Carl Jung's ideas are profound. They really come alive when applied to your own life.You have heard the word individuation. You may have read a little Jung, or stumbled across the idea of the shadow. But you are not yet sure how these ideas actually relate to your own life.
This course bridges that gap. It takes Carl Jung's central concepts, explains them in accessible language, and places your own experience at the centre. The final session is a live Q&A.
Individuation, for Jung, is the lifelong process of becoming who you truly are. Not who you were shaped or conditioned into being. Without realizing it, most of us identify too narrowly with who we think we are. But the person underneath is the one the Self has been trying to call forward all along. Over several classes you will move through the core architecture of Jungian psychology. You will explore the persona, the mask we wear so long we forget it is a mask. You will look at the coping strategies we mistake for personality. You will meet the shadow, the exiled parts of the psyche that run us from behind the scenes. And you will begin to understand complexes: why certain reactions feel too large for the moment, and where they actually come from.
The course moves toward the Self. This is Jung's term for the totality of the psyche, the deeper intelligence that speaks through dreams, the body, synchronicity, and numinous experience. You will begin to recognise the ways the psyche is already talking to you.
This course is for people who sense that Jung's ideas matter personally. You will be invited to look honestly at your own life. The question running through everything: what wants to find its way through me? This course explores the relationship between the ego and the Self, and why that relationship deserves ongoing attention.
You will leave with a working understanding of key Jungian concepts: individuation, the ego and the Self, persona, shadow, and complexes. More importantly, you will leave with a real sense of what all of this reveals about your own life.
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Recognize how the shadow, complexes, and persona are shaping your choices
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Connect Jungian concepts to your own experience
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Listen to what your dreams, your body, and meaningful coincidences are telling you
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Move from self-improvement toward something deeper: genuine self-discovery
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Pay attention to what wants to emerge through you
Class 1: The individuation processMost of us are living a life that looks right from the outside. But underneath it there is often a quieter sense that something more essentially us has not yet been lived. This first class introduces Jung's central idea that something in us is always trying to become more fully itself. We explore what that process looks like in practice, and how to recognize it already at work in your own experience.
Class 2: What is blocking this?If individuation is the natural direction of the psyche, why is it so difficult? This class looks at the forces that interrupt the process: The persona, coping strategies and complexes. The persona is the face we have worn so long we have forgotten it is a face. The coping strategies we developed for survival are the ones we slowly mistook for character. And complexes, those charged emotional patterns from the past, take over in the present before we have had a chance to choose freely. This class is where you begin to see which forces have been shaping your life from behind the scenes.
Class 3: The Shadow
The shadow refers to the parts of yourself that you have disowned, denied and/or rejected. Mainly because they were unwanted. By your family, your culture, the particular world you grew up in. What gets exiled goes underground, and from there it shapes your reactions, your projections, and the energy available to you for living. This class is an invitation to meet the parts of yourself you did not know you were missing.
Class 4: Meeting the Self
This final class arrives at the heart of everything. The Self, is the totality of who you are, conscious and unconscious alike. It carries a deeper intention for your life that the ego did not choose. In this class we explore how the Self speaks: through dreams, through the body, through synchronicity and numinous experiences. You will leave this class with a sense of what it means to live in relationship with the Self and with practical ways to keep that relationship alive.
Class 5 - Live Q&A class - June 1 - 9am PT / noon ET
You have moved through the course, sat with the exercises, and you see these ideas touching your own life. Maybe something has surfaced. A pattern you are not sure how to understand. A dream that stayed with you. A concept that almost clicked but not quite. This live class is the space to ask questions about the concepts themselves or the application to yourself.
