Rupert Isaacson: Welcome to Live Free Ride Free, where we talk to people who
have lived self-actualized lives on their own terms, and find out how they
got there, what they do, how we can get there, what we can learn from them.
How to live our best lives, find our own definition of success,
and most importantly, find joy.
I'm your host, Rupert Isaacson.
New York Times bestselling author of the Horse Boy.
Founder of New Trails Learning Systems and long ride home.com.
You can find details of all our programs and shows on Rupert isaacson.com.
Welcome back to live free ride free.
Today I've got Someone who if you open the dictionary and you look at self
actualized you're going to find a picture of ginny jordan she really ought to be
in the oxford dictionary Ginny Jordan is someone I've been privileged to know for
quite a few years, and those of you who know my work with Horseboy Movement Method
and those therapeutic approaches that we do, I can say that they wouldn't exist
without the influence of Ginny Jordan.
But I'm not the only one.
I would say that of the people I know who have had a positive effect
upon the planet and our species and other species associated with us.
I don't really know anyone who has done more than Jeannie Jordan.
She's many things.
She has been and still is a film producer, very cutting edge films that
you may know, which we'll talk about later, all of which have served a
social purpose, but have also been just jolly good films in their own right.
She has had it Founded and headed an amazing initiative
for first women in Africa.
And then I think it's gone beyond that with HIV to, to micro fund
to set up businesses, which I know has gone bananas in the world.
She is involved with regenerative farming.
She's involved with feminism.
She's involved with healing.
She is a healer.
And.
Maybe actually it's not so much self actualized.
I'm just looking at the dictionary now under the word awesome.
And look, there's another picture of Ginny Jordan.
So Ginny.
Ginny Jordan: Oh, well, in the moment I'm completely delighted,
amused and enjoying being here.
So thanks for having me.
Who I am, I, wow, I think you said a lot, I'm a multidimensional being
and, you know, if you tie me down in a room, I'm an unhappy, unhappy person.
I, I need to manifest, I need to express.
Since I was little there was a deep, just inherent call to give myself to
the world in any ways that I could find that felt true and honest and felt would
actually, you know, Actually serve.
So, who am I?
Someone that cares, cares deeply.
I
mean, almost to the point of tears.
Most of the time it's like my heart is just constantly full of depth of caring
for who we are as a species, where we're headed, where we're seen to be not headed.
But it's just an impossibility for me to turn away.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
So you have manifested so much for so many.
We're going to go into that, all the extraordinary things that
you've done and are still doing.
I want to ask you to take us back to that moment when you were a little girl
and you said you felt that calling.
Do you remember that moment?
How, what, can you take us there?
Ginny Jordan: Well, I think there were kind of two distinct moments
that come up the first, which I haven't talked about in a long time.
I was probably 6 or 7 and I woke up in the middle of the night.
What apparently felt like a nightmare, but it was a shocking wasn't really
a nightmare content and dreams.
It was just I had a revelation at night and I woke up with this.
Deep, profound heavy feeling that there had to be more than life than
the scripts that we were given.
You're supposed to grow up.
You're supposed to get married.
You're supposed to kind of have children.
Then you're supposed to do this.
You're supposed to do that.
And then it's over, you know, well done.
Or you could.
Maybe, maybe there are three scripts, but I, I saw through sort
of the nature of existence, if you will, in a moment, in a flash.
And I knew there had to be more.
I knew there was some other mysterious thing going on that was much larger
than this linear content that seemed to be already laid out in front of me.
And I went into pretty deep depression.
I tried to talk to my mother about it, and she just thought I was dead.
That's thoroughly crazy.
What's a seven year old thinking about such big arcs of future, but I was, and
that was a real awakening moment and it kind of an insistence and a contract
that I signed that there has to be something more to this existence than
just certainly going through the motions.
But I didn't know what it was, but I signed a contract to find out.
Rupert Isaacson: You said there were two moments, right?
So that was one.
Ginny Jordan: The second one was I.
I would get on the school bus and I would pretended that I had a wand.
This is sort of embarrassing, but I had a wand.
And anytime I saw what looked like a, a suffering or suddenly I would see a, a tow
truck carrying a car and, oh my goodness, that probably involved an accident, you
know, and I'm like secretly blessing.
As though I have that power as a little one that I could bless, you know,
those who might be injured or hurt or that I could see out the window.
And I often would kind of put the, the wand under imagined one.
I didn't have a real wand under my pillow at night, you know, and feel felt
prepared in the morning to, to bless and I have no idea where that came from.
It's not like, not like I had a parent modeling that, but there
was a deep, you know, that's when I began ever so slowly to wake up
to the, just the fact that I cared.
And not that everybody should have that particular destiny, but it was very clear.
It's like, wow, I really cared about that person who was on the sidewalk limping.
I really cared about what something that might have looked
marginalized or different.
Rupert Isaacson: Where were you on a school bus?
What part of America?
Ginny Jordan: I grew up in Ohio in a very small town outside of Toledo,
Ohio, fairly rural existence on a river.
My parents were at this point quite involved in
environmental conservation work.
So they modeled love of land and care for the earth for me.
I got to sort of live and breathe that without really knowing what was happening.
Why did they do that?
I think it was rooted, my mother was involved in the Nature Conservancy
from almost its inception.
And for many years was on the national board, like 30 years of her life.
And I think it came from, you know, their love of the solitude that they found
when they were in the natural world.
They were also hunters, fisher, fishermen, women and love land.
And I, I'm not sure where I could tell you where that
actually, when I look to the next
Rupert Isaacson: generation in the family that they were, they fished, they hunted,
they did duck shooting and wanted to conserve the marshes, that sort of thing.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, the very beginning of Nature Conservancy was
about that just kind of course it evolved, you know, and needed to,
Rupert Isaacson: what were they doing?
What was their, what was their profession?
Ginny Jordan: My father was a real entrepreneur.
He bought sort of a bankrupt business and got a loan from his father and,
you know, built it into a very, very successful manufacturing company.
He manufactured doors, front entry doors, and he was very intuitive.
And he anticipated sort of the energy crisis in the 60s and he'd already
designed a, a wood door that looked, a fiberglass door that looked like
wood, that was highly energy efficient.
So he had a kind of remarkable talent of sort of forecasting.
Rupert Isaacson: So you're, so he was a manifester.
Ginny Jordan: Definitely.
Rupert Isaacson: And your mother was some, a carer of the land, also your father.
Ginny Jordan: And also a big manifester and a leader and a leader in that.
Rupert Isaacson: And yet, when you came to your mum as a six, seven year old with
this revelation, instead of going, well, you're clearly, you know, following in
the footsteps of all the wise women, you know, well done, well done for showing up.
And now we begin your priestess training.
She rolled her eyes, given that she was a manifester and a caravan.
Why do you think she had that reaction?
Ginny Jordan: I think it, you know, just, you know, imagine that
generation's, you know, sort of fixation on pretty limited scripts.
What
Rupert Isaacson: year would you say?
Ginny Jordan: Well, I was born in 53, so this was probably, and I was
maybe 7, 8, something like that.
Rupert Isaacson: So about 1958, 9, 60, somewhere in there.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
I think, you know, it was a radical idea.
That maybe, maybe these scripts are fundamentally limited and you
know, who said that we should sort of fulfill it as it's laid out
sort of traditionally, culturally.
And I think that was just a little over their heads.
I also, I also think that I was speaking to some mystery of life that was much
larger and I don't think it certainly was not a religious orientation
because they didn't have that.
But.
I think I, I had a sort of a deep spiritual kind of knowing that
they didn't understand at all.
Rupert Isaacson: Did, did, when she had that reaction to
you, what was your reaction?
Ginny Jordan: Oh, I shut down.
Rupert Isaacson: But you didn't, it didn't shut you down from using
your magic wand on the school bus?
Ginny Jordan: No, didn't.
But you know, that's kind of like a secret activity.
Right.
No one really knows I have a magic wand.
Rupert Isaacson: I know you have a magic wand and I've been watching you
Ginny Jordan: for
Rupert Isaacson: 25 years.
We're going to go into that.
And it's really interesting to me.
I've often wondered where your shamanic ability to manifest extraordinary things
on an extraordinary scale came from.
And you telling me that story in all the years I've known
you, I haven't known that.
I think it should be on the school curriculum.
I think that as soon as you get on the school bus, they should
give you your What Magic Wand.
Ginny Jordan: Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: Here is how you use it and here is how you do not use it.
Can you imagine?
Ginny Jordan: It'd be amazing.
Rupert Isaacson: How different the world would
Ginny Jordan: look.
Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: Every kid riding the school bus.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
And I certainly felt, you know, sort of secretly powerful.
Not not as, you know, dominant, of course, you know, I'm young
but more than I, wow, I could have an influence of my little wand.
I could help heal someone.
I couldn't help them feel better.
I could, I could make sense out of some things that didn't make
sense, you know, bring order.
Rupert Isaacson: There's no question.
You've been doing that ever since.
Yeah, I'm going to talk to you later about this.
I think it should be a whole curriculum.
I think this is something I'd really like to pursue in the
work we do in schools and stuff.
This is genius.
So perhaps we could have that conversation, I think.
We need to give all these kids magic ones.
So now you, you blow my mind with your magic wand.
Okay.
So now, but I have to retrieve my mind.
Otherwise there will be no podcast.
Take us to the next thing.
Okay.
You, now you go from little girl.
Beginning to do her first imagining harnessing her imagination into
manifestation in a way that is through caring really compassion at what point
do you begin to put that into action?
Tell us about your college years Where did you go to college?
How was that?
What year what years were those?
Ginny Jordan: Oh, I'm terrible.
Just don't even go there It's like I don't I can't let my
Rupert Isaacson: degree so
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, I, I went to boarding school, which was utterly a disaster.
It was like putting the wrong being in the wrong context with all girls.
I grew up with 4 brothers and that was.
It's strange and heartbreaking and I knew back to this original story.
I just told you that somehow that cultural layout, which I was
supposed to go to boarding school.
Then I went supposed to go to Vassar where my mom went.
My brother's supposed to go to Yale where he went and then I'm going to marry.
You know, some amazing, you know, businessmen, and I'm going to be
president of the junior league someday.
And it was all sort of scripted.
And so I ended up after boarding school, I went to a very, very radical, extreme
experimental college in California,
Rupert Isaacson: presumably by your own design, not by your mother's design.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
And, and a bit of a synchronistic happening on the shores of Crete in
Greece when When I, I was 19, I kind of did the big walk about the big
adventure and I sat on the beach and a little tiny part of the island that you
could only get in by donkey called Vi.
And I lived on the beach, kind of did the sort of hippie thing and a man
came up to me and said, did you hear about this amazing experimental school?
That's starting some professors from Harvard or whatever,
you know, sort of big.
Mucky Mucky's coasts have had it and they want to start this experiment
in Southern California using the facilities, the University of Redlands,
it was called Johnston College.
And, you know, it was one of those moments that we have in a life
where there was just a recognition.
I went, Oh, that's for me.
And I checked it out and, and I went, and that was seminal in my, in my biography.
I experimented with so many things and as we did as a group, we literally
were 200 students that, like, made up.
We were collective creators of this, of this experiment.
And I, I studied extraordinary things with extraordinary faculty
and made up my own degree and I was.
A pivot a pivot moment.
What did you
Rupert Isaacson: what did you study?
Ginny Jordan: Mostly well, many things, but I, my degree was in psychology.
I can't even remember the title that I, but it had to
do with the integrated child.
I did a lot of work with children at the time.
And, I can't remember the title of it, but it was psychology.
Rupert Isaacson: I love the fact that you can't remember the title of your degree.
That's perfect.
But what would you say when you said we experimented,
what did you experiment with?
Ginny Jordan: Everything, you know, this was in the early days,
the human potential movement.
So, you know, we were pounding pillows and saying, fuck you out
the windows to our moms and dads.
And, you know, it's like heavy duty therapy, but it was all
about sort of self discovery.
I studied the Stolt Therapy Institute in Los Angeles with the greats of the
greats, Fritz Perls, all his proteges.
You know, get, I got rolfed at 19 years old and you get credit for that.
You know, it was like a lot of it was just experimenting.
We worked with Jean Houston, studied myth extensively and actually
went through a course with her.
And.
Ramdass and Castaneda of all people.
So some of the, some of the greats in those days were very interested.
We were, there were 12 of us that were graduating in the person in the
transpersonal psych part of the, of the, of the college, and they were our faculty.
Rupert Isaacson: So I need to just, just, just take a pause
because a lot of our listeners.
Don't know who these people were and what some of these things are.
And I think we need to talk about this because listeners, those of you who
came through the counterculture I take off my hat because those of us like
me, who as dinosaur ancient, as I am now, I am still a generation that came.
from the loins of the people of the counterculture and I have
benefited massively from it.
Basically the hippies paved the way because they knew that there was a better
quality of life than a militaristic, um, military industrial complex.
