This Jungian Life
Eavesdrop on three Jungian analysts as they engage in lively, sometimes irreverent conversations about a wide range of topics. Join them for a discussion of news events, family dynamics, personal issues, and more as they share what it’s like to see the world through the depth psychological lens provided by CG Jung. Half of each episode is spent discussing a dream submitted by a listener. Lisa, Joseph, and Deb went through their Jungian training together, becoming friends and developing creative partnerships.
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Alchemical Mortificatio: How to Survive the Wintering of Your Life
12/18/2025
Alchemical Mortificatio: How to Survive the Wintering of Your Life
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ----------------------------------------------------- Mortificatio is an alchemical term for the moment a life-organizing identity collapses. We might call it burnout, divorce, depression, retirement shock, institutional betrayal, or a terrifying medical diagnosis. The alchemists called it “death,” and Jungians understand it as part of the psychology of transformation. Read along with the dream . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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How to Work with Denial: A Jungian Guide to Facing Reality
12/11/2025
How to Work with Denial: A Jungian Guide to Facing Reality
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ----------------------------------------------------- People often mistake denial for stubbornness, self-deception, or moral failure. Denial is actually a primal psychological defense that attempts to regulate which aspects of reality are permitted to reach awareness. Today, we explore how denial operates within Psyche, why it activates powerfully in response to traumatic experiences and addiction, and how it relates to shadow, repression, and dissociation. Denial is a pre-verbal way of titrating overwhelming experiences by making them unthinkable and unsymbolized. The problem is that they are then stored in the subtle body and give rise to a host of symptoms. Programs like AA explicitly confront the denial of consequences by repeatedly sharing painful consequences within the meeting structure. Some psychoanalysts believe denial is the organizing defense in mania and borderline personality disorder. Art, films, analytic metaphors, and dreams can offer representations of the lost experiences, so the unformulated experiences acquire image and language. Denial can be viewed as a benevolent survival strategy, and yet, like most defenses, must be set aside for us to make full contact with ourselves and the world. Read along with the dream . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Have We Ever Really Read Jung? Sonu Shamdasani on the Collected Works Crisis
12/04/2025
Have We Ever Really Read Jung? Sonu Shamdasani on the Collected Works Crisis
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with 10% off from now until December 31st. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ----------------------------------------------------- Jung’s translator and editor for the English edition of his Collected Works took it upon himself to alter more than 60% of Jung’s ideas to make the books more marketable. Finally, this will be corrected. Sonu Shamdasani and his team at the Philemon Foundation are meticulously researching Jung’s original documents, and the results will surprise and perhaps even shock us. There was far more to Jung and his insights than we were permitted to know, and all that’s about to change. So, fellow Jungians, hold onto your hats and get ready to meet the real Carl Gustav Jung. Read along with the dream LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Gratitude and Reverence: How to Lead a Sacred, Soulful Life
11/27/2025
Gratitude and Reverence: How to Lead a Sacred, Soulful Life
✨ The Gift of Dreamwork: Join This Jungian Life Dream School with ten percent off from now until the 31st of December. Just use code HOLIDAY2025 when you purchase Dream School for yourself or as a gift. ----------------------------------------------------- A Jungian Look at Gratitude (and Why It Usually Arrives Late) Have you ever suddenly realized, “I never really thanked them for that,” a parent, teacher, mentor, or community that quietly carried you through a hard stretch? Gratitude is a psychological turning point: the moment you grasp that your life rests on the real, sometimes costly efforts of others, and how that realization can shift you out of self-obsession into a larger world of connection and meaning. Today we’ll explore: How genuine gratitude usually arrives late because we don’t understand what motivates other people, and our empathy is shallow. The contrast between gratitude and resentment: how resentment can be necessary at times, but becomes toxic when we’re trapped in it. Gratitude can shift us from a defensive, shut-down stance to an open-hearted, process-oriented way of living. Why some gifts like life, care, education, protection, and initiation can never be paid back, and how a mature form of gratitude is often paying it forward. Religious and ritual practices of saying grace, giving thanks, and honoring the dead are ways of recognizing that our lives depend on ongoing acts of generosity and sacrifice. How gratitude can be a sign of individuation: moving through the world with a heart that stays open to both joy and suffering, and letting experiences change us. If you’re curious about how a simple “thank you” can become a doorway into a soulful life, this episode is for you. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Signs Contempt Is Ruining Your Relationship & Ways to Cope
11/20/2025
Signs Contempt Is Ruining Your Relationship & Ways to Cope
