What is a Good Life? #94
Listening To The Story Of My Soul with Jennifer Murphy
On the 94th episode of the What is a Good Life? podcast, I am delighted to introduce our guest, Jennifer Murphy. Jennifer is an Irish mythologist, anthropologist, creativity mentor, and the founder of The Celtic Creatives. A Dubliner born and bred, from the time she could talk, Jennifer's grandmother, Frances O'Sullivan, filled her ears with tales from Irish myth and folklore, fuelling a now 40-year fascination with the stories of her lineage. Jennifer's apprenticeship in following her soul’s breadcrumbs over the past twenty years has guided her work and formal studies in Medieval Irish and Celtic Studies, Sociocultural Anthropology, Creativity and Innovation, and Jungian Psychology and Art Therapy. She supports creatives from diverse fields to (re)connect with the mythopoetic imagination of Ireland, using ancient wisdom to inform modern creativity through myth, dreamwork, imagination, and the body. She is currently writing a book on what Irish mythology can teach us about our creativity.
In this glorious conversation, Jennifer shares her journey of listening to her soul’s story—a path which has revealed her Dán (soul’s gift) and includes balancing the masculine and feminine, Sus and Imbas—the scientific and divine inspiration—exploring dreams, other worlds, and Irish mythology, and imbuing everything around us with life.
This whole episode may offer you many new lines of inquiry, as well as ways of perceiving this world, which may be integral to experiencing your own good life.
The weekly clip from the podcast (4 mins), my weekly reflection (3 mins), the full podcast (59 mins), and the weekly questions all follow below.
1. Weekly Clip from the Podcast
2. My weekly reflection
Jennifer briefly refers to a mystical experience in this interview, where she and her mother were in a group meditation, and she saw one of her mother’s childhood memories.
When they were asked to share at the end of the meditation, Jennifer mentioned what she saw, and her mother was taken aback, saying, "No, that’s what I saw." Given where Jennifer was in life at that moment—an academic, a professional, etc.—she shut down any further inquiry into that incident at the time.
Throughout these 200+ interviews, there have been numerous acknowledgements suggesting that the world may not really be the way we perceive it in a strictly logical sense.
People have subtly referred to connections with the deceased, encounters with entities, strikingly vivid and lucid dreams with deeply resonant messages, and more.
At times, people have been in professions that may be very open to this kind of inquiry. Often, though, it has been people wary of how such things may be perceived, and not something they would generally discuss.
It reminds me of an experience I had in a church while lighting a candle for a relative with a terminal condition. Her weekly ritual, before she became bedridden, had been to light a candle for me and many others.
After lighting the candle, I saw that no one else was in this local church, so I decided to sit down and meditate. At some point during the meditation, I felt a beam of light burst from my heart and up to the dome of the church.
The experience felt so visceral that, when I returned home and told my wife about it, I found myself smiling, laughing, and crying simultaneously. And I was left with the question, "What if much of this spiritual stuff I say I believe is actually true?"
Having had a few experiences with psychedelics, I was not unfamiliar with my logical mind being unable to explain an experience. However, as this happened around 1 p.m., when I was not under the influence of anything, it held a different weight of significance for me.
I’ve written in this newsletter before about a couple of encounters on the same day with an elderly woman in Berlin whom I had never met before. After encountering me for the second time that day, she told me that she knew we were going to meet again but hadn’t mentioned it initially, as she didn’t want to "freak me out."
The second time we met was several kilometres from where we had first struck up a conversation, and I encountered her after deciding to take an eight-kilometre route home that I had never walked before.
When I saw her again, sitting on a park bench, I felt as though I were living in another dimension of reality, as though it had been preordained that we would meet again. At that moment, I thought very clearly, "This feels like a movie."
I sat beside her for three hours, engaging in one of the most profound conversations of my life.
I share these simply to convey that I have had several experiences in my life that I cannot rationally explain, which left me with a sensation that vibrated at a frequency that gave me little doubt there is more to existence than meets the eye.
These experiences or feelings need not be cause for chasing further experiences. Nor must they fit into existing or constructed narratives, conclusions, or explanations of their meaning. However, I sense that we underreport or withhold these experiences, fearing how they might make us appear—whether "too out there," esoteric, or even leading others to question our sanity.
I am fortunate to have several friends who welcome these kinds of experiences. Regardless of anyone else’s interpretation of them, I am merely sharing a phenomenological experience, just as I would any other feeling, observation, or encounter in my life.
Moreover, I sense that these experiences can offer us insights, images, and clues about what our own souls might be trying to convey. They may serve as invitations to other worlds, states of consciousness, or realms that could be integral to our understanding of our lives.
If anyone wants to dismiss these experiences as unscientific, I would remind us all that we live in a universe comprising 95% dark energy and dark matter—substances of which we have no understanding.
In such a universe, I believe it is fair to suggest that we are far from drawing concrete conclusions or establishing boundaries for what reality is. This is not to say we should become completely absorbed by these experiences or perspectives, but rather that they deserve much more of our attention than we typically afford them.
Have you ever had a moment that left you wondering what lies beyond the visible or logical?
3. Full Episode - Listening To The Story Of My Soul with Jennifer Murphy - What is a Good Life? #94
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4. This week’s Questions
Have you ever shared an experience that you could not logically explain?
What is the story of your soul presently saying to you?
About Me
I am a coach, podcast host, and writer, based in Berlin, via Dublin, Ireland. I started this project in 2021, for which I’ve now interviewed over 200 people. I’m not looking to prescribe universal answers, more that the guests’ lines of inquiry, musings, experiences, and curiosities spark your own inquiry into what the question means to you. I am also trying to share more genuine expressions of the human experience and more meaningful conversations.
If you would like to work with me to explore your own lines of self-inquiry, take part in my weekly free silent conversations, discuss experiences I create to stimulate greater trust, communication, and connection, amongst your teams, or you simply want to get in touch, here’s my email and LinkedIn.
Thanks so much again for the opportunity Mark it's an honour to be part of your magnificent body of work! ✨