In this three hour workshop, we will explore Emily Dickinson as a visionary healer whose poetry offers medicine for a nation experiencing a profound blow of fate. Through the lens of C.G. Jung’s writings on Fate and Destiny, we will consider how Dickinson’s fierce interiority, spiritual independence, and devotion to the “sovereign self” illuminate practices that help us become superior to our fate and responsive to our deeper destiny as Americans.

At a time when democratic life feels strained, Dickinson’s poems act as psychic antibodies—restoring imagination, courage, and inner freedom. Together we will engage her work as a dispenser of liberty: a guide to journaling, poetic reverie, and dreamwork that strengthens the voice of the Self.

Participants will learn practical methods for cultivating creative fluency and listening to the objective psyche, discovering how Dickinson’s medicine can renew our ethical life, our democracy, and our sense of vocation.

Our text is The Red Book: Liber Novus  A Reader’s Edition, by C.G. Jung. Edited and with an Introduction by Sonu Shamdasani. No advance reading is required. We will be reading and discussing the work in small, consecutive sections week by week, until we have completed the book. Our instructor Bette Joram will be the Zoom Host as well as record each session. All sessions will be recorded. The Jung Society has made this class simple and affordable in a way that supports the operations of the Jung Society. This is an ongoing class that folks can pay for per session. No one will be excluded due to inability to pay.

“…the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – C.G. Jung

Our in-person discussion group continues to meet weekly on Saturday mornings 11:00am to 12:30pm in the Nancy Alvord Library, room 222 of the Good Shepherd Center, Seattle. Participants suggest and discuss a variety of Jungian and depth psychological topics and benefit from community connection. Please join us!

Contact Laura at arweninrivendell@gmail.com with any questions, or just drop by!

We look forward to seeing you.

Would you fund a tragedy or warship, speak in an assembly of thousands, fight or resist an imperialist war, try Socrates? Through its radical new form of political organization, ancient Athens sought to be fair and inclusive, share power and wealth, and guarantee freedom and rights to citizens and in turn receive service and support. Laws and practices were instituted to ensure fairness, justice, and that rule and support arose from an educated collective.

This system became a foundation of many Western world’s powers, including our American system. It provides great blessings and benefits. Yet Socrates, Plato and Aristotle feared and critiqued it. It birthed tyranny in ancient times and today.

Through lecture, discussion, meditation, guided imagery, and the arts we will immerse in these issues of ancient times and our origins, and strengthen our own commitments, deepen our souls, and nurture the Good, the True, and the Beautiful today.

This seminar on The Practice of Spiritual Democracy is an opportunity to consolidate the teachings we have received over the previous two months of lectures and workshops. Facilitated by Seattle Jung Society Co-President Dr. Randy Morris and series speaker Dr. Ed Tick (and possibly other contributors), we will review the key ideas from the series and then begin the work of integrating them into our personal individuation process.

Some questions we might engage include:

What does Spiritual Democracy mean to me? What forms of Spiritual Democracy practices are useful to me? How can these ideas and this learning community help me better understand my vocation and lead me to a life of personal meaning and ethical action in a distressed world? How is the practice of nonviolence an essential element of Spiritual Democracy? Can we understand how Spiritual Democracy “names the medicine that the Self awakens”?

Through discussion and small group work, we will explore the practice of Spiritual Democracy.