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SUBLIMATIO: Jung’s Alchemical Method of Turning Problems into Archetypes · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: When Jung studied alchemy, he discovered a symbolic language that
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: clarified his understanding of the ways his patients grew and changed. Now,
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: the alchemists were the predecessors to our modern chemists. They
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: worked very intuitively, combining chemicals and processes, and they observed
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: the results. But remarkably, they created their own unique language
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: to explain what they had observed. There was no scientific
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: language at that time. So Jung surmised they were projecting
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: their own psycho-spiritual fantasies onto the various observations. Now, when
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: they observed this kind of uncanny experience, which many of
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: the listeners may remember from like high school chemistry classes,
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: where you could take a solid substance and And if
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: you heat it, it would just vaporize and skip the
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: liquid stage. Most of us have seen dry ice, which
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: does the same thing. It doesn't become a liquid. It
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: just vaporizes. And the alchemists called that sublimation, or in Latin,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: the sublimatio. So for them, it seemed like an object
• 1:58
  Speaker 3: was rather magically just turning into air. So we can
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: experience this psychologically. when we have a sudden shift of attitude.
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: And this might happen if we just find the right
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: way to name a symptom, like discovering that our horror
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: when we give a presentation is actually performance anxiety. And
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: then we have this sense of relief, like, this is understandable.
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: Many people have this. And it gets us to lift
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: a little bit above that Maybe we start weeping uncontrollably
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: after our first child and somebody says, hey, that's postpartum depression.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: Women sometimes feel a great relief. It's like, oh, wow,
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: this is something that's broader than just me. So naming
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: it can lift the suffering a little bit above us
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: and we can have objective, kind of universal attitudes. We're
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: part of the universal experience. Sometimes discovering the myth of
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: Dionysus and connecting it to an addiction frees us up
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: to look at it differently and gives us an uncanny relief.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: So the alchemists might say that we're extracting the spirit
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: from matter, but also there's a danger of this leading
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: to dissociation. And today we're going to explore all that. Hello, listeners.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Remember that we have bonus material. If you would like
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: to hear our mini episodes that we record every week,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: you can go over to Patreon and support us there.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: And we just recorded a really interesting mini episode where
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: we talked about what if a friend of yours is
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: going through a tough time and seems not to be
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: facing reality, not facing the music. And what's your responsibility
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: as a friend? Should you confront them? Should you just
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: support them? Not an easy question. We took it on. So,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: check out our Patreon. Well, we've been doing this series
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: on alchemy. And of course, we looked at calcinatio, which
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: is associated with fire. We looked at salutio, which is
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: associated with water. And sublimatio is associated with air. And
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: your image, Joseph, of the dry ice is very helpful, right?
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Because we all can picture that, that you've got a
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: solid and then it becomes it becomes a gas right
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: before your eyes and totally misses this step of the water.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: So it is this powerful metaphor for something kind of ascending.
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: So in sublimatio imagery, there's an upward movement, and it
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: has to do with the spirit, and it has to
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: do with air.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: We're looking to shift in a psychological sublimatio out of
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: the concrete personal particulars of something in the day-to-day part,
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: and trying to get to a broader, sometimes mythic, perspective
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: on it. And, strangely enough, people can kind of loosen
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: up a little bit around the topic and the consideration.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: And this was really central to the Jungian practice, and
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: we do that often through amplification. Taking a dream image,
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: a life experience, and finding universal examples in mythology, fairy tales,
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: sometimes even in art, it just creates this interesting effect
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: inside of us that lifts us out of this kind
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: of neurotic tension where we think we're kind of trapped
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: in a private room just fretting our hands about something.
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  Speaker 3: And then we realize this is also beyond me.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Well, and it's translating the difficulty that we're facing into
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: sort of a higher form, which, you know, your comment
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: about connecting addiction with Dionysus, for example, is a really
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: great example of that. So you've got the live personal experience,
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: which could be very humiliating, distressing. Yeah. And then you say, okay, well,
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  Speaker 2: it's the energy of Dionysus. And suddenly you've translated the experience,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: the same experience, but it's now kind of appearing in
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: a different key and just lets you relate to it
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: a little bit differently. I mean, I do think that
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: what we've been talking about relates to, in a way,
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: it relates to this lovely quote that we've shared many
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: times on the podcast that Jung says, we don't solve
• 6:43
  Speaker 2: our problems so much as grow larger than them. I
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: would say that sublimatio is, I think it's usually more
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: like a kind of sort of short-term project or attitude shift.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: It's not necessarily the full growing larger than, but it
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: might be that momentary shift in attitude that is enabled
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: by having a concept for something, naming it, that you've
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: given so many good examples of. But it's the way
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: that things look different when we get up above them.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: You know, when you live in your neighborhood and you
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: drive around or walk around or whatever, but then you
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: see a map and all of a sudden you understand
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: something different about how the streets are related to each
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: other or whatever it is. So it's that overarching perspective
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  Speaker 2: that sublimatio provides.
• 7:38
  Speaker 3: A really common example that is so ubiquitous sometimes we
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: don't even catch it is just astrology. Like, how many
• 7:47
  Speaker 3: people who wouldn't even think of themselves as being serious
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: astrologers still kind of check out that little part of
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: the newspaper? You know, what's it saying about Aries today?
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: And that's a way of just leaning into this idea
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: that we are connected to the cosmos, and the cosmos,
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: the greater is affecting the lesser. And the lesser, in
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: a sense, is translated in some fashion to the greater.
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: And this is called the microcosmic-macrocosmic relationship. And even though
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: we may think to ourselves, oh, I don't take it seriously,
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: there is a reason we keep going back and reading it.
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: Because in just even a tiny way, it universalizes something
• 8:37
  Speaker 3: and it gives us a bit of freedom.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I mean, there are many Jungian analysts
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: who will incorporate tarot or astrology into their practice. And
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: I'm not particularly knowledgeable in either of those areas, but
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: I will often pull a tarot card with someone under
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: the following circumstances. When someone is trapped in a dilemma,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: like an external world dilemma that they cannot influence, There
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: is nothing you can do but sit with, let's say
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: that your husband has just said, I'm leaving, there's nothing
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: you can do. And, you know, yeah, there are practical
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: things to do, but in terms of managing it emotionally,
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: you're just sort of sitting with this. That's not the
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: greatest example, but something where there really is nothing to do.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: You can't influence it. You can't necessarily think your way
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: through it. You've done the work you need to do
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: in terms of understanding how you got here. And now
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: you're just sitting with a ton of anxiety or distress
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: or whatever. Sometimes I'll say, why don't we pull a card?