Contempt feels like a gut punch. It’s a cold, distancing act that devalues a person even as it avoids solving a real problem. The contemptuous are full of shame, fear, or hurt, so they recreate those feelings in others to evade their own issues. Unlike anger (which tries to correct an injustice), disgust (which avoids what feels contaminating), or hatred (which seeks destruction), contempt asserts superiority and cuts off relatedness. It shows up in eye‑rolling, sarcasm, mockery, and a habit of judging others as beneath one’s standards. Whether you’re struggling to survive it thrown at you, or you’ve been told you unconsciously do it, there is a way to transcend it. Read along with the . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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SEPARATIO: The Alchemical Secret That Ends Confusion
11/13/2025
SEPARATIO: The Alchemical Secret That Ends Confusion
Alchemical separatio is the skill of sorting out your mind. You separate what belongs to you—your complexes, habitual triggers, and painful memories--from what is happening in the world around you. In the laboratory of your life, you separate present triggers from older wounds, and literal facts from symbolic meanings. This is part of your essential self-ordering instinct. As you bring more and more of yourself into conscious awareness, a delightful calm will tell you you’re on the right path. Join us and learn how to gain the profound clarity necessary on the path of Individuation. Read along with the dream . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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LUCID DREAMING: How to Make the Most of a Magical Opportunity
11/06/2025
LUCID DREAMING: How to Make the Most of a Magical Opportunity
Lucid dreaming is an interesting ego state when we are dreaming and regain full self-awareness. Being awake in the dream world can be useful, but imposing a rigid agenda can undermine the Dream Maker’s attempts to educate and help us. Each dream is crafted to incrementally expand our awareness and acceptance of unconscious factors we need in order to grow. When we wake inside a dream, we can lose track of that important attitude and may use the dream as our playground—most people try to fly and miss significant opportunities. If we can achieve a non-grasping clarity, lucidity can deepen our inner work by enabling us to engage dream figures with the full measure of our curiosity. Researchers have various suggestions for increasing the frequency of Lucid Dreams, and ancient traditions like Dream Yoga help the aspirant learn about their mental structures. Attaining access to the inner worlds is similar to Jung’s Active Imagination and can yield comparable or even better results. This is possible if we adopt a proper dream ethic: respect the dream as an autonomous process and use lucidity to inquire and relate, not to dominate. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Shadow, Evil, and Individuation: Jung’s View of the Devil
10/30/2025
Shadow, Evil, and Individuation: Jung’s View of the Devil
The devil archetype carries three qualities: it promotes bestial violence of every kind, it tries to convince us that the material world is the only reality, and it fools us into thinking we can spiritually ascend through intellect alone. On a personal level, it gathers our disowned infernal traits—envy, rage, greed, and the wish to dominate —and seduces us into believing those qualities are virtues. Once we face our own devilishness and grant it a symbolic form, we can assume a choiceful stance. Lacking that, we try to evacuate our own evil by projecting it onto others and then punishing them. As Jungians, we understand that our inferior function will first present as an imp. Still, with kind concern and thoughtful opportunities, it can transform into an uncanny ally that rescues us from malignant innocence. In its subtle form, the demonic attitude tempts us into literalism as it attacks our capacity to reflect and hold a symbolic attitude. Join us as we circumambulate The Devil in honor of Halloween. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Horror as a Mirror: What Netflix’s MONSTER Makes Us See
10/23/2025
Horror as a Mirror: What Netflix’s MONSTER Makes Us See
The new controversial Netflix series MONSTER: The Ed Gein Story offers a window into the devouring mother archetype, a transformation fantasy gone horribly wrong, and the human capacity for monstrous behavior. Gein’s crimes inspired the Hitchcock movie Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs. It challenges the audience to confront its fascination with evil and begs the question, where do the monsters hide in our own Psyche? To help us wrestle with these questions, we’re joined by Joey Pollari—actor, musician, director, editor, and the man who plays Anthony Perkins in the show. We’ll explore how intimacy with darkness affects a performer, how public persona and private pain intersect, and why we continue watching when the camera reveals what we’d rather not know. Trigger warning: this episode discusses violence, death, criminality, and severe mental illness. Learn More about Joey Pollari: Listen to Joey’s new song, LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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SUBLIMATIO: Jung’s Alchemical Method of Turning Problems into Archetypes
10/16/2025
SUBLIMATIO: Jung’s Alchemical Method of Turning Problems into Archetypes
Do you get overwhelmed by intense feelings and old patterns, feeling stuck because you can’t make sense of what’s happening, and reacting on impulse instead of pausing to choose a steady, thoughtful response? Jung’s alchemical insights will help. Sublimatio is an old alchemy term for heating a solid so that it turns directly into a gas, rises, and then cools back into a solid higher up. As a psychological metaphor, this happens when we discover an archetypal image or idea that adds a fresh perspective on an old problem. The vapor becomes a solid again when we apply the new attitude to the lived problem. This stage is both spiritual and practical—the perfect combination that helps us outgrow our issues. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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People Pleasing Is Making You Sick!
