Jungian Psychology for a Soulful Life

Course Description

Life is a complex mystery—illness, aging, vocation, relationships, anxiety, and beauty belong to and are inseparable from it. But, the soul, like a fountain, can be life-giving, sustaining, and life-affirming such that the complexity of life starts unraveling itself. A soulful life is a way of seeing and noticing that which brings forth the bouquet of life. That is, it allows us to experience life in its entirety and from a place of resilience and fulfillment.

At the core of Jung’s ideas is the concept of individuation—the realization of your soul’s purpose. Jungian psychology looks at projections and complexes as guiding/blocking; that is, they can be understood as inner characters that haunt and guide us. We all have a shadow within us that comes to the surface during all stages of life. What is the purpose of the shadow on the journey toward soulful living? What might our soul’s desire be in complex relationships with family, friends and a life partner?

This course answers questions of this nature and aims to connect you with your own journey. It offers perspectives and practical tools to participate joyfully in the highs and lows of the journey of life. It intends for you to be guided by your soul, and become courageous to express your soul’s desires.

This course is interview-style. Machiel Klerk and Akke-Jeanne Klerk – Jung Platform founders and siblings –spoke with these 12 experts to create the “Jungian Psychology for a Soulful Life” Summit. This course is a remastering of that summit.

The classes are available now.

This course is ideal if

• you want to infuse a gentleness and wildness into your life.
• you have an interest in your psychological growth and development.
• you have an interest in Jungian topics and personal development through a Jungian lens.
• you are a clinician, psychologist, counselor, therapist or work in the helping professions.

Course Overview

Class 1: Care of the Soul with Thomas Moore

Thomas Moore says, “Soul is not a thing but a quality or dimension of experiencing life and ourselves. It has to do with depth, value, relatedness, heart and personal substance.” In this session, Moore will take us on a way of seeing life that allows us to connect with the soul, especially in the everydayness of life. 

When the soul is neglected, it doesn’t just go away. It appears symptomatically as obsessions, addictions, violence, and loss of meaning—symptoms, which send patients to seek therapy. If the soul’s capacity for creativity is not honored, Mr. Moore maintains, it will wreak havoc instead. Thomas Moore gives us a little hint by stating that the “soul appears most easily in those places where we feel more inferior.” He will also help us see that we can survive and learn from our personal troubles, tragedies, and follies. He proclaims that the soul cannot be separated from the body, family, work, love, or power. In the end, he calls us to our true vocation which is to care for the world’s soul and to celebrate the sacred art of life. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• That soul is also a way of seeing and experiencing the world
• How to listen to the dysfunctions as callings of the soul
• Suggestions on how to care for our soul

Class 2: Encounters with the World Soul with Robert Romanyshyn

In this session, Robert Romanyshyn guides us to a way of seeing and experiencing the Soul of the World. This way opens us to experience the miracles in the mundane, and the extraordinary in the ordinary. He will show that we can be a witness to the world—as a vale of soulmaking—through the beauty of all that surrounds us.

In his letters with Nobel prize winner in physics Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Jung describes a level of unconscious dynamics where psyche and nature are one. This is called the psychoid level or the Soul of the World. This is a place where the psyche and nature pivot around each other so that the inner world (of images and dreams) is  the outer world (of events). Synchronicity is a primary example of this relation as are perhaps experiences like visions. These moments give us an immediate experience of the subtle world of imaginal reality.

In this session, Romanyshyn talks about how to experience the Soul of the World, and how the soul is addressing us as the living spirit of the natural world. He talks about ways that we can become responsive to this possibility and how that requires the cultivation of an aesthetic sensibility—a poetics of soul making. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• How our own soul flows over into the World Soul
• How we can listen to the Soul of the World through synchronicities and dreams
• How beauty is a quality of the Soul

Class 3: Dream Work as Soul Work with Steve Aizenstat

Jung believed that dreams are doors that allowed us to access the “most secret recesses of the soul.” The technique developed by Dr. Stephen Aizenstat – Dream Tending – is rooted in Jung’s dream work and active imagination. According to Dr. Aizenstat, dreams are manifestations of the soul and by tending to our dreams, we tend to our soul. 

