Show Notes
Interview begins @ 4:00
In this episode, we explore the enriching journey of Bea Gonzalez, an accomplished novelist, and facilitator of a depth-oriented women's collective. Known for her innate ability to weave stories, Bea intertwines feminine wisdom with a holistic approach to understanding the world, as demonstrated in her widely acclaimed work on sophiacycles.com. Our conversation starts with Bea's early dreams of professional writing, a passion that has blossomed into several published novels with Harper Collins and beyond. We investigate the significance of writing as active imagination, taking cues from Jung's Red Book. Bea presents the intriguing notion that everyone should write a novel, an exercise in self-exploration and a canvas to observe the interactions of our inner personalities. Drawing from Jungian psychology, Bea highlights the value of this framework as a lens to perceive reality. Its influence manifests in her personal growth and resonates powerfully within the groups she leads. As we navigate through the intricate labyrinth of Jung’s Collected Works and post-Jungian writers, Bea emphasizes writing as not merely a craft but a spiritual path. We discuss the potency of storytelling, the exploration of the self through narratives, and the harmonious dance of the masculine and feminine. Engaging with the profound insights of Iain McGilchrist, we uncover the junctures where his work converges with Jung's philosophy. The dialogue evolves to encompass topics such as the inner struggles we all face, the societal impacts of shadow projection in politics, and the significance of the multiplicity of the pantheon versus the social value of a monotheistic god. With her women's groups as a platform for meaningful conversations, Bea eloquently underscores the importance of discussing and writing about these explorations, fostering a vibrant exchange of ideas that spur personal and collective growth. Tune in for a profound exploration into the heart of depth psychology.
Bio:
Béa Gonzalez is a writer, lecturer, and educator. Her first two novels were published in Canada by HarperCollins and seven other countries [the UK, USA, Spain, Germany, Holland and Serbia]. Her second novel, The Mapmaker's Opera, was adapted into a musical by Kevin Purcell which was featured at the 2014 New York Musical Theatre Festival. She is also the founder of SophiaCycles, a project aimed at teaching metaphorical thinking through an examination of classical works, fairy tales and myths and can be found on YouTube, Twitter and Instagram @sophiacycles. Invocation is her third novel.
www.esalen.org
Website for The Sacred Speaks:
http://www.thesacredspeaks.com
WATCH:
YouTube for The Sacred Speaks https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOAuksnpfht1udHWUVEO7Rg
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ @thesacredspeaks Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thesacredspeaks/ Brought to you by: https://www.thecenterforhas.com
Theme music provided by: http://www.modernnationsmusic.com
More from The Sacred Speaks
What happens when a life built around success, intelligence, and achievement is no longer able to hold the deeper questions beginning to move through you?
What happens when someone who has spent nearly his entire life understanding code, data, and technological systems begins questioning the nature of reality itself?
Simon Yugler has spent time inside traditions ranging from Aboriginal Australia to the Shipibo lineage in Peru. Most of us will only ever read about experiences like that. I admire the ground he's stood on, and what it has done to his worldview.
Robert Forte has been at every major inflection point of the psychedelic movement for half a century, and he is skeptical of where it is going. That skepticism, coming from someone who knew Wasson, Hofmann, Grof, and Eliade personally.
In this In this episode of The Sacred Speaks, Dr. John W. Price sits down with Dr. Susan Schwartz, Jungian analyst and author, for a searching conversation about one of the most underaddressed wounds in contemporary psychology: the absent father. Susan is the author of The Absent Father Effect on Daughters and the forthcoming Absent Fathers, Yearning Sons. Her clinical work draws on decades of practice and deep immersion in Jungian theory, and what she brings to this conversation is not just scholarly precision but the kind of knowledge that only comes from sitting with this material in the consulting room across a lifetime. Father absence, she argues, is routinely minimized in both psychoanalytic literature and popular culture. John and Susan move through the specific ways absence shapes identity, relatedness, sexuality, and the gaze. They explore what it means when a father's eyes are never there to confirm a daughter's body, her mind, her worth, and how fathers model partnering, love, and respect for soul. Susan brings two clinical dreams into the conversation: one involving Vladimir Putin as a figure for the negative father complex, and one about cleaning a closet that opens into something unexpected and alive. These are not illustrations. They are the unconscious at work, showing what the personal father could not provide and what the psyche has done with that absence in the meantime. The conversation moves into territory that will matter to men as much as women: the relationship between absent fathers and male brutality, the failure of initiation when the father is not present to initiate, the ancestral and communal dimensions of the wound, and whether fathers can actually change. Susan's answer to that last question is honest and worth hearing slowly. The episode closes with the questions she believes everyone should be asking, and almost no one does.