This Jungian Life Podcast &#8211; Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

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If you’ve been struggling in the dark trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of ⁠⁠⁠⁠Dream Wise: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams⁠⁠⁠⁠ from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.

Special Re-release: The Archetype of War Feb 24, 2022

Show notes

Recent events in Ukraine have again put war at the forefront of collective consciousness. War’s destruction belongs to the mythic realm. Mars, the Roman god of war, was a primordial force whose altars were placed outside city gates. Although acknowledged, he was not accepted. His paramour, Venus, is warfare’s seductress, offering spectacle, pageantry, and glory.

Like all the gods of Mt. Olympus, Mars and Venus live in us as opposing forces of aggression and eros. We are charged with holding the tension of these impassioned opposites and making them conscious, lest we project shadow onto designated enemies or wage war internally as neurosis. We can stand in the complexity of conflict, suspend action, and allow the gods a place inside our psychic city gates.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“I had a dream me and my boyfriend adopted a child and were living in a rundown apartment full of darkness that resembled a studio we rehearsed in. Then we went to the balcony to watch missiles falling and exploding in the sky; my boyfriend was aloof to the situation. My first thought was, “this must be very exciting for the child because it’s like fireworks,” Then I realized that it’s actually really dangerous and life-threatening, so I grabbed the child and ran inside, leaving my boyfriend outside gazing at the sky. The room was pitch dark, and I could hear the voices of my mother and my brother talking about me; they were saying, “how is the baby going to survive without a shell”? Then I realized the kid has turned into a round egg in the palm of my hand, and the shell was dissolving like wet paper, leaving a bubble of fragile liquid with a fetus inside. I knew that any sudden movement could burst the bubble and kill the baby, so I tried to be as gentle and careful as I could.”

REFERENCES:

A Terrible Love of War by James Hillman. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0143034928/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_46A683TF2489P8WNSC8Y

Depth Psychology and a New Ethic by Erich Neumann. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0877735719/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_7W8QHPPGHMJ6SJ6RYS9R

The Moral Equivalent of War by William James. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1445529866/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_JF75M92ZS5N96ST1M49G

A Story Waiting to Pierce You by Peter Kingsley. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1890350214/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_BHEFTMVSZCJ6JF0X86N7

A Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M2YED0C/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_KGW7PQX1J4DH4WB2HQCF

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Forgiveness or Fury: Finding a Way Forward Feb 17, 2022

Show notes

Forgiveness has long been the province of morality, virtue, and religious values. Psychologically, forgiveness requires the capacity to hold both the magnitude of the injury and the humanity of the injurer. There are doable steps toward this goal, beginning with acknowledging and mourning the wrong yet forgoing retaliation. Righteousness and anger provide only illusory power and can be chronic and corrosive.

Blame can thwart our ability to understand unconscious personal dynamics and prevent acceptance of universal human flaws and vulnerability. We can accept apology and remorse—especially if it has been accompanied by introspection and greater self-understanding. Forgiveness is less about the other than it is about liberation from victimization. Even when we can’t solve a problem with another, we can increase our inner resources and enlarge our hearts.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“I was a shepherd carrying a sheep that had been born, but it was obvious it was not going to live. I was taking it to a pond to drown it, to put it out of its misery—but I knew this was actually an act of love. The pond was in a Botticelli ‘Elysian field’-like environment, and most of the water of the pond was frozen over—so much, so a horse was slipping around on the surface. There were other birds and animals all around me, like a Botticelli painting.”

REFERENCES:

Robert Karen. The Forgiving Self: The Road from Resentment to Connection. https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385488742/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_51MKHP5J0RNCC401GZDN

Edward Tick: Warrior’s Return:Restoring the Soul After War. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1622032004/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_CXPVMY2VVQBS66JD3T52

Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. https://www.amazon.com/dp/022658660X/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_JNEGRBZWC01ND6MCKY5X

The Forgiveness Project. https://www.theforgivenessproject.com/

Robert Enright. The International Forgiveness Institute. https://internationalforgiveness.com/

Desmond Tutu. Truth and Reconciliation Commission. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Truth-and-Reconciliation-Commission-South-Africa

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DUPED: What Makes Us Gullible? Feb 10, 2022

Show notes

Jung says, “The more one turns to the light, the greater the shadow behind one’s back.” Unacknowledged shadow can increase vulnerability to coercive dealings and regrettable decisions. We may find ourselves scammed, ripped off, and left holding the bag. Why didn’t we see it coming? Mostly because our denied fears and desires create blind spots others manipulate. Advertisers, hucksters, and con men prey on our fear of danger and disapproval and our quest for security and status. Gullibility is marked by misplaced trust and willful witlessness. We may not pause to reflect, research a decision, or seek neutral counsel. It is often relieving to trust an external authority rather than bear the anxiety and responsibility of choosing. When we fail to see our own shadow, we may be unable to recognize it in others.

