5th annual James Hillman Symposium in October

The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture hosts The 5th Annual James Hillman Symposium on Friday 28 October and Saturday 29 October, 2016. This year's theme is Alchemical Psychology:

“It is not the literal return to alchemy that is necessary but a restoration of the alchemical mode of imagining. For in that mode we restore matter to our speech – and that is our aim: the restoration of imaginative matter, not of literal alchemy."
— James Hillman, Alchemical Psychology 

Thomas Moore is a featured speaker at this event and a Fellow of the Dallas Institute.

Our diaita* needs to nourish body, soul and spirit

Read "The Soul Diet" by Thomas Moore at Patheos. In this blog post he explores our associations with food and eating. Moore states:

"Maybe weight loss isn’t just about exercise and kind of food we eat. Maybe it’s about how we are in life, again what mythology underlies our approach to everything. I have the fantasy that some people can’t lose weight because they, men and women, are habitually maternal in their relationships. A pregnant woman gains weight for the new being in her; maybe we maternal types keep weight on for the same reason. The more the mother complex dominates, the more difficult it is to lose weight. We 'mothers' diet strenuously, but maybe we really need to explore other ways to be in the world." 

He stresses, "A human being is made up of body, soul and spirit, all overlapping and mutually dependent elements. Any diet that doesn’t take all three into consideration is not a diet for humans but for soulless bodies. If that’s the situation, there isn’t much chance for a healthy outcome."

*Diet, from Greek diaita, originally "way of life"

Less emphasis on believing, more focus on relating

Join Thomas Moore for one week next month at Omega Institute to explore A Religion of One’s Own: Creating a Spirituality of the Heart.
When: July 10-15, 2016
Location: Rhinebeck, NY
Course: SM16-2805-600
Tuition: $475

"Through engaging discussions, meditations, and exercises, you examine ways to develop and maintain an engaged inner life, infused with a greater sense of purpose, meaning, and reflection. Learn to integrate more contemplation, transcendence, and spiritual practice into your everyday world. Address fundamental questions and face today’s unique personal and global challenges with a creative approach that emphasizes a true spirituality of the heart." 

This program is part of Omega's Retreat Week.

Barque coverage
20 Apr 2016 "Register to watch Moore's panel at Omega Institute"
9 Nov 2015 "Omega Institute hosts Thomas Moore in July, 2016"

Moore explores aging with soul in new workshop

Before St. Martin's Press publishes Thomas Moore's new book Aging with Soul in 2017, Moore offers a weekend workshop at Kripalu Center on this theme, Aging with Soul from 18 November to 20 November, 2016 with Nancy Slonim Aronie.

Two recent blog posts by Moore with Patheos at Soul & Spirit are "The Calm Terrorist" and "Deep Religion with a Touch of Atheism".

Do you dream of bondage or have power issues?

Thomas Moore updates his Soul & Spirit blog at Patheos with today's post "Of Human Bondage" that refers to a passage in his book, Dark Eros: The Imagination of Sadism (1990). His response to the quoted passage includes:

"Today we wonder why employees go berserk and shoot their employers or fellow workers or why students shoot up our schools. It makes no sense. Why these places where such good things are happening?  But of course these very places are scenes of bondage and cutting criticism every day.

I like to distinguish between sadistic and Sadean. Sadean is simply the law of life by which we suffer for our own good and inflict pain on others for their well being. A surgeon and a dentist don’t hesitate to examine and puncture our bodies, though they do try to alleviate the pain as much as possible. Teachers make us read things we’d never read otherwise and take exams and be graded and pay a good price for it all.

But this Sadeian aspect of every part of life can easily slip over into excessive, unnecessary and punitive suffering. Teachers, parents and even doctors can lose sight of what they’re doing and become sadistic, satisfying some deep urge in themselves to inflict pain. Each of us has to be alert to this tendency to become the source of pain that appears when we have gone too far, crossed a line, and moved from otherwise creative and acceptable suffering to actual cruelty."

U.S. elections
Moore cautions, "I’m writing this at a time of national elections. Here, too, we have to be cautious lest our natural and creative instinct to subject ourselves to a good leader slips into a masochistic desire to be manipulated. We might enjoy hearing a candidate express his tough intentions because neurotically we feel a need to be controlled and perhaps abused. These issues are so subtle that they can be in full bloom without our ever suspecting them."