And they, we, we take for granted.
the freedoms that we have socially now, but they were not always there.
And the people that forged that were the counterculture
people of the 60s and early 70s.
And obviously, Ginny, you were very much part of this.
And so were these people you're talking about.
So we owe a debt of gratitude for our the freedoms.
Not just that the the political freedoms, but the the social and and
thought freedoms that we have these days which we take for granted Stuff
that you could see on media today.
It was not there before Okay, so Gestalt therapy people will not
know necessarily what that is.
Even though it's a legendary thing.
Please tell us What is Gestalt therapy?
Ginny Jordan: Well, Fritz Perls was the founder of very well known
psychologist who really explored sort of the human psyche in terms of parts.
So, you know, we have a tyrant in us, we have a you know, a rescuer in us,
we have a victim, we have a, and in his passion was getting into a room and just
laying out all the parts and having them all dialogue and act out and it's very,
Very sort of active dynamic, almost on the edge of theatrical expression.
So it was a lot of, a lot about kind of moving places of tension
and certainly not being afraid of those places, inviting them.
So that was very much what Gestalt is about is liberating
yourself from different parts that don't know the other parts.
It's like where we're unconscious and kind of raising to the surface.
Rupert Isaacson: Gestalt is, I live in Germany, Gestalt is a German word,
it means patent or complete, right?
So, greater than the sum of its parts, I guess.
So, are you saying it's an integration of all of those?
Right.
Size of oneself and sort of recognition of all of those sides of oneself
to kind of get self knowledge.
Ginny Jordan: Yep.
Exactly.
Well said.
Yep.
And not done through kind of just talk therapy sitting, you know, one on
one often it was done in group work.
And so that when you witnessed somebody else's, you know, extremely violent father
and the suffering that, that, that person.
Went through, you know, the idea is also that it, it mirrored something for you.
It's like the work was for everybody was just sitting in a little cubicle and that,
that was part of its power at the time.
And it's still, it's still alive and live and well, it's nothing like it
was in our day to your point, right?
It was the human potential movement was just, just on fire.
And we were passionate about discovering who we really were.
And determined to remove any blocks that particularly that were scripted
things that, you know, back to this feeling that we were pushing off a
generation of a lot of authority.
Rupert Isaacson: You mentioned someone called Jean Houston.
Who is she?
Ginny Jordan: She's sort of queen of, you know, Mythic reality and explored
it in in, in so many dimensions she's a storyteller kind of a mythic wonder
could, could really look at what we, what we would call an archetype.
And unpack it in the most creative and deliberate way.
She, we went through a year long course with her.
That was called mind games where she was really fascinated in exploring what can
happen in a group process again, kind of a group focus and a lot of it had
to do with developing certain kinds of.
Psychic capacity, certain capacities for attunement for group mind literally some
people would be in the middle middle of the room and they would facilitate
a process where they go into a trance.
And I mean, it was pretty wild stuff we were playing with, but she's really
an extraordinary mythic scholar and anybody who hasn't heard of her should
definitely look into she's written many, many, many books and is quite a force.
Rupert Isaacson: You mentioned Ram Dass, who's Ram Dass?
Ginny Jordan: Very well known spiritual teacher of the time.
I have think he passed about, I don't know, 5, 5 or so years ago.
A Harvard dropout psychedelic guy.
That was absolutely.
I mean, he has real awakening happening in India.
And with it, with his, with a guru, very, very funny, very inspiring
wickedly bright and had a wonderful way of charismatic leader, a wonderful
way of sort of people helping people re remember who they really kind of
are, which essentially beans of beans of light is how he would talk about it.
And so it was a very devotional path with him.
Rupert Isaacson: What was he teaching you guys?
Yeah, specifically.
Ginny Jordan: I think he was teaching us really about you know, again, through
a lot of his works, he, I mean, he was most known for a book called be here now.
You know, at the time that was kind of a revelatory concept.
It's like, it's called being present, you know, now it's sort of old hat.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, this present moment mindfulness
shit that we hear all the time.
It actually did begin somewhere.
Yes.
Ginny Jordan: Absolutely.
Absolutely.
It was radical
Rupert Isaacson: at the time.
Yeah.
Ginny Jordan: Be here now.
And that was what he's kind of most known for.
And But I think he added the heart piece, you know, so, you know, we were
pushing off a lot of that generation.
We're certainly pushing off the Vietnam war, you know, there's a
lot of pushing and kind of fire and insistence on expressing ourselves and
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
Ginny Jordan: you can get all those images of, you know, sort of
anti war protests and blah, blah.
But he added the heart and, you know, he was,
Rupert Isaacson: he's saying, you've got to be compassionate towards those who
you are causing the suffering that is.
Ginny Jordan: I think he definitely, but, you know, he was a, he was a
devotional devotee to his, his version of, of, of God, so to speak, which
was a deep spiritual calling for him that, you know, mother India is most
known for, and that's where he had his 1st awakening and then determination
to translate that into Western terms.
And as I said, humor, humor was 1 of his best.
Rupert Isaacson: Speaking of humour, can I tell you my, my Ram Dass story?
Ginny Jordan: Yes, please do.
I have a Ram Dass
Rupert Isaacson: story.
I never met Ram Dass, but I did go once to a reading of things by Ram
Dass between from Be Here Now, and I went to the toilet and someone had
taped on the urinal, pee here now.
Ginny Jordan: Perfect.
Be present when you're peeing.
Make sure you get it in the toilet.
That's perfect.
Rupert Isaacson: No doubt men need a reminding of that.
Ginny Jordan: Always.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
You mentioned another name.
And by the way, listeners, it's important that you know this because
these people are all legends.
Yeah.
We're talking about mentorship here.
To be mentored by some of these people, Somewhat extraordinary.
I didn't know you were mentored by these people.
You mentioned Castaneda, Carlos Castaneda.
For those of you who do not know who Carlos Castaneda
was, Ginny, please tell us.
Ginny Jordan: Well, I, you know who he is.
Rupert Isaacson: Certainly, but not every listener will.
Ginny Jordan: No, but I'd love to hear how you would frame him.
Rupert Isaacson: Oh, well, that's a bit unfair.
I'm the one, I ask the questions here.
Ginny Jordan: But I'm interested in how your generation would, that I met.
When I was,
Rupert Isaacson: when I was a school boy Carlos Castaneda and
my school boy, I'm in London.
I'm a a very traditional conservative boys.
school, which is also part of the military, blah, blah, blah.
And I was the last generation of boys to be regularly beaten
at school, that sort of thing.
You know, it was, it was the old Victorian model.
And so Carlos Castaneda was one of the influencers that came in for rebellion.
And Carlos Castaneda was a an American who went down to Mexico and wrote a
series of books about interactions with a Huishol Indian shaman.
Or was he?
No, he wasn't Huishol.
He was, um, what's the tribe next to them?
Or was he Huishol?
Anyway, from, from that.
Ginny Jordan: He went Don Juan.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, Don Juan.
And for those of you, the Huishols are the ones who do these amazing color patterns.
And they're known for their relationship with the Huishol.
Peyote, which is a hallucinogenic substance and peeling medicine in
use for thousands of years and still in use in Native America today.
But it grows in their area and it grows in a very small area on the Mexican
Texas border and Arizona, Texas border.
And so he wrote a series of books about being in apprenticeship to this
one and being taken on an ever more.
sort of ego destroying series of terrifying hallucinogenic journeys.
that were extremely influential both as anthropology and as just
flat out entertaining writing and the spiritual writing.
However, there is of course a controversy around him.
Many people say he didn't actually, he made it all up and then he ended
up with a bit of a a sort of sex cult around him or something like that.
And then some of those people, and then he, after he died, some of those
people disappeared and perhaps potential foul play and blah, blah, blah, blah.
So he's one of these sort of legendary characters who, you know,
I look at it from my generation and say, well, I don't know.
I don't know whether he made it up.
I don't know whether he went, I don't know this, I don't know that.
But what I do know is that the books were extremely influential.
And for those of us who were sort of suffering in that Victorian model,
they served as a window on the potential of what life could look like.
And the potential of human consciousness.
That's about all I have to say on Carlos Castaneda, but you know,
knew the man, you met the man.
What, what do you have to say about that?
Ginny Jordan: Well, yeah, I understand the controversy.
Ultimately, it doesn't matter because if this was an invention and just
imagination is pretty brilliant.
Imagination because the, what it set up to your point is this power, the
power of mentorship, of letting, you know, he, he had to go through all
of his Western white control, right.
To, to let go and to be led by this man, not only just through,
you know, taking plant medicine, but you know, crazy trials.
He put him through, it's like 40 days in the desert kind of trials coyote kind of.
Operations right where suddenly he's, you know, and he was pushed.
It's like a version of an outward bound course.
And every time he went to see him and so much of the books and the inspiration are,
you know, what it is to let go like that.
To someone that again, true or false made up or not irrelevant, it's an amazing
archetype of what it is to actually break through our kind of cultural addictions.
Two.
To be able to sense life, to open our senses to other realities that, you
know, for many indigenous peoples in the world are, are, are preexisting.
There's no need to convince they're operating in an entirely
different kind of room in the house, so to speak, than we are.
And that that's, was the revelation of the books.
And he was kind of a mixed character.
He was actually quite shy.
And when he would come to teach, you know, we would all just be, you know,
be kind of like rabidly trying to pull stuff out of him, you know, it's all
such an intriguing story and he, you know, would offer things, but he was
very within himself, quite shy actually.
And didn't have a big need, you know, he was almost self effacing, almost
to the point of being self effacing.
He didn't have a big need to like, Blow his horn and say, Oh, my God, I'm amazing.
It was like, I felt a natural humility in him.
So, for whatever that's worth, as I said, you know, I was young and maybe not the
full capacity to read character, but a key figure for a young woman, for sure.
Rupert Isaacson: I think, yeah, what the point is that he, he was also a
key figure in the counter, counter culture of opening people's minds to
the power of indigenous myth as well.
What you just described to me from, you know, that waking up to the school bus.
With the magic wand to, I love that you put the wand under your pillow at night.
I love that.
To then this new radical counterculture college is it's
basically sounds like Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series.
Realizing her magical potential, even though she's, you know, I can't remember
she's a muggle half muggle as well.
And and then being sent off to Hogwarts to learn the workings of magic.
And I think what, what you've talked about, we're going to go on to the
actual things you've done in your life, which are mind blowing in a moment.
But It seems that you
awoke to intrinsically, but then were also, had it nurtured and mentored.
If nothing else, the power of the human imagination.
And the more, the older I get, the more convinced I am that this is
the most powerful tool we have.
And this is the thing that really renders us who we are in terms of
this ridiculous power that we wield as a species, for good or ill.
Luckily, mostly I think for good.
I think the story you've just sort of told of the crucible in which that
imagination can be, can awake, and then I think, I think it does actually
awaken most children spontaneously, you know, my, my, because that's who we are.
My earliest memories of walking in my parents garden in London with
the sun shining on a brick wall.
It's very early in the morning, because, and it's warm, it's a summer morning.
And i'm up early than earlier than all the adults and the adults don't want
to be woken up So i'm in the garden and there's bees buzzing on the little
flowers that are growing out of the wall And in the in those bees and in those
flowers I hear that I hear god and god talks to me and god doesn't give me
any revelations god's just like this Nurturing figure almost I can almost feel
the hand on my shoulder as i'm walking and just reassuring And I think that
almost every child on the planet You Has this as their birthright, and then
many, many, many children go through something like that imaginary wand thing.
And then it's sort of slapped out of them or, or, or even
just conditioned out of them.
And now more than ever through, you know, social media and things like that,
the non interaction with the physical world, the animal world, the human world.
And now with screens, which of course themselves are a product
of the human imagination and themselves can be wonderful things.
But obviously can also be limiting things.
So it is easy.
We can see that that power has unleashed itself in an unlimited
way and then comes with its own limitations and each generation has
to come to their own terms with this.
But I love that you had that and remember that so clearly.
Alright, so now you've been mentored by these legends.
These guys are all legends.
And then you graduate, you go out into the world.
What do you do?
What's the first thing you do when you get out of college?
Ginny Jordan: Well, I really thought I knew something.
So it was kind of total act of arrogance that I went up to
Northern California and started.
Training psychiatrists and psychologists and they, to you,
Rupert Isaacson: I really thought at 12 or whatever you were that was,
Ginny Jordan: yeah, I really thought I knew something and and that, you know,
thank goodness, you know, my version of, you know, God speaking to me said,
you know, after a few years of this, you know, I could really feel where it was.
I was kind of winging it from the inside.
And yes, I was bright.
I had things to offer, but it really was not in the depth of my experience.
And I just, at some point I knew that and that came to an end.
And I, and I knew I always wanted to work with people that was kind of a given.
But the form of kind of coming, emerging as this sort of.
