In a short presentation as a panelist for “Earth, Climate, Dreams,” an online event hosted by Depth Psychology Alliance that took place in April 2016, Linda Buzzell, MA, MFT, shared some insights into the power of “daytime dreams” and working to develop eco-resilience in the face of challenging times. I found Linda's insights into eco-resilience quite powerful, prompting me to summarize them here in order to share them with you.

Linda begins by mentioning the work of Dr. Steven Aizenstat and psyc

PART THREE: 1994 to 1999

Mira Papo, now an Israeli citizen, had been wracked by guilt ever since 1946 for not having appeared at the show trial of the man who had saved her life, Dervis Korkut. During the breakup of Yugoslavia and the siege of Sarajevo from 1992 to 1996, Israel offered temporary shelter to Bosnian refugees. It was likely one of them who left behind an out-of-date newsletter that she came across in Jerusalem. It was printed in Serbo-Croatian with items of interest to Jews in the f

First thing this afternoon, a person reported the following dream: "I was speaking to a lovely woman who appeared out of the forest. She walked out, stark naked. We sat on the ground, under the tall pines with sunlight streaming through the branches. During our conversation, which I didn't remember upon waking, I was moved to tears. We were intimate in our conversation and in our presence. I awoke utterly content.

CG Jung wrote, "The 'child' is born out of the womb of the unconscious, begotten ou

For over thirty-six years, we have gathered to celebrate the Passover, a re-telling of the Hebrew peoples’ crossing the desert into the Promised Land of milk and honey.  We read the Haggadah, we drink the wine, pass the matzo, flick the plagues off our fingers like an Italian curse gesture.  We sing Dayenu, the song that voices the wonder of any small act to be sufficient for knowing God’s abundant love and grace to us, the people who follow the law.  The youngest ones present ask t

I’m visiting with friends and one of them asks, “What is going on? Is this America? On one side, we have a candidate for president of the United States whose fans love him for saying racist and misogynistic things, for wanting to round up a minority religious group, and who says that torture and the use of nuclear weapons are on the table for use. On the other, we have a candidate who calls himself a socialist at a time when many Americans do not know the difference between Communism and Democra

PART TWO: 1942 to 1992

To be born is to be weighed down with strange gifts of the soul, with enigmas and an inextinguishable sense of exile. – Ben Okri

Sarajevo was a rich cultural ferment that included Muslims, Catholics, orthodox Christians and Jews. People often called it “Little Jerusalem.”

Most students of history know that the city played a small but significant role in 1914, when the assassination of a Serbian noble set off the mad chain of events that led to the start of the Great War. But

I grew up in a hard working Norwegian farming family in the Midwest and not surprisingly, Midwestern practicality is etched into my cells. When I walk into an art gallery, I often marvel at the amount of time someone spent gluing hundreds or thousands of tiny pieces of glass into a sculpture or creating a fine painting. Thousands of hours in many cases, with no practical benefit other than to be looked at and admired. We can look at and admire a tree or a mountain, why do we need art?

We tend to

PART ONE: 1492 to 1942

1492 was the year the Jews were expelled from Spain, after having lived there, according to historical sources, for some 2,000 years. Think about that number: one could argue that they had lived in Spain for nearly as long as they had lived in Palestine. Much of Spain – then called Al-Andalus – had been Muslim for over 700 years. For parts of that time Muslims, Jews and Christians had lived in a “golden age,” brief, shining moments of tolerance and harmony, producing works

"A testament to the healing capacities of the imagination, the humble “star in man” that connects us to the unconscious: to unknown and unexpected developments in ourselves." says Literary Aficionado

New Title Press Release - Just Published by Fisher King Press:

War of the Ancient Dragon: Transformation of Violence in Sandplay
by Laurel A. Howe

From the Publisher - Laurel Howe’s War of the Ancient Dragon is a significant contribution to depth psychology. I suspect that far more would be resolve

