This week I released the final part of my series on the Grimm’s fairytale ‘The Iron Stove.’ It also happened to be the last episode of this third season of Digital Jung.
Coincidentally, as my podcast host Buzzsprout informs me, it was also the 75th episode that I’ve published of the podcast since I started it three years ago.
I’ll be honest — I’m looking forward to taking a summer break.
As long as I go on producing this podcast — and I have no plans of stopping in the near future — I want it to stay fresh and interesting for me to create, so that it can continue to be fresh and interesting for you to listen to. Stepping away from time to time and resting is vital to being able to keep an adequate perspective and to maintain my energy for the project.
Taking a break also allows me time to ensure that I am not just talking about the practice of the symbolic life, but living it. It gives me the opportunity to simply listen to the world within and around me in an unhurried way — and as I say in the latest episode, the art of listening is central to this practice:
“A symbolic image is … full of overtones and echoes, hints and intuitions, and multiple levels of meaning that sound through it like a chorus of voices. My hope in doing a series like this, and indeed the whole podcast itself, is that it will enable us to attune our ears to some of these voices and thereby begin to learn the art of what I call deep listening.”
This episode, of course, explores the final sections of our story — the journey over and past several daunting obstacles, the reunion of the King’s Daughter with her prince, and the resulting dis-enchantment of the land.
Each of these sections is related to key aspects of the symbolic life and the particular challenges that accompany them. I use as my lens for this portion of the tale a quote from Jung in which he talks about the importance of “immediate experience,” which is sometimes translated as “irrational experience.”
The first translation — “immediate” — helps us to understand the second — “irrational.” Irrational experience, in the sense that Jung uses it, means the immediacy of the encounter with life as it is given, as it presents itself to us, prior to our sorting it into rational categories of thought. That is, life in the living of it and before the thinking about it.
“In this way,” says Jung, “the matter-of-fact and the commonplace come to wear an altered countenance, and can even acquire a new glamour.”1
Please check out the new episode for more discussion on these ideas and images. You can find this episode wherever you listen to your podcasts or simply by clicking this link: The Goal of the Symbolic Life.
Remainders
The final difficulty in the story ‘The Iron Stove’ is that the prince is kept asleep by a sleeping potion, which prevents the final reunion between him and the King’s Daughter. I thought I’d offer a quote here which, in a sense, speaks to this image and, at the same time, is a succinct summary of the the goal of all inner work. This comes from Thomas Merton:
“The spiritual life is, then, first of all a matter of keeping awake.”2
Reminders
If you want to experience the complete tale of ‘The Iron Stove,' you can read or listen to it by clicking on the link immediately below:
Thanks for listening, and take good care!
from ‘Modern Man in Search of a Soul’ by C.G. Jung
from ‘Contemplation in a World of Action’ by Thomas Merton