“Without my piece of earth, my life’s work would not have come into being.” (Word and Image, 1979)
Jung is one of the few psychotherapists who has written extensively about our relationship with Nature. He warned of the consequences of our separation from the nonhuman world, of taking from the earth with no reciprocity, and of our consequent loss of soul. He also describes how spending time in the natural world can be deeply healing, opening doors to imagination, synchronicity, and the numinous, inviting us to take our place once again within the sacred matrix of life.
In these two sessions, I will look at our complex and often confusing relationship with the more-than-human world. We often hear people say they love Nature; yet we all take part in a system that is destroying our environment. How did we arrive at such a perilous place? Can a Jungian way of thinking help us face our cultural shadow? This includes exploring the stories we tell ourselves about our place in our ecosystem which have developed over centuries. I will be offering some stories and dreams to help digest these complex issues. I will be suggesting that deepening our relationships with land, place, animals, plants, and the elements, as well as with ourselves as animals, is an essential step towards healing ecocide. Ecological crisis can then become an extraordinary portal of modern times.
