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IMAGINATION: Jung’s Path to Creativity and Inner Freedom · 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 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It's essential for meaning. It's essential for connection with ourself.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: It's essential for a successful analysis. It's the thing that
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: makes us uniquely human. I'm talking about imagination. And of course,
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: it was very, very important to Jung. So what is imagination?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Why does it matter? And what do we need to
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  Speaker 2: know about it to make our lives richer and more
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  Speaker 2: full of meaning and purpose?
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  Speaker 4: Well, why don't we, as Maria in The Sound of
• 1:20
  Speaker 4: Music says, begin at the very beginning? A very good
• 1:25
  Speaker 4: place to start. With the anthropological aspect of this, of course,
• 1:33
  Speaker 4: very briefly, and the great cognitive revolution, that is alleged
• 1:41
  Speaker 4: with some real evidence to have taken place about 70,000
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: years ago.
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  Speaker 2: So imagination, first of all, just to define it, involves
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  Speaker 2: creating a mental image, image, imagination, the word is in there,
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of something that's not present for your senses to detect
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: or even something that doesn't exist out there in reality.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: And paleoanthropologists believe that this ability to kind of mentally
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: image something that's not actually there, to kind of manipulate
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: things and to combine things, to take two things that
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  Speaker 2: you know about that aren't related and then combine them
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: in your imagination so that you have a picture of
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: something new, they suspect that this began about 70,000 years
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: ago and they call this the cognitive revolution. So to
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: kind of create anything at all, whether it's a stone
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: tool or a spaceship, you have to be able to
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: imagine it. You have to see it first. You have
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: to be able to visualize it and have an idea
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: about it. So this ability to manipulate objects in the imagination,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: to come up with new ideas, it's incredibly generative, by
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: the way, imagination. It creates something out of nothing. More
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: on that later, perhaps. But scientists say that what's required
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: for this is something that they refer to as prefrontal synthesis,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: which is the ability of the prefrontal cortex to control
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  Speaker 2: the rest of the neocortex. And they suspect that this
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  Speaker 2: didn't develop until about 70,000 years ago. So as I
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: understand it, it's a little bit above my pay grade,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: but as I understand it, artifacts made before then wouldn't
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: require that kind of creativity. For example, there might be
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: like a very crude stone tool, but it would sort
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: of like be an impulse to pick up a stone
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: tool and throw it at an animal or something like that.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: After 70,000 years, we start seeing bows and arrows. We
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: see combined objects like a lion man. We see buildings.
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  Speaker 2: All of these kinds of things were new creations that
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  Speaker 2: must have sprung from a mind that was capable of imagination.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that that's, you know, these are the
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  Speaker 4: inferences that we can make from the evidence of such
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  Speaker 4: creations that ideas are starting to happen. People are putting
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: things together. And that includes the formation of symbols, which
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: means thrown together. Right? Right. So we throw things together
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  Speaker 4: that here's an interesting plant. What if I took these
• 4:46
  Speaker 4: seeds and planted them here or there? What if I
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  Speaker 4: created a sculpture of a man with a lion's head
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  Speaker 4: or a jackal's head? We're making meaning in a whole
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  Speaker 4: new way that has practical but also has psychological and
• 5:09
  Speaker 4: emotional implications.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: Listeners, are you interested in Jung in a very deep
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: and substantial way? If so, if this is a real
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: calling inside of you, that there is a path to
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: step into a more dynamic, rigorous, and interactive learning environment,
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: about Jungian thought. The three of us trained at the
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: Philadelphia Association for Jungian Analysts in downtown Philadelphia. It was
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: a great time for all three of us. We became
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: lifelong friends and with many of the other analysts in training,
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: as well as people from all walks of life who
• 5:55
  Speaker 3: find Jungian work important and enlivening. The organization is now
• 6:03
  Speaker 3: accepting applicants for their next semester of Jungian Studies.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: The Philadelphia Jung Seminar meets eight times a year, four
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: times in the fall and four times in the spring,
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: for a weekend a month. And we're really excited to
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: say that there is now an option to participate virtually
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: if you are some distance away from Philadelphia. If you're nearby,
• 6:29
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• 6:32
  Speaker 2: a semester. The other two will be virtual. But if
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• 6:39
  Speaker 2: So please check out cgyungphiladelphia.org to learn more about the
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Philadelphia Young Seminar. So one of the examples that I
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: was reading about as I prep for this episode is
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: the revolution that occurred when we started cooking food, which
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: allowed our brains to grow, because you can kind of
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: ingest more calories with less gut if your food's been cooked.
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: It's like it's sort of been partially predigested.
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  Speaker 4: Well, so much for the paleo diet.
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  Speaker 2: Right. Who came up with the idea of cooking food?
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  Speaker 2: How did that happen, right? Someone must have had an imagination,
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  Speaker 2: presumably they had access to fire, and they thought, Here's
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: this piece of meat. What would happen if I put
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  Speaker 2: it on the fire? You know, other other things like that, that,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it's like I do ever think about like
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  Speaker 2: how they come up with the idea to make cheese
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: or soap. Who threw those things together? So they're not
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  Speaker 2: symbolic per se, but they're probably early precursors to in
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  Speaker 2: the real physical world of things that got thrown together
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  Speaker 2: that created something that was really useful.
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  Speaker 4: I'm also really appreciating the symbolic, you know, things like
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  Speaker 4: cave art. And a lot of that seems to date
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: back about as far as maybe 17,000 years ago. But
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: there could have been many more objects and things that
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  Speaker 4: predated what we now know from the caves and, you know,
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  Speaker 4: around the Mediterranean particularly. Not that those are the only ones.