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Because exactly the reason that you're giving, regardless of whether
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: or not you believe in tarot or astrology, one thing
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: that these tools do is invite you to take the 40,000-foot view.
• 10:00
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: It invites you up here to look down on the
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: problem from a higher perspective, even just momentarily, even just
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: for 10 minutes. And it often brings relief. So when
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: people are dealing with particularly very anxiety-provoking situations like this,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: I think it can be adaptive to use these tools
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: that way because it just invites that little shift.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: So one of the ways that shows up in popular
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: culture right now is when people say, hey, let's do
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: a thought experiment.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: I love that term.
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: I use it all the time now.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I do too.
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: And so you pull a tarot card and it's, you know,
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: tarot card number 11, justice. And it shows this woman
• 10:44
  Speaker 3: holding a scale and a sword. And then we have
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: to ask somebody, well, How might we understand this? Is
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: there any way as a thought experiment, this might give
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: us a new perspective on what you're feeling? And just
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: the task of having some other frame to try on
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: loosens it up and we get the ego above the entanglement,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: even if it's just a half an inch. And we
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: might be able to see something a tiny bit more objectively.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: And whether it's a massive transcendental experience or just a
• 11:24
  Speaker 3: little different way of playing with it, again, there's a
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: kind of relief that we can experience that lets us
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: breathe and try on a couple different ways of thinking
• 11:37
  Speaker 3: about a problem.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean, dreams can do something similar because we...
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  Speaker 2: our egos may be very identified with one aspect of
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: a problem. And then our dream provides just a different
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: way of looking at it. And it extracts us up
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  Speaker 2: and out of our ego-bound perspective and allows us to
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: see the situation from a different angle. And again, that
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: can bring relief, that can bring clarity. That can give
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  Speaker 2: us a sense of what we might need to do
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: next that we wouldn't have thought of before when we
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: are so down in the muck of whatever the challenges
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: we're facing.
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  Speaker 3: So language can be really part of the sublimatio. Here's
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: a great example I just thought was brilliant. One of
• 12:27
  Speaker 3: my analysis hands was negotiating what seemed to be the
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: end of a relationship. And he was pondering, kind of
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: looking inside himself for an image. And he said, I
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: feel like the moon is waning in our relationship. And
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: there was something about lifting it into that kind of
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: metaphor that both he and the partner were able to go, yes,
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: that's what's happening. And then it opened up a much
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: calmer conversation about really what was the conclusion of a
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: relationship because the life force was just moving out of it.
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: So just that little linguistic metaphor kind of opened something up.
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  Speaker 3: That's a kind of sublimatia that we may find ourselves
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: naturally doing without necessarily categorizing it in that arcane way.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: There's something natural to all the processes. Yes. Yes.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: And I think, I mean, first of all, you're speaking to,
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: I believe, one of the things that makes therapy effective.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: Is that, you know, when therapy works, one of the
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: things that happens is you go into your therapist's office
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: and you've got some feeling that you can't quite identify
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: rattling around your body. There's some discomfort or discomfort. tight
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: feeling in your chest maybe and you start talking about
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: it and you're reaching for words and you and the
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: therapist together hopefully come up with a pinpoint way to
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: describe what happens and that really changes things. There is
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: some research on something called emotional granularity and what that
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: research shows is that the more you can identify feelings
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: with a great degree of linguistic specificity, the more adept
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: you are at dealing with emotions. So you could say, well,
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: I'm sad, but that's pretty vague. If you say, I'm depleted,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I'm morose, I'm anguished, I'm heartbroken, the more precise you
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: can be because then you're really extracting that thing. Then
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: you're really pulling it up. And related to that, there's
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: some research that I'm going to try to summarize, and
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: I'm sure I'm probably going to partially get it wrong.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: The most accurate summary I can come up with, these
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: researchers did was they flashed photographs of faces with different
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: facial expressions to people. And some of them were flashed
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: so quickly that there was no way the person could identify, oh,
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: that person looks angry. And then they were They were
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: measuring the person's sort of autonomic responses to it. And,
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: you know, there was a sort of fear response when
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: someone was angry or etc. But if they flashed the
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: angry face and then immediately afterwards flashed the word anger,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: it did not have that same fear response.
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's really interesting.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: It's so interesting. And it just, it says, first of all,
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: there's something kind of containing and binding about language. But
• 15:46
  Speaker 2: I think it is related to this process that we're
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: talking about, about why sublimatio can be, can bring kind
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: of relief and clarity.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: It makes me think about the way, particularly when we're
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: experiencing a kind of traumatic memory, That it's the frontal
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: lobe of the brain that needs to create a relationship
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: with the sensations that are stored in a different area.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: And by naming it and relating it to that thought process,
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: there's a sense of relief. I think Freud called that mentalizing,
• 16:24
  Speaker 3: which is to ponder. something and find really accurate language
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: for yourself or that's perhaps provided by a therapist or
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: a good friend. And there's that relief, just as I
• 16:37
  Speaker 3: was saying with that reference, where people are like, yes, yes,
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: that's it. That's that thing. And suddenly stuff can start
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: moving again.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure you have this experience. You know, for me,
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: it's a really good session when I'm sitting with someone
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: and I'm trying to feel my way into their experience
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: and I'm tuning into my intuition and my bodily sensations
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: and all of a sudden I say, is it like this?
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: And they go, yes.
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: And you can feel the shift. No, it doesn't happen always.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: But when it really clicks, there is like the person's
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: body changes, their facial expression changes. There's a shift in
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: the room.
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: You know?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: And it's just a lovely thing. Yeah.
