or executive silent retreats, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.