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  Speaker 4: But why bother? you know, don't you guys have something
• 8:22
  Speaker 4: better to do than go inside and go to all
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  Speaker 4: the trouble of creating these drawings? And there are drawings
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  Speaker 4: of human figures with the.
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: Head of a bird.
• 8:35
  Speaker 4: So we start to see how powerful imagination was and
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: remains to a fulsome, soulful, enlivened psyche and life of
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: that whatever the mythological ground was for something like cave paintings, carvings,
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: you know, all these artifacts, it's important.
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  Speaker 2: For being whole.
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  Speaker 4: We need a myth. We need symbol. We need metaphor.
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  Speaker 4: We need our imagination.
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  Speaker 2: You know, if I can just state I'm in the
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: realm of paleoanthropology for just one more minute, and then
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  Speaker 2: I'll leapfrog us forward to the present. I haven't seen
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: anything written about this, I don't think, but I have
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: to assume that part of the evolutionary advantage of being
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: able to imagine is that you could essentially run simulations.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: If you can imagine, you can create a scenario, a
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: hypothetical scenario in the future. You can think about the future.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Can you think about the future if you can't imagine?
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Aren't those two things very connected? I would tend right
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: now to think anytime we're thinking about the future, we're
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: in imaginations. And if you didn't have that capacity, every
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: situation that you faced, you would be responding as you
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: were in the present with knowledge that you have from
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: the past. So you could certainly learn from the past,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: but to be able to project forward something that might
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: happen That is pretty powerful. So if you behave in
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: this way, how might the other members of the tribe react?
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: You could have an imagination about that. Even before language,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: you could have an image of that. So you could
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: think about that in a way through imagination. And this
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: is the leapfrogging part. I mean, I think that that
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  Speaker 2: is still a very powerful capacity for each one of us.
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  Speaker 2: And sometimes we don't use it that well. Sometimes I'll
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: have someone come in, you know, be an analysand and say,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I don't know, I'm just going to make up a scenario.
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  Speaker 2: I'm really angry at my boss. I want to give
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: my boss a piece of my mind. I think I'm
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: going to go in tomorrow and tell her what I think. And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, sometimes you can say, well, how do you
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  Speaker 2: think that would go? Let's, let's, I'll say a lot
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  Speaker 2: of times in treatment, I'll say something like, let's do
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  Speaker 2: a thought experiment. Let's be in the sandbox together. And
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: what would happen if you said those things to your boss?
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  Speaker 2: And if you let yourself run those scenarios, a lot
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: of times you'll go, oh, well, that's probably not a
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  Speaker 2: good idea because if I say it like that, it's
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: probably going to really piss her off. However, I might
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: be able to say it like this and she could
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  Speaker 2: receive it. So it's an incredibly powerful tool in our toolbox,
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  Speaker 2: even today, for navigating the social world or any aspect
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  Speaker 2: of our outer lives, actually. And we don't always use
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  Speaker 2: it as much as we should.
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  Speaker 4: What I'm thinking about, the way I'm kind of putting
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  Speaker 4: a frame around what you're saying is, imagination is one
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  Speaker 4: way that we build a strong, well-adapted, flexible ego that
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  Speaker 4: is tethered to reality. What do you think will happen
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  Speaker 4: if you go into work tomorrow and rip into your boss?
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  Speaker 4: Brings me back to my first professional career as a
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  Speaker 4: special ed teacher working with adolescents. And it was very hard.
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  Speaker 4: to get them to imagine what do you think will
• 12:47
  Speaker 4: happen if you don't pass English? What do you think
• 12:53
  Speaker 4: summer school would be like? What do you think will
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  Speaker 4: happen if, because those are challenging kinds of realities. And
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: so our first, I'm kind of hypothesizing here that the
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  Speaker 4: first way we use imagination is pretty well tethered to
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  Speaker 4: likely outcomes, imaginable realities of if I do this, this
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  Speaker 4: is what's likely to happen. If I do that, maybe
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  Speaker 4: that won't turn out as well. So that capacity, the
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  Speaker 4: human capacity to project into the future for outcomes, desired outcomes,
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  Speaker 4: And to forego immediate satisfactions for future satisfactions is a
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  Speaker 4: hugely important developmental practical process.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. And it's like we have our own little laboratory
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  Speaker 2: in our imagination.
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  Speaker 4: Running simulations.
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  Speaker 2: I like that a lot.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: But of course, you know, in some ways, that's a
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  Speaker 2: fairly pedestrian use of imagination. And There's using our imagination,
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  Speaker 2: which is voluntary, where I say, I'm going to imagine something.
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  Speaker 2: And then there's involuntary use of imagination. So voluntary use
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  Speaker 2: could include running these simulations we were just talking about.
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  Speaker 2: It might include the very pleasant prospect of dreaming something up,
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: whether it's a whole world. Say you're J.R.R. Tolkien and
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: you're going to imagine a world. like Middle Earth, or
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: dreaming up a fun vacation that you'd like to go
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: on and imagine what you do in Barcelona. And then,
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  Speaker 2: of course, involuntary imagination can be sometimes quite unpleasant. Imagining
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: dark fears that present themselves to you and can become ruminative.
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: Imagination can be both a blessing and a curse because
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: it can take us to all kinds of wonderful places.
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  Speaker 2: But it can also take us to very dark places.
