JOURNEY OF TRANSFORMATION: A Retrospective, a course with Anne Pickup

AT CAPACITY

"Love is My Religion, free spirits have to soar," sings Ziggy Marley, the Jamaican musician.  Dante Alighieri might agree as written in his Divine Comedy.  Is the 14th-century poet's journey, spanning from despair to the joy of ever-expanding love and consciousness, relevant in our personal lives as well as in today's complicated, polarized, and self-absorbed world?  

Through a retrospective of art, music, and story, we will explore the meaning of Dante's lines, "From one small spark springs up a mighty flare; if I set forth, others may come behind."  As we accept and take responsibility for our complexes with honesty, humility, and yes, humor, does our own "flare" make a difference for those who follow?

A point of reference will be the Divine Comedy through the lens of the Jungian author, Helen Luke's book, Dark Wood to White Rose, Journey of Transformation.  

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Friday, February 5  |  7:30-9:00pm, Eastern Time

AN EMOTIONAL UNIVERSE? Synchronicities and Sensitive Souls as Indicators of a Feeling Cosmos, an Evening with Michael Jawer

For thousands of years, philosophers have speculated that the universe may be conscious. Jung’s unus mundus is a more complex version of this idea: that our reality may be simultaneously physical and psychical, objective and subjective, outer and inner. Synchronicities, he believed, bore this out.

In this “Evening With,” Michael Jawer will share current ideas of consciousness researchers that begin to approach Jung’s thinking. Concepts such as panpsychism and cosmopsychism, which envision consciousness interacting with matter in bold, uncharted ways, conjure up the very real possibility that synchronicities, telesomatic (ESP-like) experiences, and children’s occasionally vivid recollections of another person’s life all speak to the likelihood that we live in a fundamentally emotional universe.

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Saturday, February 6  |  1-4pm, Eastern Time

DREAMING IN COLOR: Race in the Unconscious, a workshop with Dr. Fanny Brewster 

We seem to be finding more language to express ourselves regarding our collective suffering, questions, and ambivalence regarding raciality.  Dreams, the voice of our creative Psyche, often takes us to that place where it is easier to express ourselves, even regarding the often difficult topic of race, racism and racial relations. Dreaming in Color:  Race in the Unconscious, provides a space for integration of ego experiences of racial anxiety--both individual and collective, with the archetypal call from the unconscious for healing. 

We will spend time discussing our cultural/ethnic/racial dreams and re-visiting, finding a less- shadowed path to them through creative writing.  The mirroring of dreams and writing can provide us with walking Psyche's bridge between these two depthful interior spaces.  We might discover some things we never knew we had lost.

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Four Tuesdays, February 16 - March 9  |  7:00 - 8:30pm, Eastern Time

PRISMS: Refractions of this Journey We Call Life, A Course With James Hollis 

This course will examine the peculiar journey we call life from a number of differing angles. What is Comedy, and why do we laugh? What is a Jungian perspective on the problem of evil? How does one move from callow youth to wisdom? Of what should we be mindful regarding aging and mortality? These are questions that prompt one to more conscious living.

Required Text: Prisms: Reflections on this Journey We Call Life (Published 2. 15. 21.)

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Saturday, February 20  |  10:00-2:00pm, Eastern Time

FINDING HOME, a workshop With Sandy Geller

AT CAPACITY

The Jungian Art Therapy Workshop will use the framework of a guided meditation to represent The House as a Symbol of the Self. Participants will have ample time to use writing prompts and active imagination to work with the rich images evoked by the meditation of the house. It will be an experience of what Jung called a rite d'entrèe, an opening to the unconscious. We will, like Jung, become architects of a personal space, our temenos  where we can go to think deeply, soulfully, and creatively. Our time in the meditation will be followed by time to actually craft a tiny house or our own Bollingen sort of tower.

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Four Thursdays, March 4 - 25  |  7:30-9:00pm, Eastern Time

AN ESOTERIC VIEW OF THE WIZARD OF OZ, a course with Janet Kane

Have you wondered why most of the popular myths of the hero’s journey are from ancient civilizations?  Why don’t we have an American myth?  Well, we do, and we have been privileged to witness the birth of this powerful myth, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. As an archetypal story, it follows a pattern that extends back into ancient civilizations and their mythologies. Dorothy's journey away from Kansas and back again represents a spiritual quest, an expedition to inner dimensions to face all aspects of the Self. We will explore this move towards wholeness or individuation.

We will learn how the theosophical roots of the author L. Frank Baum helped create the rich depth of meaning that was born into existence in 1900 as a book and later reincarnated as a movie in 1939. Using the structure of Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey as well as astrological concepts, we will examine Dorothy’s longing for home, the Scarecrow’s, the Tin Woodman’s, and the Lion’s search for the things that will make them complete, the Wizard’s fear and frustration that result from his pretending to be something he is not and the universal need to believe in something or someone.

Learning about the deep wisdom in the story of the Wizard of Oz may help us develop a deeply rooted map for wherever we are in our own life and find the eternal truths in this story that helps us make sense of our own existence. 

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Friday, March 5 |  7:30-9:00pm, Eastern Time

THE WOLVES ARE BACK: The Great Mother and Cultural Complexes - A Look at the Reintroduction of Wolves into Yellowstone National Park Through a Jungian Lens, an Evening With Robert Bump

Officially, in 1926, as a consequence of a systematic policy of eradication, the last wolves were killed within the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.  On January 12, 1995,  eight adolescent gray wolves, members from packs of wolves living in Jasper National Park Alberta, Canada, were reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park.  Such a reversal of events—from eradication to successful reintroduction—involving an apex predator, the wolf, given the frightful place the wolf has held within the Western imagination is remarkable.  This presentation will  reflect on this reversal using the lens of analytical psychology, specifically the concept of the cultural complex, with the hope that it will offers the opportunity for a deepening of our understanding of humanity’s relationship to wilderness, wild animals, and what is wild within the human psyche.

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Friday, May 21 |  7:30-9:00pm, Eastern Time

THE GREEN DREAM: The Inauguration of the Individuation Process, an evening with Robert Mannis, Ph.D.

Jung had this dream shortly after Christmas of 1912.  He was 37 years old.  He was personally reeling from his collapsing friendship with Freud.  Jung referred to this time of his life as "a period of inner uncertainty."  Arguably this "Green Dream" may be the most important dream of Jung's life.  I believe this dream has great significance for all of us, as it began a journey of introspection that Jung aptly named, the individuation process.