What Are You Running Away From?

Suppose what you fear
could be trapped
and held in Paris.

Then you would have the courage
to go everywhere in the world.
All the directions of the compass
open to you,
except the degrees east or west
of true north
that lead to Paris.

Still, you wouldn’t dare
to put your toes smack dab
on the city limit line.

And you’re not really willing to stand on a mountainside
miles away
and watch the Paris lights
come up at night.
And just to be on the safe side, you decide to stay completely
out of France.

But then danger
seems too close
even to those boundaries,
and you feel the timid part of you
covering the whole globe again.

You need the kind of friend
who learns your secret and says,
“See Paris first.”

—M. Truman Cooper

Self Reflection

One day you will decide to risk
Sharing your own deep truths about being and becoming

No matter how dark the substance you must sift
You will risk and risk and risk again

Believing now that you're able to survive
The exacting gaze of your own knowing

Because on that day you will have already had the mysterious and good fortune
Of catching a glimmer of Love -
Both strange and familiar to your tired human body

And everything after that glimpse will never be the same again
Now that you know that meeting the gleam in your own eyes
Doesn't require so much stalwart bravery as you once thought

Your gaze now only serves to return you into your own open arms
Where you can finally hear the sound of your own soothing voice
Saying simply this: "I will welcome you in".

Yes.
I will welcome you in, I will welcome you in, I will welcome you in.

The Wisdom of Darkness

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark.  
Go without sight,
And find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.

-- Wendell Berry

Sacred Spaces

Grateful: for ritual, for compassion, for safe spaces to do inner work, for grace, for creativity, for community, and for reminders to approach all of these light-filled qualities with the kind of humility that acknowledges their ever-present shadow.

- CG Jung Institute, 1.6.2013

Transformation

"What is poison at the beginning becomes nectar in the end".  -- A good teacher.

Book Evangelism!

The Language of Emotions by Karla McLaren
A Little Book on The Human Shadow by Robert Bly
The Deepest Acceptance by Jeff Foster

The Intimate Life by Judith Blackstone

The Bond by Lynne McTaggart

Vibrational Medicine by Richard Gerber
The Polyvagal Theory by Stephen W. Porges
The Ever Present Origin by Jean Gebser

.... Ready, break!

Today's Solar Eclipse!

I used to pay attention to horoscopes in the newspaper or magazines because I thought they were quirky and fun.  Maybe it also gave me a sense of cosmic connection when they were accurate as well.  Over the years, however, I've had more exposure to some very serious practitioners of the art, and any residual dismissive attitude has been consequently silenced.  According to the author of one particular astrology blog I read, these are the potential gifts of today's solar eclipse in Scorpio:

"Information lives in light.  This information comes from the heart of a Star–a star called the Sun. Our Sun holds information from its Creator (most likely the Black Hole at the Center of our Galaxy; the Galactic Center; Hunab Ku)… to Imagine what types of information is encoded within these primordial ancient galactic wave forms is mind bending. And light isn’t just information, it’s also energy. 

When the Moon aligns perfectly between Sun and Earth we experience Solar Eclipses.  Divinely infused New Moons meant to catapult us onto the right path.  It is up to us to be good tricksters in this opportune space.  Nobody is going to do this work for you.  It is up to you.  Be quick, be stealthy, and have an idea of what you are looking for.  Without the light of the Sun, we are “eclipsed” and free to roam in the Shadow of our being for a short time, rewriting aspects of our story we have been hungry to edit. 

What is the Shadow?  The Shadow in Jungian psychology is the unconscious dumping ground for undesirable characteristics of personality.  And so, during Eclipses we get to choose what gets released or incinerated in our unconscious dumping grounds.  Only with intent will you experience the stellar magic of these Dragon holes.  Intention and courage will bring you to the moments where you become weightless, carried by Love and nothing else…."

For more moon updates - check out this blog:  Holes To Heaven.

Honest Humanity

An honorable human relationship -- that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word "love" -- is a process of deepening the truths they can tell each other.

It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.

It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.

It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.

- Adrienne Rich

The intelligence of humility.