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  Speaker 2: And that can potentially be constructive in the sense that
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: it might help us avoid a negative outcome. But if
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: it's something that's outside our power, dark imaginings may just
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: cause us a lot of unnecessary distress that's kind of impotent.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: I'm grabbing hold of this idea of involuntary imagination. Everybody
• 15:43
  Speaker 4: has it. Everybody has experienced it. One place is in
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: those hypnagogic states, our vocabulary word for the week, between
• 15:54
  Speaker 4: wake and sleeping consciousness, where something happens and a fantasy
• 16:00
  Speaker 4: just sort of unrolls and we're somewhere in between. wakefulness
• 16:06
  Speaker 4: and sleep, certainly dreaming. Everybody dreams, whether you recall them
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: or not, and it just happens. And Jung called that,
• 16:19
  Speaker 4: he talked about fantasy thinking and then directed thinking, and
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  Speaker 4: that we have access to the fantasy thinking that is
• 16:29
  Speaker 4: not ego-directed through dreams and active imagination, hypnagogic reveries, and
• 16:39
  Speaker 4: some of the other methods that have now become their
• 16:42
  Speaker 4: own forms of therapy, psychodrama, sand play, family constellations, art therapy,
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  Speaker 4: so that we can drop down into the fantasy thinking
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: and translate some of the involuntary imaginations And connect them
• 17:04
  Speaker 4: with consciousness so that we form a bridge between the two.
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  Speaker 2: Right. I mean, I like where you're going with that, Deb.
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  Speaker 2: It's sort of like if we're having involuntary imaginations that
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: are troubling, one way to deal with that might be to,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: as you say, build a bridge, get curious about it,
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: engage it, get to know it, and see what's there.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: You know, perhaps... Perhaps there's something we've been avoiding that
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: we need to think about. Perhaps it is kind of
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: a baseless fear, but it is drawing our attention to
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: some inner dynamic that needs a little tending. I mean,
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: there's all kinds of possibilities, but it's a little bit
• 17:49
  Speaker 2: of a warning bell, isn't it?
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  Speaker 4: And as you said, imagination gives us access to that
• 17:56
  Speaker 4: because imagination is about image. So it might be something
• 18:02
  Speaker 4: that we call a nightmare or it might be, you know,
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: some kind of a phobia or fear. But there we
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: have images to work with that gives us access to
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: it so that we can personify it, giving it an
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: image so that now we can engage it and build
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: that bridge.
• 18:30
  Speaker 2: Let's just talk about dreams for another minute, because I mean,
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  Speaker 2: I think that they are the example of imagination, kind
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  Speaker 2: of par excellence. And dreams throw together the most improbable
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: combinations of things, things that, you know, when you wake
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  Speaker 2: from a dream, you think, there's no way in a
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: million years my conscious mind would have thought that up.
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  Speaker 2: So some part of you is brilliant at throwing together
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: ideas and images and layering meaning so that some fabulous
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: whole emerges. I mean, it's just so, dreams are such
• 19:12
  Speaker 2: a statement about the nature of the creative part of
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: our psyche and how just innate it is to being human.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: And I want to just take a minute to mention
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: our dream school which I know we mention on the
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: podcast a lot but just as a reminder we have
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: a 12-month online self-paced program that teaches you how to
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: work with your dreams and it's a really lovely community
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: and a chance to spend time with each of us
• 19:47
  Speaker 2: me Deb and Joseph every month in live events and
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: lots of great stuff. So I do hope you'll check
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: that out at our website, thisunionlife.com. But whether you do
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: or not, we love dreams.
• 20:00
  Speaker 4: What I'm also wanting to attach to what you just
• 20:05
  Speaker 4: said is that, yes, the dreams are the primary example
• 20:11
  Speaker 4: of involuntary imagination or what Jung called fantasy thinking. For
• 20:17
  Speaker 4: Jung and for people like von Franz and Emma Jung
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: had her own clients, and there were so many people
• 20:25
  Speaker 4: in Zurich working psychoanalytically, and their patients worked with their dreams.
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: That is the sine qua non is working with your dreams.
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: And they would go back. There was a hotel there,
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: the Hotel Sana. I hope I'm pronouncing it right. It
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: means sun.
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: For United States, right? Yeah.
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: And they would spend mornings journaling their dreams, making paintings,
• 21:03
  Speaker 4: drawings of their dreams. There was a man there who,
• 21:08
  Speaker 4: was a theater director. I think his name was Edward
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: Jones or something like that. They called him Jonah. And
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: he taught people how to do active imagination. He was
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: in theater. So that's the importance, really, of dream school
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: or an analytic process and other means of making the
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: bridge between the unconscious and consciousness. And that's how we
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: create meaning. That's where more possibilities for how this relates
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: to me, how it relates to my life, how it
• 21:52
  Speaker 4: relates to my inner world. That's how we get to
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: know where we're going and to translate raw unconscious process.
• 22:06
  Speaker 4: by mediating it into consciousness and lived imagination. Now I
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: can actually really imagine, I can imagine doing that. Or
• 22:20
  Speaker 4: I have something new to think about. There's a new
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: source of meaning. I just realized something. This dream that
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: I worked with, and now I realize, you know, I
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: really need to fill in the blank. It is enlivening,
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: and unless we bring it forward, it does not give
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: us all the potential that it offers.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Right, right. So just really taking it seriously. You know,
• 22:51
  Speaker 2: the other thing about imagination is it's very difficult to
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: do something you haven't imagined. I don't think it's impossible,
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: but I think it's very difficult. And I think that
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: this is why visualizations can be powerful, is because it
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: may be that you want to do something, but you
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: don't have a mental image of doing it. And when
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: you create that for yourself, it just opens up pathways.
