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Jung and Gnosticism: Discovering a Universe Of Whole-Making · 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 3: Hello, everybody. Lisa is not with us right now. She
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: is in Europe at a conference having a great time. So,
• 0:51
  Speaker 3: Deb and I are going to tackle Jung's ideas around Gnosticism,
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: which were particularly important to him and validated some of
• 1:02
  Speaker 3: the things that he had been intuiting and observing with
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: his own clients. Gnosticism is a very early response to
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: the Christian mythos. It was a way that several small
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: groups in the Hellenistic period were trying to make sense
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: in a very applied way of how to manage the
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: tension between the suffering of the material world and this
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: idea of a perfected spiritual state. Out of that tension,
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: which all of us, by the way, exist in all
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: the time, came a series of cosmologies, philosophies, and religious practices.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: And a particular branch of Gnosticism, which is called Valentinian Gnosticism,
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: which Jung was able to find out a little bit
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: more about, really influenced and validated some of his concepts.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: And we're going to talk about that today. It may
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: sound abstract. But when we break it down into these
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: granular places, it actually is very relevant to the way
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: that our own psychology works.
• 2:24
  Speaker 4: To add a little bit more to its history and origins,
• 2:31
  Speaker 4: the Levant, all of the area around the Mediterranean, before
• 2:38
  Speaker 4: and then after the birth of Jesus, was really seething
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: with all kinds of ideas and turmoil. People were unsettled.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: There was more trade and travel. And so there were
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: all kinds of ideas and needs going on, which one
• 2:59
  Speaker 4: historian says was a feeling overall, collectively, of alienation from
• 3:07
  Speaker 4: the world that they lived in. and people longing for
• 3:10
  Speaker 4: sort of a mysterious and miraculous salvation. So pessimism about
• 3:18
  Speaker 4: the world was combining with attempts at self-transcendence. We might
• 3:25
  Speaker 4: think about whether that has any relevance to today's world.
• 3:31
  Speaker 4: And Gnosticism overall was practiced by all kinds of sects
• 3:37
  Speaker 4: and people who had different ideas about it in different
• 3:41
  Speaker 4: locations in Egypt and what is now sort of Jordan
• 3:50
  Speaker 4: or Israel, Turkey, etc. And it was the search for
• 3:55
  Speaker 4: a kind of secret, personal, subjective, and transformational truth kind
• 4:02
  Speaker 4: of knowledge that you could get from your own practice
• 4:06
  Speaker 4: and your own discipline, and you could then achieve your
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: own knowing, not a factual kind of knowing, but something
• 4:17
  Speaker 4: that would ground you in yourself and the meaning of
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: your life. So here today, we could see some parallels
• 4:26
  Speaker 4: with psychoanalysis. which is one's own quest for an internal
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: kind of knowing. So it's really sort of like there's
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: nothing new under the sun. Of course, it is new,
• 4:50
  Speaker 4: and it's not relegated only to those times way, way,
• 4:56
  Speaker 4: way in the past. Some of the dynamics and principles
• 5:00
  Speaker 4: are very much relevant today, which is what Jung obviously discovered.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: I think that one of the ways that we begin
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: to surmise that something is archetypal is that it survives
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: the test of the millennia. Because, for instance, there are
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: innumerable images and ideas that our culture generates. Many of
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: them are stereotypical or cultural icons, but many of those things,
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: a thousand years from now will probably be forgotten because
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: they don't necessarily reflect a more universal, primordial truth. One
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: of the things that Jung did, and we all do,
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: is we're looking into antiquity at some of these patterns
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: and ideas that seem to have an uncanny staying power.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: And that gives us a sense there's got to be
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: something universal to make this stay in consciousness. One of
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: the problems with talking about Gnosticism is that when the
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: Catholic Church rose to its tremendous state of political power,
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: that there was a great effort to weed out all other,
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: quote unquote, competing perceptions of Christianity. Initially, the only fragments
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: of Gnosticism were actually found in the Vatican itself, in
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: the commentaries that the clergy had written as they were
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: investigating and, quote-unquote, purging the world of Gnostics and Gnostic texts.
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: They were all destroyed. And then, as you were saying, Deb,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: the treasure trove, of the Nag Hammadi library was astounding
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: because it escaped the great purgation.
• 6:56
  Speaker 4: That's right. It was, um, The 1940s, mid-1940s, and in
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: one case, a 10-year process, where the Dead Sea Scrolls
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: and the Nag Hammadi manuscripts were discovered. And that sparked
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: this intense, renewed interest in Gnosticism because we had texts
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: that had not been purged. And these were the The
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: Dead Sea Scrolls came from Jewish traditions written between more
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: or less 300 BCE and 100 BCE. And the Nag
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: Hammadi Scrolls were written in about the 4th century BCE
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: and discovered in 1945. One of which is the Gospel
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: of Thomas, which is been widely read and discussed, which
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: is a Nag Hammadi manuscript. So, you know, this really
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: enabled a resurgence of interest in Gnosticism because we had material.
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: Exactly. So with that incredible resource, Jung, Jungians, and of
• 8:19
  Speaker 3: course innumerable other people, began to feel a resonance with
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: some of these ideas. And Jung felt this was really relevant.
• 8:31
  Speaker 3: So I'm going to just, in a very brief way,
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: describe the cosmology of the Valentinian.
• 8:40
  Speaker 4: Can I pop in with one other tidbit of history
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: before you go there? And he is the one who,
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: with others, was very interested in and instrumental in publishing
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: the Nag Hammadi manuscripts, especially the Gospel of Thomas. And
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: he urged the Jung Foundation to buy something called the
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: 13th Codex, a collection of things. He flew to Egypt
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: to buy missing pages. He knew Jung, and the Jung
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: Foundation did buy it. And I'm sure Jung had great
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: access to it. So that's just another link to Jung.
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: And with that said, please introduce us to the cosmology.
• 9:38
  Speaker 3: So the first thing that we now know is that
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: there were many different schools of Gnosticism. And this was
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: a kind of spontaneous response to what we're very basic
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: stories of the Gospels. As the Gospels were spread around
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: the ancient world, it activated this powerful feeling and these
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: archetypal images. And then, as Jung noted, human beings have
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: a religious function inside of them that we naturally try
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: to wrap these archetypal feelings and images, and to relate
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: to them, often in ritualized ways. So, Valentinius was born
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: about 100 AD and died in Alexandria, and he founded
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: a school in Alexandria. And that's important because the great
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: libraries of Alexandria afforded an incredible sharing of knowledge and information.
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: There was an enormous cross-pollination of wisdom and information from
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: all over, at least the conquered world. Idros contributing all
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: the Greek philosophies were mixing in, which created this tremendously
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: fertile environment. And for those of you that are scholars,
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: I know that I'm going to be oversimplifying this. But
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: in this model, There is an unknowable divinity that cannot
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: even be imagined. And this divinity gives birth to the
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: only begotten one, or the only begotten son. The only
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: begotten son then produces thoughts, and these thoughts become entities.