“I’ve seen how you can’t learn anything when you’re trying to look like the smartest person in the room.”  -- Barbara Kingsolver

The Art of Therapy

I believe in therapy.  In fact, I believe in it so much that I am both a practitioner and a client of the craft.  Consequently, I've had the tremendous fortune of being initiated into really beautiful processes of transformation from both positions.  My own journey through this somewhat mysterious phenomena has often let me to wonder exactly why therapy "works" when it does.

In light of that confession, I'd like to link you to this lovely little essay about the potential gifts of good psychotherapy:  The Folk Art of Therapy.  This piece gives one of my favorite explanations about why and how therapy can be so powerfully transformational.  If reading it stirs your curiosity at all, I'd like to also recommend another reading assignment:  The Gift of Therapy by Irvin Yalom.  This book does a beautiful job of exploring the subtleties of healing that the therapy relationship aims to facilitate.  If, however, you're a person who needs empirical evidence in order to believe in anything your five senses can't immediately recognize, you might want to look into this book:  The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy.  And if you have the supremely good fortune to live in the beautiful city of Chicago, and want to attend something that guarantees to facilitate a more provocative conversation than any of the above sources combined, then consider attending this lecture:  The Love Cure given through the CG Jung Institute of Chicago in early December of this year.

(Disclaimer: while I enjoy much of what each of these authors posits about the process of therapy, their beliefs about mental health and best practices do not necessarily reflect my own).

Not mad, just human.

"We are not mad, we are human. 
We want to love and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love. 
For the paths are many and dark, 
and we are ardent and cruel in our journey."

-- Leonard Cohen

Self-Acceptance

Sometimes other people say things so well that it feels unfair to try to paraphrase it:

“The acceptance of oneself is the essence of the whole moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook on life. That I feed the hungry, that I forgive an insult, that I love my enemy -- all these are undoubtedly great virtues.  But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very enemy himself -- that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness -- that I myself am the enemy who must be loved -- what then?”  - CG Jung

“If you try to avoid or remove the awkward quality, it will pursue you. The only effective way to still its unease is to transfigure it, to let it become something creative and positive that contributes to who you are.  Nietzche said that one of the best days in his life was the day when he rebaptized all his negative qualities as his best qualities. Rather than banishing what is at first glimpse unwelcome, you bring it home to unity with your life.  In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualities”.  - John O'Donohue

“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries" - Theodore Roethke

While I don't think I can articulate this sentiment any more clearly than the above minds have done so, I will add this:  learning how to practice genuine self-acceptance is not for the faint of heart.  It is a grievous error to assume that this concept belongs to some kind of cute, cuddly, warm and fuzzy experience.  It's equally grievous to dismiss the notion of self-acceptance as a means for justifying passive denial of personal responsibility.  Instead, real self-acceptance requires an honest and ongoing encounter with our own sources of shame.  That is an extraordinarily brave quest!  Yet the potential reward for this kind of inner courage is something like Wholeness.  In fact, Carl Jung believed that our darkest inner landscapes often hold our greatest creative potentials.

So, onward brave friends!  I think we owe it to ourselves and to each other.

The mistake of envy.

“No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.”  -- John O'Donohue

I think this idea is one we should really try to hold onto while traveling through this ephemeral human experience.  In the above quote, John O'Donohue compassionately reminds us how the misperceptions of envy can be dangerous and destructive.  Following his lead, I'd like to remind us that this destructive quality often manifests in subtle, insidious, and/or nearly imperceivable ways.  I think we have to be conscious of the ways in which envy can simply distract us from pursuing our own authentic paths.  This feels important to me because it suggests that even in the most passive manifestations envy can have very personally tragic consequences.

The intelligence of opposites.

Fortunately for me, I have had the very good fortune of being psychologically reared within a Jungian framework of human development.  This has allowed me to become increasingly comfortable with what often feels like endless cycles of learning and unlearning and relearning all over again.  Carl Jung calls this "integrating the opposites", and considers this process to be the central principle of individuation.  From a theoretical perspective, he posits that everything we think we know is simply an initial "thesis", which must be psychically balanced out by an initially unknown opposite or "antithesis".  This antithesis is at first constellated in the unconscious, and we are therefore entirely unaware of its presence until we are somehow forced to acknowledge it.

