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Forging the Upward Thread: Why Do We Create Religions? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst on Cape Cod. Today,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: we're going to talk about a topic that was selected
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: by our supporter community on Patreon. We're going to be
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: talking about what Jung called the religious function of the psyche.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: And it's a big topic. It's one I've wanted to
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: talk about for a while. So I was really excited
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: that our patrons picked it. If you would like to
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: help us pick future topics, check out our Patreon. You
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: can go to our website, click on the podcast tab,
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: and you'll see that there is a link there to
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: our Patreon for just a handful of dollars a month.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: You can support us And also you'll get some nice
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: benefits like bonus material and, of course, the ability to
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: help us pick future topics. So what did Jung mean
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: by the religious function of the psyche? This was an
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: important idea to him. And maybe I'll just start, Joseph,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: by pointing out that Jung believed that we had a
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: religious instinct and that the religious instinct was every bit
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: as strong as the other instincts for like food and creativity,
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: and sexual activity.
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: Yes, it was the last of the instincts that he
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: added in his canon of ideas. And he was questioning,
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: you know, is the drive to religion, is it an instinct?
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Is it a function? Is it coming from some other
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: creative part of the psyche? As he was trying to
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: define it. But what he noticed across cultures and across time,
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: that human beings, have an innate drive towards meaning and
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: connection with something transcendent, and that left in total isolation,
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: human communities create methods, images, rituals, beliefs that tend that drive,
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: that tend that need.
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: So I'm not even sure who said that we have
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: a God-shaped hole in the heart.
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: Who said that? I don't know, but I do like it.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: I've heard it before.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: Got to look it up. But I think that, you know,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: that resonates with a lot of people. And I think
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: that in a way, that's what Jung is saying. He's saying,
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: you know, we're sort of wired to do this. And
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: how do we know that? Because as you just said,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: every culture across time and place has done this. And so...
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: We have some need, probably kind of passed down evolutionarily,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: to relate to the transcendent in some way. And therefore,
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: what Jung says we can know is we can know
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: the God image, that we create a God image. He
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: says we can't know what God is, but we certainly,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: time and again... Across time and space, we create the
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: God image, and frequently there's a lot of commonality in
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: the God images that people create.
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: In the Collected Works 9-2, I think, titled Ion, Jung
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: writes these marvelous essays as he analyzes the ways that
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: gods have looked and been treated over time. from primordial
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: time where trees and mountains and animals were images of
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: the divine, all the way to probably the most recent
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: religious impulse, which has to do with Christianity and God
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: becoming a human being that has all of the feelings
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: and vulnerabilities of humanity. But in general, however this looks,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: the drive to make it, is the thing he was
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: interested in. And central to Jung's psychology is that when
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: there's a misdirection of spiritual energy, people become unwell. And
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: that's really quite a statement. Now, he didn't use the
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: word religion because he understood that people have such complicated,
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: often traumatogenic material around it. So he would talk about
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: the relationship between the ego and the self. And when
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: the ego and the self are not in right relation,
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: we become symptomatic. Another way we could say it is
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: when the ego and the religious function are not working correctly,
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: people can develop compulsions or addictions or strange ideologies.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: They worship the wrong thing.
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: They can, right, worship the wrong thing or fall into
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: some bizarre world the Hale-Bopp comet, you know, cults that
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: wind up with disastrous issues. He said something that I
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: think is relative to this idea of being unwell when
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: our religious instinct is not functioning correctly. It's not a
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: matter of indifference, whether one calls something a mania or
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: a god. When the god is not acknowledged, egomania develops.
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  Speaker 3: and out of this mania comes sickness. So that if
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  Speaker 3: the deep archetypal energies that traditionally find expression in various
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: religious practices are denied, that they will then manifest in
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  Speaker 3: distorted ways, and therefore Jung saw healthy religion as not
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: necessarily an organized creed, but the need for living spiritual experiences,
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: which Lisa reminds me of the A story you had
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: told once before about being in the train station and
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: seeing a quality of light come into the train station.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: And light is often a religious symbol and feeling that
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: a healing process began spontaneously.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: On Saturday, May 17th, join me and Deb for a
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Shadow and Dreams seminar, a sneak preview of how we
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: work with shadow and dreams in this Jungian Life Dream School.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Every night our dreams confront us with shadow, what the
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: waking mind doesn't want to know. Our dreams bring shadow
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: close in order to compensate, compliment, or contradict the conscious attitude.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: During the one hour session, we'll dive deeper into Carl
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Jung's concept of the shadow and see how it fits
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: in with dream work. We'll also conduct a live dream
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: interpretation using a dream submitted by an attendee. There'll be
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: time to ask your questions about Jungian dream analysis and
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: we'll reveal a special TJL Dream School offering for Spring 2025,
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: exclusive to seminar attendees. There will be a recording available
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: if you book a space and then can't make it. So,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: if you're curious about shadow and dreams or would like
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: to know more about our Dream School, we hope to
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: see you at 12 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday, May 17th.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Follow the link in the show notes to book your
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: free space. Jung was very clear that we have religious experiences,
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: and by religious, again, he means tinged with this kind
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: of quality of emotion that we might call numinous or awe-filled,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: and it's an experience. At the end of his life,
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the BBC interview, the interviewer says, do you believe in God?
