John Gray Part 1 – Consciously Evolving our Relationships: Understanding How the Sexes’ Biological, Chemical, and Social Patterns Illuminate “Why Mars and Venus Collide”
Living Dialogues
Duncan Campbell
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Episode 74 - John Gray Part 1 – Consciously Evolving our Relationships: Understanding How the Sexes’ Biological, Chemical, and Social Patterns Illuminate “Why Mars and Venus Collide”

Episode Description:

“I’m Dr. John Gray, author of Why Mars and Venus Collide. You’re listening to Living Dialogues with Duncan Campbell – which is a real dialogue, not just an interview, but rather something which inspires more information than I would normally share in an interview. He participates, I participate, and the result is something greater than whatever I thought was possible.” – John Gray, author of “Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus”, one of the best-selling books of the past decade, and now the follow-up New York Times Best-seller “Why Mars and Venus Collide”

“For human evolution to continue, the conversation must deepen.” – Margaret Mead

In this highly engaging 2-part dialogue with internationally-acclaimed John Gray, the best-selling relationship author of all time and 30-year marriage counselor, we go considerably deeper into the differences and creative possibilities between men and women (Vive La Difference!), exploring much further the themes first described by John in his mega-bestselling book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus (over 40 million sold in over 45 languages throughout the world).

In his new bestseller, Why Mars and Venus Collide, these themes are now updated and considerably expanded, and entirely new ones are introduced, in the light also of the latest relevant scientific research. Our dialogue is full of fascinating insights, often very funny moments of self-recognition, and spontaneous back and forth mutual observations and stories beyond what’s in either of the two books -- showing with specific examples that, indeed, “old dogs can learn new tricks” of real transformative relational value in this arena at any age and whatever your gender. Great whether you’re single, married, in or out of relationship.

“Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.

Contact me if you like at www.livingdialogues.com. Visit my blog at Duncan.personallifemedia.com. ”. (For more, including information on the Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogue Series on my website www.livingdialogues.com, click on Episode Detail to the left above and go to Transcript section.)

Other programs you will find of interest on these themes are Dialogues 72 and 73 with Deborah Tannen, Dialogue 52 with Angeles Arrien, Dialogues 53 and 54 with Coleman Barks, Dialogues 55-57 with Sobonfu Some, Dialogue 28 with Michael Dowd, and Dialogue 69 with Barbara Marx Hubbard.

After you listen to this Dialogue, I invite you to both explore and make possible further interesting material on Living Dialogues by taking less than 5 minutes to click on and fill out the Listener Survey. My thanks and appreciation for your participation.

Transcript

Transcript

“Duncan Campbell, I heard about your podcast a few months ago, and have been deeply listening to all the dialogues with your fantastic friends/guests. Your words, ideas, and wisdom are truly inspirational. You have evoked a new appetite for knowledge in me that I hope to share with a starving younger generation. Thank you for doing what you do, and creating a unique space, void of boundaries and classification. A breath of fresh air! Much love and respect.” – Amit Kapadiya

In furtherance of creating and maintaining the planetary dialogues now required in the 21st century, I featured a special series of dialogues with myself and other elders in the weeks leading up to and including the 2008 Olympics hosted by China and the U.S. 2008 elections. Those dialogues can be listened to separately on this site or as gathered as a series on my website www.livingdialogues.com under the collective title “Engaged Elder Wisdom Dialogues”. They address various specific political aspects of our planetary crisis, with its dangers and opportunities for a visionary and evolutionary shift. (We remember that the Chinese character for “crisis” is often described as meaning both “danger” when visioned from a fear perspective, and “opportunity” when visioned from a wisdom perspective.)

In all my Living Dialogues from their inception I talk in various ways about the need to generate dialogues across generational, ethnic, gender, and national boundaries -- building bridges of understanding and wisdom in the cooperative spirit and reaching out required by our 21st century realities, and the essential roles that we all are called to play in our evolution for it to take place.

This is the time for renewed dialogue, for visionary and inspiring discourse producing practical and innovative solutions together, to engage our own elder wisdom and youthful inspiration, and in so doing to experience and exemplify that “Dialogue is the Language of Evolutionary Transformation”™.