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: become kind of universal intelligences. And these thoughts come in
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: cosmic pairs or syzygies. So there are pairs of opposites
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: that come from the mind of the only begotten. In
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: these pairs of opposites, one of them is Sophia. And
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: Sophia translates, into the word wisdom, Sophia's divine partner is teletos,
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: which means the longed for or will in its application
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: of longing or reaching for. Now, in the mythology, Sophia
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: becomes full of longing to know the mysterious and unknowable
• 12:48
  Speaker 3: God directly. She doesn't want to have to go through
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  Speaker 3: the only begotten one to see some interpreted experience of
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: the absolute divinity. And in her desire to circumvent the
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: natural order of the cosmos, she falls out of balance. She,
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: so to speak, splits away from her partner, Elatos, and
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: she imagines what the unknowable god should be. And because
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: she is a divine being, her imagined deity takes form,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: which is called the Demiurge. The Demiurge then begins to
• 13:46
  Speaker 3: create Sophia's fantasies. Sophia imagines what it must be like
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: for the divine to create. But because the Demiurge exists
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: in her own imagined form, the Demiurge must use the
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: substance of Sophia's own body to create, and for the Gnostics,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: a perverse approximation of a world. And so the world
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: as we know it in this cosmology is a kind
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: of tortured and misguided fantasy, because it is made out
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  Speaker 3: of parts of Sophia that there are sparks of Sophia's divinity,
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  Speaker 3: which are distributed throughout the physical world, which don't belong here.
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: In essence, they're trapped in the physical world. And that
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: what appears to be the laws of nature are nothing
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: more than a kind of perverse and terrible fantasy that
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: was born out of this frustration in Sophia. In some
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: of the Gnostic myths, the idea of the first human
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: being is a kind of worm that over time becomes
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: a human being. So we're left in that state. We're
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: here in a false world that shouldn't be here. The
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: real world is somewhere in a spiritual realm that we
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: all bear a spark of Sophia inside of us, So
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: there is divinity scattered in all places, but somehow through gnosis,
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: through a revelation that is purely internal, we can discover
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: that this is all a terrible physical mistake and hopefully
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: liberate ourselves from this mistaken world of matter and return
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: with Sophia back to this correct cosmic pairing. So there
• 16:21
  Speaker 3: is a great split. There is a descent into a
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: strange fantastical misery. But divinity and the truth is somewhere
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  Speaker 3: hidden in this. The Gnostic has to break the hypnotic
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: attachment to this false world and discover the spark of
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: Sophia in themselves and hope to restore the syzygy that
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: they belong to Thalitos. And when this is completed, the
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: universe will be restored to its correct status or be redeemed.
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: So there is a great asceticism and a rejection of
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: all of the apparent, even attractive things about this material
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: world because it was all made by this kind of
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: terrible pseudo-god.
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: So let's take a step back and define what a
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: syzygy is. And then I'm liking this idea about that
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: each of us has a little spark of the divine.
• 17:46
  Speaker 3: The self, yeah.
• 17:48
  Speaker 4: Isn't that lovely? Exactly. It equates with Jung's idea of
• 17:51
  Speaker 4: the self. But if we are to go back to Thelatos,
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: is that not in itself a split? Don't Sophia and
• 18:01
  Speaker 4: Thelatos ever combine or balance out each other? unite in
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: some way that maintains their individual characteristics.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: There is this problem, right? Because the whole universe doesn't
• 18:20
  Speaker 3: fall apart. So the clever realization is that there is
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: a higher Sophia and a lower Sophia. That some aspect
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: of Sophia remains in relationship to Thalitos. And some part
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: of her, Sophia Akamov, is what they would call it.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. It's very complicated, right? Is the one
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: that's removed from the pleroma, which is the perfect world,
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: and falls downward.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: So this does get, as Winnie the Pooh said, or
• 19:02
  Speaker 4: should have said, complicated her and complicated her. But it
• 19:08
  Speaker 4: seems to revolve around this idea of opposites. And as
• 19:16
  Speaker 4: everybody's talking about today, binaries. So the world is bad,
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: but you can resume yourself from the clutches of this,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: what did you say, hypnotic material world that sort of
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: mesmerizes us into a false idea about what reality is.
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: Exactly.
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: Right? Okay, so let's talk about what all these Gnostic
• 19:41
  Speaker 4: ideas have to do with opposites and Jung's ideas about
• 19:47
  Speaker 4: opposites and syzygy. that word that I will never, ever
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: learn to spell. Exactly.
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: So Jung found this idea fascinating. And in Ion, which
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: is Volume 9, Part 2, when he's talking about the
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: evolution of the image of the self, which often is
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: equated with divinity, he starts with animalistic images of the
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: divine and it progresses forward. And so Gnosticism was an
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: important kind of movement in the development of the concept
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: of the self. And what Jung was seeing is that
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: every time that we have a conscious experience or attitude,
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: that it is immediately paired with its opposite somewhere in
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: the unconscious, which is a little bit different from shadow,
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: although it can have some relationship. But this is a
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: really radical idea. So for instance, every time we fall
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: in love with someone and we're conscious about loving them,
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: it's opposite. is a nodal point in the unconscious, which
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: could be indifference or perhaps even hatred. Now, we're only
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: conscious of the love part, and that's the Sophia that's
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: fallen into the world. There's only one piece. But somewhere
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: in the unconscious is the opposite. Now, Jung would say
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: something rather radical, which the Gnostics also believed is you
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: couldn't feel love if its opposite didn't exist. That there
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: have to be opposites in order for the experience to exist.
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: So it is the tension between love and indifference that
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: actually creates consciousness. And that both are required even though
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: only one might be held consciously. Now, That can seem
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: strange to us, but our dreams will often help us
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: experience this because we talk about compensatory dreams. So I love, love, love, love,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: love somebody. Oh my goodness, we're perfect, we're divine. And
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: then we have a dream about walking into the bathroom
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: accidentally with our beloved on a toilet and we're disgusted,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: which is like Not at all what you're thinking about consciously.
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: But the opposite is being offered because in terms of
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: psychological hygiene, both of these things need to be held
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: in order for us to not be in a state
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: of splitting.
• 22:57
  Speaker 4: It's really very interesting that the... compensatory function in Gnosticism,
• 23:11
  Speaker 4: as I'm just at the edge of learning, was the
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: spark of the divine is within each one of us
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: as compensatory to various forms of organized religion, you know,
• 23:27
  Speaker 4: in a time when there was huge diversity and change.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: So don't worry if the outer world structures aren't all
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: unified and stable. You've got what you need of the
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: divine within you. And in individual psychology, when you're madly
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: in love with someone, the compensatory function puts that little
• 23:53
  Speaker 4: spark of, that person is also really irritating.
• 23:58
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 24:01
  Speaker 4: Inside us, so that instead of a split, there's hopefully
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: a balance. That if we can acknowledge the dream where,
• 24:13
  Speaker 4: to our shock and dismay, we saw our beloved sitting
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: on a toilet, if we can take what that means,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: what that symbolizes of the shattering of an illusion, an idealization,
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: and integrate that, then it will save us, hopefully, from
• 24:34
  Speaker 4: just that little part of splitting, that my beloved is
• 24:38
  Speaker 4: all good and all wonderful. No, it's both. And Jung was,
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: I would say it was so core to his theories
• 24:53
  Speaker 4: and work, is that there is light and shadow. There's
• 25:00
  Speaker 4: love and disgust, irritation, hatred, indifference, a whole list, so
• 25:08
  Speaker 4: that we don't fall into those splits of all one
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: thing and nothing.
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: Of the other.