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: You feel different when you name it. Like, both parties
• 17:32
  Speaker 3: are like, ugh.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 17:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: And I think one of the ways of thinking about
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that is like this moment of meeting, almost, because the person,
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: I mean, partly it's the person feels so seen, but
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: it is also, to go back to our topic, this
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: extracting the essence of the experience and then being able
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: to hold on to it because now it's in words.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: So for instance, you're going through a divorce and then
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: you wind up maybe even watching YouTube videos. And what
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: you'll notice is when you can find something that is
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: common to all people about an experience, particularly of suffering, again,
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: we're lifting it from the personal to something that is
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: more collective and universal. People experience that as powerfully helpful
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: just as a little pivot sometimes the dream maker can
• 18:30
  Speaker 3: also give us some help around this and sometimes that
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: happens literally where you're having dreams of ladders or going
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: up and down elevators sometimes but not always flying dreams
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: can suggest a sublimatio because suddenly you're way above and
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: you're looking down and Perhaps your childhood home is down there.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: You're thinking, that is a really small part of an
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: enormous psychological reality. And having that perspective can be really helpful.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: And the fact that people love flying dreams, it's so
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: euphoric to get up into the air. So there are
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: ways that the dream maker, that the deep parts of
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: ourselves will help us. They'll put us at the top
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: of a mountain, looking down. And often my question is,
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: how does it feel? How is it different from how
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: you would normally move through the world? So yes, these
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: are natural processes.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: So Joseph, you were talking about being up high on
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: a mountain. It made me think of that book by E.M. Forster,
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: A Room with a View. And of course, there was
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: a beautiful movie that came out in the 80s. Helena
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Bonham Carter, that was her breakout film. But the book
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: uses this metaphor of a room with a view. And
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: of course, in the film, well, in the book too,
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: it's these views of Florence, right? But the book actually
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: kind of extends this metaphor of the window. And especially
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: a window with a view. And what I think is
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: exactly what we're talking about especially in this sort of
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: spiritualized sense, that when you're up high, you can see more.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: You have a relationship with something larger. You have the
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: ability to sense the transcendent moving through whatever ordinary situation
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: you're facing. So that's another place where this maybe shows
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: up in the culture.
• 20:31
  Speaker 3: Now, just to take a little bit of a pivot,
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: Some analysts are very suspicious of sublimatios, and even in
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: the collective culture, people will use this phrase, spiritual bypass,
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: where something really has to be dealt with in a
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: very grounded, earthy way, and that as the person is
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: looking at it, they have a tendency to very consistently
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: go into some some kind of overly spiritual process. Now,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: this can be harmless sometimes. And for instance, I have
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: friends where, you know, I'll say, hey, you know, I
• 21:18
  Speaker 3: was looking for a call from you on Friday and
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: they go, oh, Mercury was retrograde. So all of a sudden,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: it doesn't really bother them and it's not supposed to
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: bother me because Mercury's at fault. You know, that's the
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: one that's really on top of it all.
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: But there are other more problematic situations. For instance, I've
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: had clergy in my practice, and my outward observation is
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: they're kind of agonizing, and particularly through the lack of
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: energy to take care of themselves in the most basic ways.
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: And as we approach it, they have a tendency to
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: tell me how being Christ-like is really the goal. Christ
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: wouldn't worry about this, or they are sacrificing themselves for this, that,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: or another purpose. So rather than really looking at something,
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: and sometimes it's even just like getting adequate medical care,
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: they'll elevate it to a kind of spiritual suffering, a
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: spiritual crucifixion that somehow is greatly beneficial to the world
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: at large or themselves. And that can be a way
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: of just not taking care of business in a very
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: grounded way. And if we stay way, way up there,
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: we can lose functionality. And in the worst cases of that,
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: which we would see perhaps in a psychosis, where people
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: are really, really far up and off the ground and
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: really have lost functionality in massive ways.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: And what you're lifting up to, I think, is that
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: the sublimatio, the tendency to go up, can absolutely be defensive.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, I don't know about you,
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: but when I hear a flying dream, I'm always a
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: little bit like, hmm, is that, you know, that's just
• 23:16
  Speaker 2: kind of leaving the ground and wanting to go up
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: where you don't have to really feel things. You can
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: go up in your head. So sublimatio, the kind of
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: shadow side of it that we're getting into now has
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: to do with intellectualization. There can be like a, we
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: find a remoteness from life and its problems, which again,
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: as we said before, can be good. But the downside
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: is that we're skipping out on our human experience. So
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: like you said, we're doing a spiritual bypass where And actually,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: you know, the thing about Jungian psychology is that it's
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: great for that, right? Because you can always find an archetype.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: And some people come in and they just want to
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: talk about their dreams and they want to talk about archetypes.
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, okay, wait, wait, wait. What are you feeling,
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: you know? So that sort of intellectualization or taking things
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: up into a very kind of rarefied, I mean, it's exciting.
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: It's exciting to kind of visit this Christlike space or
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: to pull up an archetype, but you do have to
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: be aware of, is there a connection with embodied experience?
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: Are you using it to escape from something?
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: In a way that's defensive.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: So sometimes this shows up, a client may come in
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: and an analyst says, they just got fired. And they'll
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: say something, well, you know, Everything in the universe is
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: happening in right order, and I'm a child of the divine,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: and everything is going to be really absolutely perfect. And
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: it's not an uncommon kind of New Age perspective. In
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: small doses, it may act as kind of a bridge.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: We can kind of breathe and look at options and
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: kind of land safely. But sometimes, if I hear that
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: a lot, I'll start to ask people, well, let's just
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: pause and close your eyes. Tell me As you're talking
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: about getting fired, what's happening in your body? Is your
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: body comfortable? Do you feel angry? I mean, I'm noticing
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: your face is very red as you're talking about it,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: even though I know you have a very robust philosophy
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: around it. So sometimes the idealization of something or a
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: philosophy is a way of not actually metabolizing something, and
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: then what happens is is that unmetabolized stuff gets stuffed
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: into the body or the unconscious, and it starts to
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: chew at us in sometimes very unexpected ways. We start
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: having stomach aches, or we put on a bunch of weight,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: or we find ourselves just somehow never having time to
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: interview for another job. It'll happen when the universe decides
• 26:04
  Speaker 3: it will. So it's a tricky, fine line. It's a
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: beautiful thing, And like anything else, too much of it,
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: uncertain effects. Yeah.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: And I think maybe the answer somehow is the ability
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: to be able to move back and forth between them. Because,
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: you know, philosophizing, the word that you just used, is
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: a really good way of describing, I think, this process
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: of sublimatio. It's really good to have a philosophy. You know,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: that can be incredibly helpful. We did an episode on stoicism.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: And stoicism can be you know, a great philosophy to cultivate,
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: especially when you're meeting with adversity in life. But it's
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: just like, is it just an escape hatch or does
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: it actually facilitate your being able to be with your
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: feelings more? So you sort of have to be aware
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: of how you're using it. And sometimes it's important just
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: to be with the feeling. And I mean, I can
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: say as a clinician, when I'm sitting in the room
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: with someone who's feeling something incredibly painful, there's always a
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: couple of the different options of what to do with that.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: Sometimes the right thing to do is just to feel
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: it with them, just to be in the feeling experience.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: But that is uncomfortable. So I have a tendency to
• 27:23
  Speaker 2: want to go up and intellectualize and analyze and, you know,
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: maybe bring in an archetype or to make it something
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: that's more of an intellectual exercise. So We always have
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: to be aware of where we are in these alchemical operations,
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: why we are where we are, and what we're sort
• 27:44
  Speaker 2: of getting from it, I think. Yeah.