10/09/2025
People Pleasing Is Making You Sick!
People Pleasing is a compulsive strategy that disavows your needs and surrenders your agency. It begins in family systems that only reward compliance, which produces a false self. If your soul is constantly devalued, you may develop dependent narcissism with a covert contract: “I’ll keep you happy, and you’ll keep me safe.” Healing comes when you identify your true experience—notice whether you feel drained, tense, or obligated versus calm, interested, or genuinely willing. Give yourself permission to pause before agreeing. Say, “I’ll think about it,” step away to check in, rate how much you do or don’t like the request, and give a clear yes/no. Say yes only when it aligns with your values and can be revised; a yes aimed at managing someone else’s mood or bolstering your self-worth is unhealthy and requires deeper work. Growth requires inner authority and the courage to be disliked so that your choices follow Psyche rather than external approval. Find the books we reference . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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If Looks Could Kill: The Death Mother Archetype
10/02/2025
If Looks Could Kill: The Death Mother Archetype
Some mothers attack life in their children. They crush appetite, joy, curiosity, and initiative. They call it love or duty. It is not love. It is domination dressed as care. She withholds warmth to make the child obedient. She intrudes when the child needs space and vanishes when the child needs help. She shames tears, punishes play, mocks ambition, and polices the body. She turns boundaries into punishments and favors into chains. The Death Mother archetype is ancient and modern, requiring careful confrontation to free the parent and the child from its destructive grip. Today, we will help you do this. Find the books we reference , and . --- Eavesdrop on three Jungian analysts as they engage in lively, sometimes irreverent conversations about a wide range of topics as they share what it's like to see the world through the depth psychological lens provided by Carl Jung. Conversations between real people—never AI. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Projection and Play: What Dolls Do to Psyche
09/25/2025
Projection and Play: What Dolls Do to Psyche
Dolls are human stand-ins that invite projection and play; children use them (including action figures and Barbies) to try on identities and develop imagination, then later withdraw the projection as the figure becomes inert again. Icons and idols differ because their meaning is fixed and not for play, which limits imaginative engagement. The healthiest use of dolls is symbolic—relating to them without collapsing into literal belief—while overly realistic “reborn” dolls, talk-box toys, and similar literalizations can narrow imagination, blur symbol and reality. Across history, dolls have served ritual, funerary, and “sympathetic magic” functions, echoing a recurring human urge to craft lifelike figures and “breathe life” into them. A modern parallel appears in AI’s disembodied mirroring—an echo that can soothe but does not foster embodied, self-generated play. The practical test: does the figure expand inner life and integrate feeling, or does it substitute for reality and stunt imagination? Dreams carry the same work inward; their figures function like internal dolls that invite dialogue and meaning-making. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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MYTHS: Maps of the Collective Unconscious
09/18/2025
MYTHS: Maps of the Collective Unconscious
Think of myths as the dreams of an entire culture. Those stories reside in the collective unconscious and influence all of us throughout our lifespan. Mythic patterns shape our attitudes, and when we recognize them, we can link our personal experiences to the universal. When you’re panicking, you’re under the influence of Pan; when you’re sunk in gloom, you’re on a night-sea journey like Odysseus. Jungians’ call linking the personal to the universal, amplification: take a symptom, link it to a myth, and you’ve shifted it from “my private defect” to “a shared force,” which gives us objectivity. Jung noticed that when we lose awareness of the mythic, those patterns secretly affect us and tend to act themselves out, sometimes recklessly. Today, we’ll help you bring these grand narratives into awareness and understand how they help and, at times, hinder you. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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BULLYING: When Aggression Runs Wild
09/11/2025
BULLYING: When Aggression Runs Wild
