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MYTHS: Maps of the Collective Unconscious · 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
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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.
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Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
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Speaker 4: we are going to talk about myth, and amazingly, something
0:51
Speaker 4: we have not discussed before, although almost nothing could be
0:57
Speaker 4: more central to Jung, his process, his experiences, and his theories. So,
1:05
Speaker 4: what is a myth? Well, myths are collective revelations. based
1:11
Speaker 4: on unconscious psychic experience. So consciousness does not create them.
1:19
Speaker 4: And they teach us. They're teaching tales. They're very strongly
1:23
Speaker 4: aligned with the religious function, culturally and individually. And they
1:30
Speaker 4: teach us that archetypal energy is supraordinate to human power.
1:37
Speaker 4: Myths are to culture. what dreams are to the individual.
1:43
Speaker 4: And they provide symbols that dynamically activate the discovery of
1:50
Speaker 4: new possibilities. So we find in mythology all kinds of experiences,
1:58
Speaker 4: narrative patterns, transcendence, that deal with the universals of life. Conflict, separation, love, desire, conquest, loss, redemption,
2:12
Speaker 4: and the list goes on and on. So let's take
2:16
Speaker 4: a look together this week at this vast repository of
2:21
Speaker 4: human experience and see where we go.
2:25
Speaker 2: Well, the Roman historian Sallust is said to have written
2:29
Speaker 2: that myth never happened, but always is. So that touches
2:37
Speaker 2: on something about the eternal truth that we find in myth.
2:42
Speaker 2: And I think we all recognize that when we read mythology.
2:46
Speaker 4: And whether we know it or not, this is how
2:51
Speaker 4: we construct reality. It is how we make meaning. We
2:58
Speaker 4: add up all our experiences, and this happened, and then
3:00
Speaker 4: that happened. He said, and I went there, and the
3:04
Speaker 4: food was, and And what does it mean? We're always
3:08
Speaker 4: doing it at a superficial, everyday level. And we are
3:14
Speaker 4: doing it in terms of what is the meaning of
3:17
Speaker 4: our life. The people that we love, the careers we pursue,
3:20
Speaker 4: the travels we long to engage in, children, etc. They
3:26
Speaker 4: are like the beams of inside the walls of our houses.
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Speaker 4: They're the essential structure that holds up the house and
3:40
Speaker 4: defines the house, even though they're not visible.
3:44
Speaker 3: And Jung is the one who brought this clarity forward.
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Speaker 3: I mean, myths have existed as long as human culture has,
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Speaker 3: but Jung understood myths as the phenomenology of the objective psyche.
3:57
Speaker 3: And that's not something, that's not a frame people were
3:59
Speaker 3: necessarily holding.
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Speaker 4: Unpack that a little bit more about the objective psyche
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Speaker 4: and that reality, because it's important.
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Speaker 3: Yeah. While we may have known, all of us, even
4:11
Speaker 3: since we were kids and learning myths in school, but
4:15
Speaker 3: questioning the place that myths come from and what they
4:20
Speaker 3: are describing is something that Jung found really interesting. So
4:23
Speaker 3: we have our waking personality, and then the early Freudians
4:29
Speaker 3: were curious about the personal unconscious material that we could
4:34
Speaker 3: know that's within reach if we hadn't forgotten it, or
4:39
Speaker 3: if we can find some way of finding a thread
4:41
Speaker 3: to it or repressed it. But it's something that's still
4:46
Speaker 3: related to our personality and our lived experience. Jung dropped
4:51
Speaker 3: another layer or several layers deeper, and he both experienced,
4:57
Speaker 3: particularly during his creative illness, as well as, once he
5:02
Speaker 3: understood it in the dreams of his analysis, that there
5:05
Speaker 3: is another layer to the unconscious, that there is a
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Speaker 3: field of consciousness that all humans co-participate in that actually
5:15
Speaker 3: stores and organizes the vestigial experiences of all humanity and
5:21
Speaker 3: groups them and organizes them. Now, the Platonic idea is
5:26
Speaker 3: that all these forms participate existed from the beginning of
5:29
Speaker 3: time and human beings have ever been influenced by them.
5:33
Speaker 3: Sometimes Jung suggests that maybe collective human experience has co-created
5:39
Speaker 3: the structures, maybe they were there in some metaphysical way,
5:43
Speaker 3: but that this layer of the unified psyche is active,
5:50
Speaker 3: that it has or it is populated by structures, and
5:55
Speaker 3: that myths are particularly mythic themes that repeat throughout time
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Speaker 3: and in many different cultures, suggests that there are universal
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Speaker 3: elements that are active underneath all the different cultures, and
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Speaker 3: that we can track how these things act and function
6:16
Speaker 3: through the study of myth.
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Speaker 2: And I do just want to insert here, that was
6:21
Speaker 2: a great summary. And you said that Jung was the first,
6:26
Speaker 2: but we need to give a little hat tip to Freud.
6:29
Speaker 3: That's right.
6:30
Speaker 2: Because, you know, as early as around 1900, he was
6:34
Speaker 2: beginning to think in terms of the Oedipus Complex. And
6:39
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a very interesting thing, right? Because Jung
6:42
Speaker 2: took this, sorry, Freud took the myth of Oedipus, who
6:46
Speaker 2: of course murdered his father and slept with his mother,
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Speaker 2: and used that as a kind of central organizing idea
6:53
Speaker 2: in his understanding of the kind of development of the
6:58
Speaker 2: psychosexual stages of development. So there's pre-Oedipal, and then there's
7:04
Speaker 2: You know, more of a kind of Oedipal sexuality. So
7:07
Speaker 2: these become really fundamental framing ideas for Freud. But he
7:14
Speaker 2: really only works with that one myth. Maybe there's another
7:21
Speaker 2: one he eventually kind of adds in there. But there
7:24
Speaker 2: isn't the sense that he's embracing mythology as a storehouse
7:31
Speaker 2: of patterns. that could track the very bones of the
7:36
Speaker 2: collective unconscious. But they're mining somewhat of the same vein there.
7:43
Speaker 2: And of course, he really fully develops that idea in 1910.
7:47
Speaker 2: During some of those years, he would have been working
7:50
Speaker 2: alongside Jung. So I don't know that anyone's ever really
7:53
Speaker 2: tracked what was the mutual influence around the use of
7:57
Speaker 2: mythology in the exploration of human psychology, but they certainly
8:03
Speaker 2: would have been in touch when they were both working
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Speaker 2: on those ideas.
8:06
Speaker 3: Here's my question based on your research about this, Lisa,
8:10
Speaker 3: is that the Oedipus story is a play. I've not
8:16
Speaker 3: come across Oedipus as a myth. I mean, it comes
8:19
Speaker 3: from that Greco-Roman time period that we associate with mythology
8:24
Speaker 3: and the Oedipus The theater of the Oedipus story, of course,
8:27
Speaker 3: involves mythic figures that are referenced in it. But beyond
8:31
Speaker 3: the play, Oedipus at Colonus, Oedipus Resc, etc., does that
8:38
Speaker 3: exist as a religious myth, or is that more of
8:42
Speaker 3: a vestige of the aesthetic and art of the period?
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Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I think all of the drama was myth,
8:50
Speaker 2: and myth was drama for the ancient Greeks. And I
8:53
Speaker 2: think all of those you know, all of the dramas
8:58
Speaker 2: were based on mythological stories. So kind of tracing it
9:02
Speaker 2: back to where is it, you know, where does it appear?
9:04
Speaker 2: I'm not as good a scholar on that, but I
9:08
Speaker 2: think it counts as a myth. In my book, it does.