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: So another painful example, and I've actually heard this several
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: times in my practice. Someone is very involved in a
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: church community. It's very positive for them. They've come in
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: and said, you know, oh my God, you know, my
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: mother just unexpectedly died. And to have somebody turn and say,
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: how wonderful they're now with Jesus. And that the person
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: is often will feel so much rage as if their
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: feelings have been just absolutely invalidated. We can understand the
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: church friend thinks that they're being beneficent. It makes sense
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: to them to say such a thing. But they're inviting
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: the individual to abandon their grief. and rise up into
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: kind of a spiritual, what I might say is a
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: platitude at that moment, where the sublimatio is being applied
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: or invited at a time when that's not really what
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: it's called for. But we can imagine the other person
• 28:50
  Speaker 3: feeling uncomfortable, and they too want to kind of fly
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: up and think about angels and spirit, because it's really hard,
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: as you were just saying, to sit with that person
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: and cry with them. It's hard work.
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: A number of years ago, I had a conflict with
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: an important person in my life. And at first I
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: was angry and I was upset. And then I had
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: this idea that, oh, but I could look at it
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: like this. It just sort of naturally arose. And it
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: suddenly just made me very calm. And I thought, oh, okay, yeah,
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: maybe it's a good thing. And I thought, well, that's
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: really remarkable because the way how I felt really shifted.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: And I thought, OK, well, that was, you know, cognitive
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: reframing and all this great stuff. And that was true. And.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: the insult to the connection that was buried in that
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: conflict did not go away simply because I found a
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: new way to relate to it. And years later, it
• 29:53
  Speaker 2: kind of came home to roost. So that was a
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: lesson to me too. Like I did escape from the
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: conflict in the moment and it felt great, but I
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: didn't fully deal with what there was to be dealt with.
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: So let's talk a little bit about sublimation as certain
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: kinds of instinctive energies that kind of go into the
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: unconscious and then they float back up in a somewhat
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: more socially acceptable form. Not quite what Jung was thinking,
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: but there is a valid way that the spirit of
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: a thing kind of enters into a different form, but
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: the libido has enough of a connection that it kind
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: of works. One example of this is human aggression. As
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: human beings, we have this instinct to be aggressive and violent.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Our culture often introduces a system where that's expected to
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: be contained and but it's okay for that energy to
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: show up in sports. So either we're watching sports and
• 30:59
  Speaker 3: we're fiercely shouting or we're fighting to really triumph over
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: the other team, but rather than there being blood and
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: mayhem and injury, Well.
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: In Philadelphia, in sports, there usually is mayhem and injury.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: But anyway, yeah.
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: I've heard about the Eagles games. It makes me very
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: cautious about it.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: We're pretty serious in Philadelphia, but yeah.
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: But that would be one way that the Freudians might
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: think the energy is freed up from a certain thing
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: and then it goes underground and it comes up successfully, actually,
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: in a different form. That's more... socially acceptable. And that's
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: much also of what happens in childhood and raising kids,
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: for that matter.
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: Right. So Freud called this sublimation, and it was one
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: of his kind of primary defenses. And, you know, for example, Freud,
• 31:55
  Speaker 2: of course, believed that the primary sort of life drive
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: was sexual in orientation. So instead of, you know, having
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: an orgy, you might learn to play the oboe.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: That's a hard thing to link together, but I am
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: sure that that does exist for people. The oral fixation.
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: That you take that sexual energy and you sublimate it
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: into a kind of pro-social form, for example. And I'm
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: actually reading here from Edinger's book, Anatomy of the Psyche,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: where he offers this dictionary definition of it. So this
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: is a definition for sublimation. The process of modifying an
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: instinctual impulse in such a way as to conform to
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: the demands of society. Sublimation is a substitute activity which
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: gives some measure of gratification to the infantile impulse, which
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: has been repudiated in its original form. Unlike the usual
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: defenses in sublimation, the ego is not acting in opposition
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: to the id. On the contrary, it is helping the
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: id to gain external expression. sublimation, in other words, does
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: not involve repression. So in a sense, it is so
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: interesting that, you know, Freud had this one definition and
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: then Jung had this other definition. And I've always thought
• 33:19
  Speaker 2: there's something there that's similar, but in fact, they are
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: pretty different. And Edinger goes on to quote Jung in
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: one of his letters, just kind of demolishing Freud's idea
• 33:32
  Speaker 2: of sublimation. Here's what Jung writes. He says, Sublimatio is
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: part of the royal art where the true gold is made.
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: Of this, Freud knows nothing. Worse still, he barricades all
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: the paths that could lead to the true sublimatio. This
• 33:52
  Speaker 2: is just about the opposite of what Freud understands by sublimation.
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: It is not a voluntary and forcible channeling of instincts
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: into a spurious field of application. but an alchemical transformation
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: for which fire and the black prima materia are needed.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: Sublimatio is a great mystery. Freud has appropriated this concept
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: and usurped it for the sphere of the will and
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: the bourgeois rationalistic ethos. Okay, how do you really feel?
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: I was a little frustrated. Absolutely. Got it. Message received.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. But it is interesting to think about the difference,
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: that Jung says it's a mystery. This is not some
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: ego operation to make an impulse palatable to the general society.
• 34:48
  Speaker 2: It's something that happens as a result or as part
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: of this mysterious and unconscious process of transformation.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: Yes, that it's not something in that that Jung was
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: talking about that we can actually see happen, but as
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: or after it occurs, we do have this ability to
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: reflect on, well, I was feeling this way, and now
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: I'm feeling this other way. And it seems to have
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: had a little bit to do with this different attitude,
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: finding the different paradigm, finding the archetypal aspect of an
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: experience that then gives us space. Again, one of these
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: other things that we do and we do it so
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: easily we don't understand is you have a child and
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: the child gets frustrated like a toddler. And mom and
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: dad lean down and they say, stop, use your words.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: Translate whatever you're acting out and let's abstract it and
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: put it into words. A very important kind of skill.