We can ensoul our daily life by paying attention to the dream figures, listening to, and befriending them. When we begin working with our dreams, the difference between night and day becomes less distinct in that the dream figures begin accompanying us even during the day, that is, the conscious part of our lives. As a result, the revelations from our soul, the direction in which it wants us to go, becomes clearer, sharper, and in focus. In this session, Dr. Aizenstat will give us practical tips on befriending dream figures and soul friends. By practising dream tending, we can infuse our day-to-day experiences with more colour, compassion, and meaning. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• How the soul expresses itself in dreams 
• How to befriend dream figures
• How the soul tries to guide us in dreams

Class 4: Soul Relationships with Polly Young- Eisendrath

In this 90 minute session Polly Young-Eisendrath talks about love and soul. All relationships can have soul; relationships with a partner, friends, family members and relationships at work. To love another requires a commitment to become a witness, to remain interested, and to break our heart. So firstly, tending to the soul in relationships with others asks that we show up fully and witness the true emergence of oneself and the other. We see the other and get reflected back. We need others to know ourselves, and we find ourselves through the witnessing of others. Secondly, we need an attitude of tolerance and reflection while we learn to perceive our relationships through a lens that is larger than our own individual feelings and concerns. We have to go beyond our own pleasures and desires to become curious about the other person. And lastly a soulful love asks us to recognize that to love someone is a vow to break our heart. In this session, you’ll discover that: 

• A soulful relationship asks us to love the other;
• Love is a vow to break our heart;
• A soulful relationship asks us to embrace our brokenness.

Class 5: The Soul of Place with Craig Chalquist

In this session, Craig Chalquist illustrates that our psychological life is intertwined with our surroundings. Terrapsychology  includes a suite of practices, ideas, and research methods  to study how  things of the world can get into our minds, hearts, bodies, and complexes. Craig exemplifies how the fantasies and dreams, moods and conflicts that we tend to take personally reflect in the events of the world such as rising breezes, packed freeways, lingering droughts, clicking crows, and cleaned rivers. 

As a child of eco- and depth psychology, terrapsychology illuminates our ongoing conversations with everything around us, near and far. By doing so, it re-enchants our relations with ourselves, each other, and our sentient planet. 

Join Craig Chalquist in this session to explore how these complex relationships appear in both realms—within and without.  The session also looks at the methods we can use to consciously relocate ourselves in an ensouled world—a world filled with important signals, voices, and dreams that ripple through and transcend the night realm. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• How the inner and outer worlds are interconnected;
• How to tend to the soul of a place, and 
• The perspective of putting the presence of the world in the center of our psychology.

Class 6: Heroine’s Quest for Soul in Men and Women with Erica Lorentz

In this session analyst Erica Lorentz talks about listening to the whispers of our Soul. Modern mythos pushes us to have a masculine, heroic attitude. But when we let go of this stance, we are on a journey to find and reconnect with our Soul. This session explores the qualities we need to develop to redeem our Soul and to reclaim our authentic life.  When we draw upon fairytales and myths we may find guidance for the heroine’s voyage as Erica will illustrate. To rekindle the connection to our Soul, it is crucial to move beyond negative patriarchy in ourselves and the world. Through the inner pilgrimage to our own primal feminine power, present in both men and women, we can recover soulful living and also save the World Soul.  In this session you’ll discover: 

• The difference between the hero’s journey and the heroine’s journey; 
• That we can find the blueprint in fairytales and myths that will guide us on the heroine’s voyage, and
• Reconciliation with the feminine helps us to live our true essence.

Class 7: A Psycho-Spiritual Worldview with Pittman McGehee

In this session, Pittman McGehee talks about a psycho-spiritual worldview. Our worldview informs the way we live our life. It informs our value systems, the decisions we make, and our choices and behaviors. And while it may seem to be conscious, it has unconscious elements that, as Jung said, must be brought into consciousness by becoming aware of what is going on within us and in the collective. This realization of our essence—our Self—is what Jung called individuation. This means, we are not bound by fate; we have a choice on how to be in the world. We have the power to use our gifts and blessings in a way that makes a difference. But to do this, we must learn about the soul’s desire. The gateway to finding the soul’s desire is to have the willingness to be conscious—be ready to learn about ourselves and others. Because connection to our Self and other) brings meaning and purpose as Pittman McGehee will show in this session. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• What it means to have a psycho-spiritual view of the world;
• Why consciousness is essential, and
• How consciousness helps in clarifying our purpose. 

Class 8: Befriend the Soul Through Journaling with Susan Tiberghein

Join Jungian Author Susan Tiberghien in this session on befriending the soul through journaling.  She views journaling as a voyage in self-discovery. A journal is a journey to a deeper understanding of ourselves. We slow down to sit and write. Journaling, therefore, is a spiritual practice, as Susan will clarify. With our choice of words, we give life to what we experience and how we imagine the world. As we  journal, we get to know our soul. We speak to her, listen to her, and learn from her. We know that Carl Jung kept a journal during his confrontation with the unconscious. He learned to listen to his soul through a series of active imaginations. He wrote about his experiences in his journals (aka ‘the Black Books’ that he later transferred into the ‘Red Book’). Having this example of creativity in mind, we can see that journaling is a way to nourish the soul. In this session, you will find that journaling helps us to engage with our soul through our imagination, permitting us to give words to our experiences, to evolve, and become whole. In this session, you’ll discover:

• Why journaling is nourishing to the soul;
• That our soul wants to engage with us through journaling;
• That journaling can serve as a bridge between the invisible and visible world.

