The Grey Bride

In the dream I had several nights ago, I am attending a large wedding. Two good friends of mine are the bride and groom, and the bride takes center stage. I have been invited to attend but not be in the wedding. The bride is dressed in grey toulle and she has a large number of tall, thin bridesmaids dressed in full-length, shimmery white satin gowns that nearly glow in the dark--beautiful and dreamy like moonlight. The bride is a small, active nucleus in her grey puff of a dress, like a cloud or a grey, fluffy bird. I am relegated to the sidelines and I am green with envy, wanting to be more involved, wanting, really, to be one of the bridesmaids. I love those dresses. 

Instead, I am in the audience, in the dark, aware that I am being punished somehow by the bride. It feels as though the grey bride is twisting the knife of alienation in my side. It's painful to be there, to want so much to be a part of something. This only gets worse as we move to the ceremony itself, which takes place on stage, as an elaborate theater production, very avant garde. The bride and groom have written a play that somehow fills the function of the more traditional exchange of vows, rings, etc. I am once again filled with envy for the brilliance and originality of the spectacle. 

Well, I think Jung would say that any dream about a wedding probably references the conjunctio, the archetype of the holy wedding in alchemy. This is the symbolic marriage of the feminine and masculine within an individual. The fact that I am outside the ceremony, looking in, indicates that I am not ready for this unification of "opposites" within myself. The bride's greyness, to me, means that she has unified black and white, shadow and light, unconscious and conscious. She has owned her shadow. In the dream, I want to be a bridesmaid, though, not the bride. I want to still be a girl--a maiden--not yet an individuated woman.  I long for simpler times. And this part of me, that wants to be a girl, is shunned by the more mature bride, who has accepted and embodied the inherent contradictions in life, as symbolized by her grey dress. 

The grey may also symbolize old age, grey hair. The bride has no time for primping and preening. She leaves that to the shimmering bridesmaids. She is all vision, action, and execution, as they follow on her heels. I have thought a lot about this as the ideal image for growing older. Vanity fades and is replaced by vision and action. 

As I stand at the threshold of a new life, defined by the achievement of my Masters, the grey bride is the way-shower on the path of becoming a full human being, with responsibilities. That may be why she didn't choose me as a bridesmaid. That's no longer my role in this ritual. 

The Hapless Bohemian

I've been off the radar for the last couple weeks, unable to write anything on the blog. My anxiety has been off the charts. Off the radar, off the charts, and over the edge. Inner work does not progress under these conditions, except, perhaps, in the form of nightmares. My anxiety is the result, in an immediate sense (as opposed to a depth sense) of the looming question, "Now you've graduated--now what?"

I've gotten into the habit of referring to my former incarnation (who I've been the last ten to twenty years) as a Hapless Bohemian, or, sometimes, a Reckless Bohemian. This is the persona that has been mostly at the helm of the ship that is my life. I feel certain that if I am to proceed on this journey in a way that will make the next twenty years meaningful, the Hapless Bohemian must step down. For a little while, I was having extreme thoughts like, "The Hapless Bohemian must die." That was the anxiety talking, I think. The Hapless Bohemian just needs to take a load off and realize she's not in charge any more. 

So in the wake of these kinds of thoughts, I had a night filled with dreams, all of which seemed to be about crowded spaces and a big, ramshackle run-down historical house. In the part I most vividly remember, I found myself alone in a room full of relics and artifacts--a dress Joni Mitchell had worn on a record cover, and a suit of Neil Young's. I felt a sense of awe, excitement, and nostalgia upon seeing them. My three-year-old daughter was with me. As I was leaving the room to go back into the main part of the house where I knew there were other people, a man with long, straight brown hair, a mustache, facial stubble and a black leather jacket was suddenly there forcing me back into the room. A struggle began. I was trying desperately to cry out loudly enough to be heard by the other people I knew were out there, but I couldn't form a word or make a loud enough sound and as much as I pushed, I couldn't get him off me. I kept trying and trying and finally yelled loud enough that I woke myself up. 

So who is this scary seventies dude who doesn't want me to leave the room of rock n roll relics? One possibility: he's a powerful force in my psyche--a constellation who wants to keep me in an idealized, outdated dream world, filled with other peoples' stage clothes; and I'm fighting hard against him. I love the costumes, and they fill me with awe, but I also want out. I have a daughter now. I can't get lost in here. In the dream, he's so strong. He's also humorless and seemingly heartless. He's trying to push me back into that room with all his strength. It just occurred to me that he looks a lot like Sonny Bono. It's entirely possible that this illicit masculine constellation may have formed when I was a young child, raised in a household that tacitly disapproved of Sonny and Cher. 

The people our parents shunned, whether they said it or not, are prime source material for our Shadows. And I can feel that even as I recognize this figure, it's very difficult for me to imagine reasoning with him. I feel that he wants to kill me, in a weird way, but maybe he's just defending himself against my injunction that the Hapless Bohemian must die. 

This dream reveals an inner conflict. As I stand ready to cross a threshold from my old dream of rock stardom into a new dream of being a counselor and teacher, Sonny Bono says, "Not so fast, chica. You have to deal with me first." So much of dream work demands that we honor our disowned parts. If I simply try to discard my rock n roll past, I will not be doing the hard work of integrating this essential aspect of who I have been into who I am. 

In some ways, getting my masters and entering into a real life, actual, verifiable profession, feels to me like going straight--my last chance in life to say, "Okay, okay, I want in after all." I'm catching the last train out of the station leaving for the real world. That's how it feels anyway. I want to leave Sonny behind like some homeless guy panhandling in the station. But I can't do that. I have to own that part of myself symbolized by Sonny Bono, who represented the world beyond my parents' comprehension and approval, the rock and roll performer world I fell in love with and longed for, and worked at, so much of my life. Wherever I go from here, I have to take Sonny with me. 

The Masculine

About a month ago, I had a dream about a man who was being hunted by an assassin. I loved this man very much, and I sat in his presence in a mountain hide out that contained only white futons on the floor and large windows looking out on mountain ranges. Being with him felt blissful, as if I had found some lost family member. I just wanted to sit with him and hold his hand. He was a slight man, young, and quiet. He was not typically masculine, by which I mean that he was not a strong man, physically, or swarthy or aggressive in any way. He had a profound stillness about him, a calmness you would associate with a saint. All I can say is that I loved him with all my heart. That's what it felt like. 

This dream seems to me to represent an important development in terms of my animus--my inner masculine. I want to make a book for this dream figure, and also for Uncle Gary. 