Glorious teacher who knew a bunch of things that that needed to sort of kind
of have its moment in Moment in time and then it dissolved into something much more
authentic and real which was just part of my ongoing quest anyways, and I Then well
pretty shortly after that period of time.
I got married And the whole, I have had three children and that whole journey
at the same time, I continue to work with people, but in a much more sort of.
Modest way very fascinated with dream language.
That was always a big part of my interior life.
I was an active dreamer since I was very young, a prophetic dreamer.
I often dreamt things beforehand, which was quite confusing as a little one.
But I was fascinated by the language itself of, of dreams and,
you know, how it is that we're speaking to ourselves every night.
Rupert Isaacson: You know, you're working with people, by the way,
as a therapist, how are you working
Ginny Jordan: as a therapist?
Yeah, that's what I got my debris in and then extra extra trainings, et cetera.
And then I really got involved in dream work specifically.
and studied with some wonderful Jungians.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, that was the question, the natural question to ask
was, so Carl Jung, obviously the most prolific writer, or at least the household
name at any rate, in terms of dream work and the interpretation of dreams.
Those of you who don't know who Jung is, Jung was Swiss Swiss German early
psychologist, psychiatrist product, protege of Freud, and then went away
from Freud and forged his own thing.
And an awful lot of what we take for granted in terms of psychological
stuff and that's taught in colleges today really comes down to Jung.
Do you think that Jung, it's a chance for me to ask you, do you think that
Jung's interpretations of dreams are pretty sound, or do you think they're
just Subjective and, but just sort of a useful way into what, what do you think?
Ginny Jordan: Well, I think, I think we've come a long way.
I think he, he, he really mapped the unconscious and in the most profound way
that ever had been done prior to him.
And that was that, that you Rupert could be over there in Germany right now.
And tonight you could dream about, you know, a chalice.
Rupert Isaacson: A
Ginny Jordan: golden chalice, and tonight I can dream about a golden
chalice and there's some kind of collective unconscious material that is
ubiquitous throughout the whole world.
And he really excavated that that dimension of the unconscious
that we're sharing a collective unconscious as well as having our
own personal unconscious material.
And that was revelatory at the time.
That somehow we're linked to these images and these symbols that have
preexisting tremendous, tremendous meaning, meaning that are rooted
beyond just myth and story.
They live somewhere in the fertile soil of our beings, and it doesn't matter
our upbringing culture, skin color.
Gender and none of it, and that's really was his, his, his strongest contribution
in terms of individually working.
You know, he certainly set up templates, but people have
gone much further than that.
It's not like everybody who dreams about a snake.
It means, oh, you're dealing with your sexuality or your it's the really deeper
work is, you know, Rupert, who's who's that snake to you as you begin to have a
dialogue and he was also most known for.
What, what he called, you know, active imagination.
So back to your, your thoughts on imagination.
I do think it comes down to that.
And so he really encouraged people to engage their dream
life in a living, breathing way.
It's not just something that happens at night.
That's past tense.
You know, been there, done that.
Here's the next day.
He was really interested in like your snake.
And what does that snake want to say to you?
You know, why ask him why he bit you?
Don't just interpret that.
Ask him.
Rupert Isaacson: So when you were doing your dream work and you're working
as a therapist with people, you come out of college and you're there in,
it's the 1970s and you know, the world is opening up and the counterculture
is now moving into the mainstream.
What, what, what we, what were you saying to people when they were
coming to you with their dreams?
How, how were you, how were you approaching that?
What?
What was your mission with that?
Ginny Jordan: My mission was ultimately, which I now know better now, because
I still do some of that work.
I have actually 2 groups that I work with today.
It's gone through lots of cycles, but it's quite active again in my life.
But ultimately, what I'm interested in, and the, the, the angle in which I
work with is that somehow this notion that day and night are separate.
Rupert Isaacson: And
Ginny Jordan: that this idea which is not just an idea, it's my felt experience
that you and I right now are in a dream.
We're having a podcast dream and that if you experience night and
day is kind of a seamless and many indigenous people knew this.
Right that, that the things that happen in your outer waking life, so
to speak are a little further away from the felt sense that arrives in
and what looks irrational in a dream.
It's all the same.
It's just that at night we have a different opportunity.
to generate and create and to be in a position to actually receive
tremendous help instruction guidance.
I mean, it's just powerful.
I'm just continually blown away.
I'm
Rupert Isaacson: asking people questions that are aimed at helping them to perhaps
gain insight into what those dreams are trying to tell them in terms of guidance.
Is, is, is, is it primarily that, or is it helping to reassure them that if
they're having negative dreams perhaps or nightmare dreams or despair dreams
or something that that perhaps isn't, you know, necessarily their reality or
when someone comes to you with a dream that they actually dreamt at night,
why are they coming to you with that?
And
what's your,
again, mission is, is, and I've asked the question before, so it's
like I'm repeating myself, but I guess what I'm trying to grasp at
is deep down, what are you mostly trying to help them with in this?
Ginny Jordan: Trying to help them expand into being more who they really are.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Do you feel that that's what dreams are doing that they're saying to us?
Ginny Jordan: Absolutely.
It doesn't matter whether it comes in the form of a nightmare or despair
or a snippet, you know, I can't tell you how many people come to a dream
because I just had a little snippet and then they start talking about
it and a world opens up with it.
Little one liner that they hear or something they see and I take
the position that it's not like you over milk it for meaning.
It's inherently meaningful.
It's like young used to talk about is every night.
Your soul's writing you a letter and our job.
is to wake up and open the letter.
Rupert Isaacson: Now, why do we want to open the letter?
Ginny Jordan: Instead of throw it away?
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
I mean, this might sound like a self evident question, but I think for
a lot of people, it really isn't.
For a lot of people, a dream is a dream.
You dream it, it goes away.
Why do we want to open that letter from our soul?
Ginny Jordan: Because You have the most beautiful way of addressing
your own being than anybody else.
It's your material.
It's not, I didn't drop those into your psyche.
It's yours.
You have the most beautiful way of speaking to yourself that the other,
the other night, two nights ago, I dreamt that I went to a, some being
said to me, a wonderful human, just, I felt like I really respected this
person said to me, go into this room.
You're finally ready.
You know, and I go into this room and it's like filled floor to ceiling with pearls.
I couldn't even barely get the door open and you know, okay, that's
a letter like, what the heck?
Right now, if I just throw that letter out, I will have missed something
quite, quite beautiful for me.
And my job as a human is to bow to that, like say, thank you.
And then engage it.
It's not just, not just random,
Rupert Isaacson: how do you unpack that particular dream?
You can talk me through the process.
Ginny Jordan: Well, for myself, sometimes it's really helpful to have
someone else ask you the questions, but I can ask them for myself.
I've learned to that over the years for myself.
I asked very obvious questions.
Like, what did that feel like?
Well, I was so, kind of intimidated.
And excited at the same time, what intimidated you?
Jenny?
Why is that?
You know, it's like I was in a room.
My mind could say, Oh, my God, it's pearls of wisdom or it's
treasures or that's all true.
But I needed to have a direct relationship to feel it.
And it was something about feeling the fullness floor to ceiling
fullness of these pearlescent pearls.
As as a felt experience of, and this person that told me to go in, there
was basically saying, you're ready.
Now you're ready.
It's kind of arrival time.
You're ready.
And I'm like, both scared and I'm both like, excited.
Rupert Isaacson: And what conclusion did you draw at the
end of your analysis of the dream?
Ginny Jordan: I think it affirms something that I've been feeling for a
number of years, having turned 70 this year, that this is fulfillment time.
It's like to let myself be that full.
Okay.
And not, not be afraid of my own fullness and iridescent possibility
to, you know, to fill myself in with the truth of this being.
It's not really about an arrogance or a, it's just like, wow, fill yourself.
Rupert Isaacson: Now this is interesting to me because we haven't even gone
into yet in the podcast the stuff you've actually done in your life
Which we're about to but it would seem to me knowing you for 20 odd
years a little bit more well, Ginny, I mean, yes blindingly obvious.
You've just done all this amazing shit and You're gonna probably keep doing lots
of amazing shit because that seems to be what you do but why then are you only now?
being shown You That it's time to go into this
room of your true power, your true pearls, your true, your true treasures.
Given that you've been at it for an awful long time, what do
you think is going on with that?
Ginny Jordan: That's a great question.
Well, it's just really pointing to my psychology, isn't it?
That I can say, oh, and you can say, oh, my God, you've done this and you've done
this, but to actually let myself sink into the depth of that and have it hook
into the part of me that always cared so much that I have an impact in the world
that I could, my caring could translate.
That's something that hasn't fully It's sort of like I do what I do, you know,
it's same, sometimes it feels like magic and easy and, you know, but to really
feel, really experience the depth of that, let's call it mission fulfilled.
At this stage in my life when I can see, you know, the sun
is going to set here, right?
It is, you know, I've 70, like I go, Oh my God, that's 10 years from 80.
So it's maybe resting in the back wave of the truth of my life and what I've
been, the pearls I've been able to offer.
I just
Rupert Isaacson: go ahead, go ahead, go ahead.
Sorry.
Well,
Ginny Jordan: you'd be my psychologist.
Go for it.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, I just got an intuitive
picture.
And the intuitive picture I got is that the person going in to
the room is the younger you.
And the younger you is really the next, the younger generation and that the
pearls of wisdom, the treasure trove that, of experience that you have to
offer that you have amassed through this lifetime now needs to be opened up to
those younger yous that are now coming.
Ginny Jordan: Beautiful.
Beautiful.
Rupert Isaacson: But that was just and it's funny, I got
a little physical feeling.
In my solar plexus, and then that image popped in, but that's,
that's Rupert's subjective.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, but it's up to me to have that resonate or not.
And it does, I can feel that.
And this is the reason why I'm passionate about the dream world is
that if I hadn't told you that dream, you wouldn't have engaged me with it.
You wouldn't have had your own revelation intuition about
it, which furthers my growth.
Should
Rupert Isaacson: we all be having conversations about our dreams?
Ginny Jordan: Absolutely.
Rupert Isaacson: Why aren't we?
Given that we have them every night,
Ginny Jordan: we've lost that.
I mean, there are many, you know, tribes in the world.
The Oshawa come to mind in Ecuador that they would never, ever, ever
open up a date without having a dream council, because if we're operating
particularly like, so you and I are in this moment, having this wonderful
reconnection and relationship, they're waking up every morning with their
families and extended family, their tribe, so to speak, their village.
People.
And if I know that you dreamt about a snake last night and we've having
counsel and you hear about my pearls, part of our relational field, commitment,
connection, and love field is to mirror that throughout the whole day.
So that guess what?
I mentioned a snake.
Well, this morning, actually, I did see my bull snakes finally wake
up from their spring hiding that hide under my bedroom, literally.
And there was the bull snake.
And I'm, I'm carrying you today through that your dream of the
snake and you're carrying me.
And that was a way of life for many, many tribes.
And, or you look at you know, dream cultures in Australia you
know, landscape was the dream.
That's what I meant by the seam of night and day start shifting.
If you really, if you really open up the seams, we keep them separate.
You know, we often go to bed at night.
Whoa.
You just want to crash, right?
Just check out.
And don't want anymore, we're just trying to recover because there's
been just a mass amount of content and stimulus and we just need recovery.
But imagine it wasn't like that.
Imagine your, your day life completely speaks to your
nightlife and all the way around.
But
Rupert Isaacson: it's interesting.
The messages we get when we're younger, you know.
So I remember once trying to recount a dream of mine to my great aunt,
who was a famously acerbic lady.
And she was also my way into horses.
And so I had this weird, if any of you have ever read Great Expectations,
it was a bit like Miss Havisham.
And Pip in the Miss Havisham is the sort of mad old, not terribly nice
lady, but very interesting lady who lives in the grand old house.
And Pip is the boy who's sort of sent to, to live there.
And that was me.
She, she lived in this old decaying house, which had been very grand.
There had been money.
It had been a bit aristocratic at one point, the money had all been drunk away.
And now she lived in the sort of ruins of the house, but there was still old stables
with some old retired horses in it.
And I.
Found mine.
I used to spend every weekend and every holiday with her because I kept the
horse that I bought As a teenager with the money that I made from a junk store
Her house and so we had this strange relationship and she she wasn't very nice
But she was definitely the the portal into that world for me And I remember
once trying to record recount a dream to her and she turned to me and said
and that's a withering Lee sarcastic English way and You know, Rupert, I
have to tell you that the truth is there's nothing more boring than having
to listen to somebody else's dreams.
And in one, the guillotine, you know, I sort of never talked about them again.
And I wonder if, so, so, but so behind what you say, and we haven't,
again, we haven't gone on to all the amazing stuff that you've done,
so please listeners keep listening.
But is what you're really saying that in order to thrive, not just
survive as a human being, we must live in a spiritual dimension, it's.
Just the other half of who we are.