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to give you a rather embarrassing example
• 23:18
  Speaker 2: in a minute.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: Can't wait.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I'm going to really tell on myself. So I
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: will say that... people who work with elite athletes, they
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: do a lot of imagining, right? So if you're the
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: sports psychologist that works for the Phillies, I imagine, I
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: don't know for sure, but I think, you know, you
• 23:44
  Speaker 2: work with the pitcher on imagine striking the guy out,
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: you know? And I believe that's very well-established practice with
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: elite athletes is that you rehearse it in your mind.
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: That's your imagination. Okay. Here's my embarrassing example. When I
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: was in social work school a very long time ago,
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: when I was very young, and it was a long
• 24:05
  Speaker 2: time ago, for one of our classes, they wanted to
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: make us more comfortable talking about sex and sexuality. So
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: the assignment was to go to a sex shop. So
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: I went to graduate school in New York.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: So, and this would have been back when it wasn't
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: so common, when sex shops were, you know, sex toy
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: shops were a little harder to find.
• 24:26
  Speaker 4: And It was so long ago.
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: It was so long ago. But I found that I really,
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: I just, I just didn't, I felt like I can't
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: do that, you know? So I, I wrote the paper.
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: You had to talk about your experience. I made it up. Okay.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Because I was like, I felt like I couldn't, I
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: couldn't do, I couldn't do the assignment. So I imagined
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: going to a sex shop and I wrote a paper
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: about my imagined experience in the sex shop. And what
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: I asked, yeah, like you had to like talk to
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: the owner and ask questions about the toys and that
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: kind of thing. So I did that in my imagination.
• 25:05
  Speaker 2: And then do you know what? A couple months later,
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: I had an opportunity to go into a sex shop.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Can't remember why. And I was like, oh, yeah, sure.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Because I'd done it in my imagination. Right, right. And
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, that was a really powerful learning moment.
• 25:19
  Speaker 2: I didn't mean to try to pave that path, but
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: that's exactly what I did. by having that encounter in
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: my imagination first. So here's a tip. If there's something
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: that's difficult for you to do, if you need to
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: do something that's difficult, I mean, I don't know what
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: comes to mind immediately is going to the DMV to
• 25:40
  Speaker 2: renew your license, which is not as much fun as
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: going to a sex toy shop. One way to make
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: it easier might be to imagine it first and then
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: you've you've created a kind of a cognitive pathway. So
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: there's my embarrassing story about the power of imagination.
• 26:02
  Speaker 4: I also want to maybe take a bit of a
• 26:07
  Speaker 4: dog-legged turn into the connection between imagination and myth and meaning.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: You found my story rather too prosaic, didn't you, Deb?
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: You want to take it somewhere a little deeper.
• 26:29
  Speaker 4: Actually, that's very funny. Yeah, seriously, I'm so appreciating these
• 26:38
  Speaker 4: lived ways to apply imagination in life. And we often
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: do stuff maybe without really appreciating exactly the value of
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: the process. So I like bringing it so forward as
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: to go ahead and rehearse it, go ahead and imagine it.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: The ego has access to this, and it's useful. And
• 27:07
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking, you know, this is a layer of the
• 27:10
  Speaker 4: psyche that is pretty close to consciousness that isn't all
• 27:17
  Speaker 4: that hard to access, we can build much more of
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: an intention around it. Work with dreams. Imagine your way
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: into a difficult situation. And then there's the much deeper,
• 27:28
  Speaker 4: deeper level of the mundus imaginalis, a term that I
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: think a French philosopher coined, Henri Courbet, that I like
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: very much, of imagination. the realities that we can be
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: in touch with the liminal space between the worlds. Something
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: that our consciousness doesn't have such ready access to, but
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: we all live in a mythological reality, multiple mythological realities.
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: and that Jung said that mythlessness was the problem of
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: modern man, and that myth is the source of sort
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: of meaning and cosmological meaning where we fit into the
• 28:26
  Speaker 4: grand scheme of things. And that takes imagination. That takes
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: something deeper and that is beyond, just an individual's storehouse
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: of instincts and memories and psychic material. And it really matters.
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: What do you imagine your life is about? What is
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: your personal myth or a collective myth that we can't
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: just think it up and we can't just run a simulation?
• 29:09
  Speaker 4: We have to descend into something deeper within us to
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: establish that kind of connection. And Jung was very clear
• 29:23
  Speaker 4: that this is the healing function of the psyche.
• 29:28
  Speaker 2: Well, let's talk just for another minute also about Corbin
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: and the Mundus Imaginalis. So he was a scholar of Islam.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: and his interest in this came from these Islamic texts
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: that describe this intermediate world between the empirical world of
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: the senses and pure intellect. And this world, he coined
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: the term Mundus Imaginalis because he didn't want to use
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: the term imaginary Because in our language, that implies not real.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: But the mundus imaginalis, according to Corbin, is as ontologically
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: real as the phenomenal world that we live in. But
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: it requires a different faculty of perception. And that perception
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: is the imagination. That is what allows us to see
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: this other world. So it is a different order of
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: reality that we have access to in the imagination. And
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking right now of the interview that we did
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: with Becca Tarnas about Jung and Tolkien and the two
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: red books. Because I think we're in that realm that
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: both Tolkien and Jung had access to this mundus imaginalis.
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: out of which these images arose in these two different
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: experiences that were very similar, actually. So, you know, I
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: think the implication is, again, there's something real about that world.
• 31:12
  Speaker 4: I like what you said on picking up on imagination as,
• 31:17
  Speaker 4: I'm going to call it, an organ of perception.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 31:22
  Speaker 4: We have our five senses, and then we have the...
