Friday 5th November 2021

7:30 pm

"Order and Chaos"

Dr Robert Matthews - on-line from Adelaide

Joining us at MacKillop House "on the big screen"!

Meeting at MacKillop House, 50 Archibald St, Lyneham, ACT,

We all spend so much of our time trying to keep order and harmony in our lives and keep chaos away.

Covid has shown us just how fragile this order can be. I still don’t understand the panic buying of toilet paper, but there is an experience of sheer chaos.

In this materialistic time, so much effort is put into controlling our material life, but the data shows it doesn’t seem to make us any happier.

Science thankfully tells us what Covid is and develops vaccines to restore order to our lives. However it also tells us of our insignificance in a vast cosmos.

We use to order our lives through spirituality and religion. The transcendent spoke to many, supporting them in life’s ups and downs.

Sacred images dating back a least 8,000 years show their role in offering an ordering light to peoples lives.

Chaos was also explained and so held and contained in sacred images.

Most cultures have stories of a trickster god who intentionally bring confusion. Take the African trickster god who wore a hat red on one side and blue on the other. After walking between two farmers on the road, he turns his hat around and walks back between them. The two farmers got into a fight that evening, one swearing they saw a man with a red hat, the other that it was blue!

​For the medieval mind, the voices of order and chaos sat on their shoulders. Chaos when you listen to the little devil on your shoulder and order when you hear the angel. But no-one thinks they have a shadow whispering to them anymore. Chaos is then projected onto each other. The vaccine as a way to install 5G tracking devices is a diabolic fantasy indeed.

Jung found a way to listen to a quiet voice within that for him guided his life through the chaotic rocks. He was ever grateful to that voice. It is the same voice the mystics hear only described in psychological language.

In this talk we’ll look at Jung’s life and how he strove to find order amidst this chaos.

Dr Robert Matthews is President of the Society, an Education academic at the University of Adelaide, a Jungian psychotherapist, and a training as a Jungian Analyst with the Zentrum in Switzerland.

Cost:

* At MacKillop House, 50 Archibald St, Lyneham (subject to lockdown allowance)
Jung Society members free, Guests $15, Seniors/Concession $10.
Pay by cash at the door or bank transfer or by credit card: Book here.

* On-line access, via Zoom (shared with the SA Jung Soc):
Jung Society members and guests $10 (No free-list for Canberra Jung Soc members this time!)
Pay by credit card or PayPal via Book here for a ticket to the SA Jung Soc presentation.

Preliminary dinner will not be on this time, because of Covid-19 uncertainties,
and because our "guest speaker"will be in Adelaide!

We meet (with Covid check-in etc) from 7:30 pm for tea and coffee and snacks, music, discussion and library.
The Guest Speaker's presentation (via Zoom from Adelaide) is at 8 pm (7:30pm Adelaide time) for an hour or so,
then discussion and questions for Dr Matthews on-line.
Then those of us at MacKillop House can (Covid-safely) party-on with more supper and music and discussion etc!