Love, Eros, & Emptiness in the 21st Century: The Mandala Speaks
This presentation will revisit Jung’s declaration that there exists a widespread crisis of sterility in contemporary consciousness due to a culture of exaggerated skepticism and materialism. This emptiness fosters anxiety, despair, loss of meaning, and addiction. Unearthed by trauma, this emptiness plunges us into a longing for Eros. The figure of Eros in classical mythology grants us images of this powerful, but complex and ambivalent encounter. Engaged, incarnated Eros in the forms of dream work, active imagination, creative expression, and active work on relationships can birth a transformation that “quickens the sterile wilderness of the soul as rain quickens the earth” (Jung). The ancient and worldwide experience of the mandala, a symbol of the Self, can emerge in these forms to contain and channel affect-images from the archetypal realm to grant a relationship with the living psyche.