9:11
Speaker 3: Sure, sure. So we have the collective unconscious, we have myths,
9:16
Speaker 3: and the way that human beings can sense through their
9:22
Speaker 3: imagination these movements, in the objective psyche. The other thing
9:28
Speaker 3: that's unique about myths and also fairy tales is that
9:32
Speaker 3: they survive. Because we could imagine, you know, in the
9:35
Speaker 3: ancient world, millions of people across eons that are alive
9:42
Speaker 3: and imaginative and creative, but not everything survives from the
9:48
Speaker 3: psychology of those individuals. There's something about these religious myths
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Speaker 3: that have a staying power and that that marks them
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Speaker 3: as unique and distinct from perhaps other cultural products in
10:03
Speaker 3: that way. And that can also give us some confidence
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Speaker 3: that there is something archetypal or structural in the story
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Speaker 3: that it sustains interest throughout time and culture.
10:18
Speaker 4: I think we see the resurgence of these universal themes
10:24
Speaker 4: that are the myths, whether they're Norse myths or Aztec
10:29
Speaker 4: myths or Japanese myths or Greek myths. We see them
10:35
Speaker 4: all the time in every drama that we watch, every
10:40
Speaker 4: Netflix movie. The plays, I mean, think of something like
10:44
Speaker 4: how powerful... A play like Death of a Salesman is,
10:50
Speaker 4: you know, I saw it some years back and it
10:54
Speaker 4: really gripped me as an older adult. I got it
10:58
Speaker 4: all of a sudden. Harry Potter. There it is. The
11:02
Speaker 4: stories of C.S. Lewis and Narnia and Tolkien. And these
11:08
Speaker 4: are all mythological tales. It's all around us all the time.
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Speaker 2: You know, there are different ways of understanding what myth
11:19
Speaker 2: is and different thinkers have brought different things to the table. Deb,
11:22
Speaker 2: I think what I would agree with is all of
11:25
Speaker 2: the stories that you just mentioned have like an archetypal taproot.
11:29
Speaker 2: I think some people would say they're mythological and some
11:32
Speaker 2: people might not agree with that. And I don't know
11:36
Speaker 2: that I have a clear opinion, but just to kind
11:39
Speaker 2: of parse it a little bit, you know, Jung was
11:42
Speaker 2: very interested in the tendency of the psyche to spontaneously
11:46
Speaker 2: generate mythic material, that it's almost a kind of way
11:51
Speaker 2: of thinking, as I said before. Whereas someone like, you know,
11:56
Speaker 2: if you read Joseph Campbell, who, of course, was, you know,
11:59
Speaker 2: a very famous, prominent mythologist who was very influenced by Jung,
12:05
Speaker 2: he was a little bit more down the track of
12:08
Speaker 2: seeing myths as more cultural productions that are sort of
12:14
Speaker 2: like distillates of collective wisdom, which is a very interesting
12:18
Speaker 2: way to think about myth, right? I mean, we said before,
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Speaker 2: it doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have conscious input from
12:24
Speaker 2: a single individual, but I think that myths do contain
12:29
Speaker 2: the sort of distilled collective wisdom of a culture. Myths
12:35
Speaker 2: tell us how to live. Myths help us orient to meaning.
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Speaker 2: They let us know where we are in the cosmos.
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Speaker 2: And that's where I'd say, well, I'm not sure Frozen
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Speaker 2: is a myth. It might have like a mythological or
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Speaker 2: an archetypal core. I actually never saw it.
12:54
Speaker 3: It's really great. The music is great. Is it? I'll
12:58
Speaker 3: put it on my list.
13:00
Speaker 2: But I guess my kids were just like a little
13:02
Speaker 2: too old when it came out. But if we think
13:05
Speaker 2: of like, you know, the Norse myths or the Celtic
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Speaker 2: myths or the Aztec myths, these are really associated with
13:12
Speaker 2: particular cultures. And they've been sifted down through the generations
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Speaker 2: by being told and retold and then sometimes written down
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Speaker 2: by poets or playwrights or whatever. But they belong to
13:26
Speaker 2: the culture. They belong to the people.
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Speaker 4: But I think that's exactly right, that there is a
13:34
Speaker 4: common sort of very deeply collective substrate, but it shows
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Speaker 4: up in myriad ways in different cultures. All these archetypal
13:46
Speaker 4: realities show up in all of us, and I will
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Speaker 4: express certain archetypal patterns and have certain narratives that are
13:57
Speaker 4: different from yours. but the taproot is way down there,
14:02
Speaker 4: and that's what's universal. And then the tribes and cultures
14:09
Speaker 4: shape those universals as relevant to a particular culture. So
14:17
Speaker 4: we have this theme in variations is really what we're
14:20
Speaker 4: talking about.
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Speaker 3: And I think Star Wars is a great example. So
14:25
Speaker 3: we have the heroic mythic cycle in there. But in
14:31
Speaker 3: our more modern era, it's culturally informed by our fantasies
14:36
Speaker 3: around technology and robots and space travel and spaceships and
14:41
Speaker 3: also magic, which, I don't know, existed prior to Lucas
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Speaker 3: deciding he's going to wrap it in that kind of
14:50
Speaker 3: technological fantasy. But that's a good example of the eternal
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Speaker 3: mixing with the culture And also, what that does is
15:00
Speaker 3: it creates this enormous amount of energy and that if
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Speaker 3: the culturally decorated myth has enough of the archetypal element
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Speaker 3: to it, it will once again vitalize the viewer and perhaps,
15:17
Speaker 3: as Star Wars did, vitalize a culture. It becomes a
15:20
Speaker 3: cultural element. object because it's doing something in the collective
15:25
Speaker 3: psyche just as you were saying lisa of the culture
15:28
Speaker 3: at that time do all stories have mythic underpinnings i
15:33
Speaker 3: think that we could absolutely say that i mean any
15:37
Speaker 3: play about a mother the archetypal mother is part of
15:43
Speaker 3: every expression of the mother but is it being presented
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Speaker 3: in a way that conjures the archetypal intensity of it
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Speaker 3: Probably not, but some stories do, in which case more
15:58
Speaker 3: of the collective is attentive to it because there's something
16:01
Speaker 3: more universal about the way, for instance, the mother or
16:05
Speaker 3: the child or some other dominant is being presented. So
16:10
Speaker 3: it's that mysterious thing about the archetypal image versus all
16:17
Speaker 3: other kinds of images that And that when the image
16:21
Speaker 3: is carrying a lot of archetypal dominant, it really vibrates
16:25
Speaker 3: and it's hard for us to take our eyes off it.
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Speaker 2: But there is a difference if we're going to be really,
16:29
Speaker 2: and I know I'm being a pain in the tail,
16:32
Speaker 2: but just to be precise for a minute, there is
16:34
Speaker 2: a difference between something that's archetypal and mythological in a
16:39
Speaker 2: very strict sense because, and I remember this from having
16:43
Speaker 2: to study for our exams, You know, myths are stories
16:46
Speaker 2: that are believed to be true by the people who
16:49
Speaker 2: invented them.
16:50
Speaker 4: Yes.
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Speaker 2: So, you know, myths are the religious stories of a culture.
16:57
Speaker 2: And so, for example, if you lived in ancient Greece,
17:01
Speaker 2: you know, you actually believed that Aphrodite arose from the
17:07
Speaker 2: seafoam or something, you know, that that was sort of
17:10
Speaker 2: taken as fact. And so there are You know, when
17:14
Speaker 2: we think about Star Wars, does it contain mythologems? Does
17:18
Speaker 2: it contain mythological elements?
