"My Soul, Where Are You?": A Workshop With Susan Tiberghien

Over a century ago, after breaking with Freud, C.G. Jung cried out these words, “My Soul, where are you?” He felt lost. He realized he had lost his soul.

Today, in our broken world, these words are ours. We have lost our soul, individually and collectively.

What can we do? We are overwhelmed by the news: children dying of hunger in Gaza, drones striking schools in Ukraine, millions facing hunger in Sudan, ICE patrols picking up immigrants off the streets in the U.S., my home country. In our fear, we have lost sight of our soul. We cry out, “My soul, where are you?”

My workshop is an answer to these words. It is divided into four parts.    

• Part I introduces the soul. What/who is she? We will look at how soul has been understood across the centuries, starting with Plato and Aristotle, and at how we see soul today. 
• Part II asks how do we find her.  I propose three different ways: silent prayer, journal writing, and entering the imaginal world.
• Part III asks how do we listen to her. I suggest again silent prayer and journaling, and add active imagination, tending dreams, drawing mandalas, and embracing nature.  
• Part IV encourages us to stand up and shine the light of our soul into our broken world. Clarissa Pinkola Estes asks us to reach out and mend the part of the broken world closest to us. I offer encouragement from Etty Hillesum, Martin Luther King, and Terry Tempest Williams.

Today, our world is darkened. Until we find our soul, until we listen to her and share her light, our world risks its extinction. We can save our civilization. We can find anew our soul. We can shine her light into the darkness of our broken world.

Susan Tiberghien, American writer living in Geneva, is the author of four memoirs, two writing books: One Year to a Writing Life and Writing Toward Wholeness, and most recently the 20th Anniversary Edition of Circling to the Center, An Invitation to Silent Prayer. For twenty years, she has been teaching at C.G. Jung Societies, the International Women’s Writing Guild, and writers’ centers and conferences in Europe and the U.S. She recently recorded three online master classes for the Jung Society of Washington. Susan founded and directed the Geneva Writers’ Group for 25 years. www.susantiberghien.com