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: So, talking about this tension between organized religion, like Catholicism,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: versus Gnosticism is something that Jung actually writes about. Murray
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: Stein does an incredible job with this. The collected works
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: of Murray Stein are being published. I recommend them very highly.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: He's such an incredible apologist for Jung's work and makes
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: it come to life. So Murray writes about Jung and Christianity,
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: and he's scoured Jung's work. to try to put together
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: a cogent sense of what Jung was trying to reach for,
• 26:05
  Speaker 3: which is scattered among many different places in his writings
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: and in his struggles with his friend Victor White, who
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: was a priest, and the great tension between them. But
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Jung has a sense that religion is changing, which goes
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: to the Max Zeller dream that you have mentioned many times, Deborah.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness. there is the ancient idea of the
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: Catholic Church, or the Church as an institution, which is
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: not simply Catholicism, by the way, and that that served
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: a purpose. And Jung also had a good time with astrology.
• 26:46
  Speaker 3: He talked about the age of Pisces, which is the
• 26:49
  Speaker 3: age of the fish, and the fish was also a
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: symbol of Christ. And that human beings did in fact
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: benefit from all of this structural assistance, even benefited from
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: the enormous amount of rules that were imposed upon them,
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: because rules force us to be conscious. When we think
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: about the book of Leviticus, or even the Talmud, let's say,
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: there are rules for every little thing. Now, whether or
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: not that pleases God, I don't know. But for a
• 27:22
  Speaker 3: stage of evolution in human consciousness going from being very
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: instinctive to paying attention and making conscious choices about every
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: little thing helped the growth of ego strength, the growth
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: of consciousness. But Jung said that this has ended. In
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: this next eon, human beings are going to outgrow this
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: idea of being told and being given doctrinal things and
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: repeating rituals as a way of imagining that we're having
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: spiritual experiences. And just in this moment, because this is
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: related to Gnosticism, can you tell that story of the
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Max Zeller dream? Because it's really relevant.
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: I was just going to go back there because not
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: everybody will know about it. And it is a wonderful image.
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: Jung had a patient named Max Zeller sometime right after
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: World War II. And Max Zeller was a psychoanalyst in
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: California who went to see Jung because of being disturbed
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: by the state of the world, which was right after
• 28:44
  Speaker 4: World War II, was distressing. For all kinds of very big,
• 28:51
  Speaker 4: big reasons. And like a lot of us, this has
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: happened to me. He had a dream and he was
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: about to leave Switzerland. And then he realized that he
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: had forgotten to tell Jung his dream. And so he
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: called him up and said, oh my gosh, I was
• 29:15
  Speaker 4: there yesterday and I forgot to tell you this dream.
• 29:17
  Speaker 4: I can't believe it. And Jung said, come right over.
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: And so the dream that Max Zeller had was that
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: he was watching a vast temple being built, and it
• 29:37
  Speaker 4: went on for as far as the eye could see.
• 29:40
  Speaker 4: The foundation had been built, the first floor was there,
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: and everywhere people were working on building columns. Each person
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: is working on building his or her own columns. And
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: Jung said, you know, yeah, he said, this is a
• 30:00
  Speaker 4: dream people all around the world are having, people you
• 30:03
  Speaker 4: don't know in Russia and India and everywhere. And he
• 30:09
  Speaker 4: said it was a dream of the new religion, by
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: which he did not mean a doctrinally organized belief system. But,
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: you know, I have loved this dream because it's such
• 30:23
  Speaker 4: a great way of integrating the opposites that we've been
• 30:29
  Speaker 4: talking about of individual development or what Jung called individuation,
• 30:35
  Speaker 4: what the Gnostics imaged as the spark of the divine,
• 30:40
  Speaker 4: with a communal or collective endeavor. So everyone builds their
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: individual pillar, and it is part of a vast temple.
• 30:55
  Speaker 4: So it's a wonderful image of both. our individual selves,
• 31:02
  Speaker 4: and creative energy as part of a greater whole.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: Hello, listeners. We are really excited to invite you to
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: a live podcast recording to celebrate the publication of our
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: new book, Dreamwise, Unlocking the Meaning of Your Dreams. The
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: event will be held on November 17th at 1 p.m. Eastern,
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: and there's going to be a lot of fun stuff.
• 31:27
  Speaker 5: We'll let our hair down with you. You can laugh
• 31:30
  Speaker 5: along with us as we roll with bloopers in front
• 31:33
  Speaker 5: of the live cameras. And a lucky few of you
• 31:36
  Speaker 5: will walk away with the Dream Alchemist Toolkit. We really
• 31:41
  Speaker 5: want you to join us in this mission of awakening
• 31:44
  Speaker 5: people to their inner wisdom. And when you think of
• 31:47
  Speaker 5: buying your copy of DreamWise, think about the people you
• 31:51
  Speaker 5: could share that with and introduce them to a similar
• 31:56
  Speaker 5: moment when you realize what your dreams really could mean.
• 32:00
  Speaker 2: At the live event, we're going to be interpreting a
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: lot of your dreams. It'll be kind of like a dream-a-thon.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: We're going to ask that you submit your dreams at
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: the event, so come prepared. We'll be sharing a link,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: and then we'll be interpreting those dreams as we get them.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: So we hope you'll join us. Tickets are in the link,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: and we'll see you on the 17th.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: And Murray, really pulled together from various sources what Jung
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: was imagining that this new religion would look like. And
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: what he had a sense is that people would be
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: liberated from these doctrinal, rigid ideas, that they would gain
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: access to the deeper parts of their own psyche, to
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the self, that in their fantasies and dreams, that they
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: would self-produce images and symbols that actually help them to
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: individually connect to the self rather than assigned symbols from
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: an organization. And that this would give them a true
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: sense of their connection to the divine, that would be
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: a kind of gnosis and internal wisdom and knowing that
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: would link them to this transpersonal center. And that through
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: collective sharing of dreams of this nature, that we as
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: a community of humans would generate and share the various
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: images that connect the individual to the transpersonal And that
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: would be the new way for something like that, the
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: new way that human beings would forge this relationship. And
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: so now we can understand how Jung then brought this
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: into a therapeutic goal, a psychotherapeutic goal, and said the
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: restoration of the ego self-accessed is the great work of
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: Jungian analysis and is unique and different from other kinds
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: of psychotherapy. That our task is to discover the image-making
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: function inside of us, to be able to clear out
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: the complexes that are confusing us, and to begin to
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: discover the images and symbols that are generated by the
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: relationship between the ego and the self, and to, through that,
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: have our own kind of personal mythology that works and
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: is active in facilitating this relationship to the deeper parts
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: of us. The language may sound very exalted, but in
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: a practical sense, this is what your day-to-day dreams are
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: trying to do. Your every morning dreams are trying to
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: nudge you into this place. And so the Gnostics, or
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: at least the goal of the Gnostics for Jung, just
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: rang true as absolutely, this is the individuated story of religion,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: where it can only happen inside of you, and that
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: the Gnostic sects were experimenting with ways they thought could
• 35:44
  Speaker 3: facilitate that There's no way for us to know through
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: the Nag Hammadi fragments whether or not it was or
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: wasn't effective at that time. But the goal and the images,
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: that made sense. And we are still trying to find
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: a secret spark inside of things. And Jung saw that
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: resurgence of that task in alchemy.