17:20
Speaker 3: Is it archetypal?
17:21
Speaker 2: Absolutely. You know, it's such a great example of the monomyth.
17:26
Speaker 2: And it's interesting because we don't for a second believe
17:28
Speaker 2: that Luke Skywalker really existed. And yet it speaks to
17:32
Speaker 2: us with the same intensity. I mean, it's an interesting
17:35
Speaker 2: thing to consider. Like, even though we know it's not true,
17:40
Speaker 2: it still really captures something. And I think that's the
17:44
Speaker 2: archetypal quality. So does it matter whether or not something's
17:49
Speaker 2: a myth or something's mythological or archetypal or what is
17:53
Speaker 2: the difference? I think if we're going to be precise,
17:57
Speaker 2: that there is somewhat of a difference there. And maybe
17:59
Speaker 2: it's true that all myth is archetypal, but products that
18:03
Speaker 2: are archetypal are not all myths. Maybe it's something like that.
18:07
Speaker 3: Or they're not currently in the cultures as a myth
18:11
Speaker 3: in as much as they're real. So for instance, if
18:14
Speaker 3: we were going to talk about a mythopoetic reality, as
18:17
Speaker 3: many people believe that Christ was alive, is still alive,
18:22
Speaker 3: is still a functioning Godhead that interacts with them in
18:26
Speaker 3: all these multiple ways. So that would put it in
18:30
Speaker 3: the category of a living myth in the moment.
18:34
Speaker 4: Yes.
18:35
Speaker 3: But the myth of the hero is still a myth,
18:39
Speaker 3: even if the aesthetic expression of it in a given
18:42
Speaker 3: moment in the culture is not taken as a fact
18:45
Speaker 3: in the moment. And in that regard, we're moving into
18:49
Speaker 3: how Jung used myth, because when he amplified a dream
18:53
Speaker 3: with a mythology, he wasn't suggesting that everything in a
18:56
Speaker 3: dream was thought to be a current reality in the
19:00
Speaker 3: lived sense. But the myth does something psychotherapeutically that he
19:04
Speaker 3: found interesting. interesting.
19:06
Speaker 4: What I'm wondering about is whether we might be circling
19:10
Speaker 4: around a really huge tectonic shift in today's world around myth,
19:18
Speaker 4: which is that it used to be literally true, whether
19:23
Speaker 4: they're Greek myths and Aphrodite arising from the sea foam
19:27
Speaker 4: or Hera going after all of the liaisons that her
19:32
Speaker 4: husband Zeus had. And and wreaking vengeance upon them. And certainly,
19:39
Speaker 4: you know, the whole Christian myth and churches and our 2,000
19:44
Speaker 4: years of this being a very dominant myth versus now,
19:49
Speaker 4: I think, the tectonic shift is things are moving inside.
19:55
Speaker 4: We don't have those dominant, overarching, universally.
20:01
Speaker 2: Those unifying stories. Yeah. Right.
20:03
Speaker 4: That we believe that this is, we all believe this
20:06
Speaker 4: is the case. And, It's out there and it's up
20:11
Speaker 4: above and there's a superordinate reality that presses down on
20:15
Speaker 4: us that has an objective of existence. We're much more
20:21
Speaker 4: moving into the need to find our own myth and
20:27
Speaker 4: to find it inside ourselves. And because we don't have
20:34
Speaker 4: those superordinate cultural structures that everybody subscribes to. And that's
20:43
Speaker 4: very much Jung, is this is a new day is dawning,
20:49
Speaker 4: and we are going to have to find it within.
20:53
Speaker 2: We're going to have to find our own kind of
20:55
Speaker 2: personal myth, which is an idea I want to return to.
20:58
Speaker 2: But Deb, I'm so glad you went there because Because
21:01
Speaker 2: if we think about like myths or stories that are
21:04
Speaker 2: believed to be true by the culture that writes them,
21:08
Speaker 2: I would like to offer that the DSM is a
21:12
Speaker 2: cultural myth.
21:13
Speaker 4: I love that.
21:14
Speaker 2: Okay. So that's the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
21:20
Speaker 4: It absolutely is a myth.
21:22
Speaker 2: It is our myth, and we have other myths about, like, technology,
21:26
Speaker 2: for example, and.
21:27
Speaker 3: We believe they're true.
21:28
Speaker 2: Like, I have the DSM sitting right over there, and I, like,
21:32
Speaker 2: people want insurance reimbursement. I take a code out of there,
21:36
Speaker 2: you know? But so, and that brings me to, this
21:41
Speaker 2: is my favorite, favorite quote from the Collected Works. I
21:44
Speaker 2: know you guys already know which one it is. We
21:47
Speaker 2: think we can congratulate ourselves on having already reached such
21:50
Speaker 2: a pinnacle of clarity. imagining that we have left all
21:54
Speaker 2: these phantasmal gods far behind. But what we have left
21:58
Speaker 2: behind are only verbal specters, not the psychic facts that
22:03
Speaker 2: were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are
22:06
Speaker 2: still as much possessed today by autonomous psychic contents as
22:12
Speaker 2: if they were Olympians. Today, they are called phobias, obsessions,
22:17
Speaker 2: and so forth. In a word, neurotic symptoms. the gods
22:22
Speaker 2: have become diseases. Zeus no longer rules Olympus, but rather
22:26
Speaker 2: the solar plexus and produces curious specimens for the doctor's
22:31
Speaker 2: consultee room or disorders the brain of politicians and journalists
22:35
Speaker 2: who unwittingly let loose psychic epidemics on the world. So,
22:40
Speaker 2: I mean, it could be our belief about what causes
22:44
Speaker 2: mental distress. That's a kind of mythology. We have political mythologies.
22:50
Speaker 2: And we don't even think of them as myths because
22:52
Speaker 2: we assume they're true. So that's just another way of
22:56
Speaker 2: looking at this. Not the only way, but just a way. Yeah.
23:02
Speaker 4: I think what you just have read is so incredibly
23:07
Speaker 4: important that the gods of Olympus have become the gods
23:11
Speaker 4: of the solar plexus, and we don't recognize them. that
23:16
Speaker 4: what is the hidden God, if you will, that rules
23:22
Speaker 4: a person's need to have everything in perfect order, perfect tidiness,
23:27
Speaker 4: you know, and we call that, you know, obsessive compulsive disorder,
23:31
Speaker 4: for example. And that something is going on that is
23:35
Speaker 4: archetypal and mythological, but we don't often call it that.
23:41
Speaker 4: We take medication for it.
23:43
Speaker 3: So we're in the realm of mythic placing and this
23:47
Speaker 3: kind of depersonalization of certain aspects of our own experience.
23:53
Speaker 3: So as Jungians, we can start with this idea of
23:56
Speaker 3: what's wrong with me, and then through the amplification of myth,
24:03
Speaker 3: then we can ask where does it belong, and then
24:06
Speaker 3: perhaps broaden the way we think about it. So for instance,
24:10
Speaker 3: if I suffer from a panic disorder, Does reading about Pan,
24:16
Speaker 3: from which we get the word, does reading about Pan
24:19
Speaker 3: give us a frame of understanding, metaphors, where we can
24:26
Speaker 3: then understand the forces, the deep psychological forces that surface
24:32
Speaker 3: in my lived experience as a panic attack, and understand
24:37
Speaker 3: that this belongs to an impersonal and abstract aspect of
24:42
Speaker 3: the psyche, and in doing that, does that give us relief?