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: That's that ability to kind of just get a little
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: bit above and to symbolize it because, frankly, words are symbols.
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: They're not things. They're just symbols that represent other experiences,
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: other actions. We do that just by creating language itself
• 36:23
  Speaker 3: as a form of sublimatio. Not always, but... massively life-changing,
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: but sometimes it actually is, as we were talking about.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Well, that seems like a really interesting point, Joseph, that
• 36:37
  Speaker 2: you brought up, the role of the symbol in all
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: of this. And I'm thinking about your example a little
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: while ago about the moon is waning. You know, that
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: was language, but it was actually an image. It was
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: actually a symbol, the symbol of the waning moon. And
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: what we're talking about is making me think, and I
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: don't know that I've ever had this thought before, but
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: Jung goes on and on about the importance of symbols
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: in analyzing libido and in the process of transformation. And
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: this may be exactly part of what he was talking about,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: that the symbol is a way of getting up above something,
• 37:17
  Speaker 2: to go back to your example that you used right
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: in the beginning of, you know, you've got an addiction.
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: And then your analyst says, ah, you've been marked by Dionysus.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: And suddenly you have a symbolic perspective on your experience.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: So I think you're really onto something there.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: And we know it when it's working. Like there's that big, aha,
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: that's a thing. Now we've been hinting at another aspect
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: of sublimatio, but I think we can speak to it
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: rather directly. which is the idea of the circulatio, or
• 37:54
  Speaker 3: the circulation of substance. This is a thing that the
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: alchemists also were just seeing in the laboratories, that mercury
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: could be mixed into something, or something would then vaporize,
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: it would disappear, it would go into spirit form, move
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: through the cooling tube, and then it would drip into
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: the other container. Again, not having any scientific language, that
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: looked like a miracle. It just seemed uncanny and strange.
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: So in an ideal sublimatio process, for instance, oh, God,
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: I'm drinking way too much. It's a real problem. I
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: learn about the myth of Dionysus. I think, yes, I'm
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: a child of Dionysus. I've been marked by the God,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: and I learn all about it. And then at some point,
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: we have to then cycle back down and then say, okay,
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: have I been able to limit how many drinks I have?
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: Is this making a difference? Am I standing in the
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: issue in a very concrete way that's giving me and
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: perhaps my family some relief from this pernicious problem? So
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: in the Emerald Tablet, which is an ancient hermetic document,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: it descends from earth to heaven, and descends again to
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: earth carrying the power of the superiors and the inferiors,
• 39:24
  Speaker 3: therefore thou hast the glory of the whole world. So yes,
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: we go up, we fall, the archetype of the great mother,
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: the great father, Venus, Dionysus, and then we descend back
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: to Earth, take that in, and watch whether our lived experience,
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: how is that being experienced? influenced by this spiritualization and
• 39:52
  Speaker 3: then return. This also shows up in the Rosarium woodcuts
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: that we often talk about, that at a certain point,
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: the divine couple have conjoined, the soul leaves, the dew
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: of heaven falls, and then this little homunculus soul comes
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: back inside of them. This mystery where life rises and
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: then it returns.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: And I think that that's a lovely image for maybe
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: what we were talking about a minute ago, that you
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: come up here, you intellectualize it, but then you have
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: to sort of make sure that you're back in the
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: body and you're feeling it. And then, you know, people
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: who have a problem with a kind of intellectualizing defensive
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: pattern are people who stay stuck there, not people who
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: travel there, you know, get some benefit out of it
• 40:43
  Speaker 2: and then bring it back. like you're saying, like applying
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: it to your life, going back into the feeling. Now you've,
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: you've got maybe a different intellectual understanding. So perhaps the
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: experience of the feeling is a little bit different. So yeah,
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: I like, I like that, the importance of the circulato because,
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: because otherwise we, if we just stay stuck there, that's, that's,
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: that's kind of a dead place. That isn't a place
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: ultimately of transformation. So it's, It's any of these alchemical
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: operations are part of a process, not an end unto themselves.
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: I also want to raise that there's a related term
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: for sublimatio, which maybe just will help us picture it better,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: and that is the distillatio. So I think you can
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: think about that, the distillation, what is involved in distilling something.
• 41:40
  Speaker 2: both metaphorically and also in terms of chemically or working
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: with liquids, you know, what it means to distill water
• 41:49
  Speaker 2: and you're pulling something essential out and then letting it,
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: you know, fall back. But it's very much along the
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: lines of what we've been talking about, that you are
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: lifting out the essence, right? If you distill a newspaper article,
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: that I don't have time to read, so I'm going
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: to ask someone to distill it for me. They're going
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: to give me the highlights, the main points, after kind
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: of a careful working through, hopefully. So that's that same
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: idea of the distillatio of our psychological life.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: I think that image of purifying water, you know, we
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: can take contaminated water, boil it, And then if the
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: steam is captured, the steam will condense and then drip
• 42:42
  Speaker 3: into a vial. And ostensibly, if there aren't other volatile
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: chemicals in there, that what comes into the container is
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: actually pure water. And then there's this gummed up substance
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: in the bottom. By the way, any of you that
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: are interested in this, just look at the bottom of
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: your teapot every once in a while. because there is
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: junk in the bottom of your teapot often that we
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: don't even realize, which is the leftover stuff in our
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: water with all of that boiling down all of the time.
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: But if we take that example, that the heating up
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: and the volatilizing and the distillation is also facilitated by frustration.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: So let's just say, We have a tendency to have
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: a bad habit. Maybe we stay up too late. By
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: the way, that's confessional. I know. I know it is.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: I stay up way too late. And it's been an
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: interesting experiment sometimes to force myself to turn the light
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: off at 1130 and just sit there and stare at
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: the ceiling and to watch what volatilizes in my imagination
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: as I frustrate and heat up the impulse to want
• 44:06
  Speaker 3: to just stay up and watch TV or read a book,
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: it lets certain things start to rise up out of
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: the unconscious and present themselves. And then as we ponder them,
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: it's as if they then become this distillation. Ah, you know,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: when I make myself go to sleep at 11.30 and
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: I feel kind of irritable and frustrated, I find myself
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: realizing thus and such.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 44:33
  Speaker 3: I've not had a profound transformation yet, but I'm going
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: to fantasize that right now, which is kind of a sublimatio.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: And we have this other realization that comes out of
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: frustrating the habit. That can be both a combination of
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: distillation that lets something else surface.