We are the rational half of us and the irrational half of us.
And we just slowly sort of spiritually starve to death and
disappear into, you know, misery.
If we don't live the spiritual life and the first and most immediate key
to that spiritual life is our dreams.
Ginny Jordan: I would say, yes, I don't know if it's the 1st and most immediate.
It's not everybody's language.
Some people work their whole lives off.
They so want to remember dreams and it's almost impossible for them.
And there are lots of tricks.
I could share.
We're not going to do that now that to help with that.
It's a portal for some more than others, and that's just the way it is.
And we could, some people would put it down to biochemistry,
you know, it doesn't matter.
So it is a, it is 1 of the many doors you can, you can walk through the same door.
If you've got all your senses open in the, in the forest.
You know, it's, it's that that content can arrive, just that can be at its own
dream where suddenly you're noticing right things because your senses are awake.
So it's whatever door that is there to provide an opportunity
for us to wake, to really wake
Rupert Isaacson: up.
I'm playing devil's advocate for the listeners that might say, well,
you know, I, I don't need, you know, why do I need to do this?
Is it about thriving?
Is it about?
actually not being depressed?
Is it about
being alive on the planet in a way that is more joyful?
What's in it for us to engage with our dreams or engage spiritually in this way?
Ginny Jordan: I think it's simple.
If you want to have a meaningful life, a life that really translates
to you and your, your meaning base is going to be different than mine.
But if you really want to have a meaningful life, if you don't want
to just go through the motions of life, you know, sort of half awake or
sleepwalking or, you know, wondering there's something unfulfilled,
something that's not happening.
I'm, you know, low grade depression, however it manifests.
This is one of the more extraordinary ways to open up that deep felt experience.
There's something meaningful going on here.
There's something larger than just this little being sitting over
here and that being over there that is moving through this existence.
And there are a million names for that thing.
You know, it's, some would call that God, some would call that great
spirit, some would call it mother, father, divine someone called the Dao,
some, whatever you, doesn't matter.
It's it's the, the thing that seeds life with the richness and the texture
of this very precious existence that is, is so brief, but so potent.
Rupert Isaacson: Beautifully put.
Okay, so, when I met you, you had been obviously doing this type
of therapy work for a long time.
You'd also gone through marriage and parenthood.
You had had children.
Those children, when I first met you, were already grown.
And when I first met you, you were already a mover and shaker in education.
In climate change before anyone was even talking about it, and
then went on to put out some.
Extremely sort of policy changing bits of media that have resonated,
you know, through the decades and got things actually done.
And then I also knew you as you were starting this thing called Bead for Life
with women in Africa doing microfinance.
How did you?
which has grown into something huge, which I hope you'll tell us about.
How did you go from, okay, well, I'm a therapist.
There's lots of therapists out there.
And yes, I'm doing good in the world, but I'm, you know, a therapist and I'm a mom.
Okay, great.
I'm putting nice human beings into the world.
And I've met your children, at least I met two of them and
they're great human beings.
So job done.
How do you suddenly go from that to the kind of world stage?
That you've been operating on since I've known you, what happened?
Ginny Jordan: Well, I got very sick.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: I was 35 and I was after my third child was born.
I just really had a hard time recovering and I knew something was wrong.
And talk about dreams.
I had some pretty bad dreams.
Prophetic dreams that something was not right and long story
short, I was diagnosed with breast cancer and a very aggressive form.
So at 35 at 35 did not look how old at that time.
They were eight, six, and two shit.
Okay.
That I really remember.
And you know, as anybody knows, you know, when you go through a, you
know, a diagnosis or extreme health crisis, you know, your, your, your
life flips upside down and you're very quickly measuring everything.
And it all becomes about measurement, you know, everything from how much time
might I have left to what really matters?
What's the priority?
How do I measure those things?
So it was a deep time, deep time of doing inventory, taking a look at what internal
resources I had to meet this challenge.
And Long story short, you know, it was a dramatic few years of, you know, surgeries
and chemotherapy and but I couldn't return to this sort of classic therapy
world that I was in you know, first world problems took on a different proportion.
I couldn't sit there in the room when somebody was just furious at their
husband, and he didn't like the tile she chose for the bathroom or whatever.
I just was like, I can't do this.
And I wanted to get on the ground where.
There was a different relationship to suffering.
And people that daily lives, you know, they're just, they're in survival
in many third world countries.
And I just had a deep call and knowing that I needed that.
And so as serendipity would have it, a good friend of mine who's an
AIDS doctor was going to Uganda.
And I asked if I could come, my daughters were very interested
in the HIV issue at the time.
And I thought, let's take them there and give them a real.
Experience and we ran, we went going through refugee camps
after refugee camps and you know, looking at extreme suffering.
And there was an extraordinary group of women that were making beads out
of paper and like, they were gorgeous.
Hard to imagine, but take a piece of paper from a magazine, you know, cut out a
triangle, make a bead and make a necklace.
And they had piles of them, necklaces and bracelets and earrings, but
they had no, hundreds of women, but they had no way to market them.
And suddenly it was my friend and I that were there together.
We just, we saw it.
It's like, Oh, this, we took the beads after being over
there for a month or six weeks.
And as Again, synchronistic moment where a friend heard about it
and sent, sent them to Oprah.
And then suddenly we're in Oprah's magazine and 400 words in the O magazine.
And suddenly we had a real problem, which was a huge demand.
And we hadn't even put together an organization.
We were just sort of clueless how to do that part.
And that was the whole learning curve to our commitment was
to find a, a way to sell this.
Well, product but basically our interest was never actually, it was not micro loan.
And we were kind of opposed to that.
It was much more how how, how do you create the pathway for a woman who makes
2 a day pounding road base in the hot sun to 10 a day where she can afford school
fees for her children and medicine.
And for her children and food and this, so this was an income generating project
and, you know, hundreds, thousands and thousands of volunteers eventually around
the world participated in selling these beads and hosting like a Tupperware
party model, where you sell the beads and tell the story of these amazing women.
And then it morphed over time years, this was a good 17 years of my life.
It, it morphed into what's now called the street business school, which
is a really incredible on the ground grassroots curriculum a teaching
curriculum of how a woman can go from extreme poverty to Being a true
entrepreneur and having many businesses.
So that's where it's landed.
So we started in Uganda and now we're in 40 some other countries and it's.
It's got a life of its own.
Rupert Isaacson: Why were you opposed to micro learning and
are you still opposed to it?
Ginny Jordan: Well, those, you know, go back to the days when, you know,
that was really kind of just beginning and the interest payments themselves
often became a very tricky thing.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: And there were some organizations that You know, really looked
like they were in service to Loney, but actually would start raising interest
rates if you couldn't pay it back, you know, within the 1st year and we've kind
of our motto was, you know, we weren't it was like a leg up and not a handout.
Not a handout in any way, because what these women, you know, we discovered,
I'm making big generalizations, but it was our felt experience consistently.
I mean, they had every desire, every desire to work.
They just needed, right?
The, the support and context, which we could create.
Rupert Isaacson: So you, you in the early stages, and I guess that's a collective
view, were buying these beautiful beads.
And I've seen the beads.
They are extraordinary.
You'd never know they were made out of what they make
and let alone magazine paper.
You know, they, they look stunning.
You were initially just what, from your own pocket, just buying them
and then thinking, Oh my gosh, how do we, how do we sell these things?
And brainstorming with each other and coming up with eventually the
idea of the sort of Tupperware thing.
How did you do it?
Ginny Jordan: Well, some of it was, you know, the minute you work in another
culture, you've got to be humble because you don't really know what you're doing.
You really don't.
And to assume that we as sort of my partner and I, 2 white women
really had a handle on, you know, how things worked in Africa.
I mean, within the 1st, months, we're encountering all kinds of
corruption and things that were so shocking, upsetting to us.
And it was like, well, wait a minute here.
This is a way of life.
How do you work with that?
What are our values?
How do we.
Inject that without asserting that as a way to grow an organization.
So it was a huge learning curve.
You know, we made mistakes.
We did amazingly exciting things.
We partnered with all kinds of British airlines would fly the, you know, all
their use magazines and give them to us and, you know, Habitat for Humanity.
We had a partnership with them and we bought a piece of land.
We made, we were very made serious profit.
In our early years, when we were just simply a profit making
organization and you know, what do we do with this extra money?
We can't just sort of park it.
So we bought, we bought land and then the women built their own village.
You know, we got partnerships.
So there was sweat in the game.
So we had some core principles that we really believed in.
But the, the, the course of that.
You know, river, so to speak, just took us down some wild rapids of
just rapid learning and mistakes, and we would regroup and we were smart
enough to know what we didn't know.
And that probably was why we were successful.
Rupert Isaacson: Now you talk about the, you know, you got on Oprah,
you got on Oprah magazine and you partnered with British Airways, you
partnered with Habitat for Humanity.
Well, look, I run nonprofits and I know how difficult it is to get through
Those particular types of doors.
How'd you do it?
Ginny Jordan: We were smart enough to hire at a certain point, a full time
social media, you know, marketing person.
So we got on every major.
TV, you know, good morning, America.
You know, we were, we would go to New York and, you know, and at the time,
Rupert, it was the story to be told now, you know, fair trade products connected
to, you know, communities, you know, is.
Pretty much out there, you know, and I, I don't think we would do nearly so well.
Now we were right at the beginning, 17 years ago of, wow, look at this product.
Now I'm going to, it's less about selling you a product, but I'm
going to tell you the story of these women and they carried story.
And then the women that would host the parties to sell them would take that
story as though it was theirs as well.
And then that became a way in which story could move through a product, you know,
yes, they're beautiful and lovely where it started getting painful and difficult
when we had to keep kind of coming up with the next cool marketing thing that
was not in our hearts, you know, to like, Oh, now we got the mother's day products.
And that was never a product product first organization.
That was a means to a larger end, which was.
To tell the story and for these women to find ways to elevate themselves with
pride and dignity and dollars in the bank.
So how we did it was you know, really deep, deep listening
to sort of the right course.
And the one that was already kind of in our face that we just had to
recognize that was part of the work.
It's like, oh, these women.
And when you really looked at what they were about, there
was zero issue with motivation.
We didn't even need to go into that door whatsoever.
Big issue around dignity and confidence.
So then we had to map what's the landscape of confidence.
How do you build confidence when you're told your whole life you're
poor and you need a hundred dollars to even think about starting a business.
We had to dispel that mythos.
And say, no, how did you dispel that?
You know, the 1st, modular of the curriculum, as we talk about
assets, you know, 1st of all, you're the most important asset.
You, the, you, the woman, and then, well, what do you have in your hut?
Oh, I've got a, I've got an iron in the corner.
I haven't used in years.
Okay.
That's an asset really grassroots.
That's an asset.
Oh, you've got, you know, cassava growing in the lot plot next door.
Here, there's your next asset.
So kind of dispelling the myth that you suddenly have to have a hundred dollars.
You got to go out and borrow it.
No, you grow that asset.
And then, you know, we put them in groups with each other where
they're coaches for each other.
So, you know, I'm, I'm coach Jenny and I'm saying to coach
Evelyn, you know, you can do that.
We're, we're mapping.
Confidence and a deep sense of this is possible because that's not that's
not rooted deeply in a very poor culture like where we were working.
It's just simply not.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
And that, but you can't just cheerlead people, right?
So for example, if you say, okay, you've got this iron or you've got this cassava
that's growing, these are your assets.
How do you teach them?
Show somebody who doesn't Know how to use that as an asset, how to,
what are the nuts and bolts of that?
Ginny Jordan: Well, we would go with them to market.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: Sell, sell, go, go together and sell the goods.
And then, you know, one of the, one of the modulars of the curriculum
is they're each given, you know, the equivalent of 20 bucks.
And then they get to observe how they spent the money toward the
business that they finally decided.
And it's a process to look at what your talent is and what your assets are so
that you're going to be successful.
So if you think you've got some talent sewing, okay, how the hell are
you going to get a sewing machine?
How is that going to be doing?
We'd walk them through right?
The way the pathway to be able to do that.
And so they would certain point get 20 dollars.
Then they come back and reflect on.
Oh, I think I made a mistake because I gave, you know, half of it to my
uncle to build me a vegetable stall and he just flaked off with it.
Oops.
Right, so just learning on the ground, I mean, really just we're talking really
grassroots learning and being completely accompanied in the learning process.
So that, you know, they're assured that they're actually.
Going to be successful and, you know, we've we've had, you know,
I can't remember the name of.
Wharton Business School, they did a huge analysis of our organization.
And, you know, we have serious, we spent a lot of time doing
really rounded data analysis.
So it's not just narratives.
I'm not just telling you lovely stories.
And we had 85 percent success rate of women permanently getting out of poverty.
Rupert Isaacson: Here's a question.