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: And he kind of pauses, and he said, You know,
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: I'm paraphrasing, but he says something like, believe? I don't
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: need to believe. I know. And what he meant by
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: that was, I've had experiences. I have experienced the godlike thing.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: You know, like you're saying, Joseph, that moment in the
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: train station. I just want to kind of back up
• 8:49
  Speaker 2: Jung's observation that religion is inevitable in the sense that
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: he meant it. by quoting probably one of the most
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: famous commencement addresses ever. That given by David Foster Wallace
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: to the graduating class of Kenyon College in 2005. This
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: is so oft quoted, but it's just so good. He said,
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: as not worshiping. everybody worships. The only choice we get
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship,
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: Wiccan mother goddess or the four noble truths or some
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: infrangible set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: else you worship will eat you alive. And and so
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: i i think you know this goes to your point
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: joseph about like we're going to have that urge that
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: impulse and we may not we say i don't i'm
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: not religious but but it's interesting because in areas where
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: um belief and kind of traditional religions is uh low
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: people are more likely to um follow astrology or believe
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: in ufos That's a research finding. So we need this,
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: and we will manufacture it. If we don't sort of
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: choose it carefully, it'll pop up unconsciously in these ways.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And I think another example, and Jung said this too,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: and we could pull this out, Joseph, if we want,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: in his letter to Bill W. that helped sort of
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: establish Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, what you're suffering from is
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: a spiritual suffering. You're yearning for spirits and you're drinking
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: your spirits instead of relating to them. And that this
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: is why you are ill, to go to your point, Joseph.
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  Speaker 2: So it's like, yeah, you're going to worship something. And
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  Speaker 2: what you worship could make you ill if it's not
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: the right thing, I guess. Right.
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  Speaker 3: Jung writes, the religious interest, which ought normally to be
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  Speaker 3: the greatest and most decisive factor, turned away from the
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  Speaker 3: inner world, and great figures of dogma dwindled to strange
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: and incomprehensible vestiges, a prey to every sort of criticism.
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: So when the religious interest is dismissed, or perhaps even
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: just undeveloped, it's going to become strange and often problematic.
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: And people can develop a kind of religious fervor for
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: something that actually does not connect them to the transcendent.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Because it is a misdirection of the impulse.
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a much clearer way of putting it than
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: how I was saying it.
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  Speaker 3: I like that. Thank you.
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. It's a misdirection of the impulse.
• 12:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So healing is about reviving that connection to the transcendent.
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  Speaker 3: And the ways of doing that are manifold, which is
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  Speaker 3: why there are so many different religious ideas and images.
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  Speaker 3: And then when we look to the Far East, there
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: are hundreds and hundreds of different images of deity with
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: different practices and different ways of coming in touch with
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  Speaker 3: a particular goddess or god or a deva. Because we
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: need to have a way to enter into these imaginal relationships.
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  Speaker 3: When I call them imaginal relationships, that is not dismissive
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  Speaker 3: at all. But the imagination is the realm in which
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: we meet our makers and consequently is part of the sacred.
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  Speaker 3: That's lovely.
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  Speaker 2: I have what I think is a pretty good definition
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  Speaker 2: that Jung gives at one point that I think I'll read.
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  Speaker 2: He says, from the psychological standpoint, religion is a psychic
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: phenomenon which irrationally exists like the fact of our physiology
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: or anatomy. So it's just kind of part of us.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: If this function is lacking, man as an individual lacks
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  Speaker 2: balance because religious experience is an expression of the existence
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  Speaker 2: and function of the unconscious. It is not true that
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: we can manage with reason and will alone. We are,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: on the contrary, continually under the influence of disturbing forces
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: that thwart our reason and our will because they are stronger. Hence,
• 13:59
  Speaker 2: it is that highly rational people suffer most of all
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: from disturbances which they cannot get at either with their
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: reason or their will. From time immemorial, man has called
• 14:10
  Speaker 2: anything he feels or experiences stronger than he is divine
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: or demonic. God is the stronger in him. This psychological
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: definition of God has nothing to do with Christian dogma,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: but it does describe the experience of the other, often
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: a very uncanny opponent, which coincides in the most impressive
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: way with the historical experiences of God.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: What part of that do you want to lift up
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: to toss around a bit?
• 14:44
  Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, there's so much.
• 14:46
  Speaker 3: Exactly. That's why I'm like a little verklempt. Yeah. Yeah.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: But I, you know, I think first of all, just
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: this idea that it's just a part of us, you know,
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and then, and then the other, the other thing that
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: really caught me was the part at the end about
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: it being, you know, a very uncanny opponent, you know,
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: the other within.
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: That there is, there's an active tonicity between the ego
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: and the self. And that the tension between those things
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: helps us grow. That it's not just a suckling process,
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: although it may be when we're quite young. But it's
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: a dynamic process that challenges us. It doesn't just spoon
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: pablum into our mouths.
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: It demands something of you.
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: So I'll read a quick quote from Ann Ulyanov that
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: I like.
• 15:39
  Speaker 2: Uh-huh.
