In the modern world, where urban and technological landscapes often overshadow the natural world, there is an ever-increasing disconnect between humanity and the environment that sustains us. The consequences of this detachment are far-reaching, impacting on the very essence of our well-being. Jung saw our relationship with nature as essential to the development of consciousness and wholeness (Sabini 2001). Jung stated that in the “civilization process, we have increasingly divided our consciousness from the deeper instinctive strata of the human psyche” (Jung, 1964, 36).
Jung was profoundly influenced by Indian philosophy. He made a comprehensive study of yoga and delivered numerous lectures focusing on a psychological interpretation of kundalini yoga. Many mystical traditions speak of a transcendent consciousness rooted in non-duality - the premise bring that everything, including humanity, is an aspect of the divine and is not separate from it.
We are living a dream. Are we awake in the dream? Through resonance with Nature (even in the heart of a city) as an extension of our highest Self, or what Jung called the archetype of the Self, we expand our consciousness through a deep awareness of our embeddedness in our surrounding world. We are not separate.
Jung believed that the human psyche is a self-regulating system that strives for growth and seeks to maintain a balance between conflicting potentialities (polar opposites) in the process of ‘individuation’. An important aspect in this process is the Ego-Self Axis, the vital connecting link between Self and ego.
Dreams may be seen as a conversation between consciousness and the unconscious, between an ego perspective and multiple other viewpoints alive in us...