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Reality as Medicine Feb 03, 2022

Show notes

The nature of reality may be a complex philosophical question, but from a psychological viewpoint, reality is largely a question of adaptation to the truths of our inner and outer worlds. How well do we manage psychic life and the electric bill? Science fiction writer Philip Dick pithily states: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” Multiple realities challenge us. We live in shared social realities, from embracing niceties to being steeped in beliefs and a need to belong. We also may access the objective realities of verifiable facts and scientific data. And we experience subjective realities of emotion, intuition, and unconscious influences. We can feel our feelings, differentiate between levels of reality, and choose which to apply to a particular situation or decision. Unclouded acceptance of reality is medicinal.

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Contagion: Pollution, Protection & Purity Jan 27, 2022

Show notes

When the archetype of purity is activated, science and psychology intersect. Fear of contamination has deep instinctual roots, evidenced in universal facial expressions of distress and disgust. Religious rules and rituals of riddance have long been practical and symbolic protections against pollution, whether the threat is pathogenic, environmental, or moral. For Jung, this psychological dynamic “is the dissolution of the ego in the unconscious, a state resembling death. It results from the more or less complete identification of the ego with unconscious factors, or, as we would say, from contamination...we then feel in danger of being swamped or poisoned by the unconscious.” The antidote to contamination is often a form of cleansing. Today’s sanitizers kill germs and also restore a mental state of purity long associated with sacred inviolability. An ego strong enough to straddle the opposites of the physical and archetypal worlds can help us chart a balanced course between external threat and internal anxiety.

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PORN: Technology, Consumerism & Soul Jan 20, 2022

Show notes

Nearly every civilization since ancient times has portrayed explicit sexual acts. Sexuality’s numinous aspect has long brought it into close association with spirituality and religion. The powerful potential of sexual arousal is central to being human and has seized today’s collective via the Internet. Porn is symbolic of the widespread merchandising of desire, from toys to trucks. The unprecedented power of image in today’s world can now drive what Lost Goddesses author Giorgio Tricarico terms our “desiring multiplicities” and quest for limitlessness. Pornography can be addicting, and Jung maintained that “There is no illness that is not at the same time an unsuccessful attempt at a cure.” Pornography could also be an attempt to achieve a sense of integration and wholeness through reconnection with the archetype of the goddess.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

“The Dragon Queen, a young blonde woman, was not the rightful queen and needed to be tamed. Everyone said to throw her in the furnace, but I couldn’t do that to her. She had become a sort of friend and had come to trust me. I came to her through a room where archery practice was taking place, a cave to the kingdom. An old friend was a centaur, and he was teaching me to shoot the bow and arrow. He had many tiny arrows, which he shot into the queen’s cave and missed. She came out and said, “Let me show you how it’s done.” I then captured her by tackling her with a black sheet. Then I sat on her and started massaging her legs vigorously. She started to relax. I then went to her arms and belly. She completely relaxed. Then I uncovered her, and she was ready to learn how to live in our society. One of the guys in the archery group took on the job of teaching her how to eat. He showed her a vision of all kinds of foods and nutrition but started with feeding her only sweets—all kinds of candy. I was worried and said so. He said that because she was a dragon, we needed to start out with feeding her that way.”

REFERENCES:

Giorgio Tricarico. Lost Goddesses. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1782205322/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_PBJVC0D9VDDC2TYZW516

Sharon Blackie. If Women Rose Rooted. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B098CXQLLH/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_3AQDWXGFMVJA105QAT1T

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he Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul Jan 13, 2022

Show notes

Dr. Connie Zweig, Ph.D., retired Jungian-psychotherapist and author, joins us to discuss her new book, The Inner Work of Age. She extends her well-known work on shadow into midlife and beyond and provides a map for uncovering obstacles to aging consciously. The transition from Hero to Elder, or role to soul, begins with releasing the ego’s identification with doing and reorienting toward the transpersonal center that Jung called the Self.

As we let go of outworn personas and roles, harvest the wisdom of our long lives, and break free of unconscious shadows, the Elder’s gift of authenticity naturally emerges. In this way, individuation, the deeper dimension of age, can be expanded along with our expanding longevity. This renewed purpose is the hidden promise of late-life.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“I was sitting at the front of a moving bus that was full of a friend’s family after a ceremony, maybe a wedding or a funeral. I was sitting facing backward so I could be part of the congregation. They announced they would shortly bring out my friend’s grandmother’s exhumed body for the dancing ritual. I wasn’t sure I’d have the guts to take part but wanted to wait until I saw her grandmother to make my decision. She was brought out in a sheer black veil, through which I could see her body had shriveled to a tiny frame, almost a skeleton but preserved as if she had been embalmed. Her family took turns joyously and carefully waltzing down the aisle of the bus with her, and everyone gazed upon the ritual with loving delight. I decided I would just watch this time. My friend was gently handed her grandmother’s corpse whilst sitting in her seat behind me. She held her in her lap and we had a conversation, during which my friend’s face and her grandmother’s became indistinguishable. My friend appeared both living and dead at the same time, her face hollowed and decomposed but animated and lively.”

