VIDEO Art Credit: Jano Tantongco, jano.tantongco@gmail.com AUDIO https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_311-April-Fool-v2.mp3 How do our interactions with the seemingly mundane objects around us reflect and influence our deeper psychological processes and connections with the broader universe? Jung held a fascinating belief in the soulful essence of inanimate objects. He engaged in daily greetings with his kitchenware at Bollingen Tower, expressing a unique form of animism that extended deeply into his personal and professional life. His collection of beer steins, each with its name ..read more

VIDEO Art Credit: Jano Tantongco jano.tantongco@gmail.com AUDIO If we lean into strange experiences with gentle curiosity, we may discover a level of psyche that acts directly on objects. Many of us have uncanny coincidences like thinking of a friend at the exact moment they ring us on the phone, but what about physical things breaking apart for no reason or luminous apparitions at our bedside? We often explain them away to reduce our anxiety, but Jung found them fascinating. He maintained a scientific attitude while accepting strange phenomena he could not explain. Eventually, he created a p ..read more

VIDEO VERSION AUDIO VERSION https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_275-Connie.mp3 Award-winning author, depth psychotherapist, and guide Connie Zweig shows us encountering darkness is a necessary part of our spiritual journey. In the first half of life, we disown aspects of ourselves to fit in and navigate our world more smoothly. Over time we realize all aspects of ourselves must be recalled and befriended. Integration of these shadow aspects lays the foundation for spiritual awakening. Through careful introspection, dreamwork, and self-confrontation, we can see beyond stereotypes an ..read more

VIDEO VERSION AUDIO VERSION https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_273-Anima-Mundi.mp3 Is it possible that all objects are alive? Are the winds, the oceans, the mountains ensouled, and if so, does humanity participate? Jung sensed the truth in this and embraced the concept of Anima Mundi, or world soul. We can trace this idea back to ancient philosophies. In the sixth century BC, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher Thales of Miletus saw the world as a unified whole and believed that everything in the universe was interconnected and influenced by one another. He supposed that everything was ..read more

Photo Credit: Alicia Bessette https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_238-Matthew-Quick.mp3 Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, shares himself and his new book, We Are the Light. Writer’s block led Quick to This Jungian Life podcast, analysis, and letter writing as a literary device. Letters free us even as the privacy of the page dares us to reveal ourselves, risk intimacy, and express our longing to be received. Lucas, the main character, rediscovers himself through faithful letters to his former Jungian analyst after a movie theater shooting takes 18 lives, includin ..read more

Image Credit: E. Rubenstein https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_222-v2.mp3 Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish mystical tradition that has captured the imaginations of people from widely diverse backgrounds, including Jung himself. Three weeks after his heart attack in 1944, Jung had an ecstatic vision, “…Everything around me also seemed enchanted…I myself was in Pardes-Rimonim, in the pomegranate garden where Tiferet and Malchut married. I also imagined myself as Rabi Shimon ben Yochai, whose mystical marriage was celebrated now. It looked exactly as the Kabbalists portrayed it. I cannot ..read more

The Inspiration of Saint Matthew by Caravaggio https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_211-Daimon-v3.mp3 The daimon, a guiding spirit of individual destiny, was discussed by ancient Greek philosophers and still surfaces in books and movies like The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. Daimons were particularly linked to creativity and life force and described as lesser deities, divine messengers, and determinative fates. For Jung, “daimon” was a synonym for that part of the unconscious concerned with life purpose, and it spoke through intuition and dreams. Ego’s task is transforming the au ..read more

Photo Credit: Kyle Johnson via Unsplash https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_213-Vocation.mp3 Vocation, once associated with serving God through service to others, is now most strongly associated with a career having personal worth. Vocation spans a range of needs and values:  commitment to making ends meet, striving for material rewards and social status, or the more internal satisfaction of research, helping others, and artistic expression. Freud considered love and work the cornerstones of our humanness, and Jung said, “In the final analysis, we count for something only becau ..read more

Photo Credit: Alicia Bessette https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_238-Matthew-Quick.mp3 Matthew Quick, author of The Silver Linings Playbook, shares himself and his new book, We Are the Light. Writer’s block led Quick to This Jungian Life podcast, analysis, and letter writing as a literary device. Letters free us even as the privacy of the page dares us to reveal ourselves, risk intimacy, and express our longing to be received. Lucas, the main character, rediscovers himself through faithful letters to his former Jungian analyst after a movie theater shooting takes 18 lives, includin ..read more

Image Credit: E. Rubenstein https://traffic.libsyn.com/thisjungianlife/TJL_222-v2.mp3 Kabbalah is an ancient Jewish mystical tradition that has captured the imaginations of people from widely diverse backgrounds, including Jung himself. Three weeks after his heart attack in 1944, Jung had an ecstatic vision, “…Everything around me also seemed enchanted…I myself was in Pardes-Rimonim, in the pomegranate garden where Tiferet and Malchut married. I also imagined myself as Rabi Shimon ben Yochai, whose mystical marriage was celebrated now. It looked exactly as the Kabbalists portrayed it. I cannot ..read more