Our comings and goings to and from ourselves

I am currently visiting in Los Angeles so my posting has been slack.  However I want to share a quote from Mary Louise von Franz, who talks about the objective psyche and how we come and go in relationship to it.  She talks about how we can become compartmentalized and believe we are truly committed to the unconscious and then all of a sudden, we don't believe anymore.  Yes, it is the same person who feels both these things.  What an amazing complicated system we are:  one day committed to the objective psyche, our dreams, and the messages we get from them and then suddenly we don't remember our commitment and we are off and running "away".  I guess we could say that we are each on our journey which draws us closer to ourselves and then further away from ourselves.  No wonder, we take several lifetimes to get to center.  Any comments will be appreciated.

Life's task

Today I have some clarity about the dilemma I have been swirling around in.  My dreams have been very powerful, and then I wonder how I can relate to them in reality.  Is having a powerful dream enough or do I have some responsibility to bring that content into the mainstream of my life.  Actually, bringing those dreams into my life is not the issue so much as do I have an obligation to bring them into the world:  a greater life than my own.  Yesterday, I read a passage in Jung's Psychology and Alchemy which helped clarify this problem for me.  "...almost unbearable tension because of the utter incommensurability between conscious life and the unconscious process, which can be experienced only in the innermost soul and cannot touch the visible surface of life at any point."  In truth, the rationality of the cosmos is constantly being violated in some of the same ways that the unconscious process violates our surface life.  This sentence is a paraphrase of Jung.  The task at hand seems to be to accomplish the paradoxical union of irreconcilables.  Sometimes I cannot handle this task without feeling crazy and only when I realize the inherent difficulty of the task can I even approach the questions that I have. 

Frame of reference

After the first half of life, Jung focuses on fulfilling one's life path which is built into our foundation at birth or maybe before.  This is an approach which typically psychology avoids.  Most schools of psychology believe that one can approach life by remembering the trauma of the past and redoing it.  Much of the time is spent trying to pick up the past rather than focusing on what these past experiences have encouraged us to do in the present.  Jung is more interested in finding the meaning in what has happened to us both past and present than in finding what trauma has created what kind of personality.  

I have been practicing object relations psychology for many years, and I find myself looking forward to examining the meaning of my own experiences as well as my clients.  This means that the therapist does not always or ever know what meaning is in each experience, but that the client knows and is able to uncover the meaning with the experience and help from the therapist.  A dynamic flow of energy begins to happen between client and therapist which can be lacking when the therapist considers herself/himself an expert in the life of the client.

Dreams

Pat and I are planning our flyer for our dream group:  actually, Pat is looking up quotes on dreams and I am sometimes helping her.  We are going to advertise in The Door Opener, so she is looking for appropriate quotes.  It makes me feel my excitement about dreams once more.  I stand amazed at how much is revealed in our dreams, and of course, I circle around that excitement off and on throughout the days, weeks, and etc.  

I have not dreamed in the last few nights, and I guess that is because Pat and I have been reading Jung's Seminar in Dream Analysis over the past month.  What a brilliant man that Jung is!  Anyway with my studying and working through the images in my dreams of late, my dream life has slowed down so I can catch up with all the images and symbols.

It feels so important to me to carefully work with our dreams for we have no other objective view of our lives, the purpose of our lives, and how to go about developing a relationship to God, if you will.  Indeed, what could be more important for the second half of our life after we have created all our ego would ever need:  then we can work on our relationship to God and of course the end of this life as we know it.

Lessons from circles

Edinger, Anatomy of the Psyche, says on page 143:"  Psychologically, circulatio is the repeated circuit of all aspects of one's being, which gradually generates awareness of a transpersonal center uniting the conflicting factors."  As I circle around, I am aware of the opposites occurring one after the other.  Eventually, after several times around (perhaps 100 or so) I begin to see some reconciliation between the two.  I become less divided by placing the world into categories and see the fascinating melding of our rich experiences.  This process involves self-acceptance and of course acceptance of others.  Lessons in humility and generally becoming involved with what it means to be human. 