24:47
Speaker 3: And what I would say is, for some people, but
24:49
Speaker 3: not always, for some people, that shift of perspective gives
24:55
Speaker 3: them breathing room between their waking personality and the phenomena
25:01
Speaker 3: that they are beholding inside themselves. Heaviness can be ascribed
25:06
Speaker 3: to Saturn, Being in a kind of frenzy could be
25:09
Speaker 3: a sign to Dionysus. And if it matches well enough,
25:14
Speaker 3: people can have that aha experience. And often, as I've
25:17
Speaker 3: seen in my practice, people can kind of exhale and
25:22
Speaker 3: place it into a certain aesthetic frame that gives them
25:27
Speaker 3: some distance between themselves and the problem that they're suffering.
25:34
Speaker 3: And many different systems do that, by the way. But
25:36
Speaker 3: myth is one way of possibly doing that.
25:40
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's hugely important. And that was one
25:44
Speaker 4: of Jung's great contributions that was often very much a
25:50
Speaker 4: part of dream interpretation. Exactly what you're saying. Somebody has
25:55
Speaker 4: panic disorder. Or, you know, I dreamt of, this is
25:59
Speaker 4: a pretty common dream, a dream where you can't get
26:02
Speaker 4: to the place you have to get to to take
26:04
Speaker 4: an important test. but you didn't take the course and
26:07
Speaker 4: you can't find the building of panic. And there is
26:12
Speaker 4: a relief in knowing that there is a deep mythological
26:17
Speaker 4: taproot in Pan, in instinctual life, the God with goat
26:24
Speaker 4: feet and hairy legs that relativizes our experience of it's
26:32
Speaker 4: not just me or you having a hard time. It
26:36
Speaker 4: is part of a vast human storehouse that is meaningful
26:43
Speaker 4: and takes us out of our isolation of just our
26:47
Speaker 4: own experiences and our own ego. There's a relief in that.
26:53
Speaker 4: We're not alone. There's a God here. And how do
26:57
Speaker 4: we relate to that God that might be showing up
27:01
Speaker 4: in panic around taking an exam, for example?
27:06
Speaker 2: So just to kind of amplify what you've both been saying,
27:09
Speaker 2: I have some quotes because I love quotes. Here's one
27:14
Speaker 2: from Liz Green, who's a, I believe she's a union
27:16
Speaker 2: analyst and also kind of a mythological astrologer. She is
27:21
Speaker 2: the author of the Mythic Tarot, I believe. She says,
27:25
Speaker 2: myth offers us a feeling that the problem may not
27:28
Speaker 2: be a problem. It may be a process. Joseph Campbell said,
27:34
Speaker 2: myth makes a connection between our waking consciousness and the
27:38
Speaker 2: mystery of the universe. So it lets us know where
27:43
Speaker 2: we're located. And similarly, Marian Woodman says, without an understanding
27:49
Speaker 2: of myth, without an understanding of the relationship between destruction
27:54
Speaker 2: and creation, death and rebirth, The individual suffers the mysteries
28:00
Speaker 2: of life as meaningless mayhem alone. So myth saves us
28:07
Speaker 2: from that. Myth lets us know that we're in a
28:10
Speaker 2: mysteriously ordered universe.
28:14
Speaker 3: Now, I'd love to bring up a hot topic. As Jungians,
28:18
Speaker 3: we are very pro-myth, pro-archetype, the a priori structures, which
28:24
Speaker 3: sits right right against and in great tension to the
28:27
Speaker 3: postmodern idea that nothing has inherent meaning, that human beings
28:35
Speaker 3: simply decide what's true and then it becomes true, that
28:40
Speaker 3: there are no eternals, and that everything is up to
28:44
Speaker 3: be treated as an eternally plastic and mutable substance, and
28:49
Speaker 3: that by declaring that what my reality is, that it
28:53
Speaker 3: suddenly is in fact reality. It sounds very abstract, but
28:58
Speaker 3: it's a very different philosophy. And these two systems kind
29:03
Speaker 3: of bark at each other, probably mostly in just academic circles,
29:08
Speaker 3: kind of bark at each other, going back and forth
29:11
Speaker 3: about what's more accurate. What I would suggest is that
29:16
Speaker 3: both domains have some validity and are accurate. Because how
29:22
Speaker 3: we talk to ourselves about our own experience absolutely influences
29:28
Speaker 3: how we move through the world, the choices we make,
29:32
Speaker 3: how we manage with the difficulties. And there can still
29:38
Speaker 3: be deep powerfulness. pre-existing structures that are informing that and
29:44
Speaker 3: that we need both we need the ego and we
29:47
Speaker 3: need the unconscious to be talking to each other to
29:51
Speaker 3: co-create a functional life.
29:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a great distinction, Joseph. And I
30:00
Speaker 2: want to take us just for a second into another
30:02
Speaker 2: dimension of this that I've always been interested in. And
30:08
Speaker 2: it's an idea that first kind of constellated for me
30:12
Speaker 2: when I was reading Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.
30:16
Speaker 2: And he talks about that famous scene of Arjuna on
30:19
Speaker 2: the battlefield, which is from the Bhagavad Gita. And Arjuna
30:25
Speaker 2: realizes he's about to enter into this battle and he's
30:28
Speaker 2: going to kill all his kinsmen. And then his charioteer
30:34
Speaker 2: reveals himself as Krishna and reveals to him that it
30:40
Speaker 2: doesn't really matter, that he is a player in the
30:44
Speaker 2: great cosmic drama. And it kind of invites him or
30:49
Speaker 2: demands of him that he lift himself out of his
30:53
Speaker 2: personal perspective. And the god says, I am mighty, world-destroying time,
31:00
Speaker 2: now engaged here in slaying these men. Even without you,
31:05
Speaker 2: all these warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall
31:08
Speaker 2: not live. Therefore, stand up and win glory. Conquer your
31:13
Speaker 2: enemies and enjoy an opulent kingdom. And then Campbell does
31:18
Speaker 2: something with it. I want to read just a sentence
31:19
Speaker 2: or two. Campbell says, the disciple has been blessed with
31:25
Speaker 2: a vision transcending the scope of normal human destiny and
31:29
Speaker 2: amounting to a glimpse of the essential nature of the cosmos,
31:34
Speaker 2: not his personal fate, but the fate of mankind, of
31:37
Speaker 2: life as a whole, the atom and all the solar
31:40
Speaker 2: system has been open to him. And this in terms
31:43
Speaker 2: of befitting his human understanding, that is to say, in
31:47
Speaker 2: terms of an anthropomorphic vision, the cosmic man. So what
31:53
Speaker 2: I get from that, if you'll just bear with me
31:55
Speaker 2: for a minute, is that we are ordinarily in a
31:59
Speaker 2: kind of a personal frame. We think about our life
32:03
Speaker 2: in terms of, you know, what's happening to us and
32:08
Speaker 2: the impact of us as an individual. We don't go
32:11
Speaker 2: around holding this mythological, cosmological position. perspective on ourselves and
32:17
Speaker 2: our lives. But this is one of the things that
32:20
Speaker 2: myth does, is it opens up this cosmological perspective. And
32:26
Speaker 2: it's very, very different. What looks incredibly destructive and awful
32:29
Speaker 2: and dangerous when viewed from this standpoint to the ego,
32:34
Speaker 2: you know, if we look at it from the mythological perspective,
32:37
Speaker 2: it's just as it should be. And just one other
32:39
Speaker 2: little example, maybe to try to frame what I'm saying
32:44
Speaker 2: a little bit more, Persephone is raped by Hades, okay?
32:48
Speaker 2: That's one way of looking at it. The other way
32:51
Speaker 2: of looking at it is that she goes through the
32:54
Speaker 2: necessary initiation that looks like a rape from one perspective.
