Food for the Soul: The Animus Diet

28th April 201830th January 2021 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 20 Comments

Welcome to the concluding part of my Animus Diet, almost nine hundred nights later. Why nights and not days I hear you ask? Well for the simple reason that dreams have figured so largely on my journey. Why? Because I believe every dream that comes to us, comes in the service of health and wholeness. Be assured my inner man diet will not be ending, that’ll be lifelong I’m sure, nor will I stop adding reflections to my Animus notebook. No, this is more about being a writer and longing to get started on a new project. So I feel the need to draw a line under this one, even though I may follow up with further animus adventures in years to come!

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The Animus Diet – Part Three

13th September 201730th January 2021 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 16 Comments

I never knew when I would write the next part of my Animus Diet, I only knew I would. So for all you “Jung Dudes” out there who’ve been following my animus journey here’s my latest instalment. I hope you enjoy! As you know I first started my Jungian “inner man” diet back in January 2016 and here in September 2017, as we approach the autumn equinox, after my six month archetypal tarot journey, it feels just right to gather up my pen once more and co-create with my animus. In this article I’m going to explore more key learning experiences since my initial adventures began 18 months ago, where in Part Two last March I met my mother for the first time in 18 years. The number 18, I realise, is an important number for me and one that reappears towards the end of this article in a truly inspiring “animus” dream.

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The Animus Diet – Part Two

28th March 201630th January 2021 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 18 Comments

Twelve weeks ago, around the start of the year, I made a conscious decision to start something completely new in my life, I call it the Animus Diet. Yes, I appreciate that January and dieting tend to go hand-in-hand, however, this was an entirely different kind of diet because there would be no calorie counting or weighing scales involved. Not even a tape measure, as I attempted to slim down my overweight animus, ‘Brutus’ and build up my skinny anima, whom I refer to fondly as ‘Olive Oyl.’ It was only when I discovered the wonderful cartoons at the beginning and at the end of this article that I recognised the characters as archetypes for my inner masculine and feminine aspects. In the first part of this article Journey of Love: The Animus Diet I wrote about my initial thoughts, reflections and changes that I felt I needed to make and I explored a number of suggestions about how to put these in place. This article picks up where week four left off as I continue to explore my inner masculine/feminine imbalance. And so the animus diet continues.

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Journey of Love: The Animus Diet

3rd February 201615th February 2021 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 26 Comments

Okay, that’s it, I’m putting my fat animus on a post-holiday diet! For too long now he’s been aggressively stuffing me full of sugar and fat and making me feel, well, quite ill, if not tired most of the time. As a student of Jung I simply have to try out this lower inner-man diet. So back to the book shelves I go, to pull out Marion Woodsman’s impressive books that help me study “Feminine Consciousness” in more depth and try to figure out how to curb my invisible partner’s hunger.

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The Way of the Dream – Part Two

30th December 20156th July 2020 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 22 Comments

Welcome to the second part of my Journey of Love: The Way of the Dream. For ease of reference I will republish both dreams, however, if you would like to look back over the first part of this article, here’s the link: The Way of the Dream – Part One. In this section I will be exploring each dream in further detail, bringing to light their guiding themes before exploring how, despite being decades apart, both dreams are deeply connected. First, let us return to my recurring childhood dream. Even though there are a number of symbols within each dream I’ve decided to explore the three central images, which for me are the Dragonfly, the Dark Woods and the game of Hide-and-Seek. In the second dream I shall consider the symbolism of Birth, the Goddess Lakshmi and the Queen of Heaven before exploring the powerful connections between both dreams.

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Journey of Love: The Way of the Dream

20th November 20156th July 2020 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 14 Comments

In March 2008 during a weekend workshop on the theme of Archetypal Dreamwork, I met Carl Gustav Jung for the second time in my life. This time, as luck would have it, there would be no escape or turning back. Although I had been captivated by the way of the dream throughout my life, dreams weren’t something that I had ever considered working with before within my therapeutic practice. However, deeply intrigued by the workshop particulars, I found my unconscious outperforming my conscious as the registration form seemed to fill itself out without me even noticing. Yes, I had decided from deep within, I wanted to learn more about the dark, mysterious world of dreams.

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Journey of Love: The Fate of the Alchemist

29th October 20156th July 2020 ~ Deborah Gregory ~ 18 Comments

Halloween is the perfect spell for exploring evil visitations and how we unconsciously invite more fear-provoking ghouls into our everyday lives without really knowing or understanding why. In this seasonal blog post I shall be bringing to light the fate of the magician, otherwise known as the witch, healer, or shaman, for the alchemist has many names. To begin with I’ll briefly explore the terms ‘alchemy’ and ‘fate’ before delving into one of Jung’s richest passages that I’ve ever had the good fortune to stumble across.

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