Dancing to the tune of a different drummer

Music, dancing, actually any movement seemed to awaken our souls; especially mine.  There are the witches of fairy tales who dance and chant around their pot, or cauldron, which could represent the vessel we are ourselves.  The cauldron is an image in the I Ching of our own vessel which needs protection and care.  The witches dancing feel protective to me.  When I had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy, I had a dream in which the medicine was boiling in a pot, and I was told to infuse loving kindness into the chemotherapy medicine.  After that dream, the treatments seemed less toxic, and I was able to bring the opposites together through this wise message from my unconscious.

Walking in circles may also be some protective measure for my psyche while I am so introspective right now.  Concentrating so much of my energy on my inner work certainly challenges my ego which wants me to be active in the outer world rather than so introspective.  I am following where my process leads me which right now happens to be studying in detail the images of my dreams.  Rhythm, dancing, and music are my guides right now.

More rhythm

Jung in Symbols of Transformation talks about psychic energy and posits that the first evidence of psychic energy is in the rhythms of the baby when he or she wiggles their arms and legs.  Also the rhythm of their first words:  mamama or dadada and the like.  And...Marie Louise von Franz in her book:  Psyche and Matter addresses the rhythm of time and how that introduces the concept of number.  On p. 71, she states that" time and space are inseparably connected and form a four-dimensional continuum"..."a return to the age old primitive intuition whereby for instance, the Aztec god Omoteotl, with the four Tetzcatlipocas in the four corners of space, created space and time simultaneously.  

We have circular time (our clocks) and linear time (days, months, etc.)  These methods of telling time have developed out of the tides, phases of the moon, and the movement of the earth around the sun.  

It is interesting to me that many of the primitive person's intuitions have now been confirmed by our advanced technology and advanced ability to discern and differentiate concepts through our thinking:  through our separation from the original oneness.

So we begin in oneness, then differentiate to a very sophisticated perspective and once again return to oneness.  Hummmm

Circumambulating

Today I am circumambulating  my way around the opposites keeping in mind the black pearl image and a dream I had last night in which I found myself going around circles outside my office in Kansas City and also around the parking lot at the grocery store looking for my car.  

Having this happen twice in one dream doubles the impact or importance of the circle.  That image has stayed with me all day, and as you know, circles are mandala images so it feels important to honor my walking around the circle as I ponder my day's activities and thoughts.  I am still remembering the drumming and dancing from yesterday and have added the circle today.  My hope is that I will encourage my unconscious to begin to provide more information around rhythms.  And next Friday is the summer solstice so that will be a powerful time for information to come through from the unconscious.

I have felt a bit disoriented today, and I realize this may be due to the new rhythms coming into my system.  I feel somewhat dissatisfied with old routines and haven't yet found my new ones.  More to come.

rhythms

Today I am focused on rhythm.  I had a dream in which a young boy was rocking in a window ledge.  And the rocking sensation touched a place of how we can put ourselves into a trance by performing a rhythmic movement.  This has happened forever:  we did it as little babies, as young children, and still do it today.  Notice it in yourself.  Native Americans have many ways of creating rhythms through drumming, dancing, or any repetitive movement which transfers energy from our bodies to mother earth.

And...then there is the rhythm of our lives, our dreams, and how those interact.  Our daily lives have a rhythm of their own which most often we do without being aware.  And certainly our dreams have their own rhythm which if we look at and study reveals some interesting patterns.  As I have been recording my dreams, I am seeing some dreams now that reflect earlier dreams that I could not understand.  In other words, I am seeing patterns and rhythms.  These rhythms may be the order than underlies the disorder in most of our activities:  at a deep level, I mean.  More to contemplate.  It also leaves room for the possibility of synchronicity.

Coming together of the opposites

Okay, so the process is one of separating the opposites, such as good/bad, masculine/feminine, earth/sky which may be the first step of individuating while the final step is reconciling the opposites so that I can hold one side by side with the other rather than either/or.  In the final analysis (if there could be one), the black pearl image may be pointing in that direction where black and white are united to form the black pearl.  In the bowl which contained ten black pearls they were arranged in Pythagoras' magic ten number where four pearls surrounded one pearl in an equilateral triangle.  More food for thought because Pythagorans believed that number was the key to the mystery of matter.  I don't fully grasp that yet, but perhaps in another decade or so, it will be clear to me. 

They also believed that ten was a number of wholeness. 