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: In order to heal... we have to revitalize this connection
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: to the transcendent, bringing with it the ability to get
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: up and walk to our fate instead of being dragged
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: there by a neurosis. And thus Jung saw the numinous,
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: even in pathology, it expresses how we have fallen out
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: of the Tao, the center of life. And recovery requires re-discovery.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: mythologization which is this reviving of mythology and it could
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: be a mythology that's built upon your own dreams and
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: fantasies or your own unique experiences of the transcendent such
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: as they occur but part of our work in this
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: episode for all of you is to try to revive
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: your interest in cultivating this experience or even just noticing
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: it because sometimes it happens spontaneously. Yeah. You're just in
• 16:48
  Speaker 3: a moment, you turn and you behold something that fills
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: you with wonder or awe and suddenly you are shivering
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: or welling up with tears. There's a depth of intensity
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: of feeling and it is a beautiful experience awful experience,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: and unlike the average experiences we might have had in
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: the ensuing week or the previous week. So to re-mythologize
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: something means that we need these imaginative representations of the
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: transcendent and how we orient towards it. We have to
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: imagine the way, imagine the path, and reimagine it as
• 17:39
  Speaker 3: we age, because the religion of our childhood is not
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: adequate for our adulthood, which I think is one of
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: the crises that people come to. I mean, when I
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: was a little kid, I went to a Catholic Bible camp,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: which is where I came across the idea of Jesus
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: as the Lamb of God, and they gave us little
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: coloring sheets, and we were literally coloring little pictures of
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: lambs holding flags in their And it was, I mean,
• 18:11
  Speaker 3: I did it, but I was sitting there with this
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: very challenging process of how is this Jesus, how is
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: this God? So, you know, we're offered a mythology and
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: we're offered symbols and pointing towards the divine. But often
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: it's in our spontaneous experiences. When I would go into
• 18:41
  Speaker 3: the far back of our yard that abutted on some
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: wild landscape, and I would go to an old, old
• 18:49
  Speaker 3: pond called Blackfoot's Pond. There was a tree that I'm
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: going to guess now was probably 200 or 300 years old.
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: And I would sit in the crook of the roots,
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: and I was a little, little guy. And I would
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: have this enormous, feeling of well-being and quiet, which I
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: needed so desperately. To me, that made more sense than
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: a lamb holding a flag. So that was my own
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: religious instinct, creating a kind of mythology around the great tree,
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: although I didn't language it to myself.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: In the moment. And you also didn't consciously know that
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: the tree is symbolically connected with the mother.
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: Not at all. Not at eight.
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: But your psyche knew that this was sort of an
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: experience of being connected with the kind of cosmic mother.
• 19:44
  Speaker 3: You know? Quite so. Yeah. So these things happen naturally, although...
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: we may not recognize them or recall them. What I
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: was saying earlier is the lamb with the flag is
• 19:58
  Speaker 3: not an image that is likely to work for me
• 20:01
  Speaker 3: throughout the course of my life. The tree that I
• 20:04
  Speaker 3: was cradled in when I was eight, I'm not sure
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: that that would work either. so that when we understand
• 20:11
  Speaker 3: that the divine is only represented in any number of
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: numinous images, then we can give ourselves permission to re-imagine
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: the divine such as it is, or such as it
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: comes to us, or as Anjulunov was saying, to re-mythologize
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: our religious instincts.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I've always, and I've never asked a Buddhist
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: about this, but I've always thought that that was the
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: meaning of that koan, if you meet the Buddha on
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: the road, kill him. That once a religious content, religious
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: in the psychological sense, once it gets kind of concretized, oh,
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: it's just a lamb with a flag, it's dead. It
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: doesn't have kind of juice in it anymore, and it
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: needs to be, like you're saying, Joseph re-mythologized. I mean,
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: the interesting thing is, I think that's true. And I
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: think for many people, it's like, you know, you see
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: the cross on the outside of the building and it
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: doesn't move you. But then there is something, I think,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: still about the Christian myth that is alive in our culture.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: And that's something we, I think Jung felt so too.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: And that I think could be its own podcast topic.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: But what you're saying is that for any single one
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: of us, we need to decide, what needs to be re-mythologized.
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: And is probably seeking to happen because the psyche has
• 21:42
  Speaker 3: its own wholesome understanding of what's best for itself. And
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: even as I had said earlier, the neuroses, which is
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the symptomatic suffering, is trying to heal the spiritual function,
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: which can seem very strange in the moment. I find
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: myself just wanting to step a little bit back into
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: the religious experience for a moment, because I don't think
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: we can separate that, because the question of, well, why
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: is this image related to the divine, but this other
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: image isn't? And why do different people have one idea
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: or the other? And there's a wonderful quote in Collective
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: Works 11, the numinosum is either a quality belonging to
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: a visible object or the influence of an invisible presence
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: that causes a peculiar alteration of consciousness. Something just so
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: marvelously rational about that.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: A peculiar alteration of consciousness. So for me, the picture
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: of the lamb holding a flag, it caused an alteration
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: of consciousness, but it was mostly just confusion. For me,
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: at least, it didn't create a numinous feeling. But resting
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: in the crook of the tree caused a peculiar alteration
• 23:15
  Speaker 3: of consciousness that made me feel different, oddly different from
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: the eight-year-old boy that I was the day before. So
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: I think that peculiar alteration of consciousness gives us a sense, oh,
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: that may be leading me in the direction of the transcendent.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jung said, to talk about sort of the
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: eight-year-old boy who was in the crook of the tree
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: versus the eight-year-old boy who existed an hour before that,
• 23:50
  Speaker 2: you know, Jung said that we always live in two worlds.