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: Okay. And that alchemy kind of bridged the Gnostic tradition with,
• 36:31
  Speaker 4: for Jung, the psychoanalytic process, that the alchemical images were
• 36:40
  Speaker 4: images generated materially by the alchemists who took them literally
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: in a pre-chemistry time, but which were really the alchemists'
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: projections onto matter, and that those are the processes of
• 37:01
  Speaker 4: the unconscious, of heating things and melting things and... You're
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: a resident alchemist, so you can say much more about
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: this than I can.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: Well, but the assumption is that even in the basest
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: of things, let's say lead, which is the cheapest, most common,
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: even poisonous metal, but there is some secret in it
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: which can reveal something. that it can be gold, that
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: it can be the most precious thing. They also were
• 37:39
  Speaker 3: fascinated with theses, which is the vilest of things. And
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: so in the vile thing is somehow the most precious thing.
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: And Heraclitus and the fragments of Heraclitus, who was an
• 37:57
  Speaker 3: ancient Greek philosopher, had this also wonderful idea. And he said,
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: you know, if If one situation, if one quality goes
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: to its furthest extreme, it will suddenly become its opposite.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: So there is something inside of us that's archetypal, which
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: he felt was being language in the mythology of the
• 38:22
  Speaker 3: Gnostics and also the projections of the alchemists. That's a
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: truth about our structure as human beings.
• 38:30
  Speaker 4: That even although the Gnostics denied or reviled the material world,
• 38:38
  Speaker 4: there is nonetheless that spark of the divine. And in
• 38:42
  Speaker 4: the lead, which can be poisonous and heavy and thick,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: or feces, which is vile, that there was something redeeming,
• 38:53
  Speaker 4: a potential for something else. And I think this idea
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: of the opposites is so central to Jung's work and
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: conceptual framework, that it's very seldom just one thing. And
• 39:22
  Speaker 4: don't we have a hard time holding on to that?
• 39:25
  Speaker 4: You know, the people that we just can't stand. whatever
• 39:31
  Speaker 4: group they are, they're out there somewhere.
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: Yes. They're all the lead, they're all the darkness, and
• 39:37
  Speaker 3: we're all the good stuff.
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: And like the alchemists who patiently, with their bellows and
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: their fires and whatever else, worked at transforming and discovering
• 39:52
  Speaker 4: the inner gold. You know, there we are, that we
• 39:57
  Speaker 4: can't just split things into good, bad, right, wrong, and
• 40:08
  Speaker 4: those kinds of things. Somewhere there's gold to be found.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: And even in the Sophia myth that Because Sophia splits,
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: then she is living in a world that is a
• 40:25
  Speaker 3: kind of illusion, which is exactly how we are, which
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: is the coordination, you know, humans created the pathology, that
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: when we are split inside of ourselves, we create these
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: kind of neurotic fantastical interpretations of the world that are
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: not often true or realistic. Everything gets very muddied. There
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: is a spark of truth in everything, but it can
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: become so covered and smeared and messed up by the
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: fleeing from the parts of reality that we find frightening
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: or distasteful. And in that way, we're kind of lost.
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: You know, I want to take a step into something
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: else here, because I think it's really fascinating to explore,
• 41:24
  Speaker 4: and that is the image of the serpent.
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Sethian Gnosticism.
• 41:31
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 41:34
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: Good stuff.
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: Let her rip after I throw you one more nugget here,
• 41:41
  Speaker 4: which is that in one version of Gnostic cosmology, is
• 41:49
  Speaker 4: that the serpent actually befriended Adam and Eve by saying,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: you know, come on over, have a taste of this.
• 41:58
  Speaker 4: You know, the Lord says you shouldn't do it, but
• 42:00
  Speaker 4: he's just trying to prevent you from knowing more, and
• 42:04
  Speaker 4: you're actually entitled to know more. So at any rate,
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: the serpent as having empowered Adam and Eve, and So,
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: say some more about this.
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: Well, in Sethian Gnosticism, Adam and Eve had a third
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: son named Seth. And Seth preserves the lineage of spiritual knowledge.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: And part of that knowledge is this struggle for consciousness,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: this struggle for light. And in that particular Gnostic sect,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: the symbol of the serpent, just as you were saying,
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: becomes a symbol of wisdom. Now, there's a great story
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: that someone had told me many years ago, that as
• 43:04
  Speaker 3: Jung and the other early analysts were forming the Zurich Institute,
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: they began to notice that many of the candidates fairly
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: early on would have dreams of being bitten by serpents.
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: And it became so ubiquitous that people were troubled if
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: they didn't get a dream of being bitten by a serpent.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: That was an essential ingredient. And at some point, apparently,
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: some of the analysts wanted Jung to comment on that.
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: And he said, yes, yes, yes, of course. Because a
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: correct analytic interpretation bites the ego deeply. At first, it
• 43:45
  Speaker 3: feels poisonous and it makes the ego feel unwell, but
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: it is the poison of wisdom. And once that wisdom
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: is integrated into the ego, it is revived and exists
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: in a higher and better functioning. So it is the
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: serpent that, yes, it does hurt and And sometimes analysts
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: need to speak unspeakable things to the client because so
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: much is split off, which brings us back to the splitting.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: Often what's spoken is the thing that I don't want
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: to hear.
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: So it's a wonderful example in this framework for today
• 44:33
  Speaker 4: of Gnosticism and opposites and Jung's work of here is
• 44:39
  Speaker 4: a symbol. An image that bridges those gaps. It's the worst,
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: most awful, fearsome, bad, unquote, unquote, thing. And it has
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: that gold in it of wisdom and knowledge and psychological growth. Wisdom. Yeah,
• 45:08
  Speaker 4: and serpents used to be part of the temples of Asclepius,
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: the god of healing. There were dreamatoriums, 250 or so,
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: all around the Mediterranean. And these were non-poisonous snakes, but
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: they were part of the temple. They were part of
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: Cretan religion. They've been part of Christianity's sects of... Can't
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: say much about it, but we keep going to snake, snake, snake,
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: perhaps in order to reconcile these opposites.
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: So coming full circle, we often talk about the snakes
• 45:52
  Speaker 3: are associated with wisdom, but the Greek word for wisdom
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: is Sophia. So if the venom of the snake is
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: wisdom that at first makes you feel unwell, but then
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: actually liberates you, that the snake is the earthly Sophia.
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: She is the Sophia that is moving, slithering in holes
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: in the ground, that she is alive and is unrecognized
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: and even reviled by the false world. that the Demurge
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: is the purely materialistic, literalistic attitude, that what the Demurge
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: has created and said, this is the divine, it's actions,
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: all of this world of suffering and problems. But moving
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: around underneath the leaves, underneath the ground, is a spark
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: of Sophia, and that if we encounter her, she is uncanny,
• 46:59
  Speaker 3: If she bites us and a little bit of Sophia
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: gets into us, puts us at great odds to the
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: world that we thought we were living in. And the
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: dangerous part comes is that we realize there's something else
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: totally different that's going on inside of me and perhaps
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: inside of the world. So that tremendous ambivalence that we
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: have towards wisdom, What I.
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: Am thinking of now is the thread that runs through this.