Structure of the psyche

I think that what Jung is referring to is that images come from stars, sun and moon as well as inorganic represented by earth, air, fire and water, and also reptilian (cold blooded creatures).  Down deep in our unconscious are the foundations  of life prior to when human (warm blooded) creations came into being.  So we receive images from these layers of our unconscious because they form the structure of our psyche.  When I first realized that my unconscious held all the history of mankind (and now history of life), I felt comforted to know that I had a simple, true, individual place in the whole history of life.

When images of snake, black pearl, or whatever, I know I am in touch with ancient history and that the image has something to share with me about my life now.  Finding the meaning of these symbols is fascinating to me, and I enjoy search until I find a meaning that completes my search for I feel a relationship to the image.

Matter and Spirit

In Jung's Seminar in Dream Analysis, he spends quite a bit of time exploring the relationship between the patterns of the stars and the patterns of our human lives.  I find this interesting because it brings together for me a parallel cycle between the stars and us:  for example women menstruate according to moon cycles:  certainly not every woman having her period at the same time as every other woman, but there are cycles in each individual woman which are fairly constant.  Perhaps there is not such a difference between matter and spirit as I have thought.  What Jung talks about in these pages brought to my attention an interaction between matter and spirit.  Or perhaps a facet of the same process.  That matter and spirit are the same energy seen by my eyes and ears as different when in fact they are the same.

I am holding these thoughts to see what comes of them.

Symbols: sun and moon

On page 404 of Jung's Seminar on Dream Analysis, he states the sun and moon have something to do with the structure of the mind.  To me, that is a powerful statement, one that I don't completely understand.  I do understand that we have projected qualities onto the sun and moon such as sun being masculine and active and rational and the moon being mystery, irrational, feminine, and passive.  And certainly these characteristics are part of my own individual makeup. Even if I don't completely understand what he means, I do relate to the characteristics of each and can find relevant aspects in my own psychology.

I like that Jung searches through our past, both near and far, to uncover deeper and deeper associations to images.  It brings a certain richness and depth to those images that come to me in my dreams.  And, then I can find the certain characteristics of these images which touch me with their meaning.  In order to travel these paths, I have to yield up my scientific demands and my Western way of approaching meaning.  That is not easy to do because it is so ingrained in me.  My friend, Pat, has been helping me with this understanding and how challenging these views are to my scientific frame of reference.

Black Pearl: Moon

After a great deal of research, I have completed for now my information on the black pearl.  The symbol of the moon has sustained the most interest for me because the moon symbol is really a movement from black (new moon) to white (full moon), and also represents the mother, feminine, and perhaps an integration or certainly movement from one to the other:  black to white as process.  In my own experience, I find myself moving from darkness and chaos to fullness and light and places in between.For me personally, I like the black pearl and moon symbol.

Now to answer "onthepath"s question about four, I say as we move from chaos to begin to form our identity, we move from the one to "I" which indicates a separation of masculine and feminine as well as spirit (upper) and lower (human, animal).  These four cardinal points help us grow into our uniqueness.

One last remark:  the moon is more irrational than the sun which is more rational:  it moves across the sky each day as itself while the moon comes in the night (mystery) and has rhythms.  I have profited by becoming more irrational and demanding less rationality.  Good for me.  I am also more aware of my own rhythms of activity, rest, inactivity, and how these cycle through my months and years.

Black Pearl: Individuation

Today, I am struck by how the black pearl could suggest the individuation process which starts in chaos and confusion (black) and through our spirits separates into the four:  upper and lower, feminine and masculine.  This involves a wedding of sorts, and parallels the alchemical process of turning metals into gold.  Jung has likened the alchemical scientists to early psychologists although that was not a conscious awareness on their parts.  He feels that they were projecting the individuation process onto their chemical work.  

Heraclitus suggested four colors which were reduced to three in the 15th or 16th century (see Jung, vol.14, para. 333.  In paragraph 334, Jung compares the individuation process as moving from the black to white as a moon condition which then arises to sunrise (red).  I know this is becoming somewhat academic, but I want to share the depth and richness of just one image from my dreams.

I have been wanting to find themes and patterns in my dreams for several years, but I have not tackled the research necessary to do that until now.  I am very excited.  

Tomorrow, I want to explore the black pearl and the moon.