Imagining a Jungian Wisdom School for the 21st Century

Three Programs in the Fall of 2022. Friday Lecture (7pm-9pm PT). Saturday Workshop (1pm-4pm PT):

September 23 & 24 – Sapientia – The Portal of Mystery

October 21 & 22 – Natura – The Ground of Mystery

November 18 & 19 – Polis – The Enactment of Mystery

(or register for an individual program below)

Imagining a Jungian Wisdom School For the 21st Century

In the realm of the imagination there is a place where seekers of knowledge (or gnosis) go in order to learn from wisdom keepers both literal and imaginal. These wisdom keepers, who form the faculty of a Wisdom School, are always in service to mending the Soul of the World as it seeks to fulfill its cosmic destiny. Historically, the imagination of a Wisdom School constellates in times of global crisis, or on the edge of quantum leaps in human consciousness, as a way to provide the guidance needed to navigate the rough waters. Wisdom Schools are inherently democratic. All are welcome! All belong! For truly, the most important Wisdom School is the one that resides within the chamber of your own Spiritual Heart.

Guided by the principles of Jungian Psychology, understood as a Western esoteric psycho-theology, we will enter into the Portal of the Mystery through idea, image, story and song. We will ground ourselves in the Mystery of Mother Earth, learning from her pathways and practices ways of nourishing soul in our daily lives. And we will engage the difficult task of Enacting Mystery in the everyday world of community and politics.

Join Terry Gibson, Elizabeth Clark-Stern, Leticia Nieto and Randy Morris for a multi-disciplinary, experiential inquiry into the Wisdom School that yearns to emerge in the midst of our darkest hour. Reflections will be grounded in Terry Gibson’s recent book, The Liminal and The Luminescent: Jungian Reflections on Ensouled Living Amid a Troubled Era (2021).

SAPIENTIA – THE PORTAL OF MYSTERY: liminality and the achievement of destiny

Randy will begin with an invitation into the vestibule of the Wisdom School of the Heart by reviewing the history of the idea of a Wisdom School, examining the location, curriculum and faculty of Wisdom Schools in previous centuries. Then Terry will turn to the archetypal root of all Wisdom Schools, the liminal portal of the deep imagination that leads to the realm of the Numinous Other, the place where Deep Wisdom is cultivated and dispensed. Here lies our mythopoetic identity and the powers that shape both our fate and destiny. This introduction to Sapientia — The Portal of Mystery will offer ways to enter your own Mystery School, awaken to the dynamics of initiation being offered there, and embark on the sacred pilgrimage of authentic individuation.

“Experience opens us, creates a chasm in our heart, an expansion in our lungs, allowing us to pull in fresh air to all that was stagnant. We breathe deeply and remember fear for what it is—a resistance to the unknown.”

– Terry Tempest Williams

“The living mystery of life is always hidden between Two.”

– C. G. Jung

NATURA – THE GROUND OF MYSTERY: entering the heart of Earth Divine

Elizabeth invites you to take off your shoes and immerse your bare feet in the ancient soil of Mother Earth. Her caves and wells and streams and towering oaks are reservoirs for cleansing, transformation, and opening new dimensions in our souls. We will use guided meditation, creative exercises, and song to explore stories of goddesses and pilgrims, heretics and saints whose relationship to their sacred Earth was so passionate, so abiding, it provided a loving home for the human heart in a world of violence and conquest, not unlike our own.

“Seeing the courageous, solid way that trees prepare for winter helps me appreciate all that I have learned. We must be like trees.”

– Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you walk with naked feet, how can you ever forget the earth?”

– C. G. Jung

POLIS – THE ENACTMENT OF MYSTERY: the call to ecstatic action in brave space

One outcome of archetypal stirring in the interior life is a readiness for outer action to influence the interconnected collective in the direction of justice. This hidden face of wisdom, or awakened activism, wraps around creation of sanctuary: durable, embodied engagement. As a psychodramatist, Leticia invites you to explore expressive enactment of personal story as a mythic blueprint for social change. We will take inspiration from principles and sayings of the Zapatista indigenous movement in Chiapas, Mexico. As we conclude our residence in the Wisdom School of the Heart, our opportunity is – in the face of hopelessness – to nurture an ethic of pleasure in community. We emerge from The Wisdom School of the Heart through a different door than we came in – emboldened, renewed, and available to the soul call.

“Nothing is possible without love. For love puts one in a mood to risk everything.”

– C.G. Jung

“Justice is love correcting that which revolts against love.”

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

Biographies:

Elizabeth Clark-Stern, LMHC, is a Jungian psychotherapist and playwright. She has a fascination with women of courage, struggle, and vision, as portrayed in her many plays, including Out of the Shadows, and On the Doorstep of the Castle, performed at the International Jungian Congress in Cape Town and Copenhagen respectively. She has presented on Toni Wolff’s model of the Feminine Archetypes at the Jung Societies in Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. Elizabeth is a pilgrim in search of the divine in mountains, rivers, forests, and the flowers in her own backyard.

Terrill L. Gibson, Ph.D., is a Northwest Jungian analyst, pastoral psychotherapist, and approved supervisor for the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy. For nearly fifty years he has practiced in liminal realms always respectfully seeking the unseen, healing Great Mother, soul-of-things in the individuals, couples, and communities he has served. He has a passion for film, sea kayaks, landscape photography, and the blues.

Randy Morris, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus at Antioch University Seattle where he taught in the BA Liberal Studies Program for 30 years and was the coordinator of the Psychology and Spiritual Studies concentrations. His search for an eco-spiritual revelation adequate for our dark night of the species soul has led him through experiences as a vision quest guide, dream worker, martial artist, musician, community ritual leader and elder-in-training. Randy’s investment in the future takes the shape of four grandchildren, with another on the way!

Leticia Nieto, PsyD, LMFT, TEP, is internationally recognized for her work as a psychodramatist, psychotherapist, educator, and leadership coach for systemic change. Her 2010 book, Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment: A Developmental Strategy to Liberate Everyone, gives readers skills to promote social justice by using an ecological perspective to deconstruct oppression and supremacy. Dr. Nieto is a radical change artist, who weaves a new world from a tapestry of joy, song, poetry, relational repair and restorative justice.