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: And that's That's where it's kind of linked with calcinatio, right?
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: Because the frustration is, you know, the fire of the calcinatio.
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: And that's where Jung says in that quote, for the distillatio,
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: you need the fire and you need the prima materia.
• 45:06
  Speaker 2: I'll give you a very similar example. So I'm in
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: a graduate program and it's really great and I'm really
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: enjoying it a lot. But it's it's based sort of
• 45:20
  Speaker 2: on modern psychoanalysis and which is very different than Jungian.
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: So I'm learning a lot. But one of the things
• 45:26
  Speaker 2: that the moderns do and they do it in the
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: classroom as well as in the room is, you know,
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: I have to say most Jungians are sort of like
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: we're very kind of like somebody wants to bring in
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: a cup of tea and drink it. That's fine. They
• 45:37
  Speaker 2: want to like take their shoes off. But the moderns
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: are like very, very focused on the frame. So this
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: happens in class. You can't take your shoes off. You
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: can't put your feet up on the chair. Some professors
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: are like, there's no drinking in this class. There's certainly
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: no eating. And, you know, and there's a whole bunch
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: of other things too, which, you know, I get there
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: and I am obviously not a child. So, you know,
• 46:01
  Speaker 2: I have an interesting reaction to being told all of this,
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: but it's immediately interesting to me, right? Because when do
• 46:08
  Speaker 2: we have an impulse to eat, for example?
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: So if I were going to get a bag of,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: you know, popcorn and bring it into class with me,
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: When would I feel like eating? Because it's probably not
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: because I'm like dying of hunger. And so it's this
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: frustration that you're talking about that got really interesting to
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: me because, you know, the idea is you frustrate these
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: impulses and then you have a process with yourself about
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: what is going on that needs to be distilled, that
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: needs a distillatio, that needs to be brought to consciousness.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: So that's part of this idea of sublimatio, I think,
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: is we're taking something that's in the body. I have
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: an impulse to shove some popcorn in my face. And
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: then I lift that up and say, what is that about?
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, the topic we're discussing right
• 47:05
  Speaker 2: now is super exciting to me and I can't wait
• 47:08
  Speaker 2: to say something, but I can't jump in or whatever
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: it is. So it's... Yeah, it is something about making
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: something conscious. And I think, you know, some of the
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: alchemical language, that when the alchemists described this, they used
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: the term, the body is made perfect by spiritualizing it.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: And they're talking about the body of the metal they're
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: working with or whatever. But I think we can also
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: think about it in terms of the body-spirit relationship That
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: we have something in our body. We have an impulse.
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: We have a knowing. We have a funny feeling. And
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: what we mean by the sublimatio is we get it
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: up out of the body and into language and into consciousness.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: So something else that I think is brilliant that Edinger
• 48:03
  Speaker 3: wrote is, the upward movement eternalizes, the downward movement personalizes.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm. That's great.
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: I just think that's so boom, just kind of nails it.
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: And we need both.
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that goes back to your point about the circulatio.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: So my cosmological system is based in Kabbalah and a
• 48:31
  Speaker 3: lot of work with the tree of life, which are
• 48:33
  Speaker 3: 10 spheres and 22 paths. And as one learns about
• 48:39
  Speaker 3: the various dimensions, one of the spiritual disciplines is to
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: take a personal experience and to figure out where that
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: would be placed on the tree of life, so that
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: I'm over here, but the universal aspect of the force
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: is over here on the tree. And so my experience
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: is both universal and cosmic, And this is how it
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: shows up between these years in this body. And that
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: linking between the universal and the personal is one of
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: the gifts of cosmology. And it can awaken a kind
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: of ordering process. in the psyche. Again, a very common
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: modern effort is around astrology, where people instinctively hope that
• 49:30
  Speaker 3: whatever's going on inside of them has some connection to
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: the cosmos. that we need some aspect of that on
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: an unconscious level, even if the ego might even make
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: fun of it. But we keep, we haven't stopped talking
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: about it, and every ancient culture appears to have had
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: an astrologic system, which is a way, whether or not
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: we believe in astrology, but psychologically, it's a way of
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: creating that relationship between the personal and the eternal, and
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: believing that there's a dance between the two, that there's
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: an effect. This is also captured in Jung's idea of
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: the ego self-axis. I'm down here. There's some kind of
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: a connection to the way up there. Somehow we're the
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: same thing, although we're not quite sure about it, but
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: there's a relationship between the transcendent and the waking personality.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: And many Jungians, mostly through dream work, are interested in
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: how is that functioning? Is it functioning well? And as
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: Jung's concepts clarified, that became one core way to diagnose symptoms,
• 50:49
  Speaker 3: that symptoms arise when the ego and the self are
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: not in a good relationship to each other.
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's in some ways that's
• 50:59
  Speaker 2: sort of the essential question of Jungian psychoanalysis is sort
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: of like, what is the goal? And in some sense,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: the goal is to get that functioning, to get that
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: dialogue with the unconscious. And to go back again to
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: your point about the circulatio, it's not just, oh, I'm
• 51:18
  Speaker 2: listening for the self and the self is speaking to
• 51:21
  Speaker 2: me all the time. It is an ongoing dialectic that
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Consciousness is influencing the unconscious and the unconscious is influencing consciousness.
• 51:31
  Speaker 2: And there's some ability to have a fairly fluid dialogue
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: between them.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: So just writing down your dreams, I know we beat
• 51:40
  Speaker 3: that drum all the time, but it's so effective. Just
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: writing down a dream, and even if it's not every day,
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: maybe it's two or three times a week, and pondering it,
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: even in just a relaxed kind of way, That's adding
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: in additional information symbolically to your lived experience. And the
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: dreams come from this above objective view. Von Franz has
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: this idea that the dream is the way the self
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: perceives you. It's looking at you and this is the
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: language of what it sees. That's offering this perspective from above,
• 52:29
  Speaker 3: even as we're looking at the perspective from the below.
• 52:33
  Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. So one of the ways to think about
• 52:37
  Speaker 2: your dreams is this is what the unconscious is telling
• 52:40
  Speaker 2: you you look like.
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: From that very holistic, mysterious perspective.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: That up above perspective. Yeah.