Join us for a free Zoom seminar on Dreams and Art on Saturday, September 13th, at 10:30 am EST. . Bullying is about unmanaged aggression and broken containment in early life. Aggression is normal, but kids need adults to name it, hold it, and channel it into play with clear rules. When that doesn’t happen, some children learn to control and humiliate to feel safe, while others shut down and can’t access protective anger. Bullying works as a quick fix for shame or missing recognition, or as an enactment of a harsh inner critic; it gives brief relief and then flips into emptiness. In pairs and groups, people assign disowned traits to a target and attack them, and the crowd effect spreads cruelty while personal conscience fades. Schools should step in directly and calmly: set firm limits, bring the conflict into speech, teach regulation, build empathy, and help vulnerable students practice plain, assertive pushback. Change is easier in childhood; in adults, the pattern hardens and can cross into legal trouble. The ongoing task is individuation and shadow work: own the times you bullied or collapsed, take back what you projected, and use aggression for boundaries and clarity rather than domination or surrender. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Jung’s Inner Guides: The Secret of The Red Book
09/04/2025
Jung’s Inner Guides: The Secret of The Red Book
You're invited to join us for a free Zoom seminar on Dreams and Art on Saturday, September 13th, at 10:30am ET. . --- Jung’s Red Book is the primary research record of his systematic experiments in active imagination after the break with Freud, combining calligraphic German text and paintings that document dialogues with his inner guides—especially Philemon and Salome—which became source material for his innovative psychological concepts: Psyche’s autonomy, the collective unconscious, the transcendent function, and individuation. The Red Book reveals the secret source of his groundbreaking ideas. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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The Creative Power of Inner Tension
08/28/2025
The Creative Power of Inner Tension
You're invited to join us for a free Zoom seminar on Dreams and Art on Saturday, September 13th, at 10:30am ET. . Holding the tension of the opposites means that when you’re pulled hard in two different directions, you don’t rush to choose or shut one side down—you keep both viewpoints in mind and let each be heard with equal rights, as if two people were debating inside you. If you can stand that pressure without fleeing, something new appears from the unconscious: a symbol or fresh idea that is a living, third thing that includes truth from both sides. This is the transcendent function that produces a new attitude you couldn’t reach by willpower alone. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s how Psyche grows without discarding essential parts of itself. Today, we’ll teach you how to do this. . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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IMAGINATION: Jung’s Path to Creativity and Inner Freedom
08/21/2025
IMAGINATION: Jung’s Path to Creativity and Inner Freedom
Imagination is a central organ of human perception, as vital as the senses, through which we access meaning, creativity, and the unconscious. It first appeared as an evolutionary leap that allowed humans to run mental simulations, project into the future, and innovate new tools, myths, and symbols. It operates voluntarily—when we actively plan, rehearse, or fantasize—and involuntarily, through dreams, hypnagogic images, and sudden inspirations. It offers insights we could not have predicted. Imagination provides the bridge between unconscious and conscious life, most present in active imagination, where inner figures reveal truths. It is healing and liberating: it anchors us in personal and collective myth, fosters creativity by joining disparate elements into new forms, and provides access to the mundus imaginalis, a subtle world of archetypal experience. Without cultivating imagination, our inner life stagnates; with it, we belong to something greater, deeper, and more sustaining. Read along with the dream . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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SOLUTIO: The Alchemy of Letting Go
08/14/2025
SOLUTIO: The Alchemy of Letting Go
Solutio is Psyche’s method to facilitate transformation: our rigid ego is softened in symbolic water, allowing outworn attitudes to unbind. We can see this reflected in dreams of oceans and baths, or a wall of our house dissolving. This can show up when we slough off our work persona or a creative depression brought on by retirement. Analysis itself—ana-lysis—a deliberate loosening, can deepen the process by offering a safe container to let go and yield to the process. The work is careful because the waters that purify (baptism or tears) can also drown us (psychosis or crowd contagion). We require a supportive relationship, a daily spiritual practice, or the analytic hour to hold us as our ego reorganizes like a butterfly in a chrysalis. Once our ego solidifies, we notice we’re more permeable to symbols or less defended against feelings. We’re more skilled at breaking problems into their component parts with a determination to resist regressing. The alchemical process was not created; it was noticed as a natural pattern of transformation. It leaves us with more of who we really are, but we couldn’t have claimed until we became soft enough to receive it. Read along with the . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Jack and the Beanstalk: When Magic Calls Us Into Life
08/07/2025
