JUNGIAN INTERNATIONAL TRAINING ZURICH FOUNDATION
presents

Civilization in Transition 8

PSYCHE & EARTH
A Relationship in Crisis

November 2–5, 2023
Hotel Santa Fe
Santa Fe, New Mexico

We are painfully aware that we are destroying our shared and only home. Although the Covid-19 pandemic exposed both the dangers and fragility of our unsustainable way of life, we are returning to “business as usual”, unable to put aside factional interests when confronted with a global crisis. The resurgence of autocracy, nationalism, conflict, and polarization driven by social media, are driven by, yet exacerbate and distract us from, these failings in a toxic cycle that we have to break if we are to survive.

Scientists have called the current geological epoch, which began when human impact on Earth’s land, oceans, atmosphere, and ecosystems became significant, the Anthropocene. Even though we have had an inkling of the problem since the late 1800’s, consciousness is slow to dawn and behavior even slower to change. Evolution has predisposed us to respond more readily to local events, such as storms, fires, and floods, rather than to global trends, such as climate disruption and the sixth mass extinction.

We have gathered provocative and diverse experts from Western, Eastern and Native American cultures and will encompass the fields of climate science, analytical psychology, ecopsychology, cultural ecology, deep ecology, environmental science, metaphysics and philosophy. Together we will explore the interconnection of all things, the personal and collective response to the climate crisis, the meaning of the pandemic, and the call to change that it has highlighted.

This conference provides an inter-active and proactive wake-up call to engagement, which begins from the moment you register with a minimal contribution to help us make this a carbon neutral conference. We aim to leave no carbon footprint from this conference, and each participant and presenter will play an active and important part in doing so.

We hope you will join us for what promises to be a significant, stimulating, and provocative weekend.

Ours is the first generation to properly understand the damage we have been doing to our planetary household, and probably the last generation with a chance to do something transformative about it.
Kate Raworth

Conference Program

The conference will be held at Hotel Santa Fe in downtown Santa Fe. Owned by the Picuris Pueblo, the hotel will provide a warm and intimate environment for our gathering. Two pre-conference workshops will be held on Thursday from 9:00 AM – 3:30 PM for an additional fee. The conference begins Thursday evening with a Welcome Dinner followed by a special presentation and blessing. Conference presentations will begin on Friday at 9:00 AM and end at 12:45 PM on Sunday with Conclusions, Debates, and Challenges with all presenters. Optional Social Dreaming Matrix sessions will be held Friday through Sunday mornings at no additional charge.

Thursday, November 2, 4:30 – 9:00 PM
Friday, November 3, 9:00 AM – 10:00 PM
Saturday, November 4, 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Sunday, November 5, 9:00 AM – 12:45 PM

$695

Conference fees include Thursday dinner, Friday lunch, Saturday lunch, and $25 carbon offset contribution.

Conference Presentations

GAIA, PSYCHE, AND DEEP ECOLOGY: A NEW AND ESSENTIAL WORLDVIEW with ANDREW FELLOWS

ANDREW FELLOWS

Hitherto unexplored synergies between Jungian psychology, systems dynamics, Gaia theory and deep ecology can prepare us to face the existential threat of the Anthropocene (including the Covid-19 pandemic), explain why we are currently failing to do so, and heal our inner schism between science and spirituality and outer disconnection from the world. They show how the shift of emphasis from development to individuation in our personal psychology translates into a now urgently needed metanoia away from our collective ecocidal anthropocentrism and denial through nostalgia, inertia and hubris.

These extraordinary parallels will be substantiated in the contexts of the dual-aspect monism developed by Pauli and Jung, in which mind and matter have a common origin in the unus mundus, and of Jung’s developmental theory, with its pivotal midlife enantiodromia. Their reinforcement by compelling new developments in the science of consciousness, their inspirational and transformational implications for individuals, society and our relationship with nature, and their resonance with the independently formulated principles of deep ecology will be outlined. The resulting consilience lays the foundations of a radically different worldview with which to address global heating, the sixth mass extinction, and other unprecedented challenges of the Anthropocene epoch.