• 47:40
  Speaker 4: From time immemorial, people going to the temples of Asclepius,
• 47:47
  Speaker 4: people in these Gnostic sects out there in the desert,
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: and psychoanalysis of It doesn't get downloaded to you. You
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: have to go looking for it. You have to make
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: the effort. People walked and walked and traveled to get
• 48:07
  Speaker 4: to one of these healing temples. People come every week,
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: more or less, for psychoanalytic work. The power resides in
• 48:23
  Speaker 4: us to seek it. And I think that is heartening
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: and true that it doesn't have to just descend on
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: you from the outside if you're lucky.
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: Like the serpent, it comes out of the ground. It
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: comes right by your foot, you know, and nips you.
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: And you're like, oh, my gosh. I didn't want to
• 48:55
  Speaker 3: know that. And by the way, this is one of
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: the tremendous crises of our time right now, is that
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: we have created these information systems around us that we
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: call them echo chambers. So if I believe something, I
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: can find environments that just reinforce whatever it demurge self-creation
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: is out there and that facts now become dangerous. And
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: so we once had an administration that said no one
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: in the federal government is permitted to ever use the
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: word climate change, that that is not permitted. in any
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: federal agency. That was previous president had set that as
• 49:46
  Speaker 3: a presidential order. So saying climate change is like the
• 49:55
  Speaker 3: bite of the serpent. The fact that the climate may
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: be changing could be very upsetting. It's frightening. I don't
• 50:03
  Speaker 3: want to know this. I don't want to be upset.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: So don't bite me with the facts. So let's banish
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: whatever it is that we don't like and pretend it
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: doesn't exist or pretend we can squash it in one
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: way or another. But sooner or later, the serpent of
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: wisdom is going to give us a nip. And the
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: world actually hasn't changed in any way. But we then
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: know something that we had been refusing to know.
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: Wouldn't that be nice? To just not have to know
• 50:43
  Speaker 4: stuff and to have the external world be harmonious, be
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: consistent with our beliefs, provide us with the kind of
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: stability and security and happily ever after. If only you
• 51:02
  Speaker 4: do this, this, this, and this, that would be really,
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: really great. And the awful truth, as ever, you know,
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: as Adam and Eve discovered, you've got to make your
• 51:21
  Speaker 4: way in a harder world. You have to learn how
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: to farm and go to the well to get water
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: and give it a go. And for the Gnostics, you
• 51:35
  Speaker 4: have a spark of the divine, and that that will
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: help you become your best, most realistic and empowered self.
• 51:50
  Speaker 4: And when the snakes of life bite us, the question is,
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: what do we do with that? What do we do
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: with that?
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: Can we call it wisdom? Wisdom that makes us feel unwell.
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: Can we use it? And to really literalize this, the
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: way that people who work with snakes become immune to
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: snakebite is by titrating their venom and injecting tiny amounts
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: and then increasing those amounts over time. And I think that,
• 52:27
  Speaker 4: in a way, is a great image for life. We're
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: going to be bitten. And, you know, how can we...
• 52:39
  Speaker 4: surmount it and not be so vulnerable to it because
• 52:49
  Speaker 4: here we are on this earth the way that it
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: is and we're able if we apply ourselves. I love
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: the images of these Gnostic sects out in the desert
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: with all these ascetic practices around you know, food and
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: ritual and all the rest of it. You know, they
• 53:13
  Speaker 4: worked at it. I personally don't want to go into
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: the desert and eat that way, but there are lots
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: of ways to work on our own becoming and our
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: own growing and strengthening.
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: That is absolutely true. You know, from the Gnostic standpoint,
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: because you had brought up Eden, that Eden was created
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: by the Demurge, and that Adam and Eve were human
• 53:45
  Speaker 3: beings who were hypnotized into thinking the world that the
• 53:49
  Speaker 3: Demurge had created was the real world, and everything is
• 53:53
  Speaker 3: great and fine, and I'm sleepy, and the senses and
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: the animal instincts are doing just perfectly well. And then
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: the serpent, the serpent of wisdom, bites us, And then
• 54:10
  Speaker 3: we can discern good from evil. And for the Gnostics,
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: the realization is, wait a minute, this world of pain
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: and suffering is the evil place. That the good thing
• 54:26
  Speaker 3: is in the true, spiritual, real world. And that I
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: have been asleep. And that once we awaken from this
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: hypnosis of thinking that this world is the only world,
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: then we understand that we have to labor, labor in
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: this world, but also labor to try to find our
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: way back or find our way to a much higher
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: perception of who we are and what the world is,
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: which our senses cannot report to us, that the imagination
• 55:09
  Speaker 3: inspired by something deep inside of us, tells us that
• 55:15
  Speaker 3: what our eyes see is an incomplete picture. And the
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: thing that's added to what our eyes see is meaning.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: That what the self provides through its symbolic illuminations of
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: your life are levels of meaning, that your eyes can't
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: see but are in fact there.
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: I think I would also like to put in a
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: plug for this material world that is precious and beautiful
• 56:01
  Speaker 4: and harsh, tragic, And here we are. And so it's
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: up to us also to bridge that gap between a
• 56:17
  Speaker 4: consciousness and an awareness and a kind of eros. And
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: the bodies that we live in and the things that
• 56:30
  Speaker 4: we have to do to get through the day, the week,
• 56:33
  Speaker 4: the year, This is it. Everything we do, we do
• 56:41
  Speaker 4: with ourselves. From cooking dinner to meditating to reading to
• 56:52
  Speaker 4: loving a child. And we can make the most of it.
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: We hope.
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: Well, I think that Jung's idea that human beings are
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: essential and that we bring a level of consciousness, that
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: our bodies know how to live in this world and
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: that we have instincts that help us organize to the
• 57:23
  Speaker 3: beauty and the terrors of the world. But it's our
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: consciousness that allows us to turn our instinctive impulses into
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: a form of art. That's why cooking just feeds your body,
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: but it's consciousness that turns it into the art of
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: gourmet combinations of things, the art of creating housing, the
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: art of clothing our bodies. It's the human imagination that
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: adds beauty and improvements to things that our instincts would
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: have given us only a rudimentary experience of.
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: So where in Gnostic cosmology is Eros? Is love, empathy, beauty,
• 58:15
  Speaker 4: appreciation for all those kinds of things that we just
• 58:20
  Speaker 4: have skirted it, but we haven't landed right on that square,
• 58:24
  Speaker 4: and I'd like to.
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: I think that in Valentinian Gnosticism, that everything that was
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: associated with the physical world was thought of as a
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: stumbling block, that there is an extraordinary asceticism. And so
• 58:42
  Speaker 3: one did not seek for beauty in the physical world
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: or even goodness in the physical world, that it was
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: found in the imaginal world. It was found exclusively in
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: the internal world. I have to say, though, that Much
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: of our feeling about the beauty of the world is
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: afforded to us because in modernity, the world doesn't affect
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: us as negatively as it did in the ancient world.
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: I mean, 2,000 years ago, most of us were fighting
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: to not starve, that we were seeing maybe 80% of
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: our babies pass away or women passing away during labor,
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: that that the physical life was very, very difficult and painful.
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: Disease went unchecked, etc., etc. We live in an age,
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: at least in America, where we can afford to see
• 59:47
  Speaker 3: the physical world in its beautiful and tamed aspects that
• 59:53
  Speaker 3: is subject to the remarkable capacity to shape our surroundings
• 59:59
  Speaker 3: in so many ways. But in the more ancient world,
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: nature was red in tooth and claw and that the
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 3: physical world was mostly really hard and really difficult and
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: really painful. And so thinking there's got to be someplace
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 3: better than this, I think was the common lot for
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: most people.