33:00
Speaker 2: From another perspective, it is the necessary thing that has
33:04
Speaker 2: to happen when we lose our innocence. So if we
33:08
Speaker 2: stand on one side of the equation, things look one way.
33:13
Speaker 2: If we can possibly shift into more of a kind
33:18
Speaker 2: of mythological stance, it looks really different.
33:22
Speaker 4: And I think that's what, you know, overall is what
33:28
Speaker 4: mythology teaches us, is it connects us with that which
33:34
Speaker 4: is beyond, bigger than, deeper than, wider than ego, of
33:40
Speaker 4: it looks terrible from the standpoint of ego. You know,
33:44
Speaker 4: oh my God, poor Jonah gets swallowed by the whale.
33:46
Speaker 3: That's terrible.
33:48
Speaker 4: And what about Job? All of the terrible travails that
33:51
Speaker 4: he didn't deserve is awful.
33:54
Speaker 2: Yes.
33:55
Speaker 4: And things happen to us in life that are unfair
34:00
Speaker 4: and terrible, and they really are. There's just no way
34:04
Speaker 4: to say it's perfectly okay. But mythology opens us to
34:10
Speaker 4: there is another perspective. beyond me and how I feel,
34:17
Speaker 4: and it connects us with that. Jonah learns his lesson
34:23
Speaker 4: in the belly of the whale. Job comes away knowing
34:27
Speaker 4: that there is something greater. The whole theme of the
34:33
Speaker 4: night sea journey, of going through these dark periods, and That,
34:39
Speaker 4: I would say, above all, you know, whether it's Arjuna
34:43
Speaker 4: or any of these other mythological characters, or you or me,
34:49
Speaker 4: is what mythology gives us, is you and your personal
34:54
Speaker 4: life and your ego is not the whole of the
34:59
Speaker 4: reality that you are part of.
35:00
Speaker 3: Myths offer a multiplicity of meanings, which are actually inherent
35:06
Speaker 3: in our lives, but often, particularly if we're under stress,
35:09
Speaker 3: are very hard for us to tolerate the broadness of possibility.
35:14
Speaker 3: Theology nails it down. This means this. Science has a
35:18
Speaker 3: singleness of meaning. But mythology opens and broadens. So mythology
35:25
Speaker 3: isn't about nailing down facts. It's about opening up. and
35:31
Speaker 3: creating other possibilities if it's taken in in the right way.
35:36
Speaker 3: We also need to cultivate a kind of mythic imagination.
35:41
Speaker 3: It is true that some Jungians, although we're all trained
35:44
Speaker 3: in mythology, some Jungians don't use much myth or don't
35:48
Speaker 3: have a lot of faith in it. And I certainly
35:50
Speaker 3: saw that in our training and in our colleagues. But
35:55
Speaker 3: I think that that's a shame. that I think that
35:59
Speaker 3: the imagination and the way that the imagination is stimulated
36:02
Speaker 3: by myths and fairy tales and art, for that matter,
36:06
Speaker 3: gives us options that we didn't know that we had.
36:10
Speaker 4: You know, I think we might want to turn into
36:14
Speaker 4: two mythological themes that we touched on before we started
36:19
Speaker 4: recording that really highlight and amplify this, which is the
36:24
Speaker 4: night sea journey and sacrifice, self-sacrifice. They're ubiquitous, universal, all
36:34
Speaker 4: cultures throughout history. What are these two mythological themes teaching us?
36:43
Speaker 2: We picked these somewhat at random, right? We could have
36:45
Speaker 2: picked others, but these were just two that we had
36:48
Speaker 2: sort of at the ready.
36:50
Speaker 3: The gods told us.
36:51
Speaker 2: The gods, right.
36:54
Speaker 3: So the Night Sea Journey is like like much mythology,
36:58
Speaker 3: is connected to the natural world. So if we can
37:02
Speaker 3: imagine ourselves being in a very primordial world and we're
37:08
Speaker 3: watching what we can see with our own eyes, we
37:12
Speaker 3: see the sun mysteriously rising up in the east. It
37:18
Speaker 3: travels over the sky. It seems to disappear. If you
37:22
Speaker 3: live near the water, it looks like it drowns. It
37:25
Speaker 3: goes into the ocean and then we don't see it
37:27
Speaker 3: and we don't know what's happened and we don't know
37:29
Speaker 3: if it's coming back for that matter and so one
37:33
Speaker 3: of the earliest mythologies is about what happens to the
37:36
Speaker 3: sun when it disappears one way of that being described
37:42
Speaker 3: based on the archeologic evidence is that people believe that
37:47
Speaker 3: the sun traveled along the bottom of the ocean struggling
37:53
Speaker 3: and battling and trying to find its way back up
37:59
Speaker 3: to the familiar world, which it seems to every morning,
38:03
Speaker 3: as it finds its way back up in the East.
38:07
Speaker 3: So many different mythic cycles sit with this, the idea
38:13
Speaker 3: of birth, death, and resurrection, and all the fantasies of
38:18
Speaker 3: what happens when the sun disappears? What's going on under there?
38:25
Speaker 3: And so this term, the Nikia, or the night sea
38:29
Speaker 3: journey of what goes on when the sun is on
38:32
Speaker 3: the bottom of the ocean. So if we take the
38:36
Speaker 3: bottom of the ocean to mean the unconscious or the
38:40
Speaker 3: mysterious parts of ourselves and what we have to struggle
38:43
Speaker 3: with when we are submerged at the deepest levels, we
38:48
Speaker 3: can have some hints about how that has been imagined
38:53
Speaker 3: across antiquity. in the stories of Jonah, perhaps Odysseus, Osiris,
38:59
Speaker 3: and maybe many other examples. So let's talk about Jonah.
39:07
Speaker 4: Well, it's a wonderful teaching tale, a wonderful mythology. Just
39:16
Speaker 4: to recap the sort of essence or facts of the stories,
39:21
Speaker 4: Jonah is... asked to go to an Assyrian city. The
39:26
Speaker 4: Assyrians were pretty rough and tumble people. warrior type people.
39:32
Speaker 4: And God says, get over there and tell them about God,
39:37
Speaker 4: about me. And Jonah says, you know, sort of, hell no,
39:40
Speaker 4: I won't go. I don't like those people. And he
39:43
Speaker 4: goes off in the opposite direction, not toward Nineveh. and
39:50
Speaker 4: gets on a ship sailing away. And there are storms
39:54
Speaker 4: and problems, and the ship is threatened with being capsized.
40:00
Speaker 4: And Jonah says, you know what? This is really my fault.
40:04
Speaker 4: I'm the one. I'm the cause. And he says, just
40:08
Speaker 4: throw me overboard. So they do. And our wonderful whale
40:14
Speaker 4: shows up just in time to swallow him. And so
40:18
Speaker 4: there he is in the belly of the whale. Now,
40:21
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody in ancient times took this literally.
40:27
Speaker 4: We all know when we're in a mythological realm, oh,
40:31
Speaker 4: you guys look skeptical.
40:33
Speaker 3: I got to tell you, the Old Testament is taken
40:36
Speaker 3: pretty literally by many people now and then.
40:38
Speaker 4: I don't think anybody really believed that you get thrown
40:43
Speaker 4: overboard and this whale goes, oomph. And then you live
40:46
Speaker 4: down there for three days, which is the moon is
40:50
Speaker 4: dark for three days. You know, it took three days
40:54
Speaker 4: for Christ to be resurrected. So we have this dark
40:57
Speaker 4: of the moon, the night sea journey, the dark place
41:00
Speaker 4: where we really don't know that everything's going to turn
41:05
Speaker 4: out all right in the end.