I think that Uncle Gary's heart problem will be the subject of the left side of the book, and this new hunted holy man will be the subject of the right side of the book. He seems to be a healer. As for the assassin, always lurking in the shadows, I'm not sure what to do...

Are You Okay?

In one of my yoga classes last week, we went out for a walk in the middle of doing yoga. The whole class walked around the block. I noticed I was walking by myself, not talking to anyone. I heard other people talking behind me, including my teacher. I was suddenly aware that I felt really uncomfortable and that I was trying to pretend that I was not uncomfortable. I was trying to pretend that I was super self-sufficient, having my own experience, very comfortably. And I felt how familiar that pretense was and how, underneath it, I really felt lost and was longing, really aching, for some kind of attention from my teacher. I was able to drop the pretense and just feel that unmet longing, like a kid feels when she can't get her mom's attention for a really long time and she's starting to give up. Or when the teacher never says anything nice to you in class; never praises your work, or gives you special attention. 

Remember that?

In the end, feeling the ancient/current sadness was a hundred times better than the fakery I've put over, on myself, for who knows how long. There was a book on my parent's bookshelf when I was little called I'm Okay, You're Okay.  Elizabeth Kubler Ross once quipped that a better book would be I'm Not Okay, You're Not Okay, And That's Okay. 

Half the value of psychotherapy is seeing someone once a week who will remind you that it's okay not to be okay in this crazy world. The other half is perhaps leading you to feel so okay about not feeling okay that you actually begin to feel okay without changing a thing. You become at ease with the suffering that is a natural part of being alive and human. And, because paradox is the rule of life, this ease with suffering leads to feeling joyful. 

And the next step is to feel at ease with the shifting from one to the other so that you stand your ground as joy comes and suffering goes and vice versa, and you begin to appreciate the dynamic quality of being alive without being so attached to a particular feeling state. There's some kind of freedom in that--so much less oppressive than the breathless, anxious struggle to be happy, happy, happy. It's bizarrely controlling, in a way, and narrow, this obsession we Americans have with being happy. 

Stacey Says

I shared the book with my friend Stacey, who read the part of the book that recounts the dream and said, "I'm sure you already realize this" (this is how people always preface revealing insights that I am completely blind to) "but it's interesting that you were saying to that part of yourself how much you love her, and how great she is, and she said she wanted to be alone and went away." She went on, "So, there's this part of you that can't really take that in." 

I would say this is my number one problem. 

This is what I love about dreams. You can read the same dream over and over from different angles and get different messages, all of them revealing and relevant. Other people tell you things about your dream that you didn't see and those things verify your best/worst suspicions. I suppose, in a way, the whole book was a love letter to that part of myself, and I do believe it was received. It won't be enough. I'll have to keep making things and reaching in to that wounded aspect.

I remember a time when my husband and I were on sort of a shamanic journey, if you will, and he said there was this fierce little warrior living in my second chakra ready to kill anyone who tried to get too close. She is the same one who will not be loved, or she is at least closely related to her. I see this so often in my clients, in my friends, in myself--defense mechanisms that have become independently functioning beings who will act out in ways that saved us when we were kids but which are hurting us now. Being wounded and defensive... can I begin to let that go? Wait, what the hell's wrong with me? The question is, can I begin to embrace and own being wounded and defensive so that those qualities might be integrated into my whole self, rather than split off... 

The question in the book: How would it feel to embrace that part of the self, instead of leaving it behind like some loss you have to cut to survive? How would it feel not to reflexively look away?

Ritual For A Dream Pt. 4 (The Book and the Mandorla)

I decided, at some point, to make a little book as part of the dream work I was doing. In Owning Your Own Shadow (Johnson, 1991), I read about the mandorla, which is not an alternate spelling for mandala. It's a whole other thing, Ethel. Mandorla means almond in Italian and it refers to the almond-shaped form that appears when two circles intersect (see above). This image inspired the structure of my book. 

The left side of the book contains images of the "dark" that represent my dream figure. In the middle, there is a mandorla, in which the images of the dark and light sides of the book intersect and overlap. The right side of the book contains images of the "light" and methods of healing. This is where the recipe for the salve is, as well as the image of the healing goddess. 

The book itself is an altar, like that of the curanderos of South America "who are a curious mixture of primitive shaman and Catholic priest" (Johnson, p. 111). They divide their altars so that "the right [side] is made up of inspiring elements such as a statue of a saint, a flower, a magic talisman; the left contains very dark and forbidding elements... The space between these two opposing elements is a place of healing. The message is unmistakable; our own healing proceeds from that overlap of light and dark" (p. 111).

I dedicated the book to my grandmother and "to all people who have been powerless to protect themselves against physical violence and abuse of any kind," and I can say without hesitation that I have experienced a healing in this process. 

I would be happy to share this book with anyone who is interested in experiencing it. I don't want to post too many images from it, because I don't want to reduce the impact of experiencing it as a whole. The image at the top of the post is the front and back covers of the book; in other words, it's the book lying open,  cover side up. The circle on the left symbolizes the dark images, the shadow, the unconscious, the beaten woman; the circle on the left symbolizes divine, healing light. It has been powerful to physicalize the merging of the two. I can't recommend it highly enough. 

Ritual For A Dream Pt. 3 (The Salve)

How To Make A Healing Salve

I found a recipe in the June issue of Delicious Living, cut it out, and then lost it. I decided to think of this loss as an opportunity to be more intuitive with the process. I tried to remember as much as I could and then improvised.

I gathered equal amounts of comfrey, calendula, and St. John's Wort, put them in a pot, and covered them with olive oil. I heated this mixture on the lowest heat possible for three hours. Then I strained out the herbs, put the oil back in the pot, and added cocoa butter--about three times more than the amount of olive oil--and stirred until it melted. I added some essential oils, just a couple drops, and poured the liquid into glass jars leaving them to cool over night. When I woke up in the morning, they had hardened into a salve. Ah, sweet alchemy. 

The cocoa butter makes it smell a little like chocolate, which seems appropriately healing. This process also makes me think of other simple things you could make in honor of a dream figure. You could make a meal or knit a scarf--so many possibilities. 

Ritual For A Dream Pt. 2 (The Altar)

I create altars often as places to focus my energy and intentions. Altars can be simple or complex, temporary or as permanent as anything can be on this mortal coil. 

I created an altar as a way of working with the energy of my dream figure (the abused woman). It became a middle ground for the making of the healing salve, and the book I made. The altar changed continually, as it was essentially a place for containing the pieces of the processes before they were integrated into a new form. Herbs that would ultimately be cooked into the salve or images that would be glued into the book found a temporary home there. I lit the candle and burned incense before beginning work on any of these related projects. 