So one would expect, let's say, There's an entrepreneur out there and
that entrepreneur feels a sense of mission and goes and helps poor people
become entrepreneurs You had come out of counterculture Radical feminism
radical everything become a Therapist become a mother now suddenly you're
an entrepreneur coaching entrepreneurs
from what background and how
Ginny Jordan: I would say little background, very little background, but
definitely enough of the right attitude.
And as I said, illness set me on a very particular course.
Rupert Isaacson: What made you able as someone who hadn't
engaged as an entrepreneur?
I mean, of course, everyone who runs their own business, you have been running a
successful therapy business at that point.
So of course you were an entrepreneur to that degree, but
what made you able to do that?
What we think of in terms of the cliche of an entrepreneur made
you feel that you had the tools for this Why didn't you feel that you were the
one needing with that myth of I need the hundred bucks, you know what I mean?
Right.
What what?
Where do you those tools from and where did you get the practical business tools
from of showing them how to create assets?
When you had actually come from rather a different world
Ginny Jordan: Well, we, we knew which women tend to know is that
it's a collaboration and that it's not a hierarchy and that, you know,
we really were smart enough to know where our talent was and where it
wasn't and we got the right talent.
We, we had a business manager that, you know, really taught us in many ways.
My partner was also a therapist, so, I mean, we, we used to laugh,
say, well, we're kind of the bozos here, you know, like, but, but what
we brought to the table was the vision was the capacity, right?
To stay with it.
We knew we had that.
Drive we also understood what fundamentally women need the language
of the feminine, like these women, when you've really listened and watched,
they're constantly dancing and constantly singing, even through their suffering,
even through their wailing to having just lost a child you know, to dehydration.
It's like, you know, shocking, shocking for us to like, how, how
are you managing that level of grief?
They, you know, they do it together.
And observing that and understanding like how, you know, we, I can't
tell you how many parties we hosted, how many dances it was like, oh,
we brought so much celebrate.
They taught us so much about that, right.
And we kind of could, we could, you know, as women, we could feel what
it is that women are about and we are a collective and we do have that.
I'm not saying men don't, but we've got, um.
Different kind of wider capacity and easy for me to say, I with no shame whatsoever.
We are bozos.
We do not know how to do this, but boy, do we know some amazing people who do.
And then what happened, which was part of the magic part of it was the right
people show up at the right time.
When you're clear, it's almost like a law of gravity.
Suddenly there they are at the door and said, I'm going to help you with this.
Thanks.
I'm going to help you with this.
Rupert Isaacson: Were you consciously saying, like, I remember I had
this moment with my son when I was sort of standing in a field.
Not knowing what to do when he was at the height of his severity and I
was rousing I don't I need a mentor.
I need who can who is it who can show me what to do?
Because I don't know and then I was thinking okay.
Well, who who would this mentor be and my imagination?
Well, it has to be someone who's autistic right?
Because otherwise, whatever they've got is an opinion not not experience and
then, you know, they had to start it where my son started and somehow made it.
Who's that person?
I went, oh, actually that's Dr.
Temple Grandin, you know, and then I, I went to her and asked for mentorship.
Was it kind of like that?
Were you going, okay, shit, you know, who are going to be our mentors here and
how do we actively go out to find them?
Ginny Jordan: Absolutely.
That's exactly it.
Yep.
And, you know, it requires a willingness to be kind of humble
enough to know, whoa, we really don't, we don't know how to do that.
The woman that helped us develop this, I mean, rock solid curriculum
which we finally figured out after years that that was our real
talent is we knew the ingredients.
Right.
It wasn't about selling beads.
It was actually the ingredients.
As I said, one of the key ingredients is building that landscape of
confidence, which seems sort of abstract and somewhat irrelevant.
It isn't, that's the key.
And we, we knew that we saw that over and over again.
And she had this amazing way of breaking this whole thing down into a sequenced
curriculum that built on itself.
That embedded in it were all these principles and then the
real practicalities involved in, in actually creating businesses.
That are sustainable,
Rupert Isaacson: who was this mentor
Ginny Jordan: to a woman that we found, you know, and you know, I
don't know what more to say about her.
She probably wouldn't want to be named because she's, she's very, she's very,
Rupert Isaacson: everyone will be, you know, contacting her.
Ginny Jordan: Maybe, but, you know, she's, she's extraordinary and, you
know, emerges an amazing leader and willingness to fly to country to
country to country, you know, and we
Rupert Isaacson: already knew, or was it someone that you sought out who kind
of popped into your path once you'd sort of thrown out to the universe?
Come on, God, where's my mentor?
Ginny Jordan: Yes.
Yeah, we didn't know, we didn't know her.
We knew people who might know people, but again, it's just that
process that we all go through and are ready to really reach out.
And, but you know, you gotta, you gotta shoot that arrow with utter clarity.
I learned that years and years, years of working, you know, different,
different forms of manifestation.
That the clarity is key.
It's not that you have to have everything, but, you know, what
are you really shooting for
Rupert Isaacson: clarity?
And the really,
Ginny Jordan: yeah, we were really shooting for a big goal, a big hairy goal,
which was, you know, in a 10 year period of time, a million women permanently
out of poverty and you know, we had very particular parameters to what that meant.
Rupert Isaacson: By the way, read I'll say readers because I'm an author, listeners,
don't worry if you're trying to manifest and you're feeling murky and unclear
and you're shooting unclear arrows.
You've got to do that too.
Absolutely.
That you've got to shoot.
You've got a knife
Ginny Jordan: at the target.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
Ginny Jordan: They got to fail.
You know, we failed a lot.
There are some big mistakes we made that look back, I'm just kind of
horrified, but, you know, boy, did it get us on the right course, you
know, you just course correct if you're determined which we were.
Rupert Isaacson: Two other things that you did which I can speak to is right
at the time that you were doing this the work that I was doing with the Bushmen
in the Kalahari, the Khoisan Bushmen on their land claims rights came along.
And you.
acted as a philanthropist to us.
You, you, you helped us to get going.
And listeners, what happened was as a result of that early support
two key hunter gatherer groups in Southern Africa collectively won the
five largest land claims in African history with very little money up
against seemingly impossible odds.
So that was my experience.
Also, if you're Influence.
And then also at that, shortly after that, I, I began the
work with Horseboy Foundation.
And you supported that too.
While also going through all the stuff with Bead for Life and
then moving into this other very important work with climate change.
And I remember you beginning to talk to me about climate change.
When people weren't, I mean, it's not that it wasn't around at all, but we
all know, you know, we all know that the conversation has really only become
properly, properly, properly mainstream.
I think since COVID, I think that pre that was still more or less on
the margins and the times that you, when you were talking about it and
getting really actively involved.
I think most people were still.
trying to turn a blind eye and you've been very influential in helping them see
a glaring light of, of all the pimples and warts et cetera, through a series
of extraordinary films that have had an amazing, um, influence on also getting
policy changes and things like that.
Can you tell us about Chasing Ice and Chasing Coral, how you got
involved in those movies, what those movies were, still are, they're out
there, people should watch them.
And what, what they did.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, well, I'll begin with chasing ice because
that was really my my initiation.
I, you know, have the good fortune of Jim Balogh, who the film is about is
a National Geographic, post National Geographic photographer, who's really
spent most of his career documenting, documenting, we'll call it change.
And then it.
Species change extinction and climate to be kind of became more and more his
passion and particularly climate is being observed through on glaciers.
So, being a good friend and being pretty intrigued and I did some
supporting up of his organization called extreme ice survey.
What he did is he, he designed and built cameras that could
withstand high temperatures.
I mean, cold temperatures and high winds on glaciers, and
it would operate time lapse.
So they would be basically running themselves.
And he put these, he put these all over the glaciers, Iceland and Greenland,
and eventually parts of America and Switzerland all over the world and
Antarctica eventually to try to document in real time climate change and these
time lapse images that are astounding.
And if people haven't seen the film, it's, it's so worth watching.
It's an old story now in many ways but it was the first.
Real, it was like eyeballs on the glacier eyeballs on climate change.
It was not political, nothing about it.
It was political.
It's like, take a look here.
It is it's in your face now.
And what you see rapidly in a time lapse, you'll see a whole sequence of frames
where the glacier was kind of, you know, right in front in front and all of a
sudden it's receded, but it looks, you know, like equivalent of a mile and a.
X number year period.
And it's like, you can't argue with that.
So it was a brilliant and very determined mission that he had.
I loved it.
You know, I went to Greenland, I was in those helicopters flying over
the glacier and you know, that was whatever it was 15 some years ago.
And it, I had that privilege.
And it was a privilege it was massively depressing.
I came home and practically couldn't get out of bed for three
weeks because I saw the level of glacial melt from that perspective.
And it was just very easy for me to translate that to sea rise.
It just was just simple equation and it was shocking.
And so that really launched my commitment to the, to trying to
tell the story of climate change and trying to kind of wake us up.
You know, Al Gore certainly did that and inconvenient truth is just,
you know, those first beginning.
Let's tell the truth.
What's really happening chasing the other films came along because I love
film, you know, I think next life.
I might I might go into movies.
Let's see.
It's like I love to edit.
I love being behind a camera and looking at how to tell the story and how to
tell it in the best possible way.
So that was part of my just selfish.
It's like, get me in the room when we're especially editing film to
sort of see what I could bring to it.
And again, films are huge number of people as a whole team, but that's been a real
privilege for me to work on these films.
And then they morphed into, I've got very close to the director of chasing eyes,
a young, amazing man, Jeff Orlowski.
And exposure labs and we worked on a film, probably many of your, your listeners
have watched, which is called the social dilemma, trying to tell that story of
Rupert Isaacson: before we get to the social dilemma.
Ginny Jordan: Okay.
Rupert Isaacson: Coral.
Tell us about chasing coral.
Ginny Jordan: You know, obviously the same story from now, now, not on
top of a mountain, but down under the ocean and, and really looking at the,
the story of climate change and the warming of the oceans through coral.
And that was actually not a good film until we worked our
asses off to figure out how to.
so much.
Help everyone fall in love with coral and understand, you know, it's
not just a concept that these, you know, these are bleaching and dying
these reefs all over the world.
But like, why do you want to love this coral?
How critical it is to our ecosystem?
So that was a very passionate film and we found a wonderful young.
Kid who was kind of a geek about oceans that since he was a kid and he kind of
ended up being the savior of that film because we were, that was a hard story to
tell to, to engage people in a way that had a sense of adventure, like chasing
ice has a great sense of adventure in it.
And I think we got, we're successful with it.
You know, the films have done really well, so
they all, they all, they all ended up in Congress.
We found a great way to get them to be shown with you know, they have
a film series for Congress and all of Congress, they all got copies.
And, you know, that was a long time ago.
And, you know, that was a huge awakening.
At a political level,
Rupert Isaacson: did
Ginny Jordan: you ask me a policy?
Rupert Isaacson: Did you see some tangible results politically from those things
from those films that things happened?
Ginny Jordan: Yes.
And no, you know, I don't think anybody should make a film these days without
having a really developed impact strategy because films come and go so quickly.
So, you know, what's your impact strategy?
How are you going to actually.
Move it out into the world in what way, and with chasing ice and coral,
we decided to go to some of these districts, Republican districts that
didn't even believe in climate change.
And we came up with a strategy that we would just saturate those communities,
you know, from the chamber of commerce to the kids in the high schools that
would go home and tell their parents this movie they saw, you know, we just
soaked them and we did get some of those districts to actually go to the Change
their position on climate, but it was a very arduous and expensive strategy.
And so, yes, we certainly had impact and it's very hard to
measure the impact of films.
You know, there's all these studies on, like, how many inputs you
need to actually take an action and it's often a minimum of 6.
So you've got to read about it.
You've got to see it.
You've got to talk to a friend about it.
You've got to have a parent, you know, talk to the kid about, you know, that you
need inputs in order to actually get from.
That's interesting.
Okay.
Well, I'm back to my day to actually, actually, you know,
contributing in some way.
It's, it's complicated,
Rupert Isaacson: right?
But you did get to Congress.
Yeah.
Ginny Jordan: And,
Rupert Isaacson: I do know myself how powerful that can be.
I remember when we got in front of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus with
the Bushmen, and suddenly you had these guys speaking directly to congressmen,
and they could see these people who'd been tortured and kicked off their land
for diamonds, you know, in front of them.
And then things began to happen from that point.
So, now tell us about The Social Dilemma.
That was a really, really interesting film.
And remains a really, really interesting film because I think it's all these
films are still relevant today.
But I think this one is particularly relevant to the youngest
generation that's coming up.
Tell us about that film
Ginny Jordan: in terms of how it was conceived or a lot.
Well, I think, you know, again, the same director, you know,
he talked to me about it.
He, he was working on it and what was the right angle and, you know,
we kind of came up with this idea.
We being many again and not just.
A few of us that a good way to kind of break through the, the resistance
would be to actually have the guy that invented the like button on
Facebook in front of a camera saying, whoops, I didn't have any idea of.