41:06
Speaker 2: We're in the underworld.
41:08
Speaker 4: We're in the underworld. And there's no guarantee. Hey, don't worry.
41:12
Speaker 4: It'll only last three days. You don't know that. And,
41:17
Speaker 4: of course, Jonah is basically spit up on the shore
41:20
Speaker 4: right outside Nineveh, goes and talks to the people there.
41:24
Speaker 4: They all welcome what he has to say, and everything
41:27
Speaker 4: does come out well after all. But the night sea
41:32
Speaker 4: journey is that realm of you don't know, and there
41:37
Speaker 4: are no guarantees.
41:39
Speaker 2: Right, and we might think about that as, you know,
41:42
Speaker 2: living through a terrible depression. Oh, my gosh.
41:46
Speaker 4: And a terrible life misfortune. And we've either had our
41:52
Speaker 4: own night sea journey or we know people who have.
41:57
Speaker 4: And it is not anything to be taken lightly. The suffering,
42:04
Speaker 4: the confusion, it's really, when it's hard, it's hard.
42:09
Speaker 3: Now, if we talk about the mystic theme, Where does
42:13
Speaker 3: this show up eons later? In the story of Pinocchio. Oh, yeah.
42:20
Speaker 3: Pinocchio and Geppetto, swallowed by that whale, trying to survive
42:26
Speaker 3: in this terrible misery. There's something about the story that
42:31
Speaker 3: wants to be told and retold again and again. Here's
42:38
Speaker 3: another way that the myth can capture us You guys
42:43
Speaker 3: may help me try to remember this, but it wasn't
42:46
Speaker 3: very long ago where an entrepreneur and inventor had created
42:54
Speaker 3: a personal submarine and had his son on it and
43:00
Speaker 3: one of their top investors, and they went to the
43:04
Speaker 3: bottom of the ocean. It was going to be really exciting,
43:07
Speaker 3: and the entire thing collapsed in on itself, and they perished.
43:13
Speaker 3: And we could imagine, I don't know, that the theme
43:20
Speaker 3: of the night sea journey, let's go down to the bottom,
43:23
Speaker 3: let's find out the secret, and let's survive and emerge
43:28
Speaker 3: like the sun triumphantly. But something monstrous was encountered, and
43:37
Speaker 3: they did not survive. But there is still something compelling
43:41
Speaker 3: about wanting to test oneself. Because the night sea journey
43:46
Speaker 3: is also part of the heroic journey. That the sun
43:52
Speaker 3: is the first hero that makes it through the bottom
43:57
Speaker 3: of the ocean and gets back and gives us all
44:00
Speaker 3: its warmth and its light. And we can be inspired
44:05
Speaker 3: by it. One might say that Had some of those
44:10
Speaker 3: myths been more present in those individuals' minds, maybe they
44:15
Speaker 3: wouldn't have been possessed by it and felt compelled to
44:19
Speaker 3: enact it. And that's the danger.
44:22
Speaker 4: A mythic night sea journey is very different from the hubris,
44:30
Speaker 4: the pride, the inflation of ego that that particular investor has.
44:38
Speaker 4: in my opinion, exhibited despite known construction flaws and of
44:46
Speaker 4: challenging his own will and ego and ability to create.
44:54
Speaker 4: They were going to go down and see some of
44:57
Speaker 4: the remains of the Titanic. That was the idea. And
45:03
Speaker 4: that we don't undertake those kinds of things just accidentally.
45:07
Speaker 4: out of ego and daring and my own personal will.
45:13
Speaker 4: And there's a mythic lesson there too.
45:17
Speaker 3: So that's a tragic night sea journey that one we
45:22
Speaker 3: might fantasize had kind of captured the imaginations of some
45:26
Speaker 3: number of people. And again, the enactment is dangerous, which
45:31
Speaker 3: goes back to our earlier statement that Once the gods
45:36
Speaker 3: or the archetypes or the myths fall out of conscious knowledge,
45:40
Speaker 3: they don't go away. They just become engines that want
45:44
Speaker 3: to live themselves out in human psyche and in human behavior.
45:52
Speaker 3: But we don't know that they're universal, and so we
45:57
Speaker 3: personalize them excessively, enact them, and as myths often tell us,
46:04
Speaker 3: The gods don't generally have a good effect on the
46:08
Speaker 3: lives of humans. Like in the ancient myths, if a
46:11
Speaker 3: god takes an interest in you, something pretty dangerous is
46:15
Speaker 3: likely to happen one way or another.
46:17
Speaker 4: I think we might be touching on the theme of humility,
46:24
Speaker 4: which is another iteration, perhaps, of the difference between our
46:29
Speaker 4: personal selves and our egos and our lives and what
46:32
Speaker 4: I want and how things should be. And the larger, mysterious,
46:36
Speaker 4: sometimes difficult and dark context in which we all really live.
46:43
Speaker 4: And that if you want to build your own personal
46:45
Speaker 4: submarine and say, you know, I can do it my way,
46:49
Speaker 4: that is what will happen versus our friend Jonah coming
46:54
Speaker 4: to humility and remorse on board the ship and knowing
47:02
Speaker 4: that he was the cause. And that he will subordinate
47:07
Speaker 4: himself for the sake of his fellow sailors and simply
47:11
Speaker 4: the truth of the situation.
47:13
Speaker 2: But, you know, what we're talking about is the relativization
47:17
Speaker 2: of the ego and whether or not the ego stands
47:20
Speaker 2: in relationship to something larger. And that's what a mythological
47:24
Speaker 2: worldview can give us.
47:26
Speaker 3: Right?
47:26
Speaker 2: Because myths, again, as Joseph Campbell said, as I read
47:30
Speaker 2: a little while ago, myths let us know where we
47:32
Speaker 2: are in the cosmos, you know, that we're here, that
47:34
Speaker 2: we're a child of the universe, that we belong here,
47:37
Speaker 2: but also that we're tiny. And I think that goes
47:40
Speaker 2: to your point about hubris and humility, Deb. But I
47:45
Speaker 2: just want to say this mythologem of the night sea journey,
47:48
Speaker 2: we've talked about it in kind of, you know, various guises,
47:52
Speaker 2: but it's, It's worth also mentioning that it exists in
47:55
Speaker 2: Egyptian mythology. It's in the story of Christ and what's
47:59
Speaker 2: known as the harrowing of hell, where he descends to
48:02
Speaker 2: the underworld after his crucifixion, but before his resurrection, and
48:07
Speaker 2: probably many, many other instances that we can think about.
48:13
Speaker 2: So it's just the way that these themes, these mythological
48:17
Speaker 2: themes recur, and they mean something similar And we can
48:23
Speaker 2: use them in our own psychological explorations to amplify what
48:29
Speaker 2: we're going through. So if we're depressed, we might feel
48:34
Speaker 2: comforted knowing that what we're experiencing is our own version
48:38
Speaker 2: of the night sea journey. And we can look at
48:40
Speaker 2: what Jonah went through and what Christ went through and
48:45
Speaker 2: what Odysseus went through when he descended into the underworld
48:50
Speaker 2: with the seer Tiresias. And Job. And Osiris.
48:56
Speaker 4: And Persephone. Yeah. And Inanna.
49:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, right. So it can help us place, as you
49:05
Speaker 2: said before, Joseph, our own suffering in this vast archetypal
49:10
Speaker 2: mythological context.
