tl;dr book club starting in a fortnight — Robert A. Johnson’s Inner Work
Hello there,
The Living Philosophy book club is coming to Substack! This is something we’ve been experimenting with over on the Patreon page and it’s high time we bring it to Substack. The format is quite simple (perhaps meriting some improvement).
We pick a book;
set the dates for reading the various sections by week (e.g. Chapters 1&2 on Week 1; Chapters 3, 4 and 5 on Week 2, Chapter 6 on Week 3 etc. etc.);
then I’ll post my thoughts/reflections/musings on those sections on the week’s chapters and you can post your thoughts/reflections/musings beneath;
and then when we’re finished we have a Zoom debrief chat discussing the whole book and what we got out of it
I’m planning on creating a Discord for paid members of Substack and Patreon where we can have more of a conversational flow rather than the post/comments dynamic which isn’t as dialogical as I’d like. I’m going to try and get that set up in the next couple of weeks before the book club gets started.
The book we’re going to be reading next is “Inner Work: Using Dreams & Active Imagination for Personal Growth” by Robert A. Johnson (amazon.co.uk link here). I got really excited reading about Active Imagination again recently and what I’d love to see happen is for The Living Philosophy to turn into a community of practice where we engage in philosophical exercises together. Not sure how that would look but I’ve found working with dreams again recently has lifted the weight of Nihilism off my shoulders once again and I’m excited to get into more work.
So, Active Imagination is the first port of call. I’ve experimented with it in the past but never made much headway. I’m hoping working in parallel with a community we might learn from each other and get value from the practice. I’m also thinking of bringing in some Jungian analysts maybe to do a podcast with to help us.
Anyway I’m getting ahead of myself. For now: Johnson’s book is a primer on working with Active Imagination. If you’re interested in getting your hands dirty in some Jungian self-work then this could be for you.
The plan is to get the book this week then I’ll send out a plan of attack next Saturday and then the Saturday after post the first week’s report.
Looking forward to reading with you,
James