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Jung in Ireland
"The Archetype of the Wanderer"
- Ashok Bedi
Ashok Bedi, a Jungian psychoanalyst and board certified psychiatrist, has been in practice in Milwaukee for over thirty-three years. Trained in India, Great Britain and the United States, Bedi is interested in the emerging frontiers of Spirituality and Healing and the synapses of the Mind, Body, Soul and Spirit. He is author of several books, including Awaken the Slumbering Goddess: The Latent Code of the Hindu Goddess Archetypes (Booksurge Publishers, 2007), co-author of Retire Your Family Karma (Nicholas Hays, Inc. 2003), and Path to the Soul (Weiser Books, 2000). He is currently at work on the workings of the Psychoplastic Soul: How the Soul changes our mind, body and relationships.
Bedi will be giving a keynote talk and leading two workshops for our upcoming Jung in Ireland seminar, The Archetype of the Wanderer. This seminar will explore the themes of exile and return, the relevance of uncertainty, and the challenging path to individuation. Bedi’s work integrates Eastern and Western thought, helping to create a greater understanding of the human condition. Below is a synopsis of our conversation.
Your keynote talk is titled “Lost as a Dharmic Path to Finding Our Soul”. Can you tell me a bit about the issues you’ll be touching upon?
I’m going to look at the whole dynamic of feeling lost in exile, and then returning. Feeling lost is a prerequisite of one’s Path to growth and transformation. More specifically, I believe that feeling lost is a perception of ego-consciousness. When we are lost in the ego’s forest then we stumble into the palace of our soul, embedded deep in this forest of Maya. The healing wisdom of the universe guides us from the feeling of being lost in ego’s Maya to Soul’s Dharma, or our Spiritual purpose, in this life time. We now return home to our Soul with a higher level of consciousness and a sense of our spiritual purpose. Thus, we return.
I am also going to be talking about our Triune or tripartite brain: the reptilian, limbic and neocortical brain. Each part of our brains must be attended to or we could get stuck and lost in one of them. In a quick synopsis, the reptilian brain includes the brain stem and cerebellum. It is called the "reptilian brain" because a reptile’s brain is dominated by the brain stem and cerebellum, which control survival instincts and is primarily reactive. The limbic system is made up of the amygdale, the hypothalamus, and the hippocampus and is the source of emotions, ancestral memory and archetypal wisdom. The neocortex is in the brain of higher mammals, and is responsible for reason and thinking skills.
It’s very important to have all three parts of the brain in balance, and I will be talking about ways one can go about doing this.
I will also be talking about the psychoplasticity of the soul. When you feel a lack of harmony in your life, it’s really your soul beckoning for you to get more optimally balanced. Getting lost in life and experiencing problems is really just an opportunity to find your soul life. Examining your problems with a Symbolic attitude leads the path to transformation and wholeness.
Your first workshop is titled “Exile, Wanderings and Returns: Our Personal Odyssey”. Can you tell me a little about this workshop, and how both of your workshops may be different from your keynote talk?
My workshops will be more hands-on than my keynote talk, and participants will be able to get at the specific ways in which they are lost. They will be able to closely examine how any lack of balance is manifesting in their bodies, relationships and feelings. My workshops will allow participants to explore their experience as grist for the mill of spiritual growth.
In my first workshop, titled “Exile, Wanderings and Returns: Our Personal Odyssey”, we will look at some aspects of the epic poem “The Odyssey”, which is based on the Greek hero Odysseus and his long journey home after the fall of Troy. Odysseus is gone from home for twenty years. Throughout his journey, he is repeatedly lost on his way to Ithaca. These experiences contribute to his growth and self-realization. We all have our own personal odyssey, and it’s important to gauge where we are on this journey, so that we may navigate our path to the soul.
More specifically, it’s important to look at our personal odyssey by attending to parts of our psyche which has been lost or dead, and letting that be our guide to finding higher spiritual purpose. If we truly want to grow, we must be prepared go to those strangest of places within us. Finding the lost continent of our soul is where we reach our transcendence.
Your final workshop is titled “Wandering Your Kundalini: Exile and Return to Your Spiritual Groove”. Can you explain a bit about this?
There are seven levels of Kundalini yoga that correspond with the body’s seven chakras, or main energy centers. Each of the seven chakras has its own myth and each has its own tasks that need to be performed in order to be balanced. For instance, the root chakra, located at the tailbone, correlates with the mother archetype. When you have issues with your root chakra, you are dealing with the paradigm of establishing a sense of security. When your root chakra is in balance, you are self-mothering, and you feel safe and secure. This workshop will allow participants to map out which of their chakras may be out of balance, and what steps are needed to be taken in order to balance them.
Ultimately, I hope my keynote talk and workshops will help individuals cultivate a more fulfilling, empowered life – a life fostered by his or her truest core: the Soul.
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