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: What I'd love to introduce to our listeners is the
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: Emerald Tablet of Hermes. which captures actually all of the
• 52:59
  Speaker 3: alchemical operations, and I'm going to resist interpreting it. I'm
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: just going to put the language out and just see
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: how it tickles people's imagination and what any of you
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: want to make of it. For dramatic effect, I'm going
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: to lean in a little bit closer to the microphone. True,
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: without falsehood, certain and most true, that which is above
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: is as that which is below, and that which is
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: below is as that which is above, for the performance
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: of the miracles of the one thing. And as all
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: things are from one, by the mediation of one, so
• 53:43
  Speaker 3: all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: The sun is its father, the moon its mother. and
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: the wind carries it in its belly. Its nurse is
• 53:58
  Speaker 3: the earth. This is the father of all perfection or
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: consummation of the whole world. Its power is integrating if
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: it be turned into earth. Thou shalt separate the earth
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: from the fire, the subtle from the gross, suavely, and
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: with great ingenuity it ascends from earth to heaven, and
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: descends again to earth and receives the power of the
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: superiors and of the inferiors. So thou hast the glory
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: of the whole world. Therefore let all obscurity flee before thee.
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: This is the strong force of all forces, overcoming every
• 54:45
  Speaker 3: subtle and penetrating every solid thing. So the world was created.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Hence were all wonderful adaptations of which this is the manner.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: Therefore am I called Hermes Trismegistus having the three parts
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: of the philosophy of the whole world. What I have
• 55:07
  Speaker 3: to tell is completed concerning the operation of the sun.
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: So much gorgeous archetypal language in all of that. And so...
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: As a lovely transition into mastering archetypal language, I'd like
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: to just mention something about Dream School. That part of
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: us really hoping that people can learn how to benefit
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: from these ideas, we sat down, rolled up our sleeves,
• 55:43
  Speaker 3: and created a year-long online training program that you can
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: complete at your own pace. There are live communities. You'll
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: get a chance to meet Lisa and Deb and I
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: in live events, as well as a fund of information
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: drawn from various Jungian sources to help you take your
• 56:03
  Speaker 3: dream material and create that relationship between the above and
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: the below and prove to yourself, because you don't have
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: to speculate, the value and transformation that that can offer.
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's a good point. It really does work, and
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: you can feel it. So, yeah, we hope you'll check
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: out Dream School. You can go to our website, thisunionlight.com,
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: and you'll see a button there to join Dream School
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: and help you learn more about it. Today's dreamer is
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: a 29-year-old woman. And she is a cosmetics office worker.
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: And the title of the dream is In a Hurry
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: to Hide a Body. And here's the dream. I'm in
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: the kitchen with my mom and there is a dead
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: body on the floor. The kitchen is nothing like my
• 57:04
  Speaker 2: real kitchen, but feels like it's my kitchen in my dream.
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at the body, which I assume I have murdered,
• 57:11
  Speaker 2: and feel quite calm until I realize... that there are
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: people coming over to my place soon or already in
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: the house outside the kitchen. I don't know exactly who
• 57:20
  Speaker 2: these are, but it seems like these are people from
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: work whom I don't know well but see often. Once
• 57:26
  Speaker 2: I realize they are coming, I focus on hiding the body. First,
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I start to drag the body to try to hide
• 57:32
  Speaker 2: it somewhere it can't be seen. As I drag the body, however,
• 57:36
  Speaker 2: a track of blood is left on the floor and
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: I also realize the body is too big to hide.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: The people are getting closer to the kitchen. Now, for context,
• 57:44
  Speaker 2: she says, I dream a lot, and my dreams are
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: often very cruel and dark like the one I'm sharing
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: with you. I've always wondered what might be causing me
• 58:16
  Speaker 2: to have such cruel dreams. When I had this particular dream,
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: I was just living my daily life without any major crises. However,
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: I felt pretty unhappy with my life, finding it meaningless.
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: It wasn't the kind of life I wanted, nor did
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: I have a clear dream or a plan to achieve it.
• 58:33
  Speaker 2: In other words, I felt lost. I didn't like the
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: life I was living, nor did I know what to
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: do to create the life I wanted. People would say
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: I'm a very bright person, but my head, I had
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: so many thoughts, and at night I would often feel anxious.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: And the main feelings in the dream were nervousness, anxiety,
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: and then a rush. For associations, she says, Mom, the
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: person who helps me unconditionally without asking for anything or
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: judging me. And the body, something I want to hide
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: from others. So I have to just share that I
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: really love this dream because for many, many years of
• 59:08
  Speaker 2: my life, when I was this age, like in my 20s,
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: my 30s, I would have so many dreams of, oh
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: my God, I just killed somebody. I need to hide
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: the body.
• 59:18
  Speaker 3: Oh no.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: And then I would always wake up and I would
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: be so glad that I don't have to like spend
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: the rest of my life on the lamb, you know? Lambs. So, yeah.
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: So anyway, I have sort of general thoughts about this
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: dream just because it was a very common dream for me.
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: What are you thinking?
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's interesting that she calls it cruel
• 59:44
  Speaker 2: because I wouldn't necessarily say it's cruel. I mean, obviously,
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: this body is something that kind of probably needs to
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: be seen and known. But the ego perspective is it
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: has to be hidden. So there's something that's sort of
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: like right there smack in the middle of the kitchen,
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: and it's not going to be easy to hide. The
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: ego impulses, I don't want to know about this, right?