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: One is the world of the eternal and and the
• 23:56
  Speaker 2: other is the world of material reality in our senses.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: And I think that gets at something, I think, about
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: this religious instinct, that when we have the religious experience,
• 24:12
  Speaker 2: we've touched that world of the eternal. And we can
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: drop into it when we sit in the crook of
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: a tree, or when we step into a church, or
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: when we're in a train station and the light's coming through.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: we have some intimation of the eternal. You know, I
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: just want to say that, you know, when Jung uses
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: words like God or spirit, he's basically roughly using them
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: as synonyms for the unconscious. And in particular, I think
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: we can't kind of get through this episode without talking
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: about the self. Because the self is, you know, at
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: one point Jung said it might as well be called
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: the God within. And I guess The way I think
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: about the self is it's sort of the phenomenology of
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: the religious instinct. So we experience the self as that
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: which is stronger than us, that which defeats us. Jung
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: said an encounter with the self is always a defeat
• 25:13
  Speaker 2: for the ego, that which guides us and that which
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: offers solace and comfort. And it is the wider, higher
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: perspective that that the divine offers. So in some sense,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: when we're talking about religious experience, we are talking about
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: an experience of the self.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: Yes, I think that as Jung advanced his ideas and
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: he had his own growing experiences as he went inside,
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: which he captures in the Black Books and the Red
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: Books in his note, he came up against this living
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: experience autonomous dynamism inside of himself. He was working for
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: a long time to find a way to suspend the
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: influence of his waking personality and yet stay observationally alert
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: so that he could behold the autonomous action of the
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: unconscious without interfering and without evading it. And through that,
• 26:24
  Speaker 3: he was able to have these incredible imagistic encounters that
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: altered his personality, that changed him, rewired him. And he
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: was able to return with an entirely new understanding of
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: how the psyche is structured, and particularly, as you were saying,
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: the relationship between the ego and the self, that there's
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: something far greater than what he used to think of
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: as himself.
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: So back to talking about religious experience, I wanted to
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: bring in this poem by Philip Larkin because I think
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: it lifts up this truth about we can sort of
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: deny religion, we can say it doesn't matter, I'm an atheist,
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: but there's still something there. There's still something that is non-rational,
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: let's say. And so it's a poem about by the
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Irish poet Philip Larkin called Churchgoing. Once I am sure
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: there's nothing going on, I step inside, letting the door
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: thud shut. Another church, matting seats and stone, and little books,
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: sprawlings of flowers cut for Sunday, brownish now, some brass
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: and stuff up at the holy end, the small, neat organ,
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: and a tense, musty, unignorable silence. Brood God knows how long. Hatless,
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: I take off my cycle clips in awkward reverence. Move forward,
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: run my hand around the font. From where I stand,
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: the roof looks almost new. Cleaned?
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: Restored?
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: Someone would know I don't. Mounting the lectern, I peruse
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: a few hectoring large-scale verses and pronounce, Here endeth, much
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: more loudly than I'd meant. The echoes snigger briefly. Back
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: at the door, I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: reflect the place was not worth stopping for. Yet stop
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: I did. In fact, I often do. And always end
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: much at a loss like this, wondering what to look for,
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: wondering too. When churches fall completely out of use, what
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: we shall turn them into. if we shall keep a
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: few cathedrals crotically on show, their parchment plate and picks
• 28:55
  Speaker 2: in locked cases, and let the rest rent free to
• 28:59
  Speaker 2: rain and sheep, shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: Or after dark will dubious women come to make their
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: children touch a particular stone, pick simples for a cancer,
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: or on some advised night see walking a dead one.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Power of some sort or other will go on, in games,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: in riddles, seemingly at random. But superstition, like belief, must die.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: And what remains when disbelief has gone? Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: A shape less recognizable each week, a purpose more obscure.
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: I wonder who will be the last, the very last,
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: to seek this place for what it was. One of
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: the crew that tap and jot and know what rude
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: lofts were. Some ruined viber, randy for antique, or Christmas addict,
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: counting on a whiff of gown and bands and organ
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: pipes and myrrh. or will he be my representative? Bored, uninformed,
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: knowing the ghostly silt dispersed, yet tending to this cross
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: of ground through suburb scrub, because it held unsplit so
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: long and equably what since is found only in separation,
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: marriage and birth and death, and thoughts of these, for
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: whom was built this special shell? For, though I've no
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: idea what this guttered, frosty barn is worth, it pleases
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: me to stand in silence here. A serious house, on
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: serious earth it is, in whose blunt air all our
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: compulsions meet, are recognized and robed as destinies, and that
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: much never can be obsolete, since someone will forever be
• 30:52
  Speaker 2: surprising a hunger in himself to be more serious. And
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: gravitating with it to this ground, which, he once heard,
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: was proper to grow wise in, if only that so
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: many dead lie round. So, you know, the poet stops
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: in this church on his bicycle ride and thinks, this
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: wasn't even worth stopping. What is this place worth? And
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: yet it pleases him to stand in silence there. And
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: he feels a call to be more serious, a hunger
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: to be more serious. So that is, I think, a lovely,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: I love that poem, a lovely expression of the religious instinct.
