I finished teaching my last Psychology of Transformative Learning class yesterday. The title of the course felt daunting to me (I didn’t come up with that title, the class I suggested would have been called “Imaginal Ways of Knowing” or “Psychology of Perceiving and Knowing”), but I did what I always do–I taught it from [ Read more … ]
carl jung
Everything of which we are conscious is an image
… said Carl Jung, which segways nicely to my upcoming workshop April 16, at Book Passage. Here’s the description: Images lie at the heart of the creative process. They are the language of the “middle realm,” a place where literal words don’t yet exist. Depth psychologists believe that images are animate and in this seminar [ Read more … ]
The Enchanted Loom
I feel moved to post this email from an amazing woman who heard me on the radio last fall. Her metaphoric images are full of spirited life, and I love her image of the culture being in the “neti-neti” stage of childbirth: “We are ‘not here nor there’ but somewhere in-between. Neti-neti is a time [ Read more … ]
Do you have a guiding image?
I had a disagreement with an old friend recently about whether the images and metaphors that show up in our subconscious are “real.” I believe, just like with dreams, that when images and metaphors show up in our lives, they have something to teach us and I don’t think my friend would argue with that. [ Read more … ]
Working the Soil: Social Change and Metaphor
Don’t look for me in a human shape. I am inside your looking. No need for form with a love this strong. The lines above from Rumi can be interpreted in more than one way. As I teach courses on the psychology of metaphor, to my mind, Rumi’s lines refer to the power that metaphors [ Read more … ]