49:13
Speaker 3: So the study of myth is one of the very
49:17
Speaker 3: practical domains of consideration. I have to say that much
49:24
Speaker 3: of this interest in the classics, myth, folktales, fairy tales,
49:30
Speaker 3: has fallen out of our educational system. It There was
49:35
Speaker 3: a time when studying the classics was expected. You couldn't
49:38
Speaker 3: get out of high school without a strong grounding in
49:41
Speaker 3: the classics. And it is to our detriment that that
49:46
Speaker 3: has happened. I think that the collective, just speaking about
49:52
Speaker 3: Western culture America, there is a demand, and this shows
49:57
Speaker 3: up in a number of ways. The Marvel comic figures
50:01
Speaker 3: are clearly the return of the gods. and barely in
50:07
Speaker 3: modern garb because they often show up in very mythic
50:11
Speaker 3: ways interacting with modern culture. And these are powerful archetypal forces.
50:18
Speaker 3: Our kids want figurines. They want to dress like them.
50:21
Speaker 3: And depending on how young you are, Superman, who is.
50:25
Speaker 2: Zeus, is very, very real.
50:28
Speaker 3: Wonder Woman, who is the queen of the Amazons, is very,
50:32
Speaker 3: very real when you're a little kid. And the demand
50:38
Speaker 3: to produce these kinds of cultural artifacts of the mythic
50:43
Speaker 3: level of the psyche hasn't gone away. It's still there. Now,
50:50
Speaker 3: they are considered, as you were saying, Lisa, probably by
50:54
Speaker 3: the little ones as real in the same way that
50:57
Speaker 3: all of us, many of us used to believe the
50:59
Speaker 3: Santa Claus was real. He is a mythic artifact that
51:04
Speaker 3: I mean, when I was a kid, I prayed to Jesus, Mary,
51:07
Speaker 3: and Santa Claus fervently, and probably more so to Santa
51:13
Speaker 3: Claus because there was some really objective proof that he
51:15
Speaker 3: showed up once a year. I mean, that was a
51:20
Speaker 3: living myth for me because I thought it was real
51:23
Speaker 3: 100% for some time. I had the evidence. But more
51:30
Speaker 3: importantly is I needed it. I needed this myth to
51:35
Speaker 3: organize my psyche in certain dimensions, and it was very important.
51:42
Speaker 3: And they are vestiges of much more complicated mythic cycles,
51:46
Speaker 3: the all-beneficent Sky Father that comes down and gives all
51:51
Speaker 3: good gifts. You know, as the Bible tells us, these
51:57
Speaker 3: things are waiting to be activated. They're waiting to be tickled.
52:02
Speaker 3: And Sometimes they can cause a bit of havoc, but
52:07
Speaker 3: often they can save us, actually. Jesus, for some people,
52:15
Speaker 3: might be the mythic image of a masculine who is
52:18
Speaker 3: gentle and kind and self-sacrificing and ever-faithful. If one lives
52:24
Speaker 3: in a world where there is little to no lived
52:26
Speaker 3: evidence of that, Jesus can become very important. If we're
52:31
Speaker 3: in a world where We don't have a mother, or
52:34
Speaker 3: perhaps our mother is alcoholic or drug-addicted, and we find
52:39
Speaker 3: our way to a devotion of Mary as the Divine Mother,
52:42
Speaker 3: can have a saving grace to it, and is also
52:46
Speaker 3: a universal dominant. Mary is very much like Isis in description,
52:52
Speaker 3: and Osiris is very much like Christ in description. So,
52:58
Speaker 3: the archetypal strata of the psyche will activate, and often
53:04
Speaker 3: can try to save us and help us when all
53:08
Speaker 3: else is lost.
53:10
Speaker 4: It's a really interesting and touching point that you're making,
53:15
Speaker 4: which is, you know, what supports us when nothing supports us?
53:21
Speaker 4: Nothing in the external world. When we are on a
53:24
Speaker 4: night sea journey, that there is something, there are forces that,
53:30
Speaker 4: that do support us when all else is lost. It's
53:35
Speaker 4: deeply resonant, reassuring, and true from stories that we all
53:43
Speaker 4: know from people in the here and now.
53:46
Speaker 3: And speaking of life-saving things, I'd like to talk about
53:51
Speaker 3: Dream School for a minute.
53:55
Speaker 4: Great segue.
53:56
Speaker 3: It was so elegant. It was seamless. It just slid
53:59
Speaker 3: right in. No one was going to notice that, I'm sure.
54:02
Speaker 3: That one of the ways that the archetypes and other
54:05
Speaker 3: unconscious factors come to our aid is every night in
54:10
Speaker 3: our dreaming. That there is a benevolent intelligence, which we
54:14
Speaker 3: call the self, which has its eye on us, our co-navigator,
54:20
Speaker 3: as we describe in our book, Dreamwise, that is us.
54:24
Speaker 3: offering assistance in very subtle and meaningful ways. And the
54:30
Speaker 3: artifacts of that encounter are our remembered dreams. And if
54:37
Speaker 3: we take an interest in them and perhaps learn how
54:41
Speaker 3: to unravel some part of that, the positive effect of
54:46
Speaker 3: the dream can be enhanced. And so we created Dream
54:51
Speaker 3: School and we hope Because we think that it is
54:55
Speaker 3: universally helpful and healing. So today, we're going to interpret
55:03
Speaker 3: a dream just in the same way that you can
55:07
Speaker 3: learn to do in dream school. Today's dreamer is a
55:22
Speaker 3: 35-year-old male, and he works as a business development manager,
55:28
Speaker 3: and he titles his dream, The Taste of Gold. My
55:34
Speaker 3: son and I are searching for gold. It's dark, probably
55:37
Speaker 3: at night. We are at the entrance to a tunnel
55:40
Speaker 3: which is lined with dry, free-flowing sand. I bring out
55:46
Speaker 3: a long probing stick which has been specifically designed for
55:51
Speaker 3: finding gold i send the stick in until i feel
55:58
Speaker 3: the back of the tunnel i retract the stick and
56:02
Speaker 3: find little specks of gold on it i bring my
56:06
Speaker 3: tongue to the stick to pull the gold specks off
56:11
Speaker 3: my son is excited and enters the tunnel to find
56:13
Speaker 3: the source of the gold a moment later He runs
56:17
Speaker 3: from the tunnel. I feel sick. He's scared. He then
56:21
Speaker 3: tells me there's a screech owl guarding a cave at
56:25
Speaker 3: the back of the tunnel. I research this owl. I'm
56:29
Speaker 3: not sure how, but find out that it's a haunted owl.
56:36
Speaker 3: For context, he writes, I've been on a significant spiritual
56:41
Speaker 3: journey recently through yoga and meditation, which has been enlightening,
56:45
Speaker 3: but a little intimidating. as the father of two young boys.
56:49
Speaker 3: The main feelings in the dream for him were adventure, intrigue,
56:53
Speaker 3: and exploration, and he offers a few associations. My eldest
56:59
Speaker 3: son and I live in an area of New Zealand
57:02
Speaker 3: with gold mining tunnels from around the 1800s to 1900s.
57:08
Speaker 3: This sounds like a mythic dream because it's unlikely that
57:11
Speaker 3: haunted owls actually are flying around our yards.
57:17
Speaker 2: So, I mean, I think the stream is just, it
57:19
Speaker 2: is very mythic, isn't it? And, you know, it's just
57:23
Speaker 2: such an intriguing image that there's gold back there. And
57:28
Speaker 2: he can just touch it and he can just taste it.