The photo in the upper left corner of this post contains an image of a woman who has been badly beaten and is lying in a hospital bed. I placed her in the bowl of comfrey, calendula, and St. John's Wort. Later in the process, I placed an image of a healing goddess on the altar, as I was very ready to incorporate her energy into the process. Working with the images of abused women for the book was very difficult, and having a place to contain them, as well as an antidotal image of the feminine (a healing goddess) was essential to my sense of well being. Darkness with no light is intolerable. With a little light, things begin to shift. You can see enough to do the necessary work. 

Part of what made the process so powerful for me was that it allowed me to concretize and externalize my feelings of woundedness and my desire to be healed so that they became things I could see and hold and move. In this way, all the actions I took were affirmations of both the grief and sorrow of being badly hurt, and the powerful possibility of healing.

Altars are containers for transformation. Even without making the salve or the book, I could have very successfully worked with the narrative of the abused victim coming into contact with, changing, and being changed by, the divine healing presence, just by placing images and symbols on the altar. It is hard for some people to believe that this could actually change us in a profound way, but this is the essence of effective ritual. 

Ritual For A Dream Pt. 1

In Inner Work, Robert Johnson recommends "acting consciously to honor dreams" (1986, p. 97). He writes, "this... requires a physical act that will affirm the message of the dream. It could be a practical act... or it may be a symbolic act--a ritual that brings home the meaning of the dream in a powerful way" (p. 97). I've spent the last ten days or so absorbed in the process of creating and executing a ritual in honor of a dream figure that I wrote about in the post titled "Recovering Fragments of the Feminine". In that dream, a female friend of mine appeared covered in cuts and bruises, bitterly sad and angry about having been kicked out of her house by her abusive male partner.

I felt it was important to do something for her, to take an active role in her healing process. I came across a recipe for a salve in a magazine, and decided that I would make a salve for healing cuts and scrapes. I liked that it required gathering ingredients, and that I would be working with herbs--calendula, comfrey, and St. John's Wort. I also liked that the process required the herbs to be cooked in olive oil over low heat for three hours. I believe that the longer you spend on something, the deeper you go into the experience, and the more deeply you are affected. In other words, it felt healing to do something that would require me to be present to a process for three or four hours. I am tired of moving so fast all the time. When we asked our professor Gary Penn what he got out of his six years in psychoanalysis, he said, "just to slow down." Whenever I manage to slow down, I know this is no small win. 

This post is the first in a series of posts in which I'll go into some detail about the work I did with this particular dream and dream figure. In addition to making the salve, I set up an altar and made a little book based on the structure of a mandorla, which is the almond-shaped form that appears in the middle of two intersecting circles. I'll write more about all these things--the salve, the altar, the mandorla, and the book--in upcoming posts. 

For now, I just want to inspire readers to try this for themselves--take action on behalf of a dream and write a post about it. It doesn't have to be complicated, and I genuinely believe it is transformative and awakening. If it's not, you never have to do it again. I hear my inner midwesterner saying, isn't this all just a bit self indulgent? In truth, I think a case could be made that not honoring your dreams is self-indulgent. We do a lot of self-indulgent things--watching hours of TV, for one; talking at great length about trivial matters, for another--but taking time with our unconscious is not one of them. But I'm not here to debate, or to judge, my inner midwesterner and how she spends her time or what she thinks is right or wrong. I'm here to do inner work, and maybe you are, too. If so, I'd love to hear from you. 

(A quick thank you here, to Matt Silverstein, who provided the space and time for some of us to present our dream work, in conjunction with the Jungian Dream Workshop he offers at Antioch. It was vitalizing to connect with other dream workers--to give from my own unconscious and receive from the unconscious of others. Thank you, Monica, Adriana, and Laurette.)

The Other Mother

This is a picture of me at a Halloween party with my daughter and her friend. This was shortly before I began to get the feeling that not everyone appreciated my elaborate face paint. First, it was the funny looks from the other moms, all of whom, without exception, were dressed as witches. Not scary witches. Generic witches with pointy black hats and black or purple dresses. Their looks askance didn't bother me too much. I thought, Maybe they're jealous because their costumes aren't as interesting. It was when three and a half year old Romeo saw me from across the room and collapsed in tears on the floor that I thought, Hm. Maybe I've overdone it a bit. When little Charley Mae, not yet two years old, began to visibly shake from the safety of her mother's lap, and yell, summoning her limited vocabulary, "GO 'WAY! GO 'WAY!" I had to face facts. I had seriously misjudged the situation. I had gone too far. These mothers were looking at me, not with envy, but with justified concern. I was scaring the children. 

Those of you who know me will attest to the fact that I strive, perhaps a little too hard, to be a very good mother. I rarely pay homage to the shadow side of this good mother experience. Robert Johnson writes, "The persona is what we would like to be and how we wish to be seen by the world... The shadow is that part of us we fail to see or know" (p. 4). He goes on, "But the refused and unacceptable characteristics do not go away; they only collect in the dark corners of our personality. When they have been hidden long enough, they take on a life of their own--the shadow life.... If it accumulates more energy than our ego, it erupts as an overpowering rage or some indiscretion that slips past us..." (p. 4-5).

Yes, and you find yourself, the loving, breast feeding, co-sleeping, super attached mom, dressed as a terrifying ghoul at a kid's party, scaring other people's children. What was I thinking? you wonder as you retreat to the bathroom to frantically remove your make-up with baby wipes, wondering if you should make a short speech attempting to explain yourself. "I'm an artist, you see, and I just haven't really had a chance to paint in a while, or to express myself creatively, in any way. I used to sing in clubs, I mean, I really had quite a life, and I was playing with the face paint before we left the house, you know, and I guess I got a little out of control... Did I mention I'm studying to be a psychotherapist?"

Better, perhaps, not to say anything. 

The shadow side of motherhood is dreadfully tabu. I remember flying into a rage when my daughter wouldn't go to sleep one night. I felt so awful, I wanted to die. I called my friend Caren who reassured me. "You're such a good mom. It's just really hard." It is really hard when you haven't slept for more than three hours in a row for months, and you haven't been able to be physically separate from your nursing baby, and you just want an hour alone before you start nursing again. You just want the use of both arms for a brief time. Maybe longer. And your baby is screaming her head off, in a way that is biologically designed to completely freak your system out, and the only thing that makes it stop is sacrificing everything you want for yourself in that moment and picking her up. 

