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Spiritual Longing and Its Shadow
February 13, 2004 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm PST
The religions and myths of many times and cultures tell us that the human soul’s deepest desire is its longing for God. Even people who feel disillusioned with traditional religions or disenchanted with spiritual teachers still yearn for something transcendent.
Whenever we long for the transcendent, however, forces from the deep unconscious also swing into play. Walking a spiritual path not only evokes states of illumination; it challenges us to face the darkness within ourselves.
In this lecture and workshop, Dr. Wittine will explore spiritual longing and its shadow. Spiritual longing might overwhelm the ego, cover over wounded parts of the personality, perpetuate our inner critic, lead to a split between “higher” and “lower” self-needs, and derail individuation. We might project our longing onto lovers and teachers, onto food, sex, and drugs, or find it hidden in our grandiosity and desire for power. Dr. Wittine concludes that if we internalize our longing rather than externalizing it onto images, people, and things, it will guide us toward a new experience of God, which recognizes the transcendent in all aspects of life.
Related Workshop: Spiritual Longing and Its Shadow
Bryan Wittine, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst in private practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he completed his training at the San Francisco C. G. Jung Institute. He lectures internationally, has published several professional papers, and is particularly interested in what the great mystics teach us about the nature of the psyche and the individuation process. He is a co-founder and former chair of the Graduate Program in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology, and former Associate Dean of the Graduate School of Holistic Studies, at John F. Kennedy University (in the San Francisco Bay Area).
