📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Synchronicity is a term coined by Carl Jung which describes a meaningful patterns or meaningful coincidences of outer and inner events that cannot be causally linked. It occurs with an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, premonition, thought or mood) is seen to have a correspondence in external reality: the inner image has "come true", bringing meaning to your life. When Jung was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious, he kept...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Active imagination is a technique developed by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality.     Jung discovered this method between the years of 1913 and 1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious. He searched for a method to heal himself from within, through the...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon In his book Owning Your Own Shadow: The Dark Side of the Psyche, American author and Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson states that to honour and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.   In this podcast, we briefly clear up some misconceptions regarding the concept of shadow. It is not our enemy, but our friend. It contains pure gold waiting to be...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon William Blake was an English poet and visionary artist whose unique work gives us a glimpse into an entirely different world. His art was ignored and neglected, and few people took his work seriously. He was generally seen as a madman.   His vivid imagination, visions and mystical experiences lead him to a spiritual task that was the exploration of his inner self. For Blake, the essence of human existence is imagination. --- Send in a voice...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Arthur Schopenhauer was a German Philosopher born in 1788 known for his dark pessimistic philosophical reflections. For Schopenhauer, the underlying force of reality is the Will (also called will to live or will to life), which is the essence of existence. It is an unconscious and blind desire that restlessly strives for more activity. The will is the tornado that swirls inside of us and throws us from one place to the other, it is the source of our...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.    Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.    Nishitani understands human existence as consisting in three fields:...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich presents his antidote to meaninglessness through the concept of courage. He was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher born in 1886 and is considered as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.    While lecturing on anxiety, Tillich noticed that there was an enormous response in the post-war era, especially in the younger people, and he sought to give an answer to the growing...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Lovecraft's dark philosophy is known as Cosmicism, which focuses on the insignificance of humanity and its doings at the cosmos-at-large, in contrast to the anthropocentric philosophies in which many find intellectual reassurance.  This form of non-anthropocentrism is crucial to the philosophy of Cosmicism.   The question of the meaning of life was better left unanswered. Cosmicism is a type of extreme existentialism, as it brings up the uncertainty...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Few artists have so powerfully evoked the uncanny otherness of the unconscious like Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser. His unknown dream paintings were met with blank incomprehension, and were not well-received by the art community of the time, but, viewed today, his vivid paintings bear striking testament to the disruptive and transformative reality of individuation, the purpose of Jungian psychology, which is to seek wholeness of personality by bringing...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon The anima and animus are two contrasexual archetypes crucial for individuation and to progress towards the Self in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, they are the archetype of life and archetype of meaning, respectively.   The anima is the personification of all female psychological tendencies in man, while the animus is the personification of all male psychological tendencies in woman.    They form part of the collective unconscious, as archetypes...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon In Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the nightmare of total equality, a society in which equality is finally achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individuality. One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.   We’ll be exploring the increasing promotion of equality to the point of it being absurd as a consequence of the “unheard cry for meaning” that plagues modern society.    The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation of not...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon The Russian existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov is known for his “philosophy of despair” or “philosophy of tragedy”. For Shestov, the sources of philosophy were the human tragedy, the horrors and sufferings of human life and the sense of hopelessness.     Tragedies take place in the depth of the human soul, where no eye can reach out to see. Consequently, He saw the beginning of philosophy starting not with knowledge, not with wonder, but with...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon The persona is one of Carl Jung's most well-known concepts, representing the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people. But, it also has its dangers.    We will be discussing the dangers of concealing our true self. We may use the persona to help us conceal our...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon In the 19th century the status of mass society became a philosophical and moral issue in a manner hitherto unseen. It came to be defined as the permanent possibility in all individuals of losing concern for their personal status and worth, and assigning themselves to something outside themselves in an abstract “other”.   We’ll be exploring the various existential critiques and interpretations of this phenomenon peculiar to modern society from four...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Carl Jung’s collective unconscious is one of his most well-known (and controversial) concepts. The collective unconscious is the aspect of the unconscious mind which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. He came upon the idea in a dream.   The collective unconscious does not owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition, while the personal unconscious is made up essentially...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground in 1864 which is considered to be one of the first existentialist works, emphasising the importance of freedom, responsibility and individuality. It is an extraordinary piece of literature, social critique and satire of the Russian nihilist movement as well as a novel with deep psychological insights on the nature of man.   Dostoevsky’s most sustained and spirited attack on the Russian...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon In his best-known work The Hero with a Thousand Faces published in 1949, Joseph Campbell describes the archetypal Hero’s Journey or “monomyth” shared by the world. The Hero’s Journey occurs in three sequential phases: separation, initiation and the return. In the climax of the myth, the Hero experiences a psychological death and rebirth. The death of an old aspect of one’s self and the birth of a new and more capable self, receiving insights and...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Modern society has seen a massive spike in mental illness. Why could this be? We will be exploring the characteristics of modernity and associate it with the rise of mental illness. Modernity is associated by scientific and technological advancement, individualism and hedonism. The empowerment of the individual self is one of the most ramifying features of modernity. In The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz suggests that many people who suffer...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Friedrich Nietzsche provided the first detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture and warns the world of its consequences, most famously in the parable of the madman where he proclaims that "God is dead".   Nietzsche was concerned primarily with existential nihilism, where life as a whole has no intrinsic meaning or value. He defines nihilism as the “radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability." In other...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon The knight of faith is one of Kierkegaard’s most important concepts, which he discusses in Fear and Trembling under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. He begins explaining the knight of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac.    Although he has never found any knight of faith, he would not deny on that ground that they exist. He looks like any normal person, one detects nothing of the strangeness and superiority that marks him.   Before one...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Carl Jung warns us against the dangers of the collective shadow (the unknown dark side of society) and urges us to develop our personal shadow (the unknown dark side of our personality) to be consciously aware of the collective shadow and not fall prey to it. We must acknowledge our personal shadow and enter into long and difficult negotiations with it through shadow work.   Allowing us to rescue the good qualities that lie dormant within us, which...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Man cannot stand a meaningless life. What is the meaning of life? It is hard to think of a single proposition that can make your life meaningful in an instant. One can, however, orient oneself more meaningfully towards one’s goals. To find meaning is a dynamic process that constantly shapes yourself, immerses yourself in reality and has reality immersed in you.   A meaningful life can be defined according to a positive life regard, referring to an...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon What is the meaning of Death? It is the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence. Most people unconsciously repress the idea of their death, as it is too horrifying a notion to think about.  Some are perhaps not so horrified of the idea of death, but rather the pain associated before one’s death, or the death of loved ones.  We live entirely unique lives with complete different experiences, but we all share one common fate: Death. This is what...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon Life is a journey of self-realisation, of understanding and discovering who we truly are, and of maximising our potential. While this might be a life long journey, one can be closer or further from one's true self.  This video analyses self-realisation from a philosophical and psychological perspective.  Starting from the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, where we’ll discuss the self, despair and the leap of faith. Sigmund Freud as the...

📺 Watch on YouTube ⭐ Support on Patreon The problem of suffering is its meaninglessness, rather than suffering itself. It is hard to deny that to live is to suffer, as long as we do not mean that to live is only to suffer.    One who cannot bear suffering and tries to avoid the unavoidable is bound to end up in existential despair and nihilism, death is just as welcome as there’s no purpose for living.  This video explores how to tackle the problem of suffering ("why do I suffer?"), with...