Recognizing and allowing any antithesis into consciousness is rarely a comfortable process for us because it typically threatens our very fragile sense of security.  Since we are creatures who have learned to feel safe in the world by labeling, categorizing, understanding, predicting, and controlling our environment, we can start to feel powerfully threatened when what we've come to rely upon is being questioned in some way.  However, the real creative treasure in all of this can only be found when we are willing to hold both our thesis and its antithesis with a degree of consciousness.  IF we can find the courage to consider not knowing what we think we know, then the stunning miracle of "synthesis" has a chance of occurring!  For example: "I'm right and you're wrong" might have the chance of becoming "I wonder if I could learn something I don't already know from this person who disagrees with my idea".  A completely gorgeous possibility for growth, right?  Unconvinced?  Here's a classic scientific application of this idea: "Turns out, light is both a wave and a particle!".

While musing over this particular psychological process the other day, it occurred to me that this kind of thinking is actually the ironic antithesis of fundamentalist thinking.  That notion made me feel really curious about the psychological principles and patterns that govern fundamentalism.  I appreciate that the term fundamentalism is most often associated with theological and religious identifications, but I think I'd like to extrapolate the term and include rigid political identifications too.  This interests me so much right now because I think we can all appreciate our current political climate of divisive, ineffective chaos.  Yes?  Sure!

I haven't come to any definite conclusions because I'm trying to be a good student of my own philosophy, but I have begun to wonder what happens to someone (psychologically) when they decide that they know anything at all absolutely.  Maybe that's the point at which we risk becoming identified with our own sentiments, and consequently unwilling to look at them critically.  It seems to me that a person in that position would thereby have to expend a lot of energy protecting themselves from anything that contradicts their particular thesis.  Tragically, the above theoretical discussion seems to suggest that the possibility of growth would also come to a screeching halt at that exact point of psychological defense.

I'm not sure how to make this notion of "integrating the opposites" sound less threatening and more appealing for people.  Nonetheless, it seems increasingly insane to think that shouting at each other from our polarized positions will allow anything new to emerge.  Instead, I'd like to imagine a conversation about health care or taxes that didn't start with defensive posturing, but began with curiosity about the opposite of what we think we know.....

The gift of pain.

I've been thinking a lot about hurt and pain, as I've experienced quite a bit of both (in many different manifestations) lately.  The most fascinating thing about all this recent physical and psychological suffering is that I'm genuinely grateful for it.  In fact, as I've been working towards finding out what messages this pain may have for me, I'm becoming able to let go of some old habits that are no longer serving me.  And within this new very hard-won freedom, I'm also discovering a creative new space in which I can become different in ways that serve me much better.

As I've been reflecting on this process, I'm reminded of two things from two different very wise spiritual teachers.  The first is something the Dalai Lama said at a conference I attended in Chicago this past spring.  He was talking about his time as a youth in school, and made a reference to this set of whips the monks would use to discipline their students.  He explained to the audience that the monks used both a brown whip and a yellow whip, and that the yellow whip was referred to as the 'holy whip'.  His point?  Holy pain does not hurt any less.

I think I often want the spiritual path to be a little less painful than the non-spiritual path.  And I suppose it is less painful in some ways because suffering can be worked with skillfully, and meaning can be made from it.  But to echo the Dalai Lama:  IT STILL HURTS LIKE HELL.  

Nonetheless, I'm aware today that I needed this recent round of painful blows in order to wake up to more of who I truly want to become.  The second spiritual teacher I alluded to above may have said it best:

There's courage involved if you want to become truth. 
There is a broken-open place in a lover. 
Where are those qualities of bravery and sharp compassion? 

What's the use of old and frozen thought? 

I want a howling hurt.
This is not a treasury where gold is stored; this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent that can heat up and change.    

Lukewarm won't do. 
Halfhearted holding back, well-enough getting by? 

Not here.

-Rumi

Projections

If you imagine someone who is brave enough to withdraw all his projections, then you get an individual who is conscious of a pretty thick shadow. Such a man has saddled himself with new problems and conflicts. He has become a serious prob

lem to himself, as he is now unable to say that they do this or that, they are wrong, and they must be fought against. He lives in the "House of the Gathering." Such a man knows that whatever is wrong in the world is in himself, and if he only learns to deal with his own shadow he has done something real for the world. He has succeeded in shouldering at least an infinitesimal part of the gigantic, unsolved social problems of our day.

- Carl Gustav Jung