The Power of Conscious Choice (Hybrid)

The average person makes around 35,000 choices a day. Most of these are automatic and/or unconscious. All of them determine the way we experience and shape our lives. Using teachings and stories from a range of spiritual traditions, this workshop will provide practical tools for those in helping, healing, and spiritual professions, as well as others, for exploring our own unconscious beliefs and patterns – shadow work. Knowing ourselves can transform our lives and unify communities. 

The lives that we currently live are the results of a set of inherited assumptions about how both our lives and our world operate. By becoming conscious of these assumptions, we can make choices about whether to keep them, discard them, or reshape them. One way to define the unconscious is that it is what we do not know or are not aware of. Yet the unconscious makes huge decisions for us. Though it has had different names across history, shadow work is a timeless element of the world’s wisdom traditions and an essential part of psychological and spiritual development. Together, we will discover how cultivating this kind of self-awareness can help us and those we serve to live more authentic, connected, and meaningful lives. 

The Rev. Dr. Bill Kerley is a spiritual teacher who strives to offer relevant, intellectual musings for ordinary mystics. He currently teaches the Ordinary Life class at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church where he has been on staff for over thirty years. Ordinary Life is for people seeking a meaningful spiritual path outside traditional religious boundaries. He is also in private practice as a counselor and spiritual director. He has been an instructor at Baylor College of Medicine where he taught "at risk" heart patients the beliefs and behaviors necessary to enhance and prolong their lives. He is the past president of both the Houston Association of Marriage and Family Therapy and the National Speakers Association, Houston Chapter. He is also a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians and frequently uses magic to illustrate and enhance his teachings.

Brooke Summers-Perry is an artist and is currently serving as The Jung Center's Director of Curriculum. As a student of Dr. Kerley for twenty years, this work led her to become a spiritual director, serve as the Executive Director of the Hines Center for Spirituality and Prayer at Christ Church Cathedral, and to co-found We Practice Life, LLP with her son, Chase Summers-Perry. In 2014, she and  Rev Dr. Matthew Russell started Conspire, a spiritual practice group to serve as the lab class for Ordinary Life. Dr Kerley's work continues to improve her life and inform the development and facilitation of creative and accessible spiritual practices that she offers in various settings.

This program is being offered both IN-PERSON and ONLINE. Please select how you will attend when registering. Recordings will be distributed to registered participants only, and will not be available for individual purchase.

All times are CT. Please contact onlinelearning@junghouston.org with any questions.

Please register early. Programs with four or fewer participants are subject to cancellation, 48 hours prior to their start.