After I talked to Caren, I googled "motherhood and rage" and found almost nothing. Thank God for Anne Lamott, who had a piece about screaming at her teenaged son. The dearth of acknowledgment of the dark side of mothering, what I like to call The Other Mother, was staggering and depressing and a clear communication: This is not acceptable. We don't talk about this. We don't write about it. 

Well, I do. I'm writing about it now. And hopefully it will provide solace for those who find themselves on the shadow side of their conscious desire to be what the culture expects of mothers--impossibly patient, endlessly loving, and above all, self-sacrificing. I would love to hear from other mothers anywhere and everywhere about how we can honor the shadow side of this experience in ways that protect our children and preserve our sanity. What rituals might we perform in honor of The Other Mother?

My Difficulty In This Realm

Feeling very much at a loss for words right now. Got The Moon when I drew a Tarot card last night. In Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom Rachel Pollack talks about how there are no humans on this card, only animals. I feel as nonverbal as the dog and the wolf. If I were less self-conscious, or perhaps more rural, I would howl at the moon tonight. That would feel appropriate. The Moon has been omnipresent for me for several months now, and is certainly the ruling planet of this website, as it symbolizes the unconscious. Pollack writes of the image on the card, 

"The road leads through two towers, suggesting a gateway into unknown areas. The gateway is a very common symbol among mystics and shamans, seen also in many myths. Sometimes a circular pattern, like a mandala, or some physical formation, like a cave (very often compared to the vagina), the gateway allows us to leave the ordinary world to enter the strangeness of the mind" (2007, p. 128).

I feel myself on the other side of the gateway these days, looking at life as an outsider, but from the inside of myself. It can feel a bit disorienting and I am nearly ready for a return to the simpler pleasures of The Sun, but drawing this card makes me think my stay in this eerie realm has been extended. According to Pollack, "The Moon... will not be denied, and the fears can get stronger the more we fight it. The psyche, operating under its own laws for its own reasons, has turned to the Moon. If we allow ourselves to experience it the fears will turn to wonders and the gateways open to adventure" (p. 129). 

I have spent the last couple days engaged in performing a ritual in honor of the dream I described in the post "Recovering Fragments of the Feminine" so it makes sense that the moon, symbol of feminine consciousness, would be my guide. I'll go into more detail about the ritual in my next post, including photos of the process. While doing the ritual, I've struggled with many feelings that seem impossible to name or describe. I long for some kind of integration. Actually, I long for a reasonable explanation, for my sense-making mechanism to spring into action. I want to make sense of it all. Yes, it is hard for me to stop making sense. 

I once took a little mind trip, never mind the means by which I did so, and encountered three colorful goddesses. I wrote a poem about the experience that exemplifies my difficulty in this realm. 

"I want answers!" I yelled. 

"That's no way to start a conversation," they said, 

Neon yellow, orange, red. 

I'm a serious fool, no fun in the head. 

Ask and you shall receive;

Demand and they shall recede. 

Don't think you know what you need. 

Don't think you know. 

Don't think!

Impossible. 

And it's over in a blink. 

Fashion Shadow

Are there items of clothing you would NEVER wear, never, not in a million years? For me, one such item is the pastel-parachute-track-suit-with-fanny-pack look favored by so many of our elderly citizens here in the United States. I'd take a polyester leisure suit over that any day of the week. The strength of my feelings in this matter tell me in no uncertain terms that herein lies my Fashion Shadow.

I have heard tell that Carl Jung used to have shadow parties in which he invited the guests to behave not as their usual persona selves, but instead as their shadow selves. I have never been able to verify this, but I think it's a fantastic (in the original meaning of that word) idea. I also think it could result in broken furniture, heartache, and possibly a lawsuit or two. As I'm unwilling to face that kind of external fallout, I've let go of the idea of a shadow party for my own friends, but a Fashion Shadow Party could really rock. 

As you're going about your business, and your pleasure, this week, look around and see if you can locate your Fashion Shadow. Most people have more than one fashion shadow, and if you are a true Fashionista, almost everyone is your fashion shadow, and you may have to move to Manhattan, if you don't live there already. If you want to work on it, though, you should go get a Hawaiian shirt, some non-designer label beige pants, ill-fitting, maybe from K Mart, and one of those pith helmets that old men wear when they go on vacation, as if they think they're in the jungle, even though they're just on the Venice boardwalk. And work with it. And write in and tell me what came up for you as you owned that look.

I know this is a departure into the shallow, but I need it. I think this may be one of the most important aspects of shadow work--knowing when you need to come up for some air. After this, it's back to Domestic Violence and surgery, so enjoy it while you can!

Exercising the Shadow

So I want to write a post that's sort of more fun, and that will engage any followers out there in the process of examining their own shadow material. I have a couple things I do that help me see some of the details of my own shadow. One thing is to think of someone who drives you nuts, someone you really can't stand, and to imagine that person as the manifestation of your own shadow. This is fun, but difficult, because we always think, oh my god, I'm nothing like that asshole. I would never say that, do that, wear that, whatever it is. And that's the point, really. This person you cannot tolerate symbolizes the aspects of yourself you can't tolerate and will not allow.  

Doug had us do this exercise in a class. We were to bring in three images--one of our shadow, one of our romantic/sexual ideal, and one of wholeness.

I brought in the image of Britney Spears you see at the top of this post and had a remarkable breakthrough. As I researched her on the internet, I began to see how vulnerable she is to attack, and how badly she's treated. It's easy to begin to see her as the victim of her family, whom she has been supporting since she was a child. She's a kid who has way too much money, fame, and power, and almost no one she can actually trust. Her false self must be so big and so overpowering that the question of who she actually is may forever be a non-issue. I can't think of many things sadder than that. And she is now a victim of a culture that loves to hate her--beat her down, build her up, beat her down again. I ultimately got to the point where I felt loving and protective over her. I even defend her now when people talk badly about her. 

It's even more interesting to take on your least favorite family member. As James Yandell writes in the introduction to Erich Neumann's Depth Psychology and a New Ethic, "Perhaps even more difficult than acknowledging our wickedness, which at least has a certain glamour, is recognizing our ordinariness; the banality of our foundation as mortal animals can be painfully deflating." The way your mother talks with food in her mouth; your sister's intellectual rigidity; your father's porn habit. It's challenging work, "But there is gold in the muck," Yandell promises, "and as shadow integration proceeds, one reclaims substance, energy, and creative imagination that have been consigned to the sewer or the devil. One has the strength that comes from being in accord with reality rather than in desperate defense of a false self-idealization, and one recognizes the high cost and true poverty of the previous identification with the good" (Neumann, 1990, p. 5). Wow! Take that in!