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: I would venture, borrowing Jung's voice in a way, that
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: the writing of that poem was a religious act. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: Jung, I think, says, paying scrupulous attention to what makes
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: itself known in those moments of numinous experience when the
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: ego and the self address each other is the way
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: that the religious instinct functions. And out of that scrupulous
• 32:19
  Speaker 3: attention to our interiority and responding to it, our feelings, ideas,
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: and rituals, images rise. So his pilgrimage every so often,
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: past or into that relic, is pondering of what is
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: happening inside of himself as he is in that space,
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: and honoring that in so much as he records it
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: and thinks upon it, is the ego's task. I mean,
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: that is the re-mythologizing of that vacated space. That's a
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: beautiful example.
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's sort of like we can push it away,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: but it's still there. We can't do away with the
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: religious instinct just because our ego consciousness, our rational mind
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: has decided it doesn't make sense.
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: And people may need to reject a particular religious dogma
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: or a religious rule where you may need to sign
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: off on the religion of your childhood. But the inquiry
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: of what is important, what is eternal, what moves you
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: deeply and profoundly is still fueled by the religious instinct.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: And what I find is that More often than not,
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: people who are struggling in this domain are generally just
• 33:58
  Speaker 3: struggling with the word religion, that they have accreted so
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: much distress and confusion just around the term, which is
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: also the reason that Jung didn't use the word God.
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: He thought that that word is just coded in so
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: many complicated historical and individual associations that he took the
• 34:22
  Speaker 3: translation of the word Atman from the Far East so
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: that he could have, relative to 1930, 1940, that he
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: could have a relative blank canvas so he could have
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: a term and then build up his more psychological understanding
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: of what that meant. So I think that the idea
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: of the religious instinct may also have lagged a little
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: behind in his list of instincts because it is a
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: word that is so fraught. But in his writings, Jung
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: was really clear that he was not talking about organized dogma.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: He was talking about a humble, attentive stance as to
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: what is spontaneously emerging inside of ourselves. And of the
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: many things looking for the mysterious other.
• 35:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: It's that task to listen and respond.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the other who in that quote that I read
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: before was an uncanny opponent, which makes me think of
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: that story of Jacob wrestling with the angel. And there's
• 35:33
  Speaker 2: a beautiful, I don't know why, but it's just a
• 35:36
  Speaker 2: poem kind of day. There's a beautiful poem by Rilke,
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: which uses that imagery. I'm not going to read the
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: whole thing. But the idea that there's something in us.
• 35:50
  Speaker 2: that is other, and by the way, in that quote
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: that I read, he capitalizes other, and it is stronger
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: than us, and it makes demands on us. And so
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: he says, this is Rilke, when we win, it's with
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: small things, and the triumph itself makes us small. What
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: is extraordinary and eternal does not want to be bent
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: by us. I mean the angel who appeared to the
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: wrestlers of the Old Testament. When the wrestler's sinews grew
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: long like metal strings, he felt them under his fingers
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: like chords of deep music. Whoever was beaten by this angel,
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: who often simply declined the fight, went away proud and
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: strengthened and great from that harsh hand that needed him
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: as if to change his shape. Winning does not tempt
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated
• 36:52
  Speaker 2: decisively by constantly greater beings.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
• 36:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So it is a wrestling. It's a comfort, yes,
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: like you being that little boy in the crook of
• 37:09
  Speaker 2: that tree. But it's also a wrestling.
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: The question rises up. Why are we moved by these poets?
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: What is it that they're providing for us and maybe
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: some of our listeners such that their words return and
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: they re-inspire and they come up in your mind, Lisa,
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: and it seems like it's relevant to share?
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: Well, it is so interesting to me that when I
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: came here this morning, this is what I brought is these,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: you know, these, these, like images and poems. And I
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: think it's because ultimately that religious experience concerns the ineffable,
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: that which cannot be put into words. And the poets
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: come closer than anyone else. So that is the nature,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I think, of the transcendent. An ego and archetype, Edward Eninger,
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: the Jungian analyst, says that one function of religion is
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: to make visible and mediate the transpersonal categories of experience.
• 38:28
  Speaker 2: But it defies rationality. It defies easily fitting into ordinary language.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: And so I think that's why we reach for the poems.
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: What do you think? Quite so, as you had said.
• 38:45
  Speaker 3: And I think the Edinger quote leans into what I
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: was thinking, is that for many of us, that we
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: are helped by being exposed to symbolic frameworks so that
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: we can house our individual experiences. That we may not
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: have a command of language to talk about why we
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: visit an abandoned church or why we visit the tree
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: deep in the forest, and sometimes being given a mythology,
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: a poem, prayer, art that links our experience with the
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: words or images allows our experience to live somewhere. That
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: allows us to revisit it again, ponder it. It also
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: protects us from being overwhelmed by the raw numinous energy.
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: And that's a big idea for Jung because he felt
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: that with the abandonment of what I'm going to say
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: is conventional religiosity, that we have generations of individuals who
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: are denied a mythology, images, art, music, et cetera, to
• 40:12
  Speaker 3: contain these archetypal forces. The archetypal forces don't go away.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: they go underground and then they rise up in the
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: culture as weird cultural obsessions. It rises in our own
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: personality as a vulnerability to addiction or kind of dogmatic
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: positions about politics or the HOA that you belong to.
