Soul Studies with Brian James

Reading from Robert A. Johnson's “Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth” (2009).Robert A. Johnson (May 26, 1921 – September 12, 2018) was an American Jungian analyst and author. Johnson was born in Portland, Oregon. He studied at the University of Oregon and Stanford University. In 1945, he went to Ojai, California, as a student of Jiddu Krishnamurti, an Indian spiritual teacher. In 1947 he began his own therapy with Fritz Künkel. He later studied at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zürich, Switzerland, where Emma Jung, the wife of C. G. Jung, was his principal analyst. He completed his analytical training with Künkel and Tony Sussman. He established an analytical practice in Los Angeles in the early 1950s with Helen Luke. In the early 1960s he closed his practice and became a member of St. Gregory's Abbey, Three Rivers, in Michigan, a Benedictine monastery of the Episcopal Church.After four years in the monastery, Johnson returned to California in 1967. He resumed his career as a psychotherapist and lectured at St. Paul's Cathedral in San Diego, working closely with John A. Sanford, an Episcopal priest, Jungian analyst, and author. In 1974, a collection of his lectures was published as He: Understanding Masculine Psychology. The book became a bestseller after Harper & Row acquired the rights. He was the first of many books giving a Jungian interpretation, in accessible language, of earlier myths and stories and their parallels with psychology and personal development.Johnson also studied at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, India. In 2002 he received an honorary doctorate in humanities and a lifetime achievement award from Pacifica Graduate Institute.Johnson lived in San Diego, California, where he died in September 2018 at the age of 97.•••If you enjoyed this episode and want me to continue sharing work I find in the course of my Soul Studies, please let me know! Email: hello@brianjames.caInstagram: @revealingthesoulWebsite: brianjames.caInner Journeying: innerjourneying.comDonate: PayPal.me/medicinepathyoga

Reading from James Hillman's essay “Peaks & Vales,” which you can find in the collection Senex & Puer (Uniform Edition 3). The essay is revised from a lecture delivered at the University of California Medical Center, San Francisco in 1975.“We are in this room this evening because we are moderns in search of a soul, as Jung once put it. We are still in search of reconstituting that third place, that intermediate realm of psyche – which is also the realm of images and the power of imagination – from which we were exiled by theological, spiritual men more than a thousand years ago: long before Descartes and the dichotomies attributed to him, long before the Enlightenment and modern positivism and scientism. These ancient historical events are responsible for the malnourished root of our Western psychological culture and of the culture of each of our souls.”•••James Hillman (April 12, 1926 – October 27, 2011) was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.•••Download this article here: https://www.johnwelwood.com/ If you enjoyed this episode and want me to continue sharing work I find in the course of my Soul Studies, please let me know! Email: hello@brianjames.caInstagram: @revealingthesoulWebsite: brianjames.caDonate: PayPal.me/medicinepathyoga

Reading from John Welwood's essay “Intimate Relationship as a Spiritual Crucible.”“…to gain greater access to the gold of our nature in relationship, a certain alchemy is required: the refining of our conditioned defensive patterns. The good news is that this alchemy generated between two people also furthers a larger alchemy within them. The opportunity here is to join and integrate the twin poles of human existence: heaven, the vast space of perfect, unconditional openness, and earth, our imperfect, limited human form, shaped by worldly causes and conditions. As the defensive/controlling ego cooks and melts down in the heat of love's influence, a beautiful evolutionary development starts to emerge — the genuine person, who embodies a quality of very human relational presence that is transparent to open-hearted being, right in the midst of the dense confines of worldly conditioning.”John Welwood (1943-2019) was a psychotherapist, teacher, and author, and has been a pioneer in integrating psychological and spiritual work for the past thirty years. His books include Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love, Toward a Psychology of Awakening, Love and Awakening and, most recently, Perfect Love, Imperfect Relationships: Healing the Wound of the Heart. Download this article here: https://www.johnwelwood.com/ If you enjoyed this episode and want me to continue sharing work I find in the course of my Soul Studies, please let me know! Email: hello@brianjames.caInstagram: @revealingthesoulWebsite: brianjames.ca

Reading from James Hillman's The Thought of the Heart, published by Spring Publications 1992.“The thought of the heart is the thought of images … the heart is the seat of imagination, imagination is the authentic voice of the heart, so that if we speak from the heart we must speak imaginatively.”If you enjoyed this episode and want me to continue sharing work I find in the course of my Soul Studies, please let me know! Email: hello@brianjames.caInstagram: @revealingthesoulWebsite: brianjames.ca

Soul Studies is a new series of podcasts where I read excerpts from books that are currently inspiring me. In this episode I read from the first chapter of Rollo May's 1975 book “The Courage to Create”. It struck me as a book that feels incredibly relevant to our cultural moment, particularly on the topics of despair, cultural divides and ideological fanaticism. “People who claim to be absolutely convinced that their stand is the only right one are dangerous. Such conviction is the essence not only of dogmatism, but of its more destructive cousin, fanaticism. It blocks off the user from learning new truth, and it is a dead giveaway of unconscious doubt. The person then has to double his or her protests in order to quiet not only the opposition but his or her own unconscious doubts as well.”Rollo May (1909-1994) taught at Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, and was Regents' Professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. An influential psychologist, he was the best-selling author of Love and Will, as well as the author of The Courage to Create, Man's Search for Himself, The Meaning of Anxiety, and Psychology and the Human Dilemma.If you enjoyed this episode and want me to continue sharing work I find in the course of my Soul Studies, please let me know! Email: hello@brianjames.caInstagram: @revealingthesoulWebsite: brianjames.ca