You know, I thought that was a cute idea.
I had no idea that that could translate to, you know, pre teen girl suicide
rate going through the ceiling because, you know, they got, you know, unliked
by, you know, all their friends.
And that drove them to suicide and that trajectory was so shocking
and is shocking, remains shocking.
But, you know, that was the strategy with that film is have the people
that were somewhat innocently.
I mean, not all participating in something that has snowballed into something that
is really seriously out of control.
And I think the, again, that was a, I'm not so sure that film would be as relevant
in this moment because people know a lot more now, but it was the real expose
about how young people in particular being manipulated financially and how
they're actually gathering your data.
And that was, you know, not in everybody's awareness.
Like, Oh, they actually know from the way I shop and the way I communicate on sit,
you know, they know if I'm an introvert or if I'm an extrovert, Oh, they know
if I'll buy this, but I won't buy that.
Oh, they know, I mean, and whoa, you know, and that sense of of exposure
and vulnerability of how much, you know, you know, AI knows about you.
And so that was a great way to tell that story.
And we worked hard to try to figure out how to do it.
It's kind of a hybrid film because there's a theatrical piece within a documentary
that would hybrid model was new.
Not all films have tried that and it was relatively successful
because it was real time.
You see a family really struggling with the issues and then you're listening to,
you know, the, the guy that ran Facebook or Tristan, who was kind of amazing
leader in the field of social media exposure and what is the harm it's causing
Rupert Isaacson: the guy who invented the like button.
I'm
Ginny Jordan: trying to remember his name.
Rupert Isaacson: I've tried.
Yeah.
And it's so interesting is that we know the like button, but we can't remember
the name of the guy who, you know, I remember watching the movie and seeing
him being interviewed and saying, yeah, look, we, we did just think that this
might be something kind of entertaining.
We had no idea.
We had no idea at all that it would become so dark.
And initially we were just.
Obviously excited by the success, but we didn't think it would be anything
other than entrepreneurial fad.
And, and, you know, I think also that a lot of these guys were
just so into the technology.
They were nerds who were just so excited that their day had come.
That it was, it was the revenge of the nerds, Silicon Valley.
It was.
Suddenly all the kids that were getting, who had been teased at school, who had
not been, who had been the butt end of the social scenes in their high schools,
who would have been the ones actually probably going off and getting depressed
and perhaps killing themselves, you know, in, before social media, just through
straight up bullying and ostracism.
Now suddenly they were the arbiters.
And they didn't do it with this Machiavellian plan to get even.
They just were following the brilliance of their technology
and realizing people liked it.
And then, oops we didn't realize we'd invented the atomic bomb.
And I think that's what really came through from the movie when I watched it
was that, you know, like with Oppenheimer, for example, they knew absolutely
what they were trying to develop and why they were trying to develop it.
And they knew exactly what its evil potential was.
And felt that, that they had to, to stop this greater evil, not
knowing that it could lead to greater evils, but not seeing any
alternative at the time and so on.
Whereas that wasn't in any way where these guys were coming from.
They, they thought they were simply providing entertainment and couldn't
have dreamt that it would lead to the,
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, well, it was more essentially more than entertainment
because, you know, they were as confused as we've all become
around this notion of connectivity.
And so not really having a measure at the time we have a better
measurement now of the illusion of connectivity and this whole notion of
hyper connectivity as a high value.
And what how that's actually, um, deeply, deeply tearing cultural fabric.
Out from underneath us, and that's, that's the part that,
you know, was short sighted.
They couldn't see that.
You know, we think we're getting you more connected and actually
something else is occurring as well.
That's true at 1 level and another level.
It's actually, it's actually taking away your capacity to connect.
Right?
So, you know, how many young people now know how to exactly like have
build a conversation like you and I are having, you know, how many people are
really going to listen to this whole long podcast, you know, you, right.
We kind of want it, we want it kind of quick.
We want in a hyper way and, you know, they couldn't have
seen that they didn't see that.
To your point, they thought it was kind of fun and lovely and you're
going to feel more connected because someone's going to like you when
you do something and that's so cool.
No, it's embedded in a much deeper, deeper, very more transparent problem
now of where our culture is headed.
Rupert Isaacson: I mean, it's interesting because a lot of the work I do could not
have existed, could not have found its feet without social media, but that was
before I even knew that it was active.
So, for example, when we first put out the small trailer when we
were trying to raise funds to make the documentary for The Horseboy.
There was this new thing called YouTube.
This was this 2006, I think YouTube came out in 2005.
And the young filmmaker, Michael Scott, who I teamed up with to make the horse
boy said, oh, there's this thing.
We could do a little thing and put it out on there, and maybe, who knows,
maybe some people might come and help.
It was one of the first things that went viral.
Back in the day when going viral didn't mean what it means
today, but nonetheless it did.
And because of that all this work that we now do with autism happened.
So that was a result of one aspect of social media, or here we are,
we're talking on Zoom right now.
That is of course another one, but I think where you're right is that we
come out of this analog generation where we learned to communicate
before social media came along.
And then it was added as a sort of a tool that we sometimes like
to engage with and sometimes don't like to engage with, rather than
growing up with it as the tool.
Ginny Jordan: Well said.
And so, you know, we have to pray for these young people
that that's all they've known.
This is what all they've known.
And, you know, how are we going to serve them and re remembering that
discernment that you just named, which is that it's, it's an amazing tool.
That's all it is.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Ginny Jordan: It's a tool.
It's a tool.
But is, does it replace your actual social, right,
interactive felt experience?
No, it can't.
And we've now finally discovered that, right?
Rupert Isaacson: Your film was one of the first ones that,
that alerted people to it.
Yeah.
Ginny Jordan: No, it was, it was obviously the right note in the right moment.
I think 20 million people saw it in the first three weeks.
That was a huge thanks
Rupert Isaacson: to social media,
Ginny Jordan: social media, you got it.
And I'll never forget talking.
I had many, many conversations with young people around the world, and
they all were saying the same things.
Like, how do we, they're not going to throw out, you know, the ending
of it's kind of trite, you know, it's like, well, just get off it.
Well, you know, if you grew up with it and you love it and parts of it are wonderful,
like, how are you going to do that?
But.
Every single one, whether it was a young person in India or where they were in
Pakistan, wherever they were in South America, they all said the same thing.
We've got to come up with better platforms.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah,
Ginny Jordan: that and I thought, okay, good challenge for you.
Let's pass that baton to you.
See if you can figure that out.
1st of all, where they're not getting hold of your data.
They're not, you're not being marketed, you know, in a
completely manipulative way.
But 2nd, how do you actually generate.
A tool that actually can supply the connection like you and I are
having right now, and we're safe.
We're saving a whole lot of carbon to do this.
We're not getting on airplanes, you know, all that has its rightful place, but
they're going to have to figure this out because they're not going to throw up.
Why would you?
Rupert Isaacson: I almost wonder if we're going to have to sort of
open, reopen the sort of old schools of philosophy, but within schools.
Of this is how this is how a human being talks to another human being.
Ginny Jordan: I've always wanted I actually developed like, it's probably.
Probably I probably horrified if I looked at it now, but many years ago,
I went on retreat in Greece and I, I wrote a curriculum for high school
kids called the art of communication.
And I thought, like, how do you break down conversation was the art?
Sorry.
It was the art of conversation, not communication.
How do you actually have conversation?
What does that mean?
Rupert Isaacson: Why do you need it?
Yeah.
Ginny Jordan: Why do you need it?
And what does it feel like when, you know, you and I get off the podcast and
we grew something bigger than we knew we could, and that generates a feeling,
not just of exhaustion or depletion, like we've all had those conversations,
but it should, lots of those, it should be, it should be additive.
Right.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah.
Yeah.
It should be.
Ginny Jordan: You're growing something bigger than these two parts could know.
And that's the glory opportunity of real conversation.
But you know, how do you tell a young person who just wants you to get
through it in three seconds, please.
And let's get to the bottom data point or whatever.
It's, it's a lost, sort of a lost art.
Rupert Isaacson: Yes.
You can't create, you can't manifest without conversation.
Conversation between people, conversation between people in the divine, but I think
also there's just a straight up nurturing of the individual human in that we are,
they call us sapiens sapiens, right?
But that's a silly name for us, Homo sapiens, it just means the thinking
ape, all apes think, in fact, anything with a brain thinks, you know, octopuses
have ape brains, you know, I mean, it's, that's not specific to our species.
But this, this voice box, this larynx that I've got.
that you've got, with a speaking ape, with a storytelling ape.
That is, other animals vocalize, and many of them vocalize in a very
complex way, but they don't create rap.
And they don't write Shakespeare.
That's, that's us.
That's our species.
And the sort of shamanic thing, you know, story is medicine story is.
So, yeah, that is conversation.
Yeah, it's
Ginny Jordan: back to imagination.
I mean, that was what William Blake meant when all of his work
was kind of in service to what he called divine imagination is
the divine gift of this species.
Right.
Is that we can, we can vocalize, but we can imagine with it.
And off we go insane.
Create creativity as possible.
So, and, and there's a lot of creativity that happens on devices.
My God, you know, so yeah.
Like, but, you know, so then really beginning to understand, analyze,
like actually what might be missing, like, what, what are you actually
having an experience of like when you walk away and it's like, Hmm.
Right.
So.
It's, it's not an easy answer.
It's definitely an important inquiry.
Rupert Isaacson: It's really interesting when we're doing our work, you know,
movement method, horseboy method, we're obviously going into nature
as much as we can, because that's what the human nervous system needs.
People frequently, parents or teachers will say, well, to the
child that we're taking, Oh, you're not, you can't bring your device
because this is your nature time.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Absolutely.
They can bring their device.
Please bring your safety blanket and please and now engage with that in nature.
And what will happen is pretty soon you'll get a bit distracted by nature and you'll
start forgetting to use that device.
And we're not trying to wean you from your device.
In fact, we think your use of this device is a good thing.
However, if it.
You don't also have what your organism needs.
Well, then no, you won't thrive.
But yes, We absolutely accept that we live in the age of devices and they're
not all bad by any means so please engage with it and it's funny how Extreme
and black and white I guess, you know, that's So endemic to our culture, but
Ginny Jordan: that's brilliant.
That's a brilliant way to talk about it.
Rue.
I love that.
This is brilliant.
It's like, no, bring it with you.
And then you, you let this, you know, there is a natural impulse,
whether nature's pulling that out of us or whether another human
is, there is a natural impulse to have this connection that grows.
It just, it's natural.
This is not like all mysterious.
Rupert Isaacson: It's very interesting.
By the time we say light a fire at night, none of them are on their devices.
We don't even have to try, but their device might be lying
next to them, but they're not on it, but they get back on it.
Maybe they're getting back on it and engaging in a
different type of conversation.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
I love it.
No, and it's spot on.
And like, you know, how often are you and I checking our phones
while we're talking right now?
It's like
Rupert Isaacson: a zillion times.
Ginny Jordan: A zillion times.
Yeah, right.
So not, not, not needed.
But again, that's not, it's not like there's a rule, you
know, it's just, it's just.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, and the phone has set me free because the fact that
I can WhatsApp you in Boulder, Colorado from here in Germany and the fact that
someone else can WhatsApp me while I'm talking to you, that sets us free
because yes, we can live in parallel realities, which we always have anyway,
but we can do those through our devices.
We can have our livelihoods through our devices and we can
be creative through our devices.
But I think only if we also keep one of our feet firmly in nature,
will it, will it help us thrive and not just cause us pain?
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, you know, I feel completely with you on that note.
Not everybody feels that way, but part of it comes down to presence.
Like, how present, like back to DRAMDAS, be here now, how present what's our
capacity to actually be present?
Rupert Isaacson: And I think it's, it's more complex than it's often presented.
So, for example you've had this experience, when you've been in, you know,
the company of a really senior shaman,
Ginny Jordan: like
Rupert Isaacson: I'm thinking about, say, ghost from the reindeer people
in Mongolia who healed my son or Besa, who was the healer in the Kalahari
that I was the closest to, they would go in and out of trance parallel.
To being in the quote unquote real world, whereas the younger healers, they
were either in trance or they were not.
And then they would reach this point when they were in the 60s or 70s when they
could simultaneously walk the two paths and literally be kind of like smoking a
cigarette and having a conversation with someone about something very banal while
falling in and out of trance and sort of pulling something out of somebody's spine.
And is that not what we're doing when we're on our devices?
Yeah, well, talking to each other if the intention is with what you
do with that device while you're talking to somebody to bring healing
in some way or that is that not the same process really in a funny way.
Ginny Jordan: No, I, I, I think that's spot on that.
And that's pretty much what I was trying to say that ultimately what happens
in our nightlife besides just crashing and like, just wanting to check out.
It's a, you know, it's kind of a, another fertile realm of existence.
They can all be singing to each other, you know, and it
all can happen simultaneously.