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: this other ability to perceive and conceive that comes from
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: not consciousness, that's for sure. And I think anybody who's
• 31:41
  Speaker 4: ever had a really great idea recognizes this. We say, oh,
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: I had a great idea, but I didn't have this idea.
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: It is there somehow through some other means of perception.
• 32:00
  Speaker 4: And I think the way we encounter this world, most
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: of all, I mean, Jung mapped it with active imagination
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: and the Red Book. That's how you do it.
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: And I want to offer one of my favorite quotes
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: that I think gets at this a little bit, and
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: it's actually from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. So
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: the seventh Harry Potter book. Harry meets Dumbledore somewhere in
• 32:25
  Speaker 2: the beyond, because Dumbledore is deceased at this point, and
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: Harry says, Tell me one last thing, said Harry. Is
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: this real, or has this been happening inside my head?
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: Dumbledore beamed at him, and his voice sounded loud and
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: strong in Harry's ears, even though the bright mist was
• 32:41
  Speaker 2: descending again, obscuring his figure. Of course it is happening
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: inside your head, Harry. But why on earth should that
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: mean that it is not real? So what happens in
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: our head, in our imagination, is real, very real. And yes,
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: let's move over to active imagination and talk about what
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: that is.
• 33:04
  Speaker 4: I love that quote because what it says is how
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: much bigger and deeper we all are. than our conscious,
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: waking ego consciousness can ever perceive. And who would want
• 33:27
  Speaker 4: to miss that? Who would want to miss a conversation
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: with Dumbledore or your own capacity to have experiences and
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: be surprised? I think that is, we haven't talked about surprise,
• 33:45
  Speaker 4: but I think that is an enormous part of imagination
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: is the me and not me. I didn't think this up.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: I had an experience that I didn't create. And like Harry,
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: of course it happens inside me or you. And there
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: is a whole reality to that.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: Which Jung experienced when he let himself drop. And there
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: he dropped into the unconscious and there he met Philemon
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: and Salome and these figures from his dreams. And of course,
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: it's all cataloged in the Red Book with these incredible
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: drawings that he made. It was encounters in the imaginal world,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: and it changed him forever. And the wisdom that these
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: figures had were not the wisdom that the conscious part
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: of Carl Jung had. And I see this with my
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: analysands who are very skilled at active imagination, and I
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: have a few of them. It's remarkable. I mean, their
• 34:57
  Speaker 2: inner figures show them things, reveal themselves. share wisdom that
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: is not coming from the conscious personality.
• 35:08
  Speaker 4: It's an astonishingly, I think, moving experience to have something
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: come to you in an act of imagination. It is
• 35:22
  Speaker 4: deeply surprising and I think reassuring, even if some of
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: the images, and Jung had some very vivid you know,
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: sort of difficult images to process. It wasn't all, you know,
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: sunshine and flowers blooming. And he said when he would
• 35:43
  Speaker 4: have conversations with Philemon walking up and down in his
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: garden and really right on the edge of, you know,
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: really deeply disturbed in a very literal sense and at
• 35:57
  Speaker 4: the same time living his life, that Philemon told him
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: things that he could not possibly have known through personal experience.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: It's not without its risks. And Jung also said those
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: years gave him the material that he then worked with
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: for the rest of his life as a psychologist and
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: a healer and a writer and a teacher.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: And if you want to learn more about active imagination,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: we did an episode on it many years ago, but
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: we'll make sure that it gets linked. And we also
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: have a chapter on active imagination in our book, Dreamwise,
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. And I think we
• 36:45
  Speaker 2: do a pretty good job there of sort of laying
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: out what this is and exactly how do you go
• 36:50
  Speaker 2: about it. But yes, I mean, Jung said it was
• 36:55
  Speaker 2: one of the most powerful techniques. for psychological growth and development.
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: And it's just accessing this thing that we all have
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: right underneath the surface. You know, I want to talk
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: for a little bit about the link between imagination and creativity,
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: because they are overlapping concepts. In some sense, imagination is
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: the essence of creativity, as we talked about before. It's
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: being able to throw two unconnected things together and create
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: something new. That is kind of the essence of creativity.
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: And that involves the imagination. And we talk about kids
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: and how wonderful their imagination is. And we know somehow
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: instinctively that that's the wellspring of creativity. So we try
• 37:47
  Speaker 2: to want to nurture that and protect it in kids.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: And It is the nature of the unconscious, as I
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: said before, that it's so generative. And the involuntary imagination
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: that comes up where suddenly you just, maybe in a dream,
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: but perhaps in waking life, you just think, oh, you know,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: what about, what if we did this? What about that?
• 38:11
  Speaker 2: Let's see if I can fit this problem together with
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: this solution. Would that work? You know, and that's imagination,
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: that's creativity. So there are They're very close. And I
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: want to say one more thing about it. I think
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: another way where they overlap for me is this idea
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: about creating something from nothing, right? That is what imagination does.
• 38:37
  Speaker 2: There's nothing. And then I'll just go back to Harry Potter.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: You know, so J.K. Rowling was a young woman. I
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: think she was 24 or something like that. She's riding
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: on a train. And all of a sudden, her imagination
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: blurts out this image, a young boy going to wizard school.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: And I believe she started riding on the train. She
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: just had this image. And if you can think about it,
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: there was nothing. This didn't exist. And her imagination created
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: This incredible worldwide phenomenon that now, you know, has all
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: of these, you know, there's the books and the movies
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: and the theme parks and the TV shows and all
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: of this. So imagination has the capacity to create something
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: from nothing.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: And that is an echo of creation stories around the world.