In working with Britney Spears as my shadow self, I reclaimed the energy of my own adolescent sexual confusion, all the bad choices I made regarding, at that time, boys, and later, men. I found a connection with and compassion for my own devalued feminine sexuality, my own exploitation, my own false performance. It has been a huge relief to emerge in a way that not only do I not hate her, judge her, feel disgusted by her--I actually respect and relate to her. 

I'll take on Paris Hilton when I'm stronger. 

If anyone would be willing to post comments, even just letting me know who/what you're working with in this arena, I would love it. 

On my own in a really deep way

Things are getting intense in my life right now. I just found out that I have to have surgery soon because I have cervical dysplasia. If you don't know what that is, you have to look it up because I just can't describe it any more. Thank Goddess for google. It's related to my cervix, obviously, which is about as female as you can get. It's the entryway to, and the exit from, the womb. The first bad case of dysplasia I had was healed when I gave birth naturally to my daughter. Earlier this year, I had a procedure called a LEEP, and now the dysplasia is back and my gynecologist is recommending a cervical biopsy. This requires going under anesthesia, a process that freaks me out. When I was young, I had an out of body experience with anesthesia. 

All this comes on top of a full course load in my final quarter of my masters program, an intense client load at the clinic, being a mother, and I could go on. 

As if this isn't stressful enough, I don't have health insurance, so my husband and I are paying for everything out of pocket. 

And if that isn't stressful enough, the reason I was "abandoned" at eleven months was because my mother had a hysterectomy and was on bed rest. I was sent to live with another family for two weeks or a month, no one seems to know for sure. My mother doesn't even remember the name of the family. Sweet, sweet denial! I didn't think this was such a big deal until I had an eleven month old of my own and then I was like, oh shit. That's fucked up. 

It's really fucked up.

At the same time, it is illuminating. My overwhelming fear of abandonment, my inability to trust anyone, and a number of other things about myself, finally make sense. 

Last night I woke up at 4 am and couldn't get back to sleep. I felt totally alone. Today I called an old friend whose heart has been tried and tested in some of the same ways mine has. In ten minutes, she helped me to get grounded, and then she sent me this gem of an email:

"You probably already figured this out but--

 

I think one of the things that is making you so unhinged right now

is the connection between your childhood abandonment because of your mother's surgery

and your own impending surgery--the sense that these things mean you will be on your own in a really deep way.

And so of course you don't feel like you can count on [your husband] right now--you're becoming your child self--about to be abandonded by your adult self and

he's the dad--and as we all know the 'dad' cannot be counted on.

 

These are feelings that need to get felt and understood with your whole brain.

 

Things are going to be okay."

It feels really vulnerable to share all this but it felt inauthentic not to, especially when this is the very essence of inner work--facing what you'd rather not be facing. And this also shows the power and necessity of doing inner work together. We need each other's eyes and ears. Just saying what we see in each other can be a lifeline. 

The Pain Comes Back

The funny thing about all this exploration of the guru phenomena is that, if I were in my twenties experiencing this, I would probably be a Sikh by this point. Instead, I am surrendering to a more complex, less dramatic way of being in this situation. I am remembering other times I thought I had found a way to escape pain--taking drugs, becoming manic, making art, falling in love, joining a religion, moving to a new city. I've tried all these things in the hope that they would be a one-way road out of suffering and I've found that none of them are. You always end up back at your own house, eventually, with a pile of dishes in the sink, unpaid bills, and concerned messages from your friends and family on the answering machine. I believe we have to tend to our own wounds most of the time. I'm not saying that having a teacher means you're not doing that; I'm just noticing that underneath it all, that's part of my motivation for wanting a teacher. 

Not only that, I've come to believe that suffering is not such a bad thing after all. Like the shadow, suffering makes us deeper, stronger, and more compassionate. So I've become interested in the fact that, in the presence of this teacher, my pain seems to go away--physical, emotional, mental pain--and that it feels so good. And I'm also interested in the fact that the pain comes back when I think I can't have that relationship in the way that I want to. The pain comes back when I feel "myself" again, or when I feel out of relationship with that experience. 

I think this dilemma is widespread right now. We are collectively trying to release ourselves from the patterns that hold us back, and going through that process can be a bit manic-depressive. The New Age thing, a la The Secret, goes too far into the light and therefore has a monstrous shadow side. This is true of most religious orders, too, and spiritual organizations. I believe this is true of the spiritual order my teacher belongs to. There is the perpetuation of the myth that we can live in a heavenly God realm free of pain and difficulty, if only we just learn to think right, or feel right, or find the right Guru. But as I live and breathe, I tell you, that's not true. Enlightenment, if it comes at all, comes with the understanding that we are both human animals suffering all the indignities and privileges that being in a body affords, and somehow also divine, numinous beings capable of things far greater than our physical incarnations would seem to allow. 

"loyal to paradox"

I wanted to share a Marianne Williamson quote that has been popping up in my life on a regular basis for the last ten years. My friend Ivy just sent it to me for my birthday, and it exactly addresses the Guru Dilemma in my previous post. 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others." 

Much to my surprise, as I examine the dark corners of my mind, I find that I don't want to be my own guru. She's right: I fear my light much more than my darkness. I don't want to save myself. I don't want to be "brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous." I want to be a disciple at the feet of a master. I want to disappear into the blinding white light of holiness. I want to be a baby in the arms of my mother. I want to be taken care of. I don't want to work hard. I don't want to be responsible for my Light. And these feelings are, even as I admit them here in this blog, very shadowy for me. These feelings are definitely in the "not-me" box in the attic of my psyche. 

I strive to project an image of total self-sufficiency, power, strength. I do not admire dependency, and yet I find myself knee deep in this swamp of wanting desperately to be rescued, to be saved by an other. It's that eleven month old inside me waiting for mommy and daddy to come get me. And until they do, she refuses to move forward or grow up.

I have been feeling this ache all week, or for several weeks. Or for most of my life. But I've been really feeling it lately, and I see how I run the guru fantasy as a way of escaping that pain. I want the pure bliss I feel in the presence of Amrit. But I've learned enough about life by now to know that pain is as great a teacher as bliss. One gives way to the other. Either one without the other is dangerous. So that's been my meditation. When the painful ache comes up, I try to just be in it. I try to just let myself feel really sad, abandoned, and lost I let myself yearn. I don't act on it. Eventually, the pain and yearning give way to joy, and I don't resist that either. The pain comes back and I try to keep steady with it, resist the urge to join a cult. 

