VIDEO

Art Credit: Jano Tantongco, jano.tantongco@gmail.com

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Murray Stein, author, teacher, and Jungian analyst, joins us to unlock the power of symbols. These potent images bridge the waking mind and transformative unconscious forces.

The distinction between signs and symbols is essential to understanding the unconscious. Signs convey familiar information or directions, such as a stop sign indicating the need to halt. Symbols, however, represent something unknown or unconscious, carrying a deeper, often mysterious meaning that transcends ordinary understanding. They play a crucial role in human development, providing a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind. Symbols should not be reduced to something already known; instead, they should be experienced and lived with, allowing their deeper messages to unfold over time.

Historically, symbols have been instrumental in religious practices, representing divine or supernatural forces. In modern interpretation, these forces are understood to reside within the psyche. Symbols in dreams or everyday life guide us toward understanding our inner experiences. By projecting symbols onto the world around us, we gain insights into our unconscious mind and its workings, helping us navigate the complexities of our psyche.

Symbols possess a profound impact on our lives, evoking powerful emotional and psychological responses. These experiences can transform our understanding and lead to unexpected personal growth. However, it is essential to approach symbols respectfully, recognizing their potential to mislead if misunderstood. Treating symbols as gateways to deeper psychological truths allows us to harness their transformative power.

An example of modern symbolism is the Starbucks mermaid, also known as Melusina. This image represents not just a coffee brand but also evokes the mythological qualities of allure and danger. The mermaid symbolizes the seductive call of comfort and indulgence, which can be appealing and risky. Associating this with a coffee brand colors our orientation to it. Understanding such symbols in our daily environment helps us navigate the unconscious influences on our choices and behaviors.

The spontaneous, direct experience of a symbol can quickly transform us. Historical and religious narratives, such as Saul’s transformation on the road to Damascus, where the symbol of Christ radically restructured his attitudes, values, and feelings, illustrate how powerful symbolic encounters can alter one’s life direction and thinking. Jung’s encounters with living symbols are well-documented in his Red and Black Books. Through active imagination and engagement with the symbolic figures, Jung transformed his understanding of psychology and healed a deep split in his soul. These experiences highlight the power of direct, personal encounters with symbols.

We can employ techniques such as active imagination, journaling, and creating physical representations to engage effectively with symbols. Active imagination involves deliberately entering a meditative state to interact with symbolic images. Jung suggested that we lower our threshold of consciousness, evoke the symbolic image, and regard it until it moves spontaneously. Keeping a journal of these experiences allows us to track and reflect on the insights gained. Creating art or objects based on symbolic experiences can also help solidify their meaning and impact.

Dreams are a rich source of symbolic material available to everyone. Jungian psychology distinguishes between small dreams, which reflect daily experiences, and big dreams, which carry significant symbolic weight. Big dreams with powerful and vivid symbolic images are particularly significant; these dreams often contain archetypal images that tap into the collective unconscious. As such, they link the ego with archaic levels whose forces can rearrange our awareness.

Archetypes, universal patterns in the collective unconscious, emit symbolic images that shape our experiences. These archetypal symbols influence our dreams, visions, and everyday perceptions, providing a framework for understanding the deeper structures of the psyche. In other words, they bridge the gap between the material and spiritual worlds. Jung’s theory of synchronicity also illustrates how meaningful coincidences connect these realms, revealing the interconnectedness of our inner and outer experiences.

Cultural symbols, such as national emblems or religious icons, carry collective meanings that strongly influence our developing psyches. They stimulate shared human experience but also prune individual traits that set us at odds with the environment we rely on. Tracking these effects helps us reject or align with symbols based on our unfolding self-knowledge.

Integrating transformative symbolism in our daily lives involves recognizing and creatively engaging with the images in our dreams, visions, and everyday experiences. This practice helps us integrate unconscious material that restores and develops our original personality. By unlocking the power of symbols, we are set aright to repair the relationship between our ego and the Self.

HERE’S THE DREAM WE ANALYZE:

The dream starts with me going on a journey to South America. As I walked over a meadow in South America, I felt a deep connection to nature and a greater spirit. Some people from the travel group I was with started jumping into a river for fun, but I couldn’t because I was afraid of piranhas, so I stayed out. After a while, though, I realized that the river was artificial, so there wasn’t even anything alive in it, and the real river was cut off from that artificial river. After that, the travel group transformed into a school class, and I was back at school. I was annoyed because we didn’t learn anything, and I complained that I wanted to move to the next task because I had already wasted half of my life. Then suddenly, the group transformed again, and we were knights, and it was announced that we needed to go to war and attack the castle of Constantinople. But before that, the old king of our group resigned his throne, and a new king was crowned. The new king was tall and strong, and we gathered around him. All the other men were also tall and strong; only I was much smaller (only half the size of all other men). Everyone gathered in a circle around the new king and yelled, “To die for a king will bring us honour.” Then we went to attack the castle. I was the first in line charging the castle. Enemies were shooting arrows at me, so I jumped behind a small wall and realized I was alone. I must have gone to the wrong place. So I returned to search for the other knights and found them sitting in a cafeteria. I sat with them and started drinking bad coffee from a broken vending machine. As I looked around me, seeing all these knights in armor drinking coffee from paper cups, I thought, “What in the world am I even doing here?”

Murray Stein is a graduate of Yale University (B.A. and M.Div.), the University of Chicago (Ph.D.), and the C.G. Jung Institute-Zurich (Diploma). He is a founding member of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and of the Chicago Society of Jungian Analysts. He has been the president of the International Association for Analytical Psychology (2001-4), and the President of The International School of Analytical Psychology-Zurich (2008-2012). He is a training analyst at the International School for Analytical Psychology in Zurich, Switzerland. His most recent publications include The Principle of Individuation, Jung’s Map of the Soul and Jungian Psychoanalysis (editor). He lectures internationally on topics related to Analytical Psychology and its applications in the contemporary world.

Learn more about Murray HERE!

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