Class 9: The Soul’s Ecological Life with Joe Cambray

The depth psychological roots of the ecological imagination can be found in antiquity and in indigenous traditions around the world. Freud and Jung drew upon the work of the artist-scientists of the German Romantic and Classical movements including Ernst Haeckel (the German Darwin) who coined the term “ecology”. While Jung’s cosmology carried a rhizomatic vision of the psyche, the prescient quality of this has only begun to be revealed and appreciated in the 21st century. 

In this interview with Joe Cambray, we will consider examples of biological intelligence that rely on rhizomatic forms. It is likely that this biological intelligence is what the alchemists called lumen naturae or the light of nature. By looking at parallels with neural structures and astrophysical bodies that point to the archetypal patterns found throughout the natural world as well as in the soul, we will try to understand how synchronistic experiences shed light on the hidden (but ordering) connectedness that underlies the whole of existence. Join Cambray to learn from this antique and adaptive wisdom.  In this session, you’ll discover: 

• How the soul might be what underlies the whole of existence
• How the soul expresses itself in synchronicity
• How soul is part of ecology

Class 10: Knowing Yourself and a Soulful Life with Dariana Pictet

Join this session with Jungian Analyst Dariane Pictet as she shares why we need to know ourselves better to live a soulful life. When we don’t know what triggers us, we are locked in patterns that make us suffer. Anxiety, for example, keeps us separate from connecting deeply to what has value for us, to what makes us feel alive. Unwittingly, we distance ourselves from our soul, our potential, and the expression of our full creative selves. We all have complexes and getting to know them and having practices that help us to pause, breathe, before we jump in and act out, helps us connect to our soul.  Having a soulful life means that we listen to the body and find respite from mental agitation or the internal monologue that prevents us from being present in the here and now. This can bring about an expanded consciousness in which one can rest, feel more connected to our own source of well-being, to the world, and to beauty. During this session, you’ll discover:

• Why it is paramount to know yourself to have soulful life;
• That learning about your triggers and complexes is a service to your soul, and
• What practices you can engage in that will help you to live a soulful life.

Class 11: Aging: From Role to Soul with Connie Zweig

Join Connie Zweig in this session about transitioning into old age. She looks at aging as a rite of passage of letting go, of stepping into liminality, and of emerging renewed. We have to let go of the identification with our role in life and orient more deeply to the soul. We need to loosen the grip of our productive life so that something can make this shift from role to soul. We might, however,  still choose to be active, but we will be doing it with a different purpose. That is, we will be working with a different state of mind and connected to something larger. The soul is the part within us that  lives out of time and is connected to both the eternal and  the collective. We have to learn to turn within and with contemplative practices  face our shadow. Connie encourages you to look at your inner perceptions about aging –maybe there is an inner ageist or maybe there are obstacles such as a lack of openness when it comes to aging and dying – to find self-knowledge and connection with the soul. In this session, you’ll discover: 

• What it means to transition from role to soul;
• The rewards of taking back your shadow projections on aging, and
• A practice of life review and learning the right questions to ask regarding your unlived life.

Class 12: Love of Soul: Eros and Psyche with Stacey Shelby

Romantic relationships are often laden with psychological expectations, which can be of mythic proportions. Dr. Shelby examines some of the key relationship myths, particularly the myth of Psyche and Eros, because it mines the treasures of depth psychological thinking about love. We spend so much of our life yearning for something (or someone). Many of our apparent “goals” and things we believe we want, turn out to be a concealment of our true aspirations. Our deepest wants are not reducible to physical or material goods, or even to a physical person; they are psychological longings for love, integrity, sincerity, and purpose. These longings carry within them qualities that are beautiful, valuable, and deserving of our devotion. When we can see this symbolic meaning that the soul is yearning for, we cease to reduce things to a tangible object (that never fulfills us) such as a home, a vehicle, a better job, or a human being. The connection we are seeking is to the sacred. The sacred, however, cannot be reduced to material things or  persons. In honoring the soul, we come to understand that even the longing for romantic love is longing for the sacred. Paradoxically, a mature partnership born of genuine, loving acceptance can also be a sacred discipline. In this session, you’ll discover:

• The phases one goes through in romantic love
• How falling in love with soul can be the outcome of falling in love with a person
• How to better recognize projections and how they are soul guides as well

Bonus Video: Joseph Campbell and the Relevance of Myth in Our Time with Dennis Patrick Slattery

In this 90 minute video, Dennis Slattery explores how we can look at life symbolically and mythically. He shows how we live out our own stories and mythologies. And when we understand which story we are living we can better live in accordance with it, resulting in feeling more fulfilled.

By the end of this course you will:

• Recognize the soul’s desires in your life
• Learn how to listen and respond to your soul’s desires
• Find out why the realization of your soul’s desires brings purpose to your journey
• Engage with your soul’s journey in becoming who you truly are