• 39:48
  Speaker 2: That's great. That is an echo.
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: You know, sort of like when you look out at
• 39:54
  Speaker 4: the universe and you can see way, way back in time,
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: we create something out of nothing in a way where
• 40:03
  Speaker 4: we have to make up a story about it. You know,
• 40:06
  Speaker 4: was there a cosmic egg? Did a little bird fly
• 40:11
  Speaker 4: down to the depths and bring back a piece of
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: mud from which the world was created? is the story
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: in Genesis, the ex nihilo creation myth, but that.
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: It's a mystery.
• 40:29
  Speaker 4: It is a mystery of how creation happens. But even
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: if you're not J.K. Rowling, as most of us are not,
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: you're not a poet, You're not, you know, any of
• 40:47
  Speaker 4: these great examples that we can point to in the
• 40:52
  Speaker 4: external world. Each of us has a creative, generative spirit
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: that is connected with those depths. And what it gives
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: us is a sense of freedom of expression and a
• 41:10
  Speaker 4: kind of access to those other parts of ourselves. that
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: are enlivening and inspiriting and help us really be grounded
• 41:23
  Speaker 4: and in kind of a narrative of our own lives.
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: If you've had some experiences with dream work and your
• 41:33
  Speaker 4: own dreams and the surprise that something has risen up
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: out of where to meet you in the morning, if
• 41:45
  Speaker 4: you've had an experience of active imagination, a special reverie,
• 41:52
  Speaker 4: you know that you belong to something bigger, deeper, and mysterious.
• 42:01
  Speaker 4: And Jung says that is the real liberation, because then
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: you're not so bound by family expectations or cultural constraints
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: or the right way to do things. You live in
• 42:15
  Speaker 4: a bigger, deeper internal world. And that stuff doesn't matter
• 42:22
  Speaker 4: so much anymore. There's another place to which you are tethered.
• 42:28
  Speaker 4: You have access and you belong. And that lets you
• 42:33
  Speaker 4: live the creative life of just your own nature, freedom, imagination,
• 42:41
  Speaker 4: and sense of being.
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: And, you know, people can't take your imagination from you.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: I suppose that, you know, a degenerative illness or dementia
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: could take your imagination from you. But it's really your
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: sovereign possession that you can use however you want. And
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: I'm thinking about a film that shows the power of
• 43:06
  Speaker 2: the imagination, which is an older film now. I think
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: it came out in the 90s. Life is Beautiful starred
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: Roberto Benigni, and it was set in a concentration camp.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: So this man gets into a concentration camp with his son,
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: his young son, and he tells stories to his son
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: and kind of creates an imaginary experience for his son
• 43:31
  Speaker 2: that protects him from the awfulness of the reality in
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: the camp. So, you know, imagination can do that for
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: us too. It can create, as you were saying, Deb,
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: like its own world that we can choose to inhabit,
• 43:47
  Speaker 2: even if the real phenomenal world out there is grim
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: and terrible.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it is our highest faculty. It is the essence
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: of the healing function. It is... not that we're ever
• 44:07
  Speaker 4: totally free and easy, but it liberates us from a
• 44:11
  Speaker 4: lot of our neuroses, fixations, cultural constraints, et cetera, because
• 44:19
  Speaker 4: we have access to something more that we get within ourselves.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: But it seems to come from somewhere else as well.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: There are things that we did not create.
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: The thing it gives us access to is big and
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: deep and old. And it's a stream that is fed
• 44:40
  Speaker 2: by the collective unconscious. And that is why archetypal images
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: will occur to us in our imagination, unbidden.
• 44:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember, you know, I had certainly had dreams
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: as most people have. But when I was just starting
• 44:57
  Speaker 4: to learn about Jung and was in the Philadelphia seminar,
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: my real alma mater, I would say, we had an
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: assignment to read about active imagination. And the author, the
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: name of the book was something like Active Imagination by
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: Jean Chodorow. We can put that in the show notes.
• 45:21
  Speaker 4: And she quoted a letter from Jung to a Mr. O,
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: who had evidently written to Jung saying, you know, how
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: do you do this thing? And Jung wrote back and said,
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: begin by just imagining an image from your dream, such
• 45:40
  Speaker 4: as that yellow mass in your dream last week. Just
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: hold it in your mind and wait until it moves
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: by itself. At which point I shut the book and said, oh,
• 45:55
  Speaker 4: come on, you got to be kidding. And I... It
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: just happened that I was alone. Nobody was around. I
• 46:04
  Speaker 4: was on vacation. I went outside, and nobody was ever
• 46:08
  Speaker 4: more surprised than I that an image did indeed move
• 46:16
  Speaker 4: by itself in ways I could never have expected. These
• 46:21
  Speaker 4: are experiences lived small, not earth-shaking in any external world
• 46:30
  Speaker 4: sense experiences that change your life. Then everything is different.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: We know how much more we are, and it is
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: deeply humbling, surprising, revelatory, and very reassuring. We just belong
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: to something greater.
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: And imagination is the ticket.
• 46:56
  Speaker 4: Yes, imagination is the ticket. So if you're listening to
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: this podcast, go do something. Read about an act of imagination.
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: Start journaling your dreams. Pay attention to what happens when
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: you're falling asleep or before you're wide awake in the morning.
