“Living in the world without insight into the hidden laws of nature is like not knowing the language of the country in which one is born.”
— Hazrat Inayat Kahn, Sufi mystic and scholar

Program philosophy

Experiential Jungian Journeys teaches an alchemical blend of Jungian thought and Taoist perception, grounded in body-centered practice of awareness. These highly complimentary traditions provide a framework for grounding theoretical knowledge in lived experience, where it matters most!

Jung was the first psychologist to acknowledge that we are by nature, spiritual beings, that every person carries a unique essence that is worthwhile and necessary, and that it is an essential life task to regain connection with one’s unique Soul. Jungian practice promotes the development of a conscious relationship with the unconscious, with ‘Self.’ It does so in large part, by looking through a symbolic lens, whether with dreams or life events. Inevitably, healing the psychic wounds that interfere with living one’s path is a natural part of the process.

Jung discovered and made relevant within a psychological framework, that the unconscious is not something narrow and limited to oneself, but rather had layers of depth that grew wider and more profound as one delved more deeply; personal, familial, ancestral, cultural and ultimately, collective. The collective unconscious is the foundation that connects all that is. Experiential Jungian Journeys defines the collective unconscious as “an unlimited, eternal underlying matrix that neither exists nor not exists, out of which all things emerge and also return.’ The ancient Chinese sages called it Tao.

The ancient Taoists did not ask so much the question ‘why,’ as westerners tend to do, but rather, ‘what’s so?’ They observed themselves, the natural world, and the rhythms of life from a profound practice of awareness, thereby delving into the fundamental workings of manifest life.

They understood that nature, including human nature, is a reflection of the Universe. Amazingly, they were able to map how life manifests in consciousness and form from the most ineffable to the most material. Unhampered by a theoretical split between Psyche and Soma, they were able to maintain a unified view of life in all its myriad differentiations. They qualitatively knew millennia ago what the institutionalized sciences are only recently defining quantitatively.

Lao Tsu famously described the process of life coming into Being in Chapter 42 of the Taoteching:

The Tao gives birth to One One gives Birth to Two Two gives birth to Three Three gives birth to the Ten Thousand Things Ten Thousand Things with Yin at their backs Yang in their embrace And the breath between for Harmony… trans Redpine

Millenia later, Jung and his decades-long collaborator, physicist Wolfgang Pauli, both concluded that Psyche and Matter could be understood as two expressions of one underlying reality, and that the key to understanding their connection was the number archetypes.

Jungian psychology and Taoist traditions are both rooted in the archetypal, work with symbolic lenses, and understand that Psyche and Matter are two expressions of One underlying matrix. Jung called that underlying intelligence the collective unconscious. The Taoists called it Tao. The Jungian framework speaks to western psychology, while Taoist philosophy does something western traditions still cannot; it provides theoretical and practical structures to hold all the realms of being; spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, instinctual and the Soul along a continuum of Wholeness. Ancient Chinese perception intimately connects human nature with nature at large and with the Cosmos beyond. Only by knowing our place as part of the ‘fabric of Life’ can we stand between Heaven and Earth and fully dance in this cosmic, embodied reality. Together, these two traditions fit together ‘hand in glove.’

The three programs offered in Experiential Jungian Journeys; A Jungian Journey thru the Taoist Five Elements; The Space Between, From Opposition to Dynamic Equilibrium; and The Ouroboros and The Number Archetypes 1-10, represent three levels of deepening into the archetypal nature of embodied reality.  These courses point to how consciousness and form emerge from and return to the ineffable. They also point to the in-lying presence of Eternity and Unity in every moment of embodied reality. Knowing them is a practice of perception and being.  Inherent in each of the programs is the development of the ability to perceive, and therefore experience, of the ‘connection of all things.’  I call it the ‘fabric of life.’  At the same time, it is equally about each participant making contact with their unique essence, and knowing more fully how it wants to be expressed, all set in a safe group learning experience.  

“The experiential world...is the only world we can ever know.”
— Iain McGilchrist, Neuroscientist

For More Information:  360 774.3488 or contact Laura Lewis Thayer.