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: And all of these archetypal intensities intrude on our lives
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: in places that don't make sense and look strange if
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: anybody was filming you, by the way. Why is this
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: person like pounding on the table about this?
• 40:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Something that doesn't make sense for it to carry that
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: much intensity and that we can literally become physically unwell
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: by having these marauding intensities inside of us. So at
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: the very least, Jung said, well, why don't we just
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: revive fairy tales? Like fairy tales are full of archetypal material.
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: You don't have to worship them. But if you just
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: expose kids to fairy tales or yourself, at least you're
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: revitalizing this imaginal world of dragons and ogres and witches
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: and miraculous trees that can help you out in a pinch.
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: That we need some way. And failing that, We will
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: then depend on the artists and the mystics of our
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: community to provide poems and images and perhaps creative ritual
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: so that we can mediate what are really extraordinarily intense
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: life-giving but also potentially overwhelming forces.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: That is such an important idea. And there's a wonderful
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: book by Jason E.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: Smith.
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: He's a union analyst. He also is a podcaster. He
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: does the podcast Digital Young. And he has a book
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: called Religious But Not Religious that I just love that book.
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: And I'm going to read it because he covers that
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: in a lot of detail. And he does so very clearly.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: I'm just going to read a paragraph from that book.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: The religious traditions are held treasure houses of hard-won wisdom.
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: The symbols and stories of the religions provide containers for
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: our conscious minds to engage with and connect to essential
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: and timeless truths. The loss of connection to this wisdom
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: is potentially catastrophic and exerts a pressure on the human
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: being that is impossible to endure. What is no longer
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: held and contained by the symbols of our religious traditions
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: falls heavily. on our own frail psyches. So it goes
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: exactly to your point that we need these symbols, imagery,
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: symbolic containers to kind of ground the huge charge of
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: these archetypal truths so that they don't just kind of
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: shred us or shred our society.
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: I think that's so concisely said. And what we also
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: find is that advertisers, political parties, knowing about the power
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: of these archetypal or religious images then will blend them
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: with marketing efforts or political agendas. So then there's a
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: very conscious attempt to rouse or capture deep religious feelings
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: and then shroud them and operationalize them into a particular
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: cultural agenda. And we are more vulnerable to that form
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: of manipulation in as much as we don't know about
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: these concepts. So if we understand how powerful archetypal, religious,
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: and mythologic images are, then we can also police our
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: exposure to them and ponder how we may also... be
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: manipulated as well as, on the other side, positively inspired.
• 44:41
  Speaker 3: Because both poles of that reality can be stimulated by
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: these powerful images.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And maybe to sort of wrap up, I'll just kind
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: of share one final quote from Jung. He says, I
• 45:00
  Speaker 2: understood religion as something that God did to me. It
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: was an act on his part to which I must
• 45:08
  Speaker 2: simply yield, for he was stronger.
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: And in keeping with our talk today, I would like
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: to reintroduce to some of the listeners that there is
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: a path into this kind of deep, responsive listening process
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: out of which our personal mythologies arise. And that is
• 45:35
  Speaker 3: dream work. That night after night, year after year, month
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: after month, that some intelligent force inside of you is
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: offering you access to images, themes, feelings, and thoughts that
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: are designed to help foster establish or correct the relationship
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: between your waking personality and the self, the transcendent. And
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: when we learn how to tend our dreams, they serve
• 46:10
  Speaker 3: the evolution of our spiritual or religious feeling. And in
• 46:16
  Speaker 3: service to that, we have created this Jungian Life Dream School.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: We've mentioned it many times on our episodes. But we
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: hope that you will take the time to think seriously
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: about engaging Dream School. It's not just some lark. It's
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: not a product that we toss together. It really is
• 46:40
  Speaker 3: a mission that is an extension of our work as Jungians.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: It's one thing for people to talk about a dream
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: with a friend, and that's, by the way, a very
• 46:51
  Speaker 3: nice thing to do. But to really... enter into dream
• 46:56
  Speaker 3: work with the level of depth and respect and intensity
• 47:01
  Speaker 3: that it requires in order for it to be transformative,
• 47:05
  Speaker 3: requires access to a system. Jung has provided that system,
• 47:11
  Speaker 3: and we've turned that into a very thoughtful, educative process
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: which involves material that we've recorded and written, access to
• 47:21
  Speaker 3: all three of us throughout the month, in live encounters,
• 47:28
  Speaker 3: as well as a community of students, which now after
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: these numerous years that the school has been running, we
• 47:34
  Speaker 3: have very advanced students that have a wealth of experience
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: to share. And we have people that have just come
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: in and have never thought about dream work before. And
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: the amalgam of the community creates this kind of delicious
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: synergy that I think is just remarkable. It's hard to
• 47:54
  Speaker 3: find like-minded individuals who are as interested in this depth work,
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: and Dream School is a place where you can absolutely
• 48:02
  Speaker 3: meet them and also meet something in yourself that is
• 48:07
  Speaker 3: trying to talk with you. So go to thisyonginlife.com, click
• 48:13
  Speaker 3: on Dream School, and at the very least, check it out,
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: read about it, and then have a dialogue with your insides.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: and ask whether or not this is the time to
• 48:27
  Speaker 3: accept this invitation. Today we have a 39-year-old male dreamer
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: who is an educational consultant and PhD student in anthropology.
