Spring Gathering
April 26-28, 2024
This is a residential weekend of teaching in which we will encounter ourselves in a Jungian way, and then imagine how that kind of practice can become a part of our regular daily life.
What is the Jungian way?
It has been our experience that our lives are enhanced by accessing the deeper parts of ourselves. Jung called this the creative unconscious. By listening to and working with our dreams, fantasies, ideas of parents, work, and partners as information from the wiser parts of us, we can become more of who we really are.
What is the monastic part?
The monastic element has a few sides. The first side will include living in a monastic setting for a few days in order to allow time and space for Jungian contemplative exercises. The second is to examine the image of monasticism and understand it psychologically. Finally, we will practice in the spirit of this translation to enrich our daily experience with the spirit of monastic attention to our interior lives.
Our Host Location
The Spring retreat will be held at the Won Dharma Center in Hudson, New York. This peaceful environment offers spaces to engage each other and beautiful surroundings to explore.
Who is this for?
This is for anyone who has wondered about living a more deeply connected way, one that is often thought of as a monastic way. We will be looking at 'the monastic' as a psychological image and then finding out what that might mean in modern life. We invite you to join us on this adventure!
Monastic themes
Some of the monastic themes we will explore include finding a place in life for inner exploration, the question of being in the world but not being ruled by worldly norms, and the finding of one's own spiritual path. On this path we will encounter difficulties in the form of our own shadow, and the unlived connections with our desires or eros.
Carl Jung
Jung pioneered the understanding that much of personal psychological suffering comes from a lack of spiritual life and can be mitigated by finding a meaningful way to live every day. This process is hard and requires work, but results in both a firmer sense of self and a more fruitful interaction with the other -- both the others within us and others in the outer world.