Lecture 1: A Psyche-Gaia Conjecture: The Interdependence of Our Inner and Outer Worlds
Lecture 2: Stuck at the Turning Point: Why We Understand the Danger but Fail to Act
Lecture 3: Frugal Individuation: A Way to Navigate the Anthropocene—Willingly!

A recent relevant article from Andrew Fellows can be found here

CHANGING THE NARRATIVES THAT ARE CHANGING THE WORLD with LORI PYE

LORI PYE

If one understands the workings of the world, one can understand the workings of humankind.

—Paracelsus

The world’s entangled problems stem from the complexities of interrelated factors, but they all originate from human thought—from our psychology. Narratives of the psyche cannot be explored or understood through their psychological home alone; they must also be examined through their ecological home. The richness of ecological and psychological life requires the interplay of many kinds of beings and worlds. Ecopsychology advocates a curiosity and imagination into one’s psychological exploration of these same geographies. To understand that the human psyche is ecological is to grasp the idea that the same ecological processes that affect and shape Earth and its organisms’ complex narratives and behaviors affect and shape the complexity of human narratives and behaviors. It is precisely this obligatory relationship that requires us to examine the reality of human narratives and their exploitative practices. Explorations of the ecological psyche offer opportunity to change the narratives that are changing the world.

WHAT IS MATTER? DOES IT MATTER? with YURIKO SATO

YURIKO SATO

Not long ago, we humans possessed fewer material things and used them with care for a long time by mending and fixing if possible. We tend to develop certain relationships and feelings towards things when we look after them for many years. In our time of consumerism, however, the significance of material things has been reduced to their utility and desirability. They are mass-produced, sold, bought, and discarded in a short cycle, sometimes even unused. Such consumption is irreversibly damaging the natural world and exploiting socially and economically deprived people. Inwardly it is causing serious harm to our psyche.

People of various cultures and small children see things around us as animated. It seems that we have left or lost this worldview with time in human history as well as in our individual lives when we grow up. However, in this lecture, Yuriko will take up various examples which show that we ‘modernized’ humans, who live in the age of science and technologies, still have feelings towards inanimate objects as if they too have lives to be fulfilled. Is this just projection? Or is it a hint that we are, or still could be, related to the living Earth as a whole? If growing up is forgetting something, can we grow down to remember it?

LOVE OF EARTH: EXPLORING OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE DURING COVID-19 AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS with STEPHEN FOSTER

STEPHEN FOSTER

In 1961, in his essay, Healing the Split, Jung described how humanity has lost its connection with nature and how we have relegated our fear of nature to the unconscious. Recent events have given us good reason to be afraid; they are out-pictured images of apocalyptic realities from the unconscious. Two events in our recent history have revealed that we cannot hide from fears and anxieties: the ongoing climate crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic. These events make it clear that we can no longer continue with business as usual, whether it be personal, corporate, social, and religious or spiritual. But what now? What is next? How do we make the needed changes? If we consider the addiction model, the first step is recognizing that we are powerless and that this situation is unmanageable. We will explore our personal complexes and cultural complexes, and the archetypal forces that keep us caught in our present dysfunctional system, preventing us from having the energy and imagination to move forward. The climate crisis offers us an invitation for change in multifaceted ways, but then why do we continue to sit on this threshold, whether it be individually or collectively? In this seminar we will consider how psychological and socio-political issues demand that we connect with each other around these issues as well as with the parts of nature within ourselves that have meaning. It is that connection with this inner ecological landscape that gives us the energy to make the necessary changes. While we need to get honest about how we participate in and are responsible for the degradation of nature, amplified by the catastrophic events, there is a tremendous need to find a new meaningful relationship with nature that recognizes moments of awe and re-enchantment as significant facilitators of change.

AN EXCURSION INTO THE ECOLOGICAL PSYCHE with LORI PYE

LORI PYE

The seminar will provide a basic overview of ecopsychology and its educative approach to unearthing narratives underpinning destructive practices. The objective for the session is to provide participants with actual experience of working ecologically with narrative and to get a basic understanding for how to change narrative and thus change behavior. Come prepared to get your hands in the soil as much as the soul as we engage in the workings of psyche’s ecosystem. Participants will work with each ecological process for how they underpin the psychology of a narrative. Dr. Pye aims to give participants practical assessment tools with which they can continue to explore psyche post the conference.