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: He titles his dream, a sunny storm. It is nighttime
• 48:56
  Speaker 3: and I arrive in view of a long coastline. There
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: are many vibrant lights extending all along the coast, which
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: for miles extends outward towards a protruding point in the sea.
• 49:09
  Speaker 3: I recognize this as the coast outside Alcante in Spain,
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: which I visited on two occasions when I was 18
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: years old. I am excited, thrilled to be back. I
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: walk towards the beach on which I want to stand,
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: to take in the thrills once again. The lights are magnificent. Then,
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: in a second scene, I am nearer to the beach.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: It is now daytime. I walk up concrete stairs to
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: go to the boardwalk. Once there, I see that the
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: sea has extended all the way to the edge. There's
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: no sand. Instead, the sea touches the boardwalk, and violent
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: waves break over it, drenching the boardwalk and myself. The
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: sky is sunny, but the water is very rough, and
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: the gale ferocious. I see that along the boardwalk are
• 50:07
  Speaker 3: abandoned arcade games and bars. No one is there. I
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: take a step back from the boardwalk and the violent sea,
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: back towards the staircase. I realize this is the off-season,
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: that if I come back at another time, the vibrance
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: will return, the seas will calm, and the deluge will cease.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: I calmly accept that I came at the wrong time,
• 50:35
  Speaker 3: and take a further step back, resigned and serene. For context,
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: he adds, With my wife and our two very young children,
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: we're going through difficult times right now. After a conflict
• 50:50
  Speaker 3: with our landlord, we very recently had to temporarily move
• 50:53
  Speaker 3: into a new apartment that we're still trying to save
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: money to buy our first house. We spend most time
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: devoted to work, child care finances, and other serious matters.
• 51:07
  Speaker 3: Business often takes precedence over thrills and pleasure. I find
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: myself occasionally indulging in nostalgia for my adolescence and my
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: late 1980s early childhood. The latter is particularly easy as
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: my older son is now a similar age to me
• 51:24
  Speaker 3: at the time. He says the main feelings were excitement
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: at seeing the beach at night, longing to be able
• 51:31
  Speaker 3: to go there to relive these thrills with my now
• 51:33
  Speaker 3: greater knowledge and life experience. Shock and surprise at seeing
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: the swells overtake and submerge the beach, though there was
• 51:42
  Speaker 3: no fear. Disappointment and grief at the abandoned arcades, understanding
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: and acceptance that this state is not permanent. He adds
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: a few associations. I associate the Alcante beach with desire, fun, longing,
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: and disappointment. I had an intense romance at ending in
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: disappointment there in my last year of high school and
• 52:05
  Speaker 3: the summer after. There I learned to adapt and work
• 52:10
  Speaker 3: through the disappointment while still having fun, albeit in a
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: more hardened version of myself. The stormy sea is associated
• 52:17
  Speaker 3: with forces beyond my control, while the arcades and the
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: beach by day represent simpler forms of fun. that feel lost.
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: I think this is such a beautiful example of how
• 52:29
  Speaker 2: dreams can direct our attention to parts of our past
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: that may have something to say about the present. And
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: there's this evocation of this earlier time in his life,
• 52:45
  Speaker 2: this late adolescence when he was at this place and
• 52:49
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting because it's right on the coastline, and
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: it's a meeting of both this kind of man-made place
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: with boardwalk and arcades, but also the ocean. And both
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: of them kind of figure prominently in this dream. So
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: we've got these kinds of forces of nature, the gales
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: and the waves crashing up, and also these sort of
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: man-made things. And both of them are sort of saying,
• 53:18
  Speaker 2: That kind of carefree time is not now.
• 53:22
  Speaker 3: It's gone.
• 53:23
  Speaker 2: It's not now. But there is a real awareness that
• 53:26
  Speaker 2: this is not forever, that that other thing will come
• 53:30
  Speaker 2: back and return.
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: Also, there's an opportunity to reform what you imagine is thrilling.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: So he's excited to be back, and he walks toward
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: the beach. on which he wants to stand to take
• 53:48
  Speaker 3: in the thrills again. Well, something thrilling does happen, which
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: is that these enormous gale force, ferocious waves begin to
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: crash over him and rise up into the boardwalk. And
• 54:08
  Speaker 3: part of him says, you know, this isn't the thrill
• 54:11
  Speaker 3: that it used to be. I used to think going
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: to the arcades or going on a date was a
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: thrilling thing, or that it was just kind of fun
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: and games, quite literally. But something else thrilling is being
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: offered to him, which is the power of the unconscious
• 54:30
  Speaker 3: and the power of the spiritual worlds, which are far
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: more than the diversions of childhood. But in a much
• 54:42
  Speaker 3: more realistic sense, the powerful waves of the ocean are
• 54:48
  Speaker 3: more bivalent. That they could be seen as incredibly inspiring,
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: but they're also dangerous. That's a different kind of thrill
• 54:56
  Speaker 3: than playing a pinball game.
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: You know, Joseph, that's really good because it is a
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: particular word, isn't it? Thrill is, you know, he didn't
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: say to experience the fun again or the joy again.
