#373: Jerry Colonna — The Coach With the Spider Tattoo
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Optimal, minimal.
At this altitude I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question now?
It has been a broken time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living this year over metal endoskeleton.
Need him perishable.
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Hey, Tim. It's great to be here. I'm really excited to talk to you.
We have so much we could possibly talk about. You and I have spoken before, had quite a few conversations over the last God knows how many years with particular density a handful of years ago. And I thought we could start with the spider tattoo, which you just showed me over a video. It is not a small tattoo, so perhaps much like a novel. I greatly enjoy the girl with the dragon tattoo. This would be the coach with the spider tattoo, but I don't know the story. Why do you have a gigantic spider tattoo on your chest?
Oh, well, yeah. So spider is a good friend of mine. Spider is my spirit guide. So in 2007, I went on a retreat led by a jungian echo psychologist named Bill Plotkin. Plotkin. And on that retreat. This is a long story, Tim. You ready for it?
Oh, I'm ready. We have nothing but time.
On that retreat, I started to go really deep into some of the important structures of my life, and I had a dream. And it was after a night of ecstatic dancing in which I danced nearly naked in a drum circle. And I'd fallen asleep. And I had this dream in which I was going to a house that I owned on Long island. And I got to the house, and the house was completely white. And I was really terrified. And I went into the house, and it was supposed to be my house, but it didn't feel right. And I ended up in the basement. And in the basement, the basement floor was covered with this sort of, like the floor of a forest. And these mushrooms were sprouting up. And I got very scared, and I tore the mushrooms from the ground, and I ran out of THe House. So the next morning, I went into circle again, and I shared that dream. And BiLl turns to me and he says, go. Leave the CiRCLe right now. I want you to go into the forest. I want you to find those mushrooms, and I want you to apologize to those mushrooms and ask it what it was that you were supposed to hear from them that you were too afraid to hear. So I left the circle, and I started WanDering around, and I'm like, what the fuck am I doing? I'm walking around this forest trying to find these mushrooms, and I actually have to have a conversation with these mushrooms. And to be clear, I was not ingesting the mushrooms, okay? Because I know who I'm talking to. So I'm walking around, and all of a suDden, I see on the ground the exact same white, long, stringy mushrooms. And I'm, like, freaked out. And I drop to my knees and I start crying. And I said, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. What were you here to teach me? And they said, the mushrooms said to me, you're too afraid. Go into the forest and find your place. And now I'm, like, freaking out even more. So I just standing up and I'm, like, stumbling around. And this is a time period in my life where I'm just a freaking wreck. And I'm crying and I'm wandering through the forest and I find this little sort of indentation, this little spot. And I sit down and I'm, like, sitting on my rump, and I've got my hands on my knees and my head and I'm just crying. And I look up and off into my right is this gorgeous spider web, and it actually has little dew drops glistening on it. And I was like, okay, they look like crystals. And this little spider comes walking out. It's this Virginia garden spider. And I look at it and I said, okay, I give up. What the fuck are you here to teach me? Because I have no idea. And the spider says to me, you worry too much. Your children are going to be fine. And I just start shaking because there was no message that I needed to hear more than that. And so I came out of that forest. I came out of there at retreat, and a few weeks later was my 45th birthday. Thereabout, the actual year doesn't matter so much as the fact that it was my birthday. And on my birthday I got this spider tattoo above my heart so that I can never
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