Jack and the Beanstalk: When Magic Calls Us Into Life
Jack and the Beanstalk is a symbolic prescription for psychological growth, teaching us to climb out of darkness, confront the giants within, claim the gifts of our unconscious, and transform our ordinary lives. Join us as we reveal the secret meaning hidden in the fairytale. Read along with the . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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THE QUICKENING: Discovering New Life Within
07/31/2025
THE QUICKENING: Discovering New Life Within
Dreams about pregnancy and babies symbolize something new taking shape within us, like a creative project, a hidden talent, or a psychological shift that's quietly developing beneath our awareness. These images express the mysterious tension we sense during periods of growth, change, or potential, drawing our attention inward and challenging our current identity or circumstances. When our symbolic baby finally arrives in the dream, it reveals a hidden part of ourselves that is now ready to enter consciousness, creating both excitement and anxiety about how this new aspect will fit into our lives. Join us to explore how dreams of pregnancy or babies reveal our emergent potential. Find the dreams we analyze . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Wounds into Wisdom: Carl Jung’s Private Life
07/24/2025
Wounds into Wisdom: Carl Jung’s Private Life
Carl Jung’s discoveries are woven into our common understanding. Introvert/extravert, shadow work, typology, persona, and synchronicity pop up in casual conversations all the time. Negotiating with our inner figures, now used by Internal Family Systems, was pioneered by him. Although we have adopted his ideas, few know how they were forged from his personal struggles. Today, we honor Jung’s 150th birthday by sharing stories from his life and how they shaped his groundbreaking insights. Find the dream we analyze . Find the books we reference . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Calcinatio and the Alchemy of Honest Suffering
07/17/2025
Calcinatio and the Alchemy of Honest Suffering
The calcinatio stage in Jung's alchemy is about being put through inner fire—it's when the ego undergoes a kind of burning away of projections, illusions, and inflated ideas about itself. This stage often brings intense suffering, frustration, and confrontation with parts of yourself you'd rather avoid. It's about staying awake in the heat long enough to discover the truths behind your defenses. Sometimes it's like sitting in hell and roasting. This raw, honest suffering is necessary for individuation. It's not punishment—it's Psyche's way of depotentiating false structures so that something new and more truthful can emerge from the ashes. Follow along with our dream interpretation . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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DISCOVERING A NEW ARCHETYPE: The Buddhabrot Fractal Bridging Math, Myth, and the Collective Unconscious
07/10/2025
DISCOVERING A NEW ARCHETYPE: The Buddhabrot Fractal Bridging Math, Myth, and the Collective Unconscious
The Buddhabrot pattern springs from a simple algorithm: you take thousands of starting points, run each one through the same formula over and over, and chart only those whose values grow without limit—these “divergent” paths form the spectral Buddha-like silhouette. Once you recognize the pattern, you see it everywhere. It’s visible in the rosette stained glass windows of Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres, numerous representations of the buddha, as well as in the Vāstu-Puruṣa-Maṇḍala used as blueprints for Indian temples, and in the ancient chakra symbols that are now so common—proof that numbers are universal symbols tying Psyche to the world. This is a newly identified archetype: an algorithmic icon born of computation that reveals an underlying cosmic unity that C.G. Jung called the Unus Mundus. Dr. Harry J. Shirley joins us and provides an amazing initiation into this uncanny discovery. Learn more about the Buddhabrot and watch the original video from AfterSkool . Read , The Buddhabrot and the Unus Mundus. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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The Handless Maiden: A Tale to Heal the Wounded Feminine
07/03/2025
The Handless Maiden: A Tale to Heal the Wounded Feminine
Everyone faces a moment when they are tempted to sacrifice their true self to chase wealth, approval, success, or security, but doing so strips away their strength and leaves them hollow. To reclaim their lost agency, a person must embrace the uncertainty and vulnerability they've been avoiding. They must stand alone, undefended, and trust the wisdom hidden in their wounds. The Handless Maiden fairytale will help us understand the path back to wholeness. Read along with our dream interpretation . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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TAMING YOUR INNER CRITIC: Turn Self-Attack into Self-Awareness
06/26/2025
TAMING YOUR INNER CRITIC: Turn Self-Attack into Self-Awareness