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: So it's interesting. I'm, building on what you're saying, extending it,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: so edit this if it needs to be, that you're saying,
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: I think, that back in those times, denying the importance
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: or the meaning of the material world was compensatory to
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: finding meaning in the realm within and the imaginal and
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: spiritual realm. But I wonder if today we need to
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: go in a way back the other way because things
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: have gotten out of balance and we are so divorced
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: from the natural world and spend so much time on
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: electronic devices and work cubicles and all the other accoutrements
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 4: of modern life. that we've lost the connection with instinct,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 4: with nature, and with those grounding realities that electric lights
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 4: and heated rooms and television screens can't give us.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: And I think you're absolutely right that Jung was not
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: advocating for some remarkable ascetic spirituality. And in fact, the
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 3: early Catholic Church took on much of that asceticism that
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 3: the Gnostics had, the demonization of sexuality, the veneration of poverty.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: So we see in the early organizations that they were
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 3: definitely influenced in this dualistic thinking. that spirit and matter
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: cannot be resolved. So you are advocating for exactly the
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 3: attitude that is able to combine spirit and matter in
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: a symbolic attitude, which allows both to be undiminished and
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 3: yet for there to be a new attitude. And I
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: think this is what the alchemists were offering, which is,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: There is a secret in matter. There is something beautiful
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: in matter. And they would project the anima mundi, which
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 3: is this divine, exquisite divine feminine that moves like an
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 3: orchestral reality through all of nature. This great ensoulment of
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: nature with something that is beautiful and remarkable and worthy
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: to be sought out.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 4: And so, in a way, the beat goes on.
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 3: We're still there.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 4: Of relating materiality and spirituality. Relating consciousness and the unconscious.
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 4: How do we deal with the opposites? What are our
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 4: dreams telling us? That it's a continual process. of balancing, integrating, discriminating.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: We're in a dance with ourselves, with each other, with
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 4: the world.
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 3: And we are caught between choices all the time, and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 3: perhaps more so in the modern world than ever, because
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: we have more options than we ever had. I'll quickly
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: tell a dream, which brings us down to a very
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: earthy level, all of this mystical opposites. really is right
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 3: in your living room, like every day. I once had
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 3: Anne Nala Sand, who was very refined, European, very, very smart, very,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: very educated. And she was a professor, and she was
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: residing in a small home near the university. And that
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: was very much her life, even though it was in
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: the United States. Her lifestyle was very much like a
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 3: European professorial relationship. In Europe, the professors would actually live
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: on the campus. They would come into the dining hall
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 3: in a robe. They would have breakfast with everyone. That
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 3: was her whole life. So there were qualities of that.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 3: But she began to have a powerful yearning and fantasy
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 3: to actually purchase a place outside of town with acreage.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: and to own horses. So this other vision of a
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: bucolic life, of a life connected to nature, which is
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: just what you were saying, kept happening. And in her,
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 3: we might not understand it, but it seemed like an
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: irreconcilable tension that she could only have one or the other,
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: but psychologically could not find a way to live in
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: both of those worlds. She also was a music professor,
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 3: that's important in the resolution. So this tension of, should
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: I go and buy this place? No, no, no, I
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 3: have to stay here in town near the university and
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: back and forth and back and forth. It was a
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 3: mysterious agony for me because part of me thought, buy
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 3: the place in the country, commute to the university.
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah, do both, right? Just do both. Don't we do
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 4: that a lot?
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 3: But her psyche was demanding something more profound, so she
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 3: has this dream. She's sitting on a porch in this
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 3: country home, and she looks up, and there is a
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 3: wind chime above her. And as the wind blows, it
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: plays symphonic music. And she woke up from that dream
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: and suddenly she felt like she could move to the country.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 3: And rather quickly, she found everything and created what she
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: wanted within the year. So, for whatever reason, there was
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 3: this split in the psyche. But the wind chime, which
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: is activated by something as natural as a breeze, still
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: plays symphonic music so that both nature and life whatever
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 3: classical music meant to her or her role in that world,
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 3: they actually could both live together in that transcendent symbol
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: of the symphonic wind chime. So that's a pair of opposites,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: which for this person was an irreconcilable tension. The transcendent
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 3: function provides a symbol that resolves a tension, And in
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: the great scheme of the Gnostics, the irreconcilable, terrible earth
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 3: and the glorified spirit of God is reconciled in the
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: mythopoetic story of Jesus, who is both a material human
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: being and God who reconciles the two worlds, the two
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 3: universes of matter and spirit. And one might say from
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 3: a purely psychological standpoint that the human psyche creates the symbol,
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: the image of the Redeemer in order to resolve the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 3: excruciating Gnostic tension where the only solution was just escape.
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: It's a lovely dream and a wonderful symbol and image
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 4: of how that heals. They're just wind chimes. They get,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: you know, the wind blows and they play symphonic music.
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 4: So this is what we hope for, what we work.
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 4: toward is that third thing that reconciles the tension and
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: the opposites so that it's not materiality or spirituality, you know,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: good or bad, strong or weak, but somehow all.
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 3: That's right. So the synergy now lives together that whatever
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 3: the nature is, let's say, and the urban experience of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 3: being a music professor now are restored. Now they are
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: a couple and they're not split off and they get
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 3: to live together in the pleroma, you know, in the
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 3: fullness of the greater universe.
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 4: So as Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek used to say,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: let it be so.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 3: Let it be so. Absolutely. The great adventure.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 4: Let us step out of these Gnostic depths and move
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: on and into a dream.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: Before we do that, I would like to just say briefly,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 3: our new book on dream interpretation, Dream of Lives. We
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: have a book? DreamWise is available for pre-order on Amazon
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: and many other different platforms where you can find your book.
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 3: And so you can join us in enhancing your own
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: jump into dream interpretation.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: And take a look online at our new website, dreamwisebook.com,
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 4: and come join us for our Dreamography podcast. project and
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 4: learn a little more about the book and just explore.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 3: Jump in the water with us.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 4: Come on in.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: So today's dreamer is.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: A 58-year-old female who is a business and life entrepreneur. coach.
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 3: And she offers us this dream. I'm floating in a lake.
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 3: I'm not far from shore, but I am in deep
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 3: enough water that I'm unable to touch the bottom of
• 1:11:29
  Speaker 3: the lake. The water is black, but not menacing. I
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 3: am naked, floating on my back. The sun is shining
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 3: above like a beautiful summer day. I notice that that
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 3: I have a black seatbelt wrapped around my waist. It
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 3: is not only fastened, but knotted. I'm holding two babies.
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 3: I would guess to be approximately nine months old. They
• 1:11:58
  Speaker 3: are boys. I realize they too have black seatbelts fastened
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: and knotted around their waist, and their seatbelt straps are
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 3: knotted to my seatbelt around my waist. The baby seatbelts
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: are approximately two feet in length. I'm floating comfortably as
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 3: all is going well with each baby tucked in the
• 1:12:24
  Speaker 3: crook of my armpits with their heads resting on each
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 3: side of my shoulders. I believe all is going well,
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 3: but I realize I may not be able to float forever.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 3: I begin to feel unease, and one of the babies squirms.