MANAWA: INDIGENOUS VISIONS OF RESTORING THE CONDITIONS OF LIFE with APELA COLORADO and TIMOTI BRAMLEY

APELA COLORADO and TIMOTI BRAMLEY

Through an indigenous lens, we understand psyche and earth are not permanently severed but consider the crisis as a broken relationship with time. When did our ancestors lose their relationship with celestial and terrestrial cycles? How does this split emerge in our dreams and the very conditions of life today? Manawa is an ancient word spoken throughout Polynesia which offers us insight. Manawa means time, heart, breath, womb, gut, process: a chain of transmission that spans time-before-time to the Right Mind. This is the response we might enact upon earth today.

Centered by indigenous dreamwork practice, we consider our individuation-in-relation, our sacred responsibility to re-enter the sacredness of time, space and place. Our embodied perspective draws on indigenous knowledge from Turtle Island, Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (Polynesia), and Gaul. For us, dreams are rooted in relationship, ancestral remembrance, landscape, and collective mythologies. Through dream ceremony, we develop Indigenous Mind: a process in which all modern people are invited to remember our own origins and renew our connection to earth. Together, we weave memory, culture and Spirit into our own larger truth to help restore relationship and the conditions of life.

SOCIAL DREAMING MATRIX: DREAMS LISTENING TO DREAMS (Optional) with FRANCES HATFIELD

FRANCES HATFIELD

Throughout human history, people have been telling dreams in community. This ancient lineage of dreams and dreaming carries great significance in many of the world's older cultures and this lineage is trying to find a voice in our modern world today. The Social Dreaming Matrix is an experimental container for sharing dreams and images arising from the deep psyche. This opportunity to share dreams, without interpretation, with a dream calling out its response through another dream or an image, helps us to see into each other and into ourselves in compelling and evocative ways. Sharing this process can seed our dreams and inner experiences for long periods to come, offering us inspiration and meaning. Optional social dreaming matrix sessions will be held on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday mornings before the program begins and will be available on a first-come, first-served basis.

A Responsible Conference

We, the wealthiest 10% of the world’s population, are responsible for some 50% of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions and impacts due to human activity that are heating the planet at a rate of four Hiroshima atomic bombs per second. Since the industrial revolution we have been adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere much faster than they can be removed through natural processes. Our leaders are failing us, so it is up to each of us to do what we can to avert, or at least ameliorate, this crisis.

Fortunately, we know what to do—minimize our demand for goods and services and negate the impact of what remains by investing in projects that commensurately reduce greenhouse gas emissions elsewhere, a measure often called “carbon offsetting”. To bear active witness to the conference theme, we therefore aim to make this a “carbon-neutral” conference.

We have therefore estimated the emissions associated with conference presenter and participant travel, hotel energy use, and food production, and will invest in carbon offset projects in less developed countries via myclimate, which has been carefully chosen by ISAP and its parent body, AGAP for their own offsets. The rationale for this is scientific and economic—it makes no physical difference where offsets are implemented, and this achieves the maximum reductions per dollar invested. To this end, $25 has been incorporated into your registration fee. In this way, each of us can play an active and responsible part in fighting climate disruption.

JUNGIAN INTERNATIONAL TRAINING ZURICH FOUNDATION

The annual Civilization in Transition conference is sponsored by the Jungian International Training Zurich Foundation. Conference proceeds and the monies generated by the annual appeal support ISAPZURICH. The JITZ Foundation underwrites the cost of the Zurich lecture series for students, subsidizes the counseling center, and provides interest-free tuition loans to trainees as well as other direct support.

Jungian International Training Zurich is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Board members are Deborah Egger, Chair; Ursula Ulmer, Co-chair; Robert Zieserl, Treasurer; Carol Brandt, Secretary.

Please consider supporting this important mission by making a gift to support the next generation of Jungian analysts. For more information or to make a contribution online or by mail, visit jitzurich.com. For more information, contact Carol Brandt at carol.brandt@jitzurich.org

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