Our inner critic—that voice constantly tearing us down—can stem from difficult childhood experiences, negative cultural messages, or even powerful archetypal forces deep within us. While healthy self-assessment involves honestly owning our mistakes, feeling genuine regret, and making amends, the harsh inner critic keeps us stuck in cycles of self-hatred and shame. Sometimes, beating ourselves up can actually be a sneaky way to avoid openly engaging a problem or soberly accepting responsibility. The trick is to slow down, get curious, and talk back to that voice—to have an honest inner dialogue rather than just giving in. At its worst, the inner critic can be devastating, pulling us toward despair; that's precisely when we need the support of others and deeper wisdom—turning toward the Self will help us find a path to peace. Read along with our dream interpretation . Here’s a we discussed. LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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SHARK: Elemental Symbol of Our Will to Survive and Ravenous Hunger for Experience
06/19/2025
SHARK: Elemental Symbol of Our Will to Survive and Ravenous Hunger for Experience
Primeval, silent, relentless—the shark announces itself as its fin slices the water. In that instant, ego’s barriers shudder and give way: you’re not anxious; you’re utterly alert, stripped of distraction by a force both familiar and uncanny. When you stop battling that raw terror and honor it—offer a silent libation of attention—the predator becomes a protector. Here, in the shark’s unblinking gaze, you meet the stranger in your depths, the animality you once fled, now guiding you to face what you’ve long denied. Read along with our dream analysis . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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MOTIVATION: What Happens When Your Get-Up-and-Go Leaves Without You?
06/12/2025
MOTIVATION: What Happens When Your Get-Up-and-Go Leaves Without You?
Motivation rises from conscious and unconscious dynamics. We can reason with ourselves to take logical action while our libido flows with its own intelligence. When these two aspects align, we find ourselves acting decisively and effectively with remarkable freedom. When we’re at odds with the secret intelligence of the unconscious, we can find ourselves uncomfortably suspended. As we honor the autonomy of Psyche and cultivate a curious friendship with it, we can discover a creative collaboration that sets us in a fresh direction aligned with the Self. Read along with our dream analysis . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Sibling Rivalry: Archetypal Conflicts and Shadow Dynamics in Families
06/05/2025
Sibling Rivalry: Archetypal Conflicts and Shadow Dynamics in Families
Sibling rivalry can bruise and build in equal measure. On the hard side, the older child feels toppled from the throne, the younger scrambles for a foothold, and both learn how quickly envy, resentment, and score-keeping ignite—whether over a parent’s extra hour of attention or the larger slice of birthday cake. Those early contests can calcify into adult grudges that surface in estate negotiations, workplace jockeying, or mismatched relationships. Yet the same daily friction teaches useful skills: we sharpen empathy by reading a sibling’s next move, develop a theory of mind through constant negotiation, and discover that competition does not rule out loyalty—especially when a crisis calls every rival home. Listen and discover how sibling rivalry is both the first training ground for conflict and the first workshop for cooperation, shaping how we handle fairness, attachment, and resilience for the rest of our lives. Read along with our dream analysis . LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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Mandala Archetype: How the Self Turns Chaos into Cosmos
05/29/2025
Mandala Archetype: How the Self Turns Chaos into Cosmos
Mandalas are Psyche’s way of drawing a compass for you when life feels off-kilter. Jung noticed that these circular patterns—whether they appear in Navajo sand paintings, Tibetan yantras, or last night’s dream—pull everything back toward a stable center he called the Self. The rim defines where your ego ends; the cross-lines and repeating fours help you locate sensation, feeling, thinking, and intuition in relation to your core. By “walking” the circle, even in imagination, the ego learns to orbit rather than hijack the organizing center, and the usual tug-of-war between instinct and spirit eases. Jung’s own Liverpool dream, with its sunlit circular island in a dark industrial square, showed him how a mandala can emerge autonomously whenever Psyche needs to order chaos and point the way back to wholeness. Curious why a circle keeps popping up in dreams and sacred art?—listen in and find out how it can quietly realign your life. *Featuring our new Q&A section where we answer questions from our Patrons! GO DIRECTLY TO THE Q&A: 43:29 LOOK & GROW If you’ve been struggling in the dark, trying to find the keys to unlock your dreams, help has arrived. Order your copy of from the hosts of This Jungian Life podcast and open the secret door.
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