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 3: In order to reposition the squirming baby, the other baby
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 3: must be let go, and he sinks below the water.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: I then help the submerged baby to the surface, who
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: is now choking on water. But this upsets the balance,
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 3: and the other baby dips below water. I'm caught in
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 3: a balancing act of trying to maintain my balance while
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 3: keeping the two babies calm and with their heads above water.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: I also must pat each choking baby on the back
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: in an upright position to clear the fluid they've swallowed.
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 3: This further exacerbates the situation and the alternating sinking situation
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: happens more frequently. At the same time, I'm also trying
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: to untie the knots in the seatbelts as I feel
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 3: the babies would be better off if not connected to me.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: This back-and-forth struggle continues for some time, until I awaken.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 3: For context, she tells us, I recently lost my 29-year-old
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: son to overdose. He's had a serious addiction for 10 years.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 3: Nine years ago, I lost my only other son when
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 3: he was 17 to an accidental overdose. The main feelings
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 3: in the dream, she writes, I feel calm at the
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: beginning of the dream all is well and I'm comfortable.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: I'm confident in my ability to float. I become more
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: and more anxious as the dream progresses to the point
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: I am frantic about saving the babies. I'm frustrated at
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: not being able to undo the seatbelts or untie the knots.
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 3: And she adds, I believe the lake I am in
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: is the lake that our family has a cottage on.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 3: I've always been a strong swimmer and an excellent floater.
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 3: I'm very confident in the water and am very attached
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 3: to water. The babies in my dream are not my sons.
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: I feel no more connection to them beyond the need
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: to save them. I'd been thinking about seatbelts the other day,
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 3: as I have a seatbelt for my dog when she's
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: in the car. I stopped using it for several months,
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 3: but found it and thought I should be using it regularly.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: These are intense images.
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 4: I think where I want to begin is with my
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 4: own reaction to starting with the dream and then the
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 4: loss of her two adult sons. And the reason that
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 4: I report that out is that it's important to pay
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 4: attention to feeling because what arises in you or me
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 4: or any of us in hearing a dream or hearing
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 4: a story is very likely part of the larger field.
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: And These are huge life events. And contrasted with her
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: not having any particular attachment to either of the dream babies,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 4: other than making conscientious efforts to keep everyone literally in
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: the dream afloat. It goes from, I'm playing with the
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 4: image of floating. And I think most of us have
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 4: had that experience of the ego is given kind of
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 4: a time out while you're floating, usually with your eyes closed,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: in this sort of oceanic experience, even if it's a
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 4: lake of just you let go. There's nothing really to do.
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 4: But we don't float for a really long period of
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 4: time because all of a sudden we wonder, like, okay,
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 4: where am I? Time to come back to consciousness or
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 4: more consciousness. The water is black but not menacing, and
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 4: the sun is shining. So everything starts out in this
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 4: lovely kind of mood and relationship. of our material body
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 4: to water which is often the unconscious. And then we
• 1:17:50
  Speaker 4: have the seatbelts and two babies and they have seatbelts
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 4: and things really get much, much more anxious in this
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 4: kind of mission impossible scenario that the dream maker presents.
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: Back and forth struggle continues for some time, and that's
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 4: the story of the dream. Back and forth struggle to
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 4: keep new life alive with black seatbelts that are useless
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 4: and encumbrances in the water. What are you thinking, Joseph?
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: My first.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: Attitude is that it would be easy to say, oh,
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 3: this is a dream about her two sons. But the
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 3: dream is often saying something that we don't know. So
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 3: to say that, oh, this is a mom trying to
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: keep her two sons safe Well, but she knows that
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 3: and she's lived that. So it's difficult sometimes to not
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 3: get seduced by her life context and to say, okay,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 3: symbolically rather than literally. She's floating on a black lake
• 1:19:32
  Speaker 3: and it's rather beautiful. And I think you were inferring, Deb,
• 1:19:37
  Speaker 3: that there's something kind of blissful about floating in a
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: kind of almost uterine regression. Nothing to do, it's easy,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 3: there's really no effort. And as she is in this
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 3: uterine environment, images of babies start to populate in the
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 3: psyche that are tethered to her because she herself is
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: in the arms of the great mother and the great
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: mother who is mysterious, thus the water is black and warm,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 3: that it's unfathomable. And yes, it does evoke these baby energies.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 3: And in the beginning, everything is okay. So I ask myself,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: where do things go south? Where do things suddenly become
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: a problem? She believes all is going well, and it
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: is going well. But then she has a thought. I
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 3: may not be able to float forever. So what happens
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: is she becomes anxious. And she begins to impose something
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 3: into the situation. And once she begins to frighten herself,
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: then there's a squirming energy. And then she misses the
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 3: thing that's odd in the dream. I'm uneasy, I'm uneasy,
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 3: a baby squirms. And the response is, well, just let
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: go of the other baby and let it fall under
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 3: the water and I'll handle the squirmy one. That's a
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 3: very extraordinary decision to make if that was the real life,
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: to just totally let go of it rather than just
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: let them both squirm a little bit on your shoulders.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: I mean, that would seem like a better solution. this
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 3: unease begins to happen, not just in her, but with
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: all the babies. She's kind of a baby too. All
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 3: three of the babies become uneasy. And then it's a
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: struggle to keep consciousness here, because for something to fall
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: under the water is to slip away from consciousness. They
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 3: are tethered to her. Can you imagine what would happen
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: if she was successful at untying the seatbelt, then the
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 3: babies would just slip out of her hands.
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, their seatbelts are knotted to my seatbelt around my waist.
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 3: So once they slip under the water, that seatbelt.
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 4: So they're tethered to one another. Right.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 3: But the part of her that wonders, maybe it would
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 3: be better if I took off the seatbelt, which then
• 1:22:33
  Speaker 3: means that the infant's could, and maybe they should for
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 3: all I know, rest back into the unconscious. And so
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 3: at that point, she may be able to return to
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: her own adult position, which is she's very capable at
• 1:22:52
  Speaker 3: navigating waters. She's not a baby. She knows what to do.
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: She can swim to shore. She's a good floater. She
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: knows what to do. But when the infantile part of
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: her gets too close, to her, then it's confusing, priorities
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 3: are confusing, things are uneasy, this is unsustainable, I'm too vulnerable,
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: I couldn't float forever and I become anxious and that
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 3: is what happens. When the young parts of us take
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 3: us over, we're in a moment where we are competent
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 3: but all of a sudden, the inner infant disrupts the
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: ego's ability to do what it knows to do and
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden, it can't quite function correctly. What
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 3: do you think, Deb? What are you indexing on here?
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 4: All is well in the dream, as long as the
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 4: dream ego is just floating. you know, this sort of blissful, uroboric,
• 1:24:07
  Speaker 4: oceanic state of not having to pay attention. There's nothing
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 4: that has to be done. Everybody's peaceful. But then, as ever,
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 4: this is a state that cannot be permanent. And the tethers,
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 4: are seatbelts. Seatbelts are car equipment. And she references that
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 4: in her comments about she's got a seatbelt for her dog.
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: So cars are very much ego functions. They go where
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 4: we drive them. We're in charge. And I wonder if
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 4: this is a dream about... all being well as long
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 4: as the dream ego can float. But as soon as
• 1:25:16
  Speaker 4: babies start wriggling and the water gets cold and all
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 4: the rest of it in this necessarily impermanent state, Then
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 4: the anxiety comes up. Then it's a difficult, almost impossible situation.
