Earth and Humanity: Embodied Psyche in the Field of the Imaginal Heart

Abstract

This study is intended to contribute to a metaphorical understanding of how world soul, or Anima Mundi, is imagined, embodied, and communicated at the intersection of the visible and invisible interrelationships among humans and animated nature. This hermeneutic exploration has implications for relationship with imaginal dimensions and presences as well as a reciprocally transformative relationship between humanity and more-than-human dimensions. In response to the ecological, ethical, and spiritual challenges of a global, yet seemingly alienated community, the study supports a paradigm shift. Through hermeneutic, textual dialogue and phenomenological narrative, biopsychosocial concepts of subjectivity, image, imagination, and duality are explored within an interdisciplinary range of works by Carl G. Jung, James Hillman, Robert Sardello, Robert Romanyshyn, Veronica Goodchild, James Hollis, Richard Tarnas, Joseph Cambray, Michael Conforti, Henri Corbin, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Amit Goswami, Peter Kingsley, and others. Reference to wisdom traditions provides a cultural-historic context for efficacious psychological conceptions and interventions. The study demonstrates a metaphorical understanding of embodied Psyche in an erotically interrelated, animated, field of imagination. The author claims that in a seemingly dualistic reality, our hearts can welcome Home the Stranger who is no stranger.