According to Robert Johnson, it is the entertainment of this kind of paradox--pleasure/pain, bliss/sorrow, light/dark--that lies at the heart of true spirituality. In Owning Your Own Shadow he writes, 

"What has paradox to do with the shadow? It has everything to do with the shadow, for there can be no paradox--that sublime place of reconciliation--until one has owned one's own shadow and drawn it up to a place of dignity and worth. To own one's own shadow is to prepare the ground for spiritual experience."

The paradoxes I am working right now are:

• the bliss of dissolving into my teacher/the terror of being trapped alone inside myself
  
• the light belongs to my teacher/the light belongs to me
  
• bliss/torment
  
• vulnerability/strength
  

Johnson inspires me to remember that none of these pairings represent good/bad. He insists, "We must retrain ourselves to think that each represents a divine truth. It is only our inability to see the hidden unity that is problematic. To stay loyal to paradox is to earn the right to unity."

Are you my teacher?

I've been on the spiritual path for a number of years now, and I've encountered numerous teachers, and I've learned a lot from all of them, but I've never felt that feeling that people often describe upon meeting their Teacher, their guru with a capital G. Ram Dass just sobbed at the feet of his guru, having only just met him. I want that. I admit it. 

Margaret Mahler, the famous psychoanalyst, would say that I, like most human beings, am still struggling with the process of separation-individuation that I began in late infancy, and that because I have not completed that process, I need an idealized external object in order to feel okay, or fully alive. Whatever the case, about two weeks ago, I took a yoga class from a Sikh yoga teacher here in LA and by the end of the class, I felt like the boundaries of my heart were dissolving. Chanting near him, I was able to trust his voice so completely that I felt as if I was actually listening, hearing another voice, for the first time. I was able to allow my body to completely absorb the sound of his voice, and when I sang or chanted, I felt like my voice was flowing out of my throat like water. Without conscious effort, I sang harmony. There was a dissolving of the boundaries between my body and the room that reminded me of the ecstasy I felt after giving birth to, and nursing, my daughter.  

Two weeks passed and I didn't see him again, and I wondered what it would be like when I did. So I took my second class with him on Tuesday night, and it was the same. I told him what was happening to me, and he talked about how anything I'm seeing in him is my own divine nature reflected back at me. Teachers are mirrors, awakeners of what has been sleeping inside us. "So, are you my teacher?" I asked. He shrugged, "I don't know." 

I came home to my Robert Johnson book, Owning Your Own Shadow and was immediately immersed in his examination of the process of falling in love. "To fall in love is to project the most noble and infinitely valuable part of one's being onto another human being." He goes on to say that in the west, we do this in romantic relationships, while in the Eastern world, it is "confined to the relationship between a guru and his student." When I think of this teacher, I vacillate between feeling an ancient and intense longing and the complete fulfillment of that intense longing. When I am with him, I am in some kind of internal free fall that would normally be terrifying but because he is there it is bliss. If this belongs to me, this bliss, why am I projecting it onto him? 

I don't want to deny the power I feel in this teacher's presence, but I also don't want to abnegate self responsibility. Or rather, I do want to abnegate self responsibility, as badly as I've ever wanted anything, but I know that's dangerous behavior. And so I keep sobering myself up with the idea that I am just projecting what Johnson calls the "golden" part of my shadow--the light I refuse to own as mine--onto him. I counteract this by creating my own disillusionment, pinching myself awake from the dream of being saved by another. 

As I sit with this dilemma, I sit in pain. Instead of dissolved boundaries, my heart feels raw and arthritic. I wonder if I will ever heal from the hurts of my childhood--the abandonment at eleven months, the mental and verbal abuse. I wonder if stepping into the pain will kill me. I can't do this alone. I long for my savior, my knight, my guru. I want to run into his arms and be healed. Mahler would say I long for my mother, for those blissful early days of complete merger with her, for however long they lasted. I continually find myself in the middle of the primal wound, the moment when everything shifted from good to bad. The way it must have felt to be left at eleven months old. This meeting with this teacher has put me there. In the mirror he provides, I see myself hopelessly lost, and blissfully found, and lost again. 

Johnson writes, "At critical moments in life it is always possible to sort out what belongs to one and what does not. There is a moment of sanity when decision is possible." I feel myself there. 

Remedial Studies in Inner Work

My friend Matt recently mentioned that he was going to name his blog Remedial Studies in Inner Work. This was the first time I recognized the gumption I must have to be calling my blog ADVANCED Studies in Inner Work. I just want to enter a short post here in the way of attempting to defend, justify, explain, and/or excuse myself, lest any readers should go one day longer thinking, "What an ass!"

First of all, I'll knock our culture by saying that it doesn't take much to be advanced in this arena as an American. We are so extraverted that anyone who takes a moment to herself is regarded warily, at best, as a self-obsessed navel gazer! Americans are very skeptical of the inner life. We mostly don't believe it exists; or maybe we believe it exists, but that it is bad news and should be assiduously avoided. 

Secondly, I will say that, regardless of this, I, an American girl, got my first diary at age nine and never looked back. I remember the recurring dreams of my early childhood, and I always believed my dreams were important, even after my mother finally convinced me that dreams were not the same as real life. I have been a student of the Tarot for over twenty years and a student of the I Ching for almost as long. I have written so many journals that I feel guilty about leaving my children with the burden of dealing with them. It would take years to read them all. I have studied yoga, meditation, Buddhism, and Hinduism. I've been in therapy. I'm in therapy now. I'm getting my masters in clinical psychology. I write down my dreams, study them, and create artwork and perform rituals as a way of honoring them. I mean, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! If I've done anything in this life, and if there's anything I could claim to be working on at a deep level, it's inner work. 

So, when Doug suggested the title for this course, it felt like a course I really wanted to take. And that's how this blog came to be called Advanced Studies in Inner Work. 

Recovering Fragments of the Feminine

I wish I had more time to write, but I have enough time to write about how my psyche seems to be in the process of recovering lost parts of myself--especially the part that's unabashedly female, the part that has feelings and isn't afraid to have them, in a particularly female way. Of course, I'm in dreadfully tricky, sticky territory, attempting to talk about the Feminine, and femaleness, without an in-depth analysis of what exactly I mean. But that's why this is a blog and not a master's thesis. 

In a recent dream, my mother had moved in with me, Michael, and Elva, and this wasn't a bad thing. It seemed good. The house felt safe. It was night and the television was on, casting blue light into the otherwise unlit room. Elva and Michael were in bed. My mom was sitting in a chair. A feeling of safety pervaded. I left the house to go out and look for someone, or meet someone. In the dark, I encountered my friend Jen. Jen has always symbolized a certain type of primordial femininity, facets of extreme earthiness and oceanic depths of feeling. Always lithe, in the dream she was overweight and covered in scrapes and bruises. She had left an abusive relationship. He had kicked her out of the house they shared and told her to go back to Venice, where she had an apartment in my building. I embraced her and told her how amazing I think she is, and how she deserves only the best. I expressed a great deal of love for her. She said she wanted to be alone and went to her apartment. I thought she might be angry at me. I wasn't sure, but I was glad she was back. 