I mean, now we're getting kind of out there, but I
absolutely know it's possible.
The, the Tibetans have, have researched that for thousands of
years, you know, they call it dream yoga where you actually can wake up
fully is beyond even lucid dreaming.
You can wake up fully in Simon's death practice ultimately, because you're waking
up fully inside of your night experience and you're wide awake, but you're asleep.
And like, how do you do this simultaneously?
And like you just said, where it's.
It's not a, you know, it's not a question of, Oh, I'm not present
or I have to be here or here.
It's this black and white thing that we have gotten ourselves into.
It, it has a weaving.
We just don't know how to live it.
Rupert Isaacson: You've mentioned at the beginning while we were
chatting before this began about another project called Chasing Time.
What's that about?
Ginny Jordan: Well, that's really the, the literal finale of taking these.
Cameras down all over the world and the last cameras, the time lapse
that were part of chasing ice.
So chasing time is really a much shorter version.
It's maybe a 45 minute film piece on Jim.
They log the photographer going back to take down the last, very last
camera, which happens to be in Iceland.
And so it's full of incredible images.
I mean, gorgeous.
Portraits of glaciers that just make you fall in love in part,
knowing that we're not going to see those images and X number of years.
There's going to be no glacier left.
No snow left to be looking at.
And it's also the story.
So it's visually gorgeous and kind of a love affair.
And it's also the story of taking down the last camera.
And handing it over to in this case, the, the government got involved in
this project and decided they wanted to launch a more citizen science
project as the tail of this project into the future, which would be.
People, citizens going to the same spots where Jim took the, you
know, it's a very specific spot.
You know, you don't change your spot.
You're going to do time lapse.
It's got to be exact exact.
So the exact same spot, you know, with these brass kind of stands where have
a little mount on them where you can mount your iPhone and you, me, just
regular citizens can take a picture.
And that picture will go into a database of images.
And so their child, you know, 20 years from now can take the same picture
in the same spot and be comparing to how much retreat there's been.
And the angle for for the Icelandic people is they love their glaciers.
They love them.
It's a big part of their, of their culture.
It's also a huge part of tourism, you know, the amount of diversity
in that, if you've ever been to Iceland, it's so diverse.
It's kind of astounding.
And so, you know, in the film you see, you know, hundreds and hundreds of, of people
that live in Iceland engaged in this project from their love of the glaciers
and their love of wanting to document.
Their loss, so it's kind of an active science project, but it's also a
grieving project and a way of engaging their grief that these things are
going and one day there's children.
Children are not going to see any of the landscape they
have, which is so impressive.
So what a beautiful thing to go from an individual.
It's not about Jim Balog anymore.
It's about the people participating and documenting the change.
In the world, and that's real time, real life engaging and these projects
are actually, as you probably know, these citizens scientists projects are
sprouting up all over the world where people are engaged in observing that.
Oh, my God, that species of birds didn't come back this year and they
have a way to send that data in and participate in telling the story.
of this changing planet.
So it's a brilliant way to end this extraordinary effort that Jim made.
Rupert Isaacson: I want to bring the conversation in it's, we're going to
sort of head for the home stretch now.
By the way listeners tend to break these things up into segments to listen to.
But you've got so much that, okay.
So before I just go to the last.
A set of things I wanted to ask you about you, you've got chasing
time, which you're working on.
What have you got another movie up your sleeve?
Ginny Jordan: Well, yeah, there's a wonderful book called braiding
sweetgrass, which is your, if your listeners haven't read, I highly
recommend that's have you read it?
Rupert Isaacson: I can highly recommend it to braiding sweetgrass.
I was given it by a Cheyenne native American woman.
Oh, wow.
Was actually braiding in Yellowstone National Park who braided sweetgrass
for my daughter Freya and braided it into her hair and for my youngest son
Kirian, and she said you guys must read this book and we didn't and so
we read it aloud to our children.
For those, last year, for those who don't know what braiding
sweetgrass is, please Ginny, tell us.
Ginny Jordan: Well, it's the woman who wrote is called Robin wall Kimmer.
Is she an actually, is she a botanist?
I'm trying to remember her actually.
I mean, she's, she's got, you know, very strong, serious science background.
But indigenous And it's a really hard book to describe how she's engaging us in,
um, the ingredients of I'm going to put this in air quotes, an indigenous way of
living where we're in right relationship to all species and all beings.
And she's a masterful storyteller, so she'll tell you the whole story of sweet
grass and it's you know, before you know it, you're smelling it and then
you really kind of want to plant it.
And I've learned how to make sweet grass baskets
Rupert Isaacson: for those listeners who are, say, driving a car in Berkshire in
England right now, listening to this.
What is sweet grass?
Ginny Jordan: It's just, you know, kind of one of a gazillion thousands of
grasses but it's been used traditionally in native cultures for, you know,
basket making also for smudging.
They often weave it into into braids where you can, you know, Light it and
it creates an, it's an amazing scent.
It's sweetness of sweetness of grass.
If you could just imagine putting your face in really fresh grass, it's so, so
sweet but it's not, you know, we would not look at it and go, that's an amazingly
special grass, you know, it, it kind of grows and kind of not so great conditions.
It sort of doesn't matter, but.
She elevates it to its rightful place.
And what she's trying to say throughout the whole book is
all these species are beings.
They're living beings that have this dynamic expression, you know, in this
case, in the form of plants that are full of all kinds of medicines for us.
And we simply have not learned how to actually have a direct
experience with these beings.
You know, we might use them.
We might.
You know, be interested, but like, actually, you know, she really
takes us through the experience of what it is to actually listen to
a plant and have the plant speak.
That's
Rupert Isaacson: the, I think, for many people, the revelatory part of.
If you like modern day spirituality is that suddenly there's an acceptance,
thanks to you guys from the counterculture 50 years on, there is
now finally an acceptance within the medical and the psychological field
of the use of psychotropic plants.
For the mental health pandemic that we've got, and suddenly you're seeing
magic mushrooms being legalized in just about every state, but whoever would have
thought you'd see that and people using ayahuasca and using, you know, other plant
based medicines, you know, peyote, etc.
I've had some experience with that.
And as you know, listeners, maybe you don't know what the native, what the
indigenous people of all, all those cultures who use these things around
the world say is that, well, we didn't discover the use of these plants.
These plants discovered us and we have a relationship to this plant.
These plants have personalities and speak to us through our consciousness
and our shamanic processes.
And it's, it wasn't a system of trial and error.
Let's try this thing.
Let's try this Not at all.
It's a very different process and I think with what you're doing with braiding
sweetgrass, you seem to be, once again, at the zeitgeist of when this becomes
part of mainstream thought, just before it becomes part of mainstream thought.
You did it with climate change, you did it with ice and coral, you did it with
social media with the social dilemma.
Now you're doing it with plant based medicines in relation to other species.
What is it, Jiddy, that allows you to consistently and continually identify
and tap the zeitgeist of what the human beings need before it hits the
mainstream, to help it hit the mainstream.
What, what, what, where does this quality come from?
You hit it into the ballpark, Every time with your films,
Ginny Jordan: I wish I could answer that people have reflected that to me.
Like, well, how are you doing this?
Like, you're, you've got a good picker.
You know, you can I, I think it's a bit mysterious.
I think it's as simple as I, I have good instincts when I met you and you just
somewhat casually said to me, well, I have this idea about this book and I
have this idea about taking Rowan out, you know, out, you know, given some
of your, your upbringing and history and connection to, to shamans and to
healers and it was forming for you.
And there was just no question in my mind, no question.
And it had to do with the quality of your heart.
It wasn't just that you're actually happened to be brilliant and you actually
have some of the most can do motivational you know, capacities I've ever met.
It was actually the quality of your heart.
And I think I can tell that.
It's like Robin Wall Kimmer in writing this book, you, you feel, you know,
she's not on a rampage or a campaign to convince anybody of anything.
She's telling the story through her own heart, which tends to soften
us and open us and, and generate something that makes it more acceptable
to have things be in the mystery.
And I would say my instincts.
Are, are, have been developed over time to, you know, meeting Jim Bailong,
you know, when I first met him and he told me about this crazy idea he
had, it was probably not going to work to put these cameras out and
they didn't work and people who watch the movie will know that like he, he
was determined, but they all fail.
These cameras fail because he was first time I've ever been designed,
but you could feel I, and I feel it to this day when I'm with him,
it's the quality of his heart.
And that he had that in combination with tremendous sense of vision and will that
I just feel like that's those are the two kind of like, if there's a secret sauce
or the secret ingredients, I think when I sense those coming together, it, it,
it, you know, either in my being or in other people's beings that really are here
doing what they meant to be doing here.
It's worth taking a risk and saying, Oh, I support that
Rupert Isaacson: mentor a moment here.
Please, how can we, those listening, all of us, how can we learn to develop
that muscle to develop that skill of correctly discerning the quality
of the human heart in front of us?
As we get involved with other people, what, what advice or
tips would you give to people?
Ginny Jordan: Well, even doing what, even asking the question you're
asking is the first question to ask.
Right.
We tend to skip over that question.
So if I'm meeting somebody who's all on fire about a project or they're an
entrepreneur or whatever, to stop long enough, not just to go on the ride of
the exhilaration possibility, but what's the quality of this human's heart.
It, I don't mean that they have to be all kind of gushy and lovey or it, it
doesn't but you, but you have to sense where this whole passion is rooted.
Right.
And, you know, there are a lot of initiatives that don't make it, and
I'm pretty convinced part is that that's the carrier that's bigger
than just even our will force and our powers of manifestation.
It's the human heart that, that actually loves, knows what it
loves and loves what it loves.
And that's bigger than just that person.
And if that hasn't been cultivated or developed or not known to that
person, you know, they might get there.
Of course, trial and error will get us there.
Because, I mean, this is frigging hard work.
It's not a person out there listening that doesn't know that life is hard work.
Now, anything we want to achieve or accomplish requires an
incredible amount of effort.
So where that effort is coming from is, you know, maybe somebody
could say psychologically, this is the true integration of the
masculine and feminine, right?
Where there's this.
You know, this beautiful concert going on of, of deep, deep love for this existence.
Whether we get to save it or not, I don't know.
Right.
But if that heart isn't part of the driver and that has a natural softness
to it and openness, willingness to learn as we go, willingness to listen,
willingness to fail willingness to hurt.
To grieve, to be vulnerable.
I, I just see that as just a kind of a critical.
So I think the answer to your question is, you know, ask the question.
Rupert Isaacson: That's a brilliant answer.
Ginny Jordan: Ask the question.
Rupert Isaacson: Ask the question.
What is the quality of this person's heart?
Ginny Jordan: And you may not know, or you may be, may be clueless,
but it's, it's a worthy question.
But at
Rupert Isaacson: least it brings it into conversation, right?
Ginny Jordan: Brings it into your consciousness.
Rupert Isaacson: Right.
I'm
Ginny Jordan: just trying to see where they're really, where they're
really living in their being.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay, now the final thing.
You're also an author, and I know you don't like this book
that you wrote much, or at least you've told me that but I like it.
I like it for its humor, and it's also just really well written,
and it's also mind blowing.
And this book is called Clear Cut.
It's by Ginny Jordan, the person you're listening to.
And Ginny, you talked about this revelation coming to you through
your experience with cancer.
And you very modestly talked about it as if that was the only experience
with it you've had, let alone Meniere's disease, let alone various other things.
And before Ginny, I want you to talk us through all the cancers you've
been through, and all the stuff you've been through, and all the
parts of you that have been cut.
Before we go there, though, I want you listeners, you can't see what I'm seeing.
So I'm looking at Ginny on the zoom screen.
Ginny is one of the radiantly beautiful women I know, human beings,
and Yes, you're 70 years old, and you don't look a day over 50, and
you are the sort of person who when we see you walking down the street,
you look the picture of health.
And yet, every single time I make contact with you, particularly when
we haven't spoken for a year or two, which happens, there's always, you've
always just come back from death's door.
Can you, and this book Clearcut tells some of those stories, and What
you've learned as you've lost parts of yourself, can you just briefly
tell us what you've gone through with sickness and loss of your body?
And then from there, I want to go into something we can learn from this.
So can you just please give us that rundown?
Ginny Jordan: Well, as you said, it's been an enormous theme,
one of the braids on my braid.
So, I did not know at the time when I was 35, as I mentioned that I had what's
called the BRAC2 gene, which is a, a genetic propensity for breast cancer
that actually I got from my father.
Yeah.
You know, in the early days, we didn't have the test for that.
So then I knew that.
So, I, I got breast cancer.
So I had breast cancer on the right side.
Then I, 15 years later, got breast cancer on the other side.
And in between, I suffered a really horrific.
Another genetic disease that my mother and grandmother both had called Meniere's
disease, which is an inner ear disorder where you're rendered kind of helpless
with these attacks of violent vertigo.