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: Start really noticing. Don't miss it. Our dreamer this week
• 47:35
  Speaker 4: is a man. He's 35 years old, and he works
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: as a housing worker and a musician and has titled
• 47:45
  Speaker 4: his dream, A Meeting with a Music Lawyer. And here's
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: the dream. It's evening, and I'm in a bar with
• 47:55
  Speaker 4: high ceilings and glass walls. I'm here to meet a
• 47:59
  Speaker 4: music lawyer named Sarah Falwell. She's wearing a pink blouse
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: and has long brown hair and glasses. We start on
• 48:09
  Speaker 4: the top level of the bar on an outdoor balcony.
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: I'm holding a black and white electric guitar. My usual
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: guitar in real life is all white. I ask Sarah
• 48:21
  Speaker 4: if she's heard this one and proceed to play one
• 48:24
  Speaker 4: of my older songs that I don't normally play. It
• 48:28
  Speaker 4: feels a little risky. It's an emotional song. In the lyrics,
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: I'm metaphorically a bird soaring high, flying away to somewhere better. Happily,
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: she likes it, as do the people on the patio.
• 48:43
  Speaker 4: We go inside and descend to the main level. She
• 48:47
  Speaker 4: tells me what we need to do to progress with
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: my music career. It's all very practical. She uses phrases
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: like market exposure and has some gigs she's going to
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: set me up with. She is calm and friendly and
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: I innately trust her. She seems very well connected and knowledgeable. Finally,
• 49:08
  Speaker 4: we descend to the lowest level, which is underground. As
• 49:12
  Speaker 4: we do, I ask her if she knows about my past.
• 49:16
  Speaker 4: I describe the brief success I had when I was young.
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: She listens, then says, Okay, and why were you successful then?
• 49:25
  Speaker 4: Because you had a deal, the right market strategy, etc.,
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: and that's what we'll do now. Then I woke up.
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: So for context, he says... When I was a late teen,
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: I had some success with a band I had started,
• 49:39
  Speaker 4: which I then broke up. Since then, I've taken other
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: jobs but have still kept playing music, which I consider
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: to be my true calling. The day before I had
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: this dream, I got notice that the service I provide
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: for my job, which helps people find housing, will be
• 49:57
  Speaker 4: canceled by the state as soon as possible due to
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: fraud from some of the companies who provide it. meaning
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I will have to change jobs very soon. The main
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: feelings in the dream, he says, are excitement at meeting
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: this person and the opportunity they represented, a sense of
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: freedom about playing whatever I wanted to play, and then
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: validation about it being well-received. And he adds, during my
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: younger years, I had dealings with many music executives of
• 50:30
  Speaker 4: different kinds, They were all male, and I disliked almost
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: all of them. So I associate music execs with negativity.
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: I associate the guitar with my passion, creativity, hope, and love.
• 50:46
  Speaker 4: It's my favorite thing. I associate bars mainly with music,
• 50:50
  Speaker 4: as that's usually why I go to them, to play shows.
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: So I really, I really kind of love this dream,
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: and it's one of those dreams where I sort of
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: I think I have a hit on it. So first
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: of all, I want to bring up one detail which
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: supports my hypothesis, was that in real life, his guitar
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: is all white. And in this dream, it's white and black.
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: So somehow the dream guitar is able to incorporate, well,
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: there's a little yin-yang thing going on there.
• 51:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: And I want to say, what I'm going to say
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: is I think the dream guitar can incorporate something that's
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: a little... That's more earth. That's a little earthier. That's
• 51:33
  Speaker 2: a little heavier. The white and black, that's the meaning
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: I'm going to ascribe to it. I love the fact
• 51:40
  Speaker 2: that they're descending. They're in this beautiful place, but they
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: keep going down. And then at the very end, they're underground.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: I think it's an incredibly positive dream, actually. And what
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: I suspect is that he has a real kick-ass anima
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: who happens to be very practical. And if the anima
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: represents our unlived potential, it may be that he's focused
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: on developing his creativity in his life. The unlived potential
• 52:12
  Speaker 2: exists in this practical realm. But she is showing up,
• 52:16
  Speaker 2: and boy, does she have a plan. She has a plan.
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: My quick hit on the dream, and I just want
• 52:25
  Speaker 4: to build that out for a sec. You had a hit.
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: I had a hit.
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: For listeners, pay attention when you have a hit. Just notice, like, boom.
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: What was that about? I felt a certain way about
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: this dream. I really liked it. Oh, you wanted to
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: go to the guitar. I quickly want to make the
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: association to Jung's very famous dream about the skulls where
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: he was in a house and he goes from, I'm
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: going to say, 17th century furnishings to another level and
• 53:00
  Speaker 4: another level, and finally he opens a trap door to
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: a basement that has just packed earth in which there
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: are two skulls and bones. So this dream for me
• 53:15
  Speaker 4: echoed that of the meaning of the descent into depths
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: of the psyche. Then we go back to our basic
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: processes of associations and theory and Jungian concepts and build
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: it out. But your first quick reaction is a good
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: place to start. I liked this dream too. And the
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: feeling that I have about a dream is often my
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: first way in. Everybody has a different way in. But
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: this sense of this wonderful anima figure who is very practical.
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: First of all, she has a name. We could be
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: curious if we had the dreamer here about, is this
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: someone he knows in real life? And she's wearing a
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: pink blouse, a very feminine, typically feminine type of color.
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: He knows, the dream ego knows exactly what she looks like.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: And she's a music lawyer, and I'm sure there are
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: lawyers in the music industry, but again, there's that hint of,
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: you know, really practical, down and dirty, cross the T's
• 54:37
  Speaker 4: and dot the I's and get the job done.
• 54:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Music, lawyer. They're almost like two words that don't
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: go together.