And that is what we all do, in our mutual roles as host, deep listeners, and guests, when we gather together here from all parts of the globe in Living Dialogues.

SUBSCRIBE HERE FOR FREE TO LIVING DIALOGUES AND IN THE COMING WEEKS HEAR DUNCAN CAMPELL’S DIALOGUES WITH OTHER GROUND-BREAKING TRANSFORMATIONAL THINKERS LISTED ON THE WEBSITE WWW.LIVINGDIALOGUES.COM. TO LISTEN TO PREVIOUS RELATED DIALOGUES ON THIS SITE, SCROLL DOWN ON THE LIVING DIALOGUES SHOW PAGE HERE -- OR CLICK ON THE NAME OF A GUEST ON THE LIST AT THE RIGHT -- TO HEAR DUNCAN’S DIALOGUES WITH DR. ANDREW WEIL, BRIAN WEISS, COLEMAN BARKS, RUPERT SHELDRAKE, LARRY DOSSEY, JUDY COLLINS, MARIANNE WILLIAMSON, MATTHEW FOX, JOSEPH CHILTON PEARCE, DEEPAK CHOPRA, BYRON KATIE AND STEPHEN MITCHELL, CAROLINE MYSS, GANGAJI, VINE DELORIA, JR., MICHAEL DOWD (THE UNIVERSE STORY OF THOMAS BERRY AND BRIAN SWIMME), STEVE MCINTOSH, FRANCES MOORE LAPPE, STANISLAV GROF, RICHARD TARNAS, MARC BEKOFF AND JANE GOODALL, RICHARD MOSS, PAUL HAWKEN, PAUL RAY, JOSEPH ELLIS, DUANE ELGIN, LYNNE MCTAGGART, ECKHART TOLLE, MICHAEL MEADE, ANGELES ARRIEN, SOBONFU SOME. TED SORENSEN, ROBERT THURMAN, DAVID MARANISS, DAVID BOREN, GEORGE LAKOFF, TOM HAYDEN, JAY INSLEE, BRACKEN HENDRICKS, BOB GOUGH, VAN JONES, BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, LESTER BROWN, DAVID MENDELL, DEBORAH TANNEN, AND OTHER EVOLUTIONARY THINKERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD.

The best way to reach me is through my website: www.livingdialogues.com. Many thanks again for your attentive deep listening in helping co-create this program.

All the best, Duncan.

P.S. As a way of further acknowledging and appreciating your part in these dialogues, and since I cannot personally answer all of them, I have begun to publish from time to time in these pages some of the numerous (unsolicited) appreciations received from you.

Female: This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com.

John Gray: Hi, I’m Dr. John Gray, author of “Why Mars and Venus Collide.”  You’re listening to Living Dialogues with Duncan Campbell, which is a real dialogue not just an interview but something that inspires more information than I normally would share in an interview but he participates, I participate and the result is something greater than what I ever thought was possible.

Voiceover: From time immemorial, beginning with indigenous counsels and ancient wisdom traditions; through the work of western visionaries such as Plato, Galileo and quantum physicist David Bohm, mutually participatory dialogue has been seen as the key to evolving and transforming consciousness.  Evoking a flow of meaning, a dia, flow of logos meaning beyond what anyone individual can bring through alone.  So join us now, as together with you the active deep listener, we evoke and engage in Living Dialogues.

Duncan Campbell: Welcome to Living Dialogues.  I’m your host Duncan Campbell and with me for this particular dialogue, I am truly delighted to have as my guest, John Gray, author most recently of the New York Times bestseller, “Why Mars and Venus Collide” and internationally recognized expert in the fields of communication and relationship and the author of 15 books.  John Gray was a certified family therapist for over 15 years and has been conducting personal-growth seminars for over 30 years.  His watershed book “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” was recognized by USA Today as the bestselling book of the 1990s.  Translated into more than 40 languages, this phenomenal book has helped millions of men and women transform their relationships.  He has appeared on Oprah, The Today Show, CBS Morning Show, Good Morning America, The View, Politically Incorrect and Larry King, and has been profiled in Newsweek, Time, Forbes, USA Today, People Magazine, among others.  His Mars-Venus Advice weekly syndicated column for the Tribune Media Services has appeared in more than 100 media outlets.  And he also has a thriving website and an ongoing newsletter with thousands of subscribers www.marsvenus/collide.com and www.marsvenuswellness.com.  And so John, what a delight to have you here on Living Dialogues.

