sacred (9)

9142474253?profile=originalA common and compelling component of both shamanism and Jungian or depth psychology is that each seeks to treat soul loss by retrieving and reintegrating vital essence that is missing. This must occur through direct experience; therefore, the underworld journey to retrieve the soul is one of necessity and initiation.

Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung believed symptoms of soul loss, such as disorientation, lack of focus, or feelings of powerlessness, exist because a portion of psychic energy that is n

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“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been”

                                                      Rainer Maria Rilke

 

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2018 will be a year of alchemical transformation. It is an 11 universal year in numerology, master number of new beginnings. It is also the vibration of creation and partnerships. As we move into the Aquarian Age, we enter the mystery as a huge shift begins in the world. Dreams during this period of the year, especially between December 25-January 6th, a

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9142463876?profile=originalThe psyche is primed with an innate, organic wish to connect with something spiritual, something beyond the ordinary—something “numinous,” suggests Dr. Lionel Corbett, who is a psychiatrist, Jungian analyst, and professor, as well as the author of “Psyche and the Sacred,” among other works.

Corbett’s interest in transpersonal, numinous experiences came from growing up with a strong personal sense of connection to something larger that he could never quite articulate. Our religious traditions have

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I am honored to have been invited to post a guest blog on the Pacifica Graduate Institute Alumni Association. It's about the Alliance and it just went up! Check it out if you have a moment:

Greater than the Sum of Its Parts: Depth Psychology and the Honeybee Hive

One glorious late spring day on Pacifica’s Ladera Campus I witnessed a humming, writhing, vibrant swarm of honeybees on a bougainvillea bush. It stopped me in my tracks, entrancing me with the sheer number and proximity of bees buzzing ar

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"The message is unmistakable our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark. It is not that  the light element alone does the healing, the place where  light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is the mandorla" Robert A. Johnson


I had the pleasure of interviewing author Jean Benedict Raffa about her book “Healing the sacred Divide”. You can watch it on the Mindfunda YouTube-channel. Jean is a keynote speaker at the annual co

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Reconnecting with the Sacred: Finding Home

“The decisive question for man is: Is he related to something infinite or not?
 That is the telling question of his life.”
-(-C.G. Jung, 1961, pp. 356-7).

Watching what’s going on on our planet each day, I am continually struck by the suffering and grief that seems to be inherent in the human condition. It occurs to me that part of the problem is that western culture places so much value on individualism, independence, and getting ahead, venerating community and interdependence less. As a result, m

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“Shapeshift Threshold Reverie”. Interview with Maila T. Davenport PhD, AltarPlaces.org, Portland.

By Willi Paul, openmythsource.com

“I am so pleased that people are bringing story and myth back into active culture – they have been stowed away on dusty library bookshelves for too long! We live in a world whirling in story, and most often anymore they are held in a solitary word – word as hologram, code, oral image. Who says we no longer use pictographs?” MD

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eBook 9 by Willi Paul & openmythsource.com
 
"Good day, I visited your site and really enjoyed reading your myths. They are instruction manuals for life after the electrician pulls the plug." 
 
 
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Living the Symbolic Life

It is Sigmund Freud who is credited for the discovery of the unconscious and is often called the “father of psychology”. Psychiatrist and medical historian Henri Ellenberger, in Discovery of the Unconscious, describes Depth Psychology as the key to exploring the unconscious mind. Understanding what lies in the unconscious--whether repressed, forgotten, or simply never known--can help us bring meaning to our conscious lives. The unconscious makes itself known to us through symbols, that is, image

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