Inner Wayfinding Cohort
gradually create the unity of conscious & unconscious, without which there is no individuation
This is an invitation to the “Inner Wayfinding” cohort starting next month.
If you want to hear what it’s all about, read ahead normally.
If you’re already interested, skip to Logistics.
If you like social proof, skip down to Testimonials.
If you just want to buy your ticket, click here.
Most people are at war with themselves. Our emotions want one things, our conscious minds want another, our unconscious selves shimmer with third fourth and fifth possibilities. Instead of pouring out into the world, our energies get knotted up fighting each other, holding each other back, swirling and draining away inside of us.
There are a few limited ways we tend to deal with this:
Do what the conscious mind wants, suppress everything else.
Unpack every possible emotion and unconscious drive involved, spend a few years gazing endlessly into them, avoid making actual decisions.
Let the conscious ego act as a mediator and final arbiter, listening to all the petitions from drives and desires and needs.
What almost no one does — because it makes no sense to the conscious ego — is to let go, drop into open spontaneous space, and let the whole psyche push and pull and storm,, let the chemical reaction play out how it’s going to play out, within the vessel of your own inner experience.
Almost no one tries this — and yet, it’s the most strangely effective method I know of.
There are a lot of ways to go about it; I’ve found that the easiest entry point tends to be Jung’s practice of Active Imagination.
If you’ve ever read Carl Jung’s Red Book, you have some idea of what his practice of Active Imagination can do — and also of how deeply strange it is. All the Jungian ideas we most treasure — archetypes, the collective unconscious, anima, animus, the unity of opposites… — they come from his roaming the unconscious in Active Imagination.
The same basic techniques have been used by shamans, Sufis, Taoists, Christian mystics, Tantric Buddhists, and just about everyone who’s ever noticed and leaned into the power of inner imagery.
[In Active Imagination] you can not only analyse your unconscious but you also give your unconscious a chance to analyse yourself, and therewith you gradually create the unity of conscious and unconscious without which there is no individuation at all.
— Jung
That’s the core of it — this isn’t just the usual strategy where you, the conscious ego, examine and analyze the rest of yourself. It’s a way of allowing the many parts of you to analyze, interact, and mingle with one another.
This can be confusing for some people because it’s non-linear and not especially effortful. We often expect Truly Effective inner work to be like rubbing alcohol or lifting weights — it should hurt, it should strain us, it should have a clear and recognizable progression; how else do we know it’s working?
Active imagination doesn’t seem to work that way most of the time. It’s more like lightning strikes — energy builds up above and below, and for awhile it seems like nothing is really happening; then, all the sudden, the energy moves, it lashes out, flashing claws to unite above and below — that “unity of conscious and unconscious, without which there is no individuation at all.”
In this cohort, we’ll start in on the basics of this practice. We’ll start noticing and encouraging the many, many charges that want to be evened out between the conscious and unconscious — the many many places where lightning wants to strike, if we can just step back and let it.
For specific examples of how this can look, I’ve written two accounts you can check out, here and here. The process looks odd to people who expect inner work to look either like meditation (find inner stillness, sink into emptiness) or therapy (understand your self better so you can operate your self better), and this is usually a positive thing. Opening up your preconceived notions of what it takes to alter the Psyche can in itself be a healing encounter.
Logistics
Group meetings: 5pm CEST, July 12, 15, 19, 22, 26 (Mondays & Fridays)
5 group meetings, a shared discord, optional crews
$300 for both a cohort ticket and permanent access to the self-guided course (if you’ve already bought the course, but not the cohort, contact me separately, we can deduct your purchase price)
Each meeting, I’ll give a short topic-based talk, then open to Q&A, group interaction, shared practice, whatever’s in the field for the day.
Testimonials:
Here are some comments I’ve gotten from attendees of previous workshops on these topics:
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