Reflections on Ecology and Soul

Course Description

Robert Romanyshyn, a poetic thinker and storyteller, is our guide in this this course.  Together, we descend into the depths of spirit and move beyond our singular focus on current day manifestations. 

In the depths we encounter the soul of the world, which presents itself through dreams, synchronicities and symptoms in our everyday world. These two realms of soul and world are deeply interconnected. Soul invites us to a more balanced, meaningful and fulfilling life that benefits ourselves, our families, our culture and also the world at large. 

At a perilous time, the availability of deep imagination is there. These classes tap into this wellspring and show how we can co-create a more sustainable future.

Listen to this audio clip and get a sense of Robert’s approach for this course:

This course is ideal if

• You are curious about and want to dive deep to explore the unconscious dynamics in the spirit of the depths which lies beneath the agitated spirit of the times in this pandemic world.
• You are interested in how dreams, symptoms and synchronicities are psychological forms of action that can help to translate events into experiential exercises, which allow us to slow down and pause to be responsive to events that too often overwhelm us.
• You are open to looking at examples of specific myths, films and visionary literature as ways to become more aware of the current myth/story/dream within which we are entangled.

Course Overview

Class 1. Four Levels of Unconscious Dynamics in Climate Crises

Let us begin with an image of political, economic, medical, scientific, and technological responses to climate crises as parts of a chorus. What voice does soul bring to this ensemble. It is the undertones from the depths of soul, and in this class, we lend an ear to hear four levels of unconscious dynamics from the personal through the cultural-historical, collective-archetypal and psychoid depths of soul. Throughout, experiential examples and dream images are invited. Subsequent classes then deepen this material. 

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Class 2. The Spirit-Matter Issue in Jung’s Psychology: From Alchemy to The Psychoid Archetype

Beginning with an image from alchemy, we discuss how it holds together the tension of spirit and matter, a problem whose deep roots in the western soul still haunt the background of the psyche matter split in climate crises. To understand how the theme of the psychoid archetype became a key part of Jung’s psychology, we trace the thread of alchemy to his dialogues with Wolfgang Paul. This path underscores the roles of Pauli’s dreams and his struggles with the feminine and emphasizes the voices of Eros and Anima as an essential part of soul’s contributions to ecological crises.  In preparation for Class 3, experiential examples of this archetypal level of soul’s voice, for example synchronicities, are invited and discussed. In addition, some practical ways in which one can make himself/herself ready for such moments are presented. 

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Class 3. Re-Storying Broken Bonds Between Nature and Soul: Inner Journeys in the Outer World 

Beginning with a clip from a short film Robert Romanyshyn made of his journey to the Antarctic in 2009, we explore how this landscape of frozen cathedrals of ice awakens the virtues of silence, solitude, serenity and solace as portals into the beauty and sacred qualities of the natural world. Such epiphanies are a homecoming that heal the frayed erotic ties between the sensual body and the sensuous charms of nature.

Discussing the Chinese Rain Maker story as one that illustrates, we come home to the world by coming home to ourselves, we explore practices like learning to wander in wonder to attend with patience to those occasions when, for example, a shaft of light on a dew dipped leaf in the early morning might reveal the extraordinary in the ordinary, or the sudden sense of being seen by an animal as it crosses your path might uncover the splendor of the simple, or the smile on the face of a child might display the miracle in the mundane, as moments that might awaken a sense of sorrow at what has been lost and become a step toward engaging in a heartfelt way the ecological crises from the depths of soul.  What are your stories of such moments?

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Class 4. The Need for Myth in a Broken World: The Myth of Prometheus   

Myths are collective larger stories that give a place for one’s individual and our collective suffering. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein presents Victor Frankenstein as the modern Prometheus. Summarizing that tale frames our current climate crises in its larger story. Doing so allows us to see not only where we are now, but also where we are going in the context of how we have arrived here. In addition, reading Mary Shelley’s story  as a re-telling of the Promethean myth focuses our attention on the following themes for our consideration: Who is the Monster; How do we make monsters?; What are the consequences of excluding the feminine in the act of creation?; What are some seeds of hope to be harvested from her tale? We will use some experiential exercises to give bodily form to them. 

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Class 5. Working in the Night Theater of Dreams: Dreams and Ecology

Whatever the interpretative lens one uses, dreams are fundamentally a different perspective on waking life. Describing the mood of dreams as tableaus that offer the possibility of possibilities, I describe a way of working with its images in the same way that an actor gets into character by embodying and enacting it. The question for this class is how dreams might be inviting us to imagine other ways of responding to climate catastrophes. Drawing on material from working with an online dream group the last two years, Robert gives a few examples of this work that focuses on dreams of animals. Do they approach us in the dream time to offer us the possibility of feeling climate issues with their eyes? Participants will be requested to bring a dream that feels related to climate crises. Participants are also asked to consider this question in relation to the dream: If you were to imagine a piece of music that captures the mood of the dream, what would it be?

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Class 6. Dreaming the Impossible Dream: Don Quixote as Guide to the Power of Imagination

Are we mad fools to believe that the voice of soul has a place in the chorus of voices responding to climate crises? The final class gathers the themes of our meetings in the context of Don Quixote who dared to dream an impossible dream. Summarizing some key points of his story, we focus on his tilting at windmills as a daring act to imagine them to be other than as they appear. Becoming as it were his companion rather than a critic, we see the dangers of binary either-or thinking that asks only if Don Quixote is mad or sane. A question that too quickly dismisses the power of imagination to change things as they are.

As we gather for this final meeting, Don Quixote stands with us and addresses all of us with this final question: 

Dare you dream of a world where the climate of nature, the mood and atmosphere of the natural word, is in balance and harmony with the climate, the mood and atmosphere of soul?

A PDF file of the keynote address Robert gave in the hometown of Miguel de Cervantes to celebrate the 415th anniversary of Don Quixote’s dream, will be made available. 

By the end of this course you will

• Learn about the therapeutic and healing value of memory and the creative imagination where the work of remembering re-members one for the sake of re-imagining a possibly different future. This transforms the sense of being a victim condemned to a fate, to a destiny that one can understand and choose how to respond.
• Learn to work with personal and collective symptoms as a vocation, which calls one to remember something too vital to forget, but which is forgotten because it is too painful to remember.
• Be able to re-vision psychological work as ‘marginal’ work, as home-work, as an obligation to change your heart and not just your mind. To go deep by doing the difficult but necessary work if we are to survive today. And by going to the margins where the monsters we make wait to teach us the way back home to ourselves, our bodies, each other and the natural world.