When we are face to face or soul to soul with the numinous we cringe. If we don't cringe, at the very least, it's not the real thing. We hide from the real thing. We're afraid. We join churches or ashrams or professional societies. CG Jung wrote, "One can only say that somehow one has to reach the rim of the world or get to the end of one's tether in order to partake of the terror or grace of such an experience at all. Its nature is such that it is really understandable why the Church is actuall

"I believe that if I can sit out there long enough those crows, the trees and the wind can teach me something about how to be a better human being. I don't call that romanticism, I call that Indigenous Realism." --Dr Daniel Wildcat 

Yes, when we quest we sit out there…we also walk, wander, and explore out there. Nothing fancy. Mostly old school ways: a few pleas, some simple petitions of nature for friendship and guidance. Some personifying and praising of her gifts to us and within us. But the p

Part One

Show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser. – Vince Lombardi

April 2020, sheltering in place. Two dozen residents of a nursing home not five miles from here have been infected by the virus. I have a mask to wear outside – in New Orleans I’d say, “I’m masking” – but it’s raining, I’m stuck inside, can’t go for a walk, even with the mask. No ball games today in this weather. Yes, I’m warm, have food and family, have internet, have privilege. I have the privilege to comfortably whine ab

This morning I came across a wonderful post on facebook Inner City Books site. It addressed the secret order in disorder. We all feel that disorder, if we are honest. If we are really honest, we listen to it. There's something to the disorder, all the chaos, the depletion, the crazy feelings.

The post from Inner City Books went like this, "When we look at our lives up close, it can seem that they are made up of one chaotic event after the other. But with the view of time, and certainly by examini

You who seek do not need to seek me, for I am always here. I have not left. It is as it has always been and always will be. The past is present and will continue. You cannot escape because I am what you know. You know me too well and worship me, which makes me stronger in you.

Medusa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini 1630

I am the Medusa, the destroyer. I am the darkness where light fades. I am the event horizon into which all things are drawn. I will crush them into nothingness

“The calendar can’t tell you when the first day of spring is—your heart does,” says Alexandra Stoddard.[1] Of course, externally, spring is a natural event starting at the Vernal Equinox and ending at the Summer Solstice. As a season, it is marked by warmer weather, a period that from very ancient times was, and is today, celebrated with symbols of flowers and bunnies for natural fecundity, sweets for the sweetness of life, and eggs, for breaking out of confinement to liberation, like a chick.[2

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all... to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.” -- Joseph Heller, Catch-22

(I owe the title of this post to Ruben Bolling, whose satirical cartoons I've long enjoyed.)

Heller's observation

We are holistic beings. Body and mind work together as expressions of who we are. Psyche reflects body and body reflects psyche. A person's body speaks a great deal to who they are just as one's mental health is reflected in the workings and appearance of the body.

C.G. wrote, "Not infrequently the dreams show that there is a remarkable inner symbolical connection between an undoubted physical illness and a definite psychic problem, so that the physical disorder appears a a direct mimetic express

http://www.chironsouljourneytruth.com/home.html

The link above will connect you to an article on different Sparrow lore, from Christ's crucifixion, Venus Aphrodite's pet, medieval peasant totem bird (in contrast to the oppressor's totem bird, the eagle).

Happy Easter, and Happy Year of the Monkey,

Dale

(Dale O'Brien) 

Dr. Pat Katsky is a Jungian Analyst and core faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute, and she has been a therapist for thirty years. When Pat sat down with me in a recent interview, our conversation focused on the idea that some of the most psychologically healing experiences come from the natural world, a theme derived from an upcoming certificate program, “Dreaming the Earth: Earthing the Dream” starting April 15, 2016.

Pat mused on how in the last million or so years of history, humans have alw

What’s in a name?  Apparently, everything.  In the 1950’s and 1960’s the Civil Rights movement nominated its leader Martin Luther King, Jr.  to head up a movement which would bring civil rights to the disenfranchised African American.  A cultural zeitgeist was birthed in Alabama and ended on the steps of the Capital of the Confederacy in Montgomery in 1965.  The fruits of the Civil Rights movement were hard fought and won over the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Ac