REFERENCES:

Connie Zweig. The Inner Work of Age: Shifting from Role to Soul. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1644113406/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_ZCW0Z73PAQTREBXS1206

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LEGACY: Living Toward the Long Future Jan 06, 2022

Show notes

Is the future relevant? Can we suspend immediate satisfaction in favor of our descendants’ quality of life? Legacy comes from the Latin root legatia: one who is sent on a mission [into the future]. It is an act of benevolent imagination to accompany our choices forward in time and take responsibility for their fruits – by facing the long future we have set in motion, we can choose wisely.

We are like King Midas, who nursed the satyr Selenius and was rewarded by the god Dionysus with one wish. Seduced by the fantasy of limitlessness, he wished that all he touched turned to gold. His elation gave way to horror as his touch turned fruit, meat, and wine into gold. Lacking foresight, he could not feel the reciprocity between the present and the future.

Late in life, Jung struggled with a vision of the future – humanity would ultimately destroy itself. Bearing this, he hoped analytical psychology could intervene. If only people would turn within and embrace the autonomous forces of the unconscious, the ego could be set in right relationship to the Self and the earth.

"Rather seek for yourself and your fellows the healing vessel, the servitor mundi, which you urgently need. For your state is perilous; you are all in imminent danger of destroying all that centuries have built up.”

CG. Jung,Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Once we accept the temporality of the ego and embrace our fragile mortality, we can find meaning in what we will leave behind for future generations. We come to understand that we can, in essence, become immortal through our legacies.

Here’s the dream we analyzed:

“On the way to our new house, big rocks are scattered across the way. When we approach the building site, we come to a man in his 50s who looks like a fisherman. He holds a snake and shows it to us. Then I see lots of snakes around him on the ground. I am really scared and try to move out of the situation as soon as possible. The man looks amused as if he challenged us. There is also an old woman beside the man, but her age is not determinable. I find an alternative way to get to the house with my husband. The other way is a bit longer. We climb big rocks where there is some water falling over the sides. I Don’t know whether we finally get out of the situation or not.”

REFERENCES:

CATAFALQUE: Carl Jung and the End of Humanity, by Peter Kingsley https://www.amazon.com/dp/1999638417/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_FTK8MZ6AC8J76ND77QTJ

MEMORIES, DREAMS, REFLECTIONS by CG Jung https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01BW37JXE/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_GW7CM3KWS2CA3WHPHRQK

THE LONG NOW FOUNDATION, https://longnow.org/

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Jonah & the Whale: a dream for our time Dec 30, 2021

Show notes

The Bible as sacred text serves as a source of revelation and wisdom about the divine. As mythology, the Bible establishes norms for daily life and organizes psychic life forces. For Jung, mythologies and religions are symbolic expressions of archetypal patterns that foster the development of consciousness. Mythology reveals the dreams of a culture just as dreams bring personal mythology to light. Jung said, “We must read the Bible or we shall not understand psychology.” The Bible is not psychological only, but unless it is also psychological, we may not be able to relate its contents to our personal lives. We, therefore, engage the mythos of Jonah and his whale of a tale a dream. Orienting to Jonah as dream in the world, a dream for the world, and a dream of each of us can help us better understand ourselves in the context of a greater whole.

Here’s the dream we analyze:

“I’m at my girlfriend’s apartment, standing in a hallway with several doors. All of them save one are closed. Behind them, I sense a tremendous power. I stop in front of one of the closed doors and open it, but I don’t cross the threshold. It’s either my girlfriend’s childhood room, or it is mine. I guess that I first believe it to be hers but then understand that it’s mine. The room looks quite innocent, but I sense a trap inside. I somehow understand that I may ask one question to the presence that lingers in the room and that the question will be answered. I also understand that if I enter the room and the force is benign, I may exit and come back as I please, but if the presence is not benign, I will never be able to leave once I enter. So I need to construct a question that operates on two levels at the same time: it must seem to be an innocent question, but with a hidden purpose to determine the nature of the force. I start to think but draw a blank. Then a question very clearly “drops down” into my mind, and I examine it. It’s not only a good question, it’s the perfect question, and I put it forth: “How can one know when it is enough?” The answer comes quickly, accompanied by the sound of gnashing teeth and crushing boulders, and all too clearly reveal the nature of this entity: “It can NEVER be enough!” I then understand that it is the devil who dresses his frustrated angst in these words, and the answer makes me completely uninterested in entering the room. I decide instead to continue; I’m done with the things that are here. So, I go to the room with the open door, and after a short period of preparation, I fly away. When I fly through the window, a strange thing happens: as I pass through the glass, I feel that my amber body is being cleansed. It is as if all the impurities that it has accumulated during the entire ordeal were stopped from passing through as if the glass was some sort of filter. As a result, I feel more free as I continue my journey.”

REFERENCES:

Joseph, Diele, FCR. Jonah: The Story of Us https://www.amazon.com/dp/1556053924/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_8SGRSZT47FB9YA4RN6PV

Hollis, James. Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life https://www.amazon.com/dp/0919123694/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_VZMCVWT0D7FQ0880MW1W

Stein, Murray. The Bible as Dream: A Jungian Interpretation

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1630516686/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_HW0D3QRPE2HH0X20PM3VLOOK & GROW

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