• 55:10
  Speaker 2: It was thrill. And thrill carries with it the sense
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: that you might be endangered, right? That's, I mean, something
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: that's thrilling is fun, but it's also exciting because there's
• 55:25
  Speaker 2: a real kind of activation. And he says in his context,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: he says, business often takes precedence over thrills and pleasure.
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: So I think you're really onto something there that there,
• 55:37
  Speaker 2: you know, there is a different kind of thrill here.
• 55:41
  Speaker 2: And he might be able to open to it. I mean,
• 55:44
  Speaker 2: I certainly know what it's like to be in the
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: throes of, you know, studying with two small children, trying to,
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: you know, you're working all the time. There's kind of
• 55:56
  Speaker 2: no downtime. Downtime is like when you get to fold laundry.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: And it is hard. But there can also be something
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: thrilling about that. I also noticed that he's 39. So
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: that can be a real kind of midlife moment. I mean,
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: we tend to go to that a lot, but I
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: think it's maybe relevant here. You know, 40 is a
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: pretty big transition for many people. And, you know, here
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: he is being asked maybe to shift from his expectations
• 56:35
  Speaker 2: of what's going to be thrilling, because now that may
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: be much more of an inner experience.
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Just as a small thought experiment or an experiment
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: you might do is, I one time had the misfortune
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: of deciding that I would watch a couple of my
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: favorite childhood television shows. And they were so terribly disappointing
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: from an adult perspective that I wish I hadn't done it.
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: Because what I was remembering is not so much these shows,
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: but I was remembering the delight that I felt and
• 57:13
  Speaker 3: that these things from my childhood are not capable of
• 57:17
  Speaker 3: delighting me anymore. So some things are actually kind of
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: better left as relics for us to revisit, remembering who
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: we were at that time rather than the relic itself,
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: which often doesn't have the power we think it's going
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: to have. So I like that in the dream, he
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: tries to go back to being 18.
• 57:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: But actually, the unconscious is saying, that world's not there.
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: You know, the world's not there is the world of
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: 20 foot waves and gale force winds. That's the world
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: that you're in.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I thought it was so interesting that one
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: of the associations to the place in Spain was disappointment.
• 58:04
  Speaker 2: But in a way, that's another kind of layer, I think,
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: very similar to what you're saying. It's like he's being
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: reminded that he can overcome disappointment.
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: That's right. He is resilient.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And I do really like that the dream is like, yeah,
• 58:22
  Speaker 2: but you've come at the wrong season. This is not
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: the season of your life for.
• 58:29
  Speaker 3: Pleasures and delights. Right, for pleasures.
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know. I mean, I'm at the
• 58:35
  Speaker 2: point now where the kids are grown and there is
• 58:41
  Speaker 2: more room for, I don't know, fun.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: But they're not the pleasures that you wanted at 18, though. No,
• 58:47
  Speaker 3: they're not. You have much more sophisticated pleasures.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: Well, maybe some of them. I mean, I want some
• 58:53
  Speaker 2: of the pleasures that I liked when I was 18.
• 58:56
  Speaker 3: I'm going to retract that statement. I had made an
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: assumption that was not correct. I totally get it.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: But yeah, no, I mean, you know, I mean, this is,
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: it's a little, you know, it's a little trite perhaps,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: but you know. travel. Right. When I was 18, I
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: loved to travel. And now travel is more available to
• 59:16
  Speaker 2: me than it was when we were raising the kids
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: and having adventures. Yeah. Having adventures. Now I just stay
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: at nicer hotels.
• 59:25
  Speaker 3: Which makes a difference. These old bones need a little
• 59:27
  Speaker 3: something extra. That's right. The other association I had, which
• 59:33
  Speaker 3: I think is really a stretch, but there is a
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: fairy tale of an old man who goes to the
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: ocean and he catches a magical flounder. And he pulls
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: it out and the flounder says, oh, stop, stop, please.
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: If you release me, I'll grant you a wish. And
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: so the old man hems and haws, but he decides
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: out of kindness to release the flounder and he He
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: makes a very ordinary kind of wish, and then he
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 3: goes home, and the wish has come true. But then
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 3: his wife says, you had a magical flounder. You could
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 3: ask for anything you wanted. Go back and ask for more.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: And then every time he asks for something, he asks
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: for more, and he asks for more, and he asks
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 3: for more. And then he goes back, and the last
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: time he goes back, the sea is exploding, and the
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: waves are life-threatening. And Riding on top of the wave
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 3: is the magical flounder who's now roaring at him, wanting
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 3: to know why he's asking for more. Why are you
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 3: coming for more? And then finally, in the end, the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 3: flounder has just had enough, and he says, forget it.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: And then he goes home, and everything that he's asked
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 3: for is now gone, and he's reduced to the most
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 3: basic circumstance that he had in the beginning. It's a
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: big stretch to put that into this dream, because basically
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 3: it's just a stormy sea. But I wonder if my
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 3: unconscious is bringing up that fairy tale, asking or inviting
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 3: him to question what he's asking for. Yeah. Are you
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: going to the unconscious and asking for the right thing?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 3: And if going back to being 18 again is what
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 3: you're asking the magic flounder for, not sure that the
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: flounder and the sea are telling you that's the right
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: thing to ask for.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
• 1:01:23
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• 1:01:28
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