The patriarchy is a constant presence in my dreams, beating down my inner feminine. I feel like Jen represents, among other things, a part of myself that has been held hostage by a violent, abusive, internalized masculine archetype. He has kicked her out, so he still has some power in the picture and she may be angry at me because I didn't rescue her all these years, or fight for her. I didn't make it my business to know where she was or what kind of hell she had fallen into. But I do feel she came as a result of this active dialogue I've cultivated between my conscious and unconscious realities. Uncle Gary came in a dream and enabled me to take better care of myself in reality, and the act of taking better care of myself in reality has resulted in the return of Jen--symbolizing some aspect of the forsaken feminine--in a dream. 

She's beat up, angry, deeply miserable, and mine, all mine. I welcome her with open arms. Her energy was very present in my last therapy session. My therapist was encouraging me to feel the sadness, regret, and loss of my childhood. I kept talking about moving forward and he kept pointing me there, to the messy, shameful, embarrassing wounds. What does it mean to embrace that aspect of the self instead of leaving it behind like some loss you have to cut to survive? How would it feel not to reflexively look away?

Uncle Gary and the Inner Objects

More than just another great name for a band, this is what I call the latest piece of inner work I’ve decided to share with any interested readers.

Several nights ago, I had a dream that I had an uncle named Gary who had heart problems. I was driving him around in my car—in the dream, an olive green station wagon with side paneling--very 1974. There were several important things about Uncle Gary. One is that he was clearly a “composite”--my current therapist, Friedemann Schulz, crossed with a professor from last quarter, Gary Penn. Another is that I really cared about him. I didn’t mind driving him around, trying to find “Santa Monica Hospital” so that he could get his heart fixed. I felt quite tenderly toward him and was more than willing to go out of my way for him. He sat patiently in the back of the car with his cane. This is significant because I don’t have those kinds of warm, positive feelings toward my father, who has had a lot of trouble with his heart—the body is so symbolic sometimes, n’est-ce pas? Perhaps the most significant thing about Uncle Gary is that he is a perfect symbol of growth in my psyche.

 

Uncle Gary, I believe, represents a shift, or at least a new possibility, in the world of my inner objects. Don’t know what inner objects are? Read on for a most likely very simplistic analysis of this complex branch of psychoanalytic thought!

 

In laywoman’s terms, object relations is a way of understanding the human psyche, and how we all internalize our caregivers. We all have inner objects, whether we know about them or not, and they powerfully influence how we feel about ourselves and others, and how we act in the world. If you’re interested in having a peek at my inner objects, check out the entry titled Always Running and Hiding. In it, the Feminine (the mother-daughter complex) is all good and all loving, and the Masculine is violent, irrational, and oppressive. This is how I’ve internalized the concepts of mother and father in my psyche. According to some theorists, these objects were concretized in early childhood and are based on my collective experiences of my mother and father.

 

Sally Kempton wrote, “It’s hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your mind.” This pretty much sums up my relationship to my father, the patriarchy, and the masculine inner object raging around in my psyche trying to kill people. I once did a painting of this horrible figure after a series of nightmares about a very large man waiting at the bottom of the stairs to beat me to death if I left my bedroom and tried to leave the house. In the painting, he wore a baseball hat and a pin that said, “I Hate Women.”

 

Suffice to say, I don’t have a lot of dreams about sweet older men about whom I feel tenderly. This is a new archetype for me, a kindly elder masculine figure. It’s on the heels of Uncle Gary’s arrival that I have made some real progress in creating healthy boundaries for myself with my real father, which is an example of how inner work leads to outer work, and how the unconscious can heal us from the inside, through dreams like this one.

 

 

The Bottomless Pit

I spent today in a Jungian Dream Interpretation workshop led by Matthew Silverstein. The image above is a photo of a page from my journal with some free associations to images from a nightmare. I have worked on this dream prior to the workshop, but this page was done today. 

Not so long ago, I asked my unconscious for a dream about my animus, the unconscious masculine archetype that Jung thought lived in every woman's psyche. I know that my feminine aspect has been very wounded, and that my animus must also be damaged. I wanted to see what the deal was. 

I got the dream I asked for. In it, a pack of ferocious rats had attacked my cat (I don’t actually have a cat, although I do consider myself a cat person). The cat was lying paralyzed on the floor and so was I. Meanwhile, a shadowy figure that seemed both part of me and behind me, functioning independently, had shot almost all the rats with a gun. They were bloody and dead, ringing the body of my cat. 

I noticed one was still alive and I began to make a gesture to summon the shadowy killer back to finish the job. The rat that was still alive was grey, as opposed to the others who were white. He began talking to me, trying to convince me to save his life. I got caught up in what he was saying but the whole time my gut was telling me not to trust him. Finally, he started moving toward me. He was already very close to my face. I screamed so loud that my husband (in the waking world) woke me up. 

I believe my animus is the shadowy killer of the rats. He is ruthless and violent in his reaction to the attacking rats, and yet it seems significant that the job was not done thoroughly. This ultimately represents a chink in the armor of what Jungian analyst Linda Schierse Leonard calls "the armored Amazon," an archetype I tapped into early in life as a way of surviving childhood with an abusive father and a weak mother.  This chink in the armor represents an opening which is necessary for my growth. 

At first, I wanted to reject the rats--they attacked my cat, for Chrissakes! And they scared the crap out of me. And yet, because I'm curious about the shadow, and I do want to own and take responsibility for the dark parts of my psyche, I must own the rats. I haven't figured out how yet, but I'm working on a ritual to honor the dream. The rats are shadow elements, parts of my psyche that were split off and rejected who knows how long ago. They are literally starving for attention--for life blood--and this is what they had to do to get it. 

The grey of the rat in the dream represents, for me, a move from black and white thinking into a more sophisticated state of mind that recognizes the complexity of people and life itself--no one is all good or all bad. When it comes to humanity, it's almost nothing but grey area. In my life, I have vilified my father and idealized my mother, and the pattern to see all good in one place and all bad in another doesn't stop there, of course. Bush is all bad; Obama is all good, for example. When things are good with my husband, he's perfect; when they're bad, he's the enemy. This dream is letting me know that it's time for growth. This old way of seeing the world is resulting in violence and conflict, spilled blood, helplessness, and terror. 

