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What is the nature of the beings that live in the space between matters of the natural world, and ideas of the reasonable mind? These are multivalent, multi-vocal figures that come in reverie, grief, or the moments of shipwreck that deconstruct and transform individual and cultural soul. How do these figures cause us to live a life imbued with wonder and mystery?

These questions compelled me to begin exploring what French philosopher Henry Corbin calls the imaginal realm, the mundus imaginalis. E

 For many years now I have been intrigued with Mary Shelley’s story, Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus. In many ways her story is a prophecy of themes that characterize our technological world-view. In the book that I am now writing, The Frankenstein Prophecies: The Untold Story, I explore seven of those prophecies. The triumph over death, which is the dream of Victor Frankenstein, is the central theme.

That theme lingers today in films that are our collective dreams. Jurassic Park is a goo

Change never stops if we're conscious beings. We can potentially shut ourselves down. Usually this is done by keeping unresolved trauma unresolved, engaging in unhealthy life styles, and not wanting to face our emotions and what they have to tell us; otherwise, the chances that we'll keep growing and changing, letting go and moving on, are strong.

One commentator noted, "David Bohm is considered to be one of the most accomplished physicists of the 20th century, noted primarily for his advancement

Check out a new interview and blogpost from Bonnie Bright: "Encountering Sabina Spielrein: Forging Paths To & Through Powerful Women in Depth Psychology" with Angela Sells, who is teaching on the topic this Fall at Meridian University!

Thanks, Angela, for a fascinating conversation!

In 2011, Sabina Spielrein became something of a household name due to the debut of a mainstream film called A Dangerous Method, starring well-known actors including Michael Fassbender, Keira Knightley, and Viggo Mor

Many years ago I sat on a stool in the Art barn at Esalen Institute painting a paper mache mask. I'd originally signed up for some sort of contemplative workshop, but found it too cerebral and ended up here.

I painted the mask magenta and then decided to paint a vine of flowers on the side. As I slowly drew a long vine down the side of my mask—getting into the feeling sense of the vine's graceful, elegant beauty—I found my hand being moved by something Greater than myself. 

I was no longer directi

In depth therapy we know there's a growing openness to people seeking to heal from mental pain. Many know they don't have to throw drugs at everything - there are alternatives. Therapeutic listening to psychic pain reveals not only the source of the trouble but avenues for transformation. There's a message in pain, and if that is listened to people can heal. 

A recent news article reported, "Some of the voices inside Caroline White’s head have been a lifelong comfort, as protective as a favorite

"The individual is the only real carrier of life." -- Carl Jung

The undeniable fact that the body is regulated by nature, along with the absurd idea that humans had otherwise freed themselves from the bondage of instinct, dominated psychology throughout most of the last century. That view loosely fit together certain facts while ignoring others. Such self-inflated notions were not seen as projections of a split condition -- nor are they much more acknowledged today.

The complicated nature of its o

To be real is to be creative. Something nurturing can come out of a lived experience. There's a zest that takes hold when we immerse ourself in lived reality. We feel better once we've faced what we need to face, the real taken in and internalized as truth in a given situation.  

The father of American depth psychology, William James, wrote that real creative activities in being must be lived experiences (A Pluralistic Universe p.185). Dreams point to such creativity when they address what has ha

Have you ever wished you had the equivalent of a map, handbook, or GPS that would help you know what to do and where to go to be happy? Or, have you ever felt envious of those who always seemed to know what decision to make to enhance their personal fulfillment? And, have you ever fallen in love with a person, a place, a home, a field of study, a potential new job, a cause, a spiritual path, or even a product of some sort and then felt horribly disappointed when you faced its reality? I know I h

"The emotional confusion generated by... a major shift in values is only enhanced today by a profound lack of introspection. The “suprapersonal factors” embodied in religious images are intended to orient us inwardly; to center and protect us from being swept away by mass contagion. Our ideas of religion are changing, and there is no return to the old ways. Deep in the throes of unseen psychic forces, consciousness is being pushed in a new direction. The possibilities for further development hid

A Consideration of Human Primate Existence 

Axiom 1

The Exclusivity of Human Primate Personal Consciousness (C. Jung Individuation)

Axiom 2

A Human Primate cannot develop Human Personal Consciousness without Human Primate Interaction (CULTURE)

Axiom 3

Human Primates (as other Primates) are capable of Alliance and Deception

The Male Alliance

The Cause of Human Primate Conflict

I am a Jungian because of what I relate to regarding his expressed thought and because I am challenged (competitive) by paradoxes

Smithing, in its most limited sense, is the art of working metals into useful objects or forms with aesthetic value. This sense of the artful use of something takes the word beyond the province of metal work and into forms such as “wordsmithing” and “songsmithing.” In this post, I want to focus on the idea of “dreamsmithing.”

In metal smithing, the “work” consists of various activities such as forging, smelting, refining, hammering, filing, in addition to more specialized processes (e.g. robotic

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

― Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, The Power of Myth

If you’ve ever had the experience of being fully in your body, you can likely relate exactly to

To All my students
from a teacher entering the stage of Biological Decrepitude...
i wish i could have done more;
i believe i taught somebody something.

There are many aspects of the expressions attributed to C. Jung that I experience as meaningful and meet the criterion of a high degree of facticity. However, there is a major conceptual point that I consider to be an issue. The conception of the human primate as a being with consciousness of its being is important but it lacks any relevance if t

So, have Maya and I been engaging in cultural appropriation all these years? And which cultural forms are we making use of? The terms we need to make peace with are calling, permission, authenticity and community.

After participating in several Dagara (West African) grief rituals led by Malidoma Some´at men’s conferences in the 1990s, it was quite clear to me that I was called to this important work. Maya speaks of her calling here.

By the way, even then, Malidoma was incorporating elements of gri

C.G. Jung wrote, "When a patient begins to feel the inescapable nature of his inner development, he may easily be overcome by a panic fear that he is slipping helplessly into some kind of madness that he can no longer understand" (The Philosophical Tree 1945/1954 CW 13, 325). When patients first enter depth psychotherapy, it's not uncommon that they are panic stricken. Their lives seem as if they are falling apart. "I'm tumbling down a deep hole, into an abyss," one person shared, their look utt

Archetypal Reflections: Dr. Keiron Le Grice on Jungian and Depth Psychologies

C.G. Jung contended that our personalities are made up of a multitude of archetypes, Dr. Keiron Le Grice, Chair of the Jungian and Archetypal Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute, reminded me when he recently sat down with me to share his insights into the field of depth psychology. Each archetype asserts its own aims, moods, and ideas on our personalities, influencing our lives on a day-to-day basis. Jungian

I did not want to face the truth about the archetypal story of the Republican convention, as I was hoping for better. However, it is clear to me that, overall, the convention was embodying an Innocent trance. The Innocent as an archetype has the virtues of a spontaneous, happy child, and when in positive and conscious form is optimistic and idealistic. We could see a bit of this latter aspect in the evocation of the image of America as “a shining city on a hill” that beckons others to us. And, t

When the iron bird flies and horses run on wheels, the Dharma will come to the land of the red faces. – Tibetan Prophecy

S0 – What about those emissaries from Tibet and countless other cultures who have relocated to America and Western Europe specifically for the purpose of teaching their ways? All those Yogis and Sufis and shamans and Taoists and ayahuasca priests and Zen masters and gurus (the word “guru” is now used so commonly in American English that most people probably don’t realize its Hi