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 4: And that she feels untying the knots in the seatbelts
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 4: would be better for the babies, be better if they
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 4: weren't connected to her.
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 4: And because she mentions the loss of her two sons,
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 4: I'm wondering if the process that we all have in
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 4: losing people we love is still going on of how
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 4: to resolve this loss of being tied to them, wanting
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 4: to untie their R-naughts, in the seatbelts, and Psyche is
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 4: speaking to this.
• 1:26:39
  Speaker 3: So if we take even the play of words with
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: your interpretation, the not is the not letting go, the no,
• 1:26:49
  Speaker 3: the not. And so in service to what you were
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 3: saying is, yeah, maybe... She thinks the babies would be
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: better off if she were to let go and then
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 3: become her own independent person. She's already de-connected from feeling.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 3: She wakes up and she doesn't really have much feeling
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 3: for the babies. Perhaps that is the beginning of a
• 1:27:21
  Speaker 3: capacity to let go because if she was overwhelmed with feeling,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 3: the concept would be one couldn't even imagine the process
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 3: of letting go so the feelings have to be quieted
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: a bit. I also think that the baby who resurfaces
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: is choking on water. I was also thinking about the
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 3: way we can choke on emotion. That when we get
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 3: very emotional, it's like we can't even speak. It hits
• 1:27:51
  Speaker 3: the throat in a particular way. So trying to keep
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: from being choked on the ocean of grief that she
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 3: is floating on and the ocean of sorrow that she
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 3: may be floating on and I may not be able
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 3: to float forever that it may be that I will
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 3: descend into this black ocean of grief and one she's
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: trying to for that not to happen I'm not suggesting
• 1:28:28
  Speaker 3: that she should necessarily drown in notion of grief either.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: She has to relate to it, not suffocate in it.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: So I can understand the challenge of how to orient
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 3: to the situation she's in.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think we're very much, you know, on either
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 4: similar or the same kind of page, that this is
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 4: a dream that depicts the situation, that says, here's the situation.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: And there is, as yet, no lysis, no real outcome
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 4: of then what happens. that somebody sees this and comes
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 4: out in a rowboat and says, get in, or you
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 4: discover that you can touch bottom and start to walk ashore.
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 4: We could imagine lots of outcomes that we would wish for.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: But I think this dream says just exactly what she writes.
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 4: This back and forth struggle continues for some time until
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 4: I awaken from the dream and that this process is
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 4: a huge process. It is a struggle, a back and
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: forth struggle. And that psyche is validating how difficult this is.
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: So if we take that and that the difficulty is unease,
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 3: and that it's the way that she interprets the dis-ease,
• 1:30:50
  Speaker 3: And the squirming of the babies that then sets off
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: this kind of swinging of the balance kind of back
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: and forth. If she could tolerate the dis-ease, if the
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 3: baby was just allowed to squirm as it rested against
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: her armpit, then she could be able to float in
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 3: that world. But And she is seeking to restore ease,
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 3: by the way. I may not be able to float.
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: That makes me uneasy, and I want to feel ease again.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: So she is struggling against the uneasiness of her situation,
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 3: and then that sets in motion this tilting back and forth.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: But maybe ease isn't the only thing to shoot for
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: in this situation. Yeah.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 4: I think you really... understanding something important here, that the
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 4: dream ego becomes agitated, which makes all kinds of sense
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 4: as all of us and everyone who's listening will go,
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 4: oh my gosh, what are you going to do? How
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 4: do you balance this? What do you do? Yes, but
• 1:32:12
  Speaker 4: the baby's squirming. And maybe what you're pointing to is
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 4: how not to become so frantic in this kind of
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 4: really difficult mission impossible situation that the dream ego, perhaps
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 4: like the waking ego, wants to manage it. And it's
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 4: beyond ego's capability. And it is awful. But the frantic
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 4: efforts aren't actually effective.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 3: Right. And that making the babies comfortable in that situation
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 3: is actually not the most important thing. The most important
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 3: thing is to stay afloat.
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 1:33:10
  Speaker 3: And that is really quite powerful advice for any of
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 3: us that have had an enormous loss is I just
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 3: need to stay afloat. I mean, these terrible, painful, excruciating,
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 3: awful things have happened. Can I just stay afloat? Which
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: is often a metaphor for just basic functionality.
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 4: And the implication is, I'm speaking like the dream ego,
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 4: I have to save them. I have to make this work.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 4: I have to find a way. Yeah. But the radical
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 4: acceptance is, what if I can't? What if I really can't?
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 4: What if this is not a function that ego can provide,
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 4: that I can save them? I can make it. You know,
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 4: if we really imagined this out in black water, Feet
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 4: don't touch the bottom. No rescue is forthcoming. What if
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 4: you can't?
• 1:34:27
  Speaker 3: And the other interesting and odd thing is I'm floating
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 3: in a lake and I'm not far from shore. And
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 3: the impulse to just hold the baby is tight. Do
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 3: a little scissor kick on your back and start heading
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 3: to shore because the babies are a little squirmy. They're
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: not enjoying it. But from the dream ego's position, she
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 3: can't conceive of that at the moment. But it is
• 1:34:58
  Speaker 3: interesting that something inside of the dream ego can't imagine
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: getting to shore. So that's curious. Nine months, I think,
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: is also important. Sometimes when there's such a specific timeline,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 3: maybe we would go back nine months and look at,
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: did you give birth to something? Could be that the
• 1:35:30
  Speaker 3: babies represent two important creative projects that you've been working on.
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 3: Maybe nine months ago you started writing a book and
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 3: you started a new job. and then very recently this
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: terrible tragedy happened with the death of your son and
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: you just can't, can't manage to keep alive these two
• 1:35:53
  Speaker 3: creative potentials. I just can't keep writing the book and
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 3: I can't keep the new job. I, I can't, I
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 3: can't stay afloat and keep all of these creative, or
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 3: at least these two creative potentials, creative projects, creative ideas, uh,
• 1:36:12
  Speaker 3: in my hands. And that's very normal when you have
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 3: a tragedy like that. So you may need to let
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 3: go of some of these baby projects, but also understand
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 3: that this is metaphoric. So maybe you'll let go of
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 3: the book project as a baby, but it doesn't mean
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: that it can't be revived. or step away from the
• 1:36:42
  Speaker 3: new job, it doesn't mean your career can't be revived
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 3: when it rests into the black water because you only
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 3: have so many hands, you only have so much energy
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 3: in the midst of such a devastating loss.
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: So she's thinking about cutting them loose. Maybe I could
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 3: just untie the knots and just let go of that
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: book project, let go of the new job, let go
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 3: of some of the things maybe I've started nine months
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 3: ago that seemed really wonderful at the time.
• 1:37:21
  Speaker 4: And the knots of feeling.
• 1:37:25
  Speaker 3: Knotted up feelings that there's a choking on.
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 4: Thank you for sending us this dream. Thank you for
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 4: trusting us with it.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:37:39
  Speaker 4: I hope we have been able to spark something in
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 4: you that resonates and offers you something on your way forward. Indeed.
• 1:37:54
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:37:58
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• 1:38:03
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