57:32
Speaker 2: But when he starts to get, well, when a sun
57:34
Speaker 2: rushes in, then there's, we find out that there is
57:38
Speaker 2: a guardian at the threshold. There's a guardian keeping watch
57:44
Speaker 2: over this gold. You can't just access it. You know,
57:49
Speaker 2: for me, you know, the key figure is there in
57:52
Speaker 2: the lysis or the resolution of the dream, the owl,
57:56
Speaker 2: or there's kind of a lack of resolution. The owl
57:59
Speaker 2: sort of stops forward movement, but it's also a very
58:03
Speaker 2: intriguing image, isn't it?
58:06
Speaker 3: It reminds me of something that Robert Bly says in
58:10
Speaker 3: Iron John. which I think has influenced an entire generation
58:15
Speaker 3: of men, which is don't show your gold too early
58:20
Speaker 3: in life. And what he means by that is, and
58:24
Speaker 3: we have some examples, of sometimes young men or even
58:29
Speaker 3: adolescent boys come into a depth of inspiration, skill, and
58:36
Speaker 3: great talent And if they try to offer that to
58:40
Speaker 3: the world, maybe monetizing it or developing products from their
58:45
Speaker 3: insight when they're very young, the stress and intensity of
58:52
Speaker 3: engaging the collective or an adult financial entrepreneurial opportunity can
58:59
Speaker 3: be overwhelming and exhausting to the soul. so that sometimes
59:04
Speaker 3: the discovery of what is highly valuable inside of us
59:09
Speaker 3: requires time to grow into ourselves so that we can
59:15
Speaker 3: represent what is precious in ourselves in a muscular and
59:23
Speaker 3: thoughtful way. And so it's okay for the father, the adult,
59:29
Speaker 3: to taste bits of his own gold, to find it
59:33
Speaker 3: and recognize it and extract it. But for his young
59:36
Speaker 3: son to rush in and grab the gold, there is
59:40
Speaker 3: a beneficent dweller on the threshold that says, not no, never,
59:48
Speaker 3: but not now. You don't belong at the gold. You're
59:52
Speaker 3: three or five.
59:55
Speaker 4: I think it's a great dream about how to access
1:00:02
Speaker 4: and what is the right relationship with the unconscious, the shadow.
1:00:08
Speaker 4: And the point of the shadow, Jung says, 99% of
1:00:12
Speaker 4: the shadow is pure gold. Or we have, you know,
1:00:16
Speaker 4: the lotus grows in the mud. We have a lot
1:00:17
Speaker 4: of images for that. So the father figure, our dream ego,
1:00:24
Speaker 4: does it with the stick and brings back little bits
1:00:27
Speaker 4: of gold. They're assimilable. They're digestible. The son part of
1:00:35
Speaker 4: our dreamer goes bounding in, you know, recklessly, impulsively, and
1:00:43
Speaker 4: runs into the screech owl guarding the cave. And it's
1:00:50
Speaker 4: scary of what is the correct approach to shadow, to
1:00:55
Speaker 4: your unconscious, to bringing things to awareness that has to
1:01:02
Speaker 4: do with respect and care and a conscious search for
1:01:10
Speaker 4: what you can really digest and assimilate, you know, rather
1:01:14
Speaker 4: than bolting in, I'm going to get it all. So
1:01:19
Speaker 4: in a way, I think you and I, Joseph, have
1:01:21
Speaker 4: just said pretty much the same thing from slightly different perspectives.
1:01:26
Speaker 2: So speaking of mythology, I want to pick up two
1:01:30
Speaker 2: big images from the stream and riff on them for
1:01:33
Speaker 2: a minute. So we have gold, which appears in many
1:01:38
Speaker 2: a myth and fairy tale and is an image of
1:01:41
Speaker 2: that which is of highest value. It's incorruptible. And the
1:01:46
Speaker 2: Aztecs believed that gold was the excrement of the sun.
1:01:52
Speaker 2: Gold is associated with the sun. It is therefore solar.
1:01:55
Speaker 2: It shines like the sun, however you find it in
1:01:58
Speaker 2: the bowels of the earth. So it's funny because it's
1:02:02
Speaker 2: both kind of solar and chthonic or earthy at the
1:02:06
Speaker 2: same time. The owl was sacred to Athena. The screech
1:02:12
Speaker 2: owl in particular was associated with wisdom and was sacred
1:02:15
Speaker 2: to Athena. But of course, the owl is also associated
1:02:20
Speaker 2: with darkness and night and even Satan in some traditions,
1:02:26
Speaker 2: the powers of darkness. the owl is also considered to
1:02:30
Speaker 2: be chthonic in some symbol systems. And that's interesting, right?
1:02:35
Speaker 2: Because owls are, after all, birds. So they do fly.
1:02:38
Speaker 2: And yet here they are sort of associated with the earth.
1:02:41
Speaker 2: So there's a tension with both of those symbols. And
1:02:44
Speaker 2: in some sense, they're somewhat opposite because, as I said before,
1:02:49
Speaker 2: you know, the gold is very solar. It is associated
1:02:53
Speaker 2: with consciousness and and sunlight and truth. And the owl
1:02:59
Speaker 2: is associated with darkness and to a certain extent with
1:03:03
Speaker 2: the feminine. So there's something here that interests me about,
1:03:08
Speaker 2: and Joseph, you said that the owl is beneficent, and
1:03:10
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I think the owl, there is
1:03:13
Speaker 2: a kind of helpful warning that you need to rest
1:03:19
Speaker 2: into the darkness. You need to shake hands with the
1:03:24
Speaker 2: dark feminine, perhaps, that which is chthonic or of the night,
1:03:28
Speaker 2: before you can fully access this wonderful shining gold.
1:03:33
Speaker 3: Yeah.
1:03:34
Speaker 4: You have to figure out a way to get past
1:03:39
Speaker 4: the guardian. And it's not by rushing in there. And
1:03:45
Speaker 4: so many, this is another whole mythological theme of thresholds
1:03:51
Speaker 4: and guardians. And what does it take to get in
1:03:54
Speaker 4: the castle or the back of the cave or, you know,
1:03:58
Speaker 4: whatever the situation is? How do we cross the threshold
1:04:05
Speaker 4: and make friends with the doorkeeper, the guardian, et cetera?
1:04:12
Speaker 4: And the boy part of the dreamer Doesn't know how
1:04:18
Speaker 4: to do it.
1:04:19
Speaker 3: There's also, as you were speaking of this, a connection
1:04:22
Speaker 3: between wisdom and gold. So if the owl is a
1:04:27
Speaker 3: symbol or associated to wisdom through Athena, the alchemists thought
1:04:32
Speaker 3: of wisdom and gold being very similar. So there is
1:04:38
Speaker 3: this connection in the unconscious between wisdom and gold and
1:04:43
Speaker 3: leading to the rebeto stage, by the way.
1:04:46
Speaker 4: And what a really wonderful dream that absolutely depicts the
1:04:53
Speaker 4: mythological way in which the dream makers, psyche, the mysterious
1:05:02
Speaker 4: forces operate. This is what happens. This is simply psychic fact.
1:05:10
Speaker 3: So this is a beautiful and wonderful dream for us
1:05:13
Speaker 3: to be circling around. at the end of our talk
1:05:18
Speaker 3: about myth, which is really just a taste. We hope
1:05:22
Speaker 3: many of you will just dive right in and revive
1:05:27
Speaker 3: your interest in mythology and drink it in.
1:05:30
Speaker 4: Yeah, see what you dream. See what you draw. See
1:05:34
Speaker 4: what comes up. Just notice.
1:05:37
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:05:41
Speaker 2: or join our mailing list, visit our website, thisjungianlife.com.
1:05:46
Speaker 3: Thank you.