In some ways, the environment of the dream is well described by the following image from Joan Lachkar's book The Narcissistic/Borderline Couple (2003): “the depths of the bottomless pit, annihilation anxiety... the black hole, inhabited by the internal persecutors” (p. 102). It is “containment,” in Lachkar's opinion, that allows one to reach these depths. As Matt Silverstein pointed out in the workshop today, seeing symbols and making meaning is containing. And I have been strongly contained for the past eighteen months by my beloved cohort and teachers at Antioch. This is how I have come to a place where I find myself in the bottomless pit of my psyche. And bizarrely enough, for this, I am eternally grateful. 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

           

           

Mandala for the Dream of the Feminine and the Hit Man

Always Running and Hiding

The Dream of the Feminine and the Hit Man

In a Sopranos-like environment, I am part of a mother-daughter duo and a hit has been put out on us. We are standing together in a white rectangular space made of fabric with zippers for closures--like a make-shift cloth closet. We are, I think, in a warehouse. We know someone is stalking us and we are asking, "Should we hide?" We decide yes, and wrap ourselves in white cloth and prepare to lie on the floor of the closet. I wonder if we will be found. I can picture the gunman in my mind--large, dark, fat, cruel, merciless, pointing a gun at us. 

The scene changes and we are driving in a convertible (white?) down a causeway. We have escaped. We are just out of the danger zone and I feel a surge of relief. I am looking out at the water and the open road, feeling like we might be free. 

This is an entry in my dream journal from February of 2008. It seems worthwhile to share it here because it is a dream about escaping my shadow. It reminds me of an escape dream I had when I was in analysis with a Jungian therapist. In the dream, I fled a dark, decrepit house in upstate New York, full of menacing, semi-retarded people, and drove off to California and felt great. My therapist called me on it, suggesting that these disowned parts of myself might be worth relating to, but I wasn't ready to hear that it might be a good idea to stay in a dark house full of semi-retarded people, much less that it wouldn't be considerably more intelligent to speed off to the Golden West in a convertible. 

Oh, how I've changed! Now I prowl around in my unconscious looking for trouble, which is not to say that I don't also spend a great deal of time in denial. It's just that I am beginning to see that you can run and you can hide, but you can't ever really escape your shadow. 

But how do you work with Mr. Dark, Fat, Merciless, Pointing A Gun? Running and hiding seem the obvious responses. In working with that question of how to relate to the shadow--everything we fear and reject--I have come to different conclusions at different times. In Inner Work, Robert Johnson suggests creating and performing a ritual in honor of a dream as a way of integrating its wisdom. In the case of this dream, I created a mandala that attempted to relate the masculine gun and the feminine mother-daughter element to one another. I will post that drawing in a separate post immediately following this one.  

I eat people

This is another drawing from my dream journal which came, not from a dream, but just spontaneously entered my mind and made me laugh. I knew it was some kind of gift from my unconscious. Originally, the shirt just said, "I eat people." Later I softened it with the "I want to eat people." I was unable to fully own eating people. Oh dear me, no, I would never eat people. I mean, of course, I want to eat people, and I'm willing to admit that, but I would never actually do it. 

This is a great shadow image for me. I'm a vegetarian. I don't even eat animals. So here's this ravenous, dead-eyed version of myself eating other human beings. Horrible. I love it. It's this monstrous part of myself. I am looking to better understand what to do with these primitive aspects of me. I can laugh at this image, but most of the time I still desperately want to be simple and good. I want to be light and funny and in a way, I am softening this image by making it funny. 

Maybe I need to go out and eat someone. 

Just kidding. 

This image came to me after I had been writing for several pages about a dream I had that illustrated the ways in which I tend to disown darkness, which I associate with my father. I wrote, "This dream indicates, in Kleinian terms, a paranoid-schizoid position, which reflects back to me how I have internalized my early childhood objects. Put simply, mother: good; father: bad. This seems so sad. I have moments of slipping into the depressive position, and I can almost always get there intellectually, but emotionally, most of the time, I'm stuck: parts of self related to mother are good; parts of self related to father are bad. In a classic case of projective identification, I find these hateful qualities abounding in my external environment, while I am the innocent victim... This dynamic is operating quite intensely in all aspects of my life, and I see that, and I feel utterly confused as to how to begin the process of owning what I've been disowning for so long."

I think the process involves owning the fact that, on some level, I really do eat people. I am the aggressor, the perpetrator--enraged, violent, merciless, and very, very hungry. Watch your back. 

The High Priestess

These are images from my dream journal of a female figure who appears often in my dreams. She is the High Priestess, the guardian at the gates of the unconscious in the Tarot. She is often silent, but with a presence as powerful and deep as the night. She sometimes scares me, sometimes soothes me. In my dreams, she has guided me, smothered me, asked me to come closer. In a recent dream she told me she likes me to stand near her so she can breathe. She is the embodiment of mystery, and she seems the place to start with this process of trying to share what can be shared of my own mysterious process, exploring the places she stands watch over. In the most recent dream, I had followed a group of people--"the Irish"--who were going to visit their dead. We went into a place under the ground, and she stood next to me there, in a flowing skirt, with long black hair, letting me know that I am somehow able to help her breathe. This seems creepy in retrospect, but in the dream I felt lucky, as if I had been honored by a goddess or some other powerful entity. I felt a deep and abiding love for her--a movement in the core of my body.

First Post

I have spent many hours, both blissful and tormented, alone in a room with a notebook and a pen, drawing, writing, writing songs, writing letters--letters sent and unsent, eloquent and awkward, finished and unfinished. I have carried little books in my pockets and recorded  overheard conversations, nascent song lyrics, morbid thoughts, angry outbursts, expressions of love and desire. I have drawn every friend I have at least sixteen times. I have quoted them and used their quotes to understand and explain what I'm going through. I have struggled and questioned and sweated my way through broken hearts, unprocessed childhood traumas, lost opportunities, and uncertain successes. All of this has been a celebration of inner work, the work I most love doing in this life.  

This blog is part of an independent study (Advanced Studies in Inner Work) at Antioch University. The course is about consciously naming and undertaking the lifelong process Carl Jung called individuation. The foundation of this process, as many psychologists and mystics have noted, involves facing the darkness within ourselves, and I will be working with my shadow aspects through the vehicles of dreaming, creativity, and reading other writers who work with the dark parts of the psyche. I will be posting my thoughts in this blog in the hopes of sharing and making sense of the work in a way that engages and inspires other inner workers. 

I want to thank Doug Sadownick, PhD, for his mentoring and for giving this course its name.