Living a "Symbolic Life" - Great Salt Lake as Symbol: Friday Lecture

We are excited to welcome Brooke Williams back this season!

"You see, man is in need of a symbolic life—badly in need. We only live banal, ordinary rational, or irrational things...but we have no symbolic life. Where do we live symbolically? Nowhere, except where we participate in the ritual of life..."

~Carl Jung

"Love the Lake" lawn signs across Salt Lake Valley. Billboards along the freeway. Everyday something new in the news about Great Salt Lake. The politicians, most of them developers, tiptoeing around the issue, knowing deep beneath the sludge of their own wealth that We The People don't want Her, Great Salt Lake, to dry up. We don't want and literally can't live with the toxic dust blowing regularly across Salt Lake Valley. We can't condone the disruption of massive wild bird migrations.

If Great Salt Lake symbolizes our psyche, originally, the conscious and unconscious elements of the psyche mixed more freely with each other. Modernity created a hard division between them, as the berm which separates the North Arm from the South Arm; suddenly Great Salt Lake broke from its physical bonds in ordinary reality and became a metaphor.

We still have access to our unconscious, our own balancing, 'adjustable berm.' Many believe, like Freud, that this north, wild, unconscious psychic side threatens society, and sealing it off may be what's best. The North Arm, like our unconscious (both darker, murkier, and still wild) needs to live as though our survival depends on it, because it does.

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Welcome to Season 18 ~ Archetype

This season, our Friday evenings will have more audience engagement and participation. You will have the opportunity that evening to begin what we will dive into fully the next day, Saturday, in embodied, highly interactive exploration and practice- together! This season follows Jung's concept of archetype: a universal, inherited pattern of thought, image, and symbol that lives in the collective unconscious of all human beings. These deep mental blueprints shape how we feel, dream, and act, and they show up in myths and stories across every culture.

Consider investing in yourself each month this season. Give yourself an entire immersive, transformational experience with like-minded, like-hearted community. Renew your heart and soul. Dive and play with us, as Jung himself did, in the ether of soul and self. We will be weaving Jung's teachings deeply into our explorations.

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Friday Evening: Part 1 - The Lecture

Living a "Symbolic Life" - Great Salt Lake as Symbol

Friday, October 2nd, 6:30 pm – 9:00 pm

UMOCA Theater

20 S. West Temple, SLC, UT 84113

Opening Poet: Sam

Live Music: Mike

Local Artist: Laurie Eastwood

Saturday: Part 2 - The Depth Workshop

NOTE DIFFERENT TIME AND LOCATION FOR THIS WORKSHOP

Experiencing the Enchanted World

Saturday, October 3rd, 10:00pm – 2:00 pm

City Creek Park, SLC: precise location tba

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TICKETS:

Friday Only - Part 1: $20 Advance Tickets | $25 Same Day, if available (Your 1 ticket free for Members)

Entire Weekend: $70 (Members: $50) BEST PRICE!

Saturday Only - Part 2: $75 Advance Tickets | $85 Same Day, if available

(Members: Your 1 ticket is $50)

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Schedule: Friday Evening Lecture

6:30 – 7:00 pm: Live Music & Art Mingle

7:00 – 8:30 pm: Lecture with Brooke Williams

8:30 - 9:00 pm: Community Social

Schedule: Saturday Workshop

NOTE DIFFERENT TIME AND LOCATION FOR THIS WORKSHOP:

9:45 am: Arrive at City Creek Park

10:00 - 2:00 pm: Depth Workshop

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1.5 CEUs & 5 CEUs available (per event) for Utah Mental Health Professionals ($5 or free for Professional Members)

Connect within an open community as we explore the cultivation of spirit and soul. We hope to see you there!

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From Our Presenter:

For most of my life I’ve been passionate about the wild world. Earlier, this meant skiing and climbing in some of the great mountains of America, wandering the cliffs and canyons of the Colorado Plateau or naturalizing in some of the planet’s last great Edens. Lately, during long solo walks I’ve discovered my own vast and complex inner wilderness. I write in an effort to understand the importance of inner and outer wildness in modern life. Years ago, after encouragement from my mentor, the great teacher, William Kitteridge, I realized that the one story I would tell over and over again for the rest of my life would be this: “We live in bodies that are largely unchanged since the Pleistocene, trying to make them work in a world which is vastly different from the one for which evolution designed us. Perhaps acknowledging this is a big step toward solving some of our current problems.” My ‘one story’ appears in various forms in dozens of stories and articles, and five books including Halflives: Reconciling Work and Wildness, Open Midnight, and my latest, Mary Jane Wild: Two Walks and a Rant. My passion for wildness has informed the conservation work I’ve done, formally and informally for over four decades, most recently with the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. I have an MBA in Sustainable Business from the Bainbridge Graduate Institute. Terry Tempest Williams and I live with our dog, Winslow, and three cats near Moab, Utah, where we raise rabbit brush and sage, and too much cheatgrass, watch light, and wait for rain.

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Generously supported by our season sponsors: Golden Braid Books, Fallow Renewal Jungian Life Coaching, Liberty Broadband, and Amanda Butler LMFT

Thank you to our in-kind partners: Kings Peak Coffee Roasters, DeVon Stanfield, Sugar House Distillery, & Full Circle Yoga & Therapy