I mean, so bad that, you know, I'd be bedridden for days.
And there were a number of years where I couldn't drive a car, which
was an enormous loss in terms of.
Child rearing and being a mom and not being reliable and let
alone it being a pretty terrifying disease and experience to be, you
know, on the floor with the room.
Like, you just had had.
You know, 20 pints of beer kind of experience, I mean, really violent and
I ended up having a treatment for that.
That I tried every alternative you can imagine.
And that was unsuccessful that, you know, really did the trick so I'm extremely
grateful, but then I lost my hearing on that side, which was probably gonna,
you know, they predicted that would happen, but I was making a bid for life
that I could function and have a life.
So we could chalk that up to a loss of not being able to hear.
And of course, you know, going through breast surgeries and losing
breasts is an enormous, enormous loss.
I mean, really unspeakable.
To a woman that's you know, you got to go somewhere really much
deeper than our culture to feel what makes, makes us feminine beings.
And what else hand surgery, another genetic problem that my father had
a being a, being a true Viking.
The only people who get this are Vikings.
It's a, it's a hand is a thing called do patrons contracture where your
fingers get scar tissue and you can't.
You can't you, you know, your fingers start getting pulled down and I had two
very unsuccessful surgeries with that.
So I'm kind of left with really kind of the use really of just 1
hand, so I can use my other hand.
It's, it's it's a loss.
Of course.
I'm trying to think what else?
Oh, sort of another ongoing issue recently, you know, just I was telling
Rupert just before we started that.
I have a hard time pronouncing sometimes because my lip is all numb because I
had suddenly a, a melanoma emerge on my lip last summer with out of nowhere and
boom, you were having major surgery.
That was you know, pretty traumatic as well as right on top of the
heels of a hysterectomy, which you know, went actually brilliantly
and kind of coordinated at the same time that I lost my mom.
But there was a.
Interesting that had an interesting translation is not a loss,
which was kind of surprising.
So, there's been a lot and you know, from 1 point of view, it's kind of a
dramatic story constantly, in so many ways over the years, since I was 35 I
don't take my body for granted and sort of this constant story of, of remaking
myself, you know, being taken down and, you know, it's a very mythic, right?
Taken down into a kind of darkness and then having to raise myself back
up and then being taken down again, you know, it's a bit of a job story
and it's in a big drama sense for job.
It was really dramatic.
So it's been a powerful teacher for me a powerful you know, path of, of sort of
dissolution and renewal and resurrection.
And also I has absolutely forced me as it does so many people who go through things
right through the body to really show up in the preciousness of this moment.
You know, I've almost died a few times and it's like, I, this is not abstract to me.
At all, and there's a power in living, you know, waking up every
morning and saying, thank you.
Oh, my God, I got another day.
Thank you.
So, less has it made me paranoid and more insanely, insanely grateful.
Just so grateful and, you know, why I'm still here is kind of in the
mystery, but I'm, I'm, I'm on my knees.
And in gratitude, so, you know, losses, we all know, because we, there's so
many forms of loss, whether it's through the body, or we lost our loved one.
You know, I lost 1 of my best friends this summer.
I mean, this winter and you know, they're just always an opportunity
through that pain to find a door that expands us even further access
to reach even deeper into life.
And be inside a mystery that's really beyond our understanding as well.
Rupert Isaacson: And through all this listeners despite having gone on to
these large stages of film and the non profit work, having, well, actually for
profit work, philanthropically, so with the street business school and beat for
life and all of this stuff projecting you onto these, these sort of celeb
level stages, you've continued to also just run a therapy practice with people.
I've seen you go literally through fire and flood.
So, Jenny lives in a very beautiful river valley.
In Colorado which sometimes flash floods and when I first met you, you had built
a stone circle and a cave in which you were bringing people back into, you know,
doing your therapy and they're brilliant.
And then, of course, this massive flood came in and washed it all away.
And then there's been fire.
And, but there's also been the renewal of that canyon that you live by.
And again, for those of you who don't, well, of course you don't know, but
bears walk past Ginny's window many mornings and sit in trees and look at her.
And nature comes down this riparian corridor from the Rocky Mountains
into the plains routinely.
Whenever I've stayed at your house, Ginny's been lucky enough to do that.
The wildlife has always been, the highlights.
You just sort of sit by.
In your front porch, you sort of watch these things come by.
you keep this sort of humble therapy service going.
What's next for you?
What, what intrigues you to do next?
What, what's your next offering?
What can we, I know we're going to be looking out for Braiding Sweetgrass.
But what's Ginny up to?
Ginny Jordan: It's a great question, and when I turned 70, I really
started to ask that, you know, it's like, you know, is the what's next an
actual initiative project creation?
Is it something simpler, you know, is it, you know, I, I'm always
sort of, as I said, very early on, it's a call and response life.
So I'm listening, I'm listening and hoping, inviting any
particular synchronicity or.
Or, you know, how it is when we suddenly we meet something and something lights up.
I heard about something 2 days ago that can't quite tell yet because
I'm not allowed to allowed to, but if it were to manifest, it
would be an amazing co creation.
But I'm just, you know, really in a deep.
Moment of pause and, and quietude tending the hearse, so to speak,
tending you know, a number of souls that I'm deeply invested in, in their,
their emergence and their growth.
And it's, this doesn't have a grand scale nor does it need to be.
So it more than ever at this age and stage in life, when you're kind of
in the third act how choicefulness and right placement becomes.
Very important.
What do you mean by
Rupert Isaacson: right placement?
Ginny Jordan: Placing myself in the right place for the right reason.
It's like the expense of energy, you know, when you're 20, you know, you,
you know, your bandwidth is just a whole lot wider, but now how do I
place the right, my, you know, with the right particular talents and gifts
that I have likely it'll join others.
Cause that's my favorite thing to do.
I'm not, you know, the tip of the arrow usually it's more, it's more
of a co created field, which I love.
It's more stimulating for me.
But, you know, placing myself in the right moment for the
right reason in the right place.
I don't mean that.
So, like, I have to, like, sleep over it, but it, it's got to
feel aligned and more than ever.
I feel that it's like.
Time is being measured now.
And like, really, how do you want to spend your time in what way I'm super,
super naturally involved, partly because I tend to a big piece of land.
I live on 35 acres.
I grow a lot of my own food now.
I'm, I'm really fascinated with soil and the movement of soil and
regenerative farming, and I'm very passionate about next generation.
You know, I mean, I feel completely in service to young people.
And their dreams and their visions and how I can serve and support them and
elevate them and mirror, mirror them.
You know, I less have my shingle out as like, well, I'm some wise elder, you know,
that can, it's, I learned just as much.
I mean, it's a beautiful flow and I'm happy to offer my gifts and I love
receiving the passion and the vision of this next generation and really want
to be in, you know, I want to live.
Multi generationally, and I do, there are different people live on
my land that are different ages.
And that's super important to me.
Rupert Isaacson: So community regenerative farming engagement land
engagement with the next generation.
Ginny Jordan: And some need for something that I feel is actually going to take
me further than than my land and boulder in those beans right in front of me.
I can feel that.
I just don't know yet.
I'll, I'll talk to you in a year room.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: Hopefully before then.
Rupert Isaacson: Hopefully, yeah, hopefully we'll actually make it
face to face because I tried last year and you were having in hospital
with that last thing of yours.
There we go.
But now you sit in front of me radiant with good health,
which for which I'm grateful.
Ginny Jordan: Yes, me too.
Rupert Isaacson: What would be your closing word of advice for
somebody who is listening to this?
And feeling overwhelmed by the events of the time Israel,
Ukraine, climate all of it.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
Rupert Isaacson: What's your message of hope?
Ginny Jordan: About that.
Yeah, I'm asking that of myself a lot, too, because I'm being a sensitive being.
I'm, you know, the moment I just heard the recent news with Iran, it's
just I didn't know what to do, but go down and build a fire, you know, and
Rupert Isaacson: yeah,
Ginny Jordan: you know, yeah, I think for those that feel called and feel it's
part of their path, part of the perhaps quest of these times is how can I grow
myself to be the candle in the hurricane?
Wind of the planet these days, how can I grow myself to be steady enough,
take care of my own nervous system, be responsible for my own nervous system,
because by definition, just taking a breath is stressful on the planet.
You know, if we really want to analyze what we're breathing, right, what kind
of air we have, what we're drinking, you know, just everywhere you, you know, all
layers of life, it's just by definition.
And so no shame about.
Being in stress, because it is uncertainty is stressful, but I, I
feel like our job and our quest is perhaps guides and future leaders.
And however, we want to shape our lives.
Can we grow that?
You know, determination and strength of that light to be steady and and,
and be that not by what we do by how we are by the emanation of our
being back to the quality of our heart and our capacity to feel joy.
even in spite of all of this.
That's a bright light that people need.
Rupert Isaacson: It's the first step to simply ask the question,
how can I feel joy in these times?
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
And, and real joy and not an unapologetically joyful, unapologetically,
because many people now are apologizing because whoops, how can I have that
when, you know, Gazans are not, you know, the palace there, they have no food.
It was like, how do you put all these paradoxes?
Together, it's, it's an impossible task.
And so what is it, you know, you know, you have to some in a somewhere assume
that the highest, the highest aspect of all beans want us, you know, so
we can be joyful while you be joyful.
Rupert Isaacson: To be joy.
Ginny Jordan: In this moment, we're not starving, okay, we might, you
know, we might just swing around who knows, you know, climate
change hit me hard for three years.
I lost pretty much every tree on my land.
I mean, it was like, okay.
And then I was 1 of those people.
I mean, we're, we're going to rotate around, but be joyful.
And, you know, what does that mean?
What brings you joy?
What really, really brings you joy and it could be something so crazy.
Like I love, I really love playing games, board games.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
Okay.
That's what I love.
You better play some board games, Jenny.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: Right.
Rupert Isaacson: I would like to play a board game with you next time I see you.
Ginny Jordan: Hey, good.
I'll teach you some cool ones.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
I'm on.
. Yes.
Joy.
To be Joy.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
To be joy.
Yeah.
And it can take lots of shapes.
I mean, it's not all like whoopee, you know, but it's, it's a
quality where you keep your light on, is what I'm trying to say.
You keep, you keep yourself lit and whatever, whatever ingredients you need to
keep that yourself lit, that that serves you and it serves everyone around you.
'cause they can feel.
Rupert Isaacson: Yeah, because we all know that if someone else is
not shining the candle and we can't see any light, then we despair.
We're so grateful when someone is shining the candle.
Ginny Jordan: Yeah.
Even if it's subtle it's and again, you can't mock it up.
It's not a script.
It's an arrival It's a real arrival
Rupert Isaacson: in the mentorship work in the therapy work you do.
I know you're a very private person so you don't necessarily have to give out
a a Contact or anything like that, but I'm sure people would like to benefit
from reach out, learn more, read more.
Are there any resources that you've got that people could go to?
Ginny Jordan: Yeah, they're welcome to email me.
They may not get a long one back because I can't, I can't be behind a device for
too long, but I love hearing from people.
And if, if everybody's good with just not necessarily,
you know, three page response.
I'm happy to give
Rupert Isaacson: people if people have a question that they would
like to ask you in a bit of
Ginny Jordan: that'd be the best way, but
Rupert Isaacson: just not be attached to you sending it back and perhaps
you perhaps you prefer them not to send you a 10 page epistle.
As well that take, that glues you to the screen.
You have to read
Ginny Jordan: prob probably Yep.
But to be
Rupert Isaacson: me to you.
Ginny Jordan: But I love, I love to respond.
Rupert Isaacson: Okay.
Ginny Jordan: Because, but how can
Rupert Isaacson: people reach you that,
Ginny Jordan: that's the cycle of life call and response.
So it's gi, G-I-N-N-Y-G-I-Y,
Rupert Isaacson: yeah.
Ginny Jordan: J-O-R-D-A-N.
Rupert Isaacson: Jordan.
J-O-R-D-A-N.
One word.
Ginny Jordan: 53, yep,
Rupert Isaacson: 53,
Ginny Jordan: at gmail.
com,
Rupert Isaacson: at gmail.
com, all one word lowercase, Ginny Jordan, 53,
Ginny Jordan: at
Rupert Isaacson: gmail.
com.
Ginny Jordan: That's a dead giveaway when I was born.
Rupert Isaacson: Well, it must have been a good year.
It
Ginny Jordan: was.
Rupert Isaacson: Ginny, thank you.
Ginny Jordan: Thank you.
That was super fun.
Rupert Isaacson: I'm grateful.
I'm grateful to know you.
I'm grateful for the work that you do.
I'm grateful you're in the world.
I'm grateful you're my friend.
I'm grateful.
Thank you.
Ginny Jordan: Thank you.
So, so sweet to connect again.
Let's do it soon.
Rupert Isaacson: All right.
I'm going to press the red button.
Much love.
Much, much love to you.
Thank you for joining us.
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