John Gray: It’s a real pleasure for me to be here.

Duncan Campbell: And one of the things we might do just to start this off is to go right back into your early biography of how you first came in touch with you might say this Mars-Venus stance.  Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about your early relationship with your now wife and your previous wife and your time, in the early days with Maharishi and The Beatles.

John Gray: I grew up is Houston, Texas.  I married my wife in California and I used to explain myself by saying I am from Texas that’s how we are in Texas.  And finally I discovered I was from Mars.

Duncan Campbell: That’s good.  Weren’t you also married before to…?

John Gray: Barbara De Angelis.

Duncan Campbell: Barbara De Angelis.

John Gray: Yeah.

Duncan Campbell: How long was that?

John Gray: We stayed married for two years.

Duncan Campbell: And were you both teaching together or something?

John Gray: Well, we were actually good friends for a long time.  When I was with the Maharishi and I was celibate, she was a friend of mine.

Duncan Campbell: She was with the Maharishi also?

John Gray: Yes, she was.

Duncan Campbell: I see.

John Gray: And so I came back and study psychology, together we start teaching a seminar together, which we developed together.  And so we’re teaching together about, really it was enlightened sexuality because we certain -- we did our searching in the East about enlightenment and we apply that to sexuality.  And then it grew more into enlightened love and then it grew into let’s have -- let’s get married.  And then it grew into let’s have kids and she don’t want to have kids and -- and I didn’t know I was going to want to have kids until I started making enough money to support myself.  And then I thought we can have really great kids that’d be wonderful.  And so, I ended up leaving her.  We separated you know, with love but it was difficult but it still that was the main thing that kept us apart was -- it wasn’t going to work out with the kid thing and then nine months later, I called up Bonnie, who I am married to now, who I tried to marry before I got involved with Barbara.  So I was with Bonnie.  Bonnie had children but I wasn’t into having children and so then we never got married, we always loved each other and I moved on to Barbara who was more like my business girlfriend and which eventually turned into a marriage and then I wanted to have children and then I went back and married Bonnie.

Duncan Campbell: And did you have children together?

John Gray: Yes.  So we had children.  We had one child together, we have two children that she had before that when I first lived with her.  We lived together for a year and a half and we are about to get married and she really saw that I wasn’t that much into kids because I was really into my career although I love the kids and but then ---

Duncan Campbell: This was in the first generation ---

John Gray: The first.

Duncan Campbell: --- when you were with her, yeah.

John Gray: The first time.  And then I was with Barbara, who didn’t want to have kids so that was -- and then I decided I want to have kids so I went back to Bonnie.

Duncan Campbell: And was Bonnie interested in the Maharishi?

John Gray: She was also a TM Teacher.

Duncan Campbell: And were you all out there in Iowa or where were you located?

John Gray: Well it was before Iowa.  Iowa was the beginning of the TM Movement when The Beatles went.  And so ---

Duncan Campbell: Oh you were in India then?

John Gray: Yeah, I went to India.  I went to -- it’s actually I went right when Maharishi came from India and then went several times with Maharishi to India.  But right around that time after The Beatles left was when I arrived and I went to see The Beatles actually that was sort of one of my motivations and then I thought well this guy is great and I stayed.

Duncan Campbell: Now, when you went from your original connection with Bonnie and then to Barbara and then back to Bonnie, did you have a sense that you had gone through some kind of initiation yourself that you -- as you put it established yourself, so now that you are making your own money, you are interacting with the world and the earth in a self-sufficient way that that’s when the inspiration to have children arose?

John Gray: Yes.  I clearly see that I was, you know as a celibate monk for nine years and it wasn’t just living as a monk but up with and close TM Superstar and I was Maharishi’s assistant and I had all the spiritual experiences and -- and love the life and love the whole thing and all those completely celibate.  I loved being celibate if you’re a pure celibate and I was, the energies go up your spine and they open up your higher centers and that’s really quite wonderful.  So it’s a different kind of ecstasy that I experience.

Duncan Campbell: A definite bliss, yes.

For full transcript, please contact Duncan Campbell