• 54:43
  Speaker 4: Exactly. But here she is. But I like so much
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: the dream ego's relationship with her. And we know that
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: the dream ego can have an antagonistic relationship with a
• 55:01
  Speaker 4: dream figure. The dream ego can run away from something.
• 55:05
  Speaker 4: The dream ego can go and hide from something. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: here our dream ego is receptive, appreciative, and moves toward her.
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: And here's a figure of the dream imaginal world who's
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: very much alive. wearing a certain kind of attire, and very,
• 55:28
  Speaker 4: very practical. She's calm, friendly, well-connected, knowledgeable. So here is
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: something alive in the psyche, an energy represented as Sarah Falwell.
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: And he has to go down into psychic depths. He
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: goes down, which is often associated with a kind of
• 55:55
  Speaker 4: grounding and groundedness and access to instinct and the past.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, it's like to be a
• 56:05
  Speaker 2: successful musician, you would need that incredible creativity and that
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: soulfulness and that ability to soar like a bird. But
• 56:14
  Speaker 2: you would also need to have the groundedness. And that's
• 56:18
  Speaker 2: why I was thinking of the kind of the white
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: and the black as you know, the block might be
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: kind of this earthier stuff. It's like, well, we've got
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: to have a market strategy, you know, and you do.
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: And I agree, Deb, I think the relationship, you know,
• 56:30
  Speaker 2: that he trusts her, that it feels, yeah, like we're
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: going to do this, you know, because a lot of
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: times I think creative people struggle with those other aspects
• 56:39
  Speaker 2: of things. And even if they don't struggle with them practically,
• 56:44
  Speaker 2: they often struggle with them kind of conceptually because it
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: feels like you're selling out, you know, So how do
• 56:51
  Speaker 2: you find that way? You know, artists are often not
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: necessarily good at self-promotion. Creative people are not necessarily good
• 57:00
  Speaker 2: at self-promotion, and it may kind of rub you wrong
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: to do it. But if you want to get the
• 57:07
  Speaker 2: gift out in the world, you need to be able
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: to do some of that. If it's in service to
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: offering the gift, then it's very appropriate to be self-promoting.
• 57:17
  Speaker 2: you know, not just self-promotion for its own sake. But
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: I think that there's this wonderful partnership between the two
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: of them. And as you said, it's getting kind of
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: more grounded. It's coming down and it feels good. It
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: feels good. And she can appreciate his tender, vulnerable song.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: I'm appreciating the resonance in this dream to what we
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: were talking about around imagination, of that creative, imaginal, generative, artistic,
• 57:56
  Speaker 4: musical world of our dreamer. And then how is it
• 58:03
  Speaker 4: tethered to the everyday world of getting gigs, organizing and
• 58:11
  Speaker 4: practicing the music, figuring out, you know, how you're going
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: to pay people, where you're going to play. It's the
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: connection between those ego administrative functions and the sort of
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: the soul work of somebody who is a musician or
• 58:33
  Speaker 4: an artist, and that there's the business, the business of
• 58:39
  Speaker 4: being a musician. There's the business of marriage, too, for
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: that matter, that we always have to find a way
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: to link the thing we love and have feeling for
• 58:51
  Speaker 4: to who's going to pick up the dry cleaning, who's
• 58:59
  Speaker 4: going to make the phone calls and follow up with
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: the emails. And interestingly, his anima is the one who
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: is sort of the more businesslike part of the here.
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: Instead of, you know, the mysterious, magical anima woman, this
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: dream figure says, well, you know, why were you successful then?
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: You had a deal, the right market strategy.
• 59:24
  Speaker 2: That's what we're going to do now. You know, Deb,
• 59:27
  Speaker 2: that's such a great point. And it's a wonderful thing
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: to lift up is that we talk, I mean, anima,
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: animus is still a difficult concept, right? It's just, it's
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: messy and it just doesn't. But this is a great
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: example where the dreamer has more typically feminine qualities in
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: ego consciousness, which is, He's more creative and his anima
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: is more typically masculine. And I hate those words because
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: it sounds like I'm being prescriptive, like men should be
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 2: this and women should be that, which is not what
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: I mean at all. But the fact that she's the
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: hard nose, I don't know if hard nose is exactly right,
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: but she's, you know, she just, she's very linear. How
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: about that? She's very linear. And it's true for any
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: of us that whatever qualities we have explicitly cultivated in
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: our outer personality, those that we haven't cultivated are often
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 2: pictured in dreams as opposite sex figures. So it's a
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 2: great example of the way the anima can appear in
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 2: the psyche of someone who, you know, has cultivated these values.
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: The dream is really very encouraging because it brings the
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: opposites together.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: And that's back to the guitar image.
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 4: Exactly. That's just exactly where I was going. It's right
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: there where you landed with the black and white of together.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 4: They're distinct, but they're in relationship to one another. They
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 4: didn't just mush into a gray guitar. So we have
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: both sides together. And then this dream figure, together with
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: the validation for the dream ego in the dream that
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: he does play. He takes the risk. It's an emotional song.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: And he's way up there in the stratosphere. He's a
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 4: bird soaring high. And people like it. That is validated.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: And then he can come down.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 4: And now it's time for market exposure and strategy and
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: those things of the coming together that is kind of
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 4: prefigured in the guitar image. Yes, yes.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: So if I were the streamer, I would take this
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 2: as a very good sign. I would embrace the practical aspects.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 2: Sounds like that's already probably happening. And the unconscious seems
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: to be very much in favor of what you're doing musically.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: So you can dedicate your next album to us.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: Thank you, Dreamer, for sharing your dream. Thanks for listening.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic, or join
• 1:02:22
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• 1:02:28
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