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: I mean, in some sense, hiding the body is an
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: image of repression. I want to hide an awareness of this. But,
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: you know, it's interesting because I haven't had one of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: those dreams in years now, and that must be because
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: I'm so much more individuated but you know there's there's
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: something that I don't need to hide anymore.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: I was sitting with that same thing and pondering about
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 3: her working in a cosmetics industry and part of cosmetics
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: is to hide the body so whether it's fashion or
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 3: makeup or any of the various ways that we are
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 3: hiding our body and particularly people are about to come
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: over I've got a hide my body, as I've gotta
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 3: do something about this. And so I think there is
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: this ambivalence about, on a very basic level, allowing our
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: bodies to be seen. For instance, people are very anxious
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: about wearing bathing suits, getting your gym body back, there's
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: all kinds of ideas around that. And while the dream
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: is not explicit about that, but if I just take
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: that phrase, I've got to get rid of the body,
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: and particularly because people are about to show up and
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 3: see it. And what am I going to do to
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: get rid of my body, the body? So that might
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: be one line of inquiry that I would bring up
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: for conversation. The dismembering of a body does evoke certain things.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 3: One of them is the myth of Osiris. Osiris was dismembered.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: His parts were cast out. into the great waters, but
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: Osiris had a tremendous amount of positive potential. Isis gathers
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: up the parts and through a kind of mystical alchemy
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: puts them all back together again and Osiris is reorganized
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: and comes back to life but in a different manner,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: living in the underworld but playing this mysterious unconscious role.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: So in that myth, the cutting up of the body
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: was done by the shadow material, Set. The brother of
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: Osiris is just kind of sick and tired of Osiris
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: being so shiny and bright and everybody loving him. So
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: really taking that down so that the shadow can reign
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: at least for a while in the outer world. So
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: the sense in her that, oh, I'm so cruel, this
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: is a problem, it kind of lines up with the
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: myth a bit that Set wants to some equal time,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: at least being respected, even though it may show up
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: as antisocial or dark relative to the culture. And what
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: does our shadow sometimes do to the ego when it's
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: being excessively repressed or at least not acknowledged?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was going to say, I think, you know,
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: I think the dreamer probably is cruel. My guess would
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: be we don't have a lot of information about this
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: dreamer or her life. So I'm sort of extrapolating here.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: But my guess is the cruelty is to herself. She's
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 2: been very cruel to herself. And again, that this body
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: is something that, hey, there it is. We don't know
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: if the body is male or female. Is it an
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: old person? Is it a young person? If I were
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: working with this dreamer, I might want to say, in
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: your imagination, why do you think you committed this murder? What,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 2: you know, what was that about? That would be a
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 2: really interesting thing to explore because we don't know what
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: the content is that she can't allow in. I'm very
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 2: interested in the role of the mother. The mother is
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: helping her hide it. So, you know, I'm just making
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: up a story because there's really not a lot of
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 2: information here. But she says her mother just, you know,
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 2: always is, you know, supporting her, which can be a
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: lovely thing. But those people that just always support us
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: no matter what we do, sometimes are kind of enabling
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: us to under function. So is the mother helping her
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: to not know something that she actually needs to know
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: and confront and come to terms with? You know, there
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: are things that need to die in the psyche. Maybe
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: this is one of them. But if that's the case,
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 2: then hiding it is maybe not the right thing to do.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. We're playing around with it
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 2: because we don't have a lot of context about this
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: dreamer's life.
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, a good friend will help you move.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 3: Your mom will help you hide a body. It's an
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: old joke.
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 2: I know.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but would you want your mom to do that?
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: You know? Anyway, yeah.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: Depends how much trouble you're in. But I like sometimes
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: to take just certain sentences that jump out at me
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: and push away some of the details. My heart is racing,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: and I'm scrambling to find a way to hide the body.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: Just that. Heart racing, scrambling, I need to hide the body.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 3: And then she comes up with this idea, well, what
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: if I chop up the body into pieces? pieces you
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: know was that gonna hide the body from myself from
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 3: other people and again this goes perhaps to a bit
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: we were talking about with the sublimatio getting rid of
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: the body and living constantly in a transcendent overly spiritualized
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: attitude can lead us to say things like well it
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: doesn't matter poverty is spiritual the mortification of the body
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 3: exalts the soul, that the real life is the life
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 3: of spirit. And we've just got to kind of get
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 3: rid of the body, in a sense. And there are
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: certainly many ancient religions that were primarily transcendent. Some of
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: my friends practice forms of Buddhism, and the hope is
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 3: that through these very intense, purifying practices, practices that they
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: will never have to reincarnate again that they'll get off
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: the wheel of reincarnation and get to forever remain in
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 3: the world of spirit and not be subject to the
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 3: vicissitudes of the flesh so getting rid of the body
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: or hiding it has many different valences to it but
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: again when i think about for many of us we're
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: so ambivalent about our physical bodies it's so hard for
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: us to really have a benevolent, interested body and attitude
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: in our own flesh. As a retired body worker, I
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 3: was an Alexander Technique teacher, but I was also a
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: clinical massage therapist. I became very curious about the luminosity
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: of the body and the language of touch. It was
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: very liberating for me personally. And why for many of us,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: going to a body worker can seem so numinous. to
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: have somebody who's so interested and introduces us to our
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: own body. Rub it on your feet. Oh, this is
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: your feet. There they are. So when we work our
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: way back into the body, we often find miraculous, wonderful
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 3: things about the body. But if we're in a culture
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: that's designed to kind of get away from the body
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: and its needs, it can seem very transgressive to want
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: to keep the body close. So many different possibilities. I mean,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: I don't know this person, but maybe so.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: We're playing with it in different ways. I want to
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 2: play with it in just one more way. Because she
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 2: talks about when she had this dream, she didn't know
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: what she wanted to do with her life. She didn't
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: have any desires. She didn't have a plan. She didn't
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: have a dream. She knew she wasn't living the life.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: that she wanted. And I do wonder a little bit
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 2: is what has gotten killed off? Because something feels dead.
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: She said she felt lost. But, you know, when we
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: feel lost, we sometimes also feel dead. And I do
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: wonder if her lack of direction, desire was because something
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: needed to, something had been killed off. You know, for example,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: perhaps she had an impulse to go in a particular direction.
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 2: But she said, no, I can't do that because it's
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 2: too hard. So something, some life force was getting was
• 1:08:57
  Speaker 2: getting killed off. And now it and now it has
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: to be hidden, has to be chopped up in little pieces.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I would be super curious about the rush that she mentions.
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: Was it like exciting to be chopping up the body?
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: Where does this dream go afterwards? Does do people find
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 2: out about it? And I'd also be curious about dreams
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: that followed this one.
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 3: And I'd be curious about the gender of the body.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 3: Because Jung has this way of mapping the psyche. It's
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 3: this inner masculine, the inner feminine, how old. All of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: that might give us, any of us, a sense of
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 3: what aspect in the landscape of the psyche are we
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: working with. You had brought up, Lisa, the fact that
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: it's with your mom. So we're somehow also in the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 3: orbit of either the family complex or the mother complex.
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 3: So we need more information about the body to then
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 3: deepen the possible interpretive lens. But the fact that she's
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 3: dreaming about it means that the dream maker wants her
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 3: to be pondering it. And if she has suggested that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: this is a recurrent kind of dream, it also suggests
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: that if the self is sending you the same telegram
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: several times a week and maybe for several years, We
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 3: may not be getting the message, but the dream maker
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: won't give up on us. So it just keeps sending
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: the telegram until we kind of figure it out and
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 3: then move on to the next thing.
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisunionlife.com.
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 3: Thank you.