Who Am I?

Today's blog is about who am I? It seems somehow appropriate to address who I am after whose life is this anyway. I realize that I am still trying to form myself around someone whom I admire rather than being me. Whoever that is. I guess some of me is just that: forming myself around someone I admire. However, I need some balance in my life. I have just come off of spending a lot of time with others, and I had a wonderful time sharing my life, listening to theirs, and talking about our past together. I realize that I spend a lot of time alone, and now I know that I need to take this balance stuff seriously. Not too much time alone and not too much time with others. Not such an easy task. For me this involves checking out my inner needs and wants from moment to moment. To stay in touch with myself on an ongoing basis is certainly a commitment to myself that I have not had the time to do before. What is it that I want to do on any given occasion might pose some interesting possibilities. I believe I will try that and let you know how successful I have been.

Whose life is this anyway?

I am still in the transition from ego to Self. It has not been easy. I am so used to believing that I, my ego, is responsible for my success in life, and that ego has values like productivity is essential, and so on. Because of my experiences since I was diagnosed with cancer, I now believe that the Self is in charge of my life: not me. How to yield to Self as the director of my life is the question that challenges me moment to moment. The most telling evidence available to me regarding this shift is my energy which ebbs and flows under the power of a source which is not mine. A couple of nights ago I had a dream in which I was harnessing energy from retired horses who were delighted that I would want to involve them in such a fashion. I have had other dreams about energy conservation that point to relying on something other than pressure from my ego.

I have spent my life acting from pressure: it brought me success, no doubt about that. However it is time to let that go, and focus on "listening, dreaming, understanding the meaning, and preparing for death." Not an easy task. I find I have many resistances to letting go into a deeper place of living.

What's a mother to do.

I had a dream in which my two children were in their rooms working out diagnostic themes on old typewriters.  I could hear them tapping their keys as they came upon new awarenesses in their developing schemes.  It reminds me of one of my constant lessons:  sealing the vessel.  Over the last couple of days, I have had some mis-understandings and communications with my daughter, and I wondered if this dream had some messages for me about that.  For example, when I offer support and that is misunderstood as criticism, perhaps I am to seal my vessel and not offer support in the ways I often do.  Perhaps there are some supportive statements that actually carry criticism in them:  instead of having faith in my children that they will find their way through hard times, I may be trying to save them from the hard time, and in so doing, hinder their progress through my own lack of faith.  Truth be told, we are each to find our own way on our path without the "helpful" advice from a mother who may not be able to stand her child's pain.  

Much ado about nothing yielded something

After I posted yesterday, I actually wrote some.  Putting into place a background to understand what I am trying to say is at least a start.  I may never use any of what I am writing now, but at least I am getting my fingers to work on the computer and words are coming out.  I am reminded once again of the process of writing and that to just get into the "frame" is a step toward to task of writing.  So I think, writing the blog yesterday got my fingers ready to do some more serious writing after I closed my post down.  How about that.  

Much ado about nothing.

I have been in one of those phases where my energy waxes and wanes, and I get impatient with myself.  I imagine as long as I am impatient, my energy will wax and wane.  I know there is a message in this process, and instead of focusing on that, I prefer to beat myself up for not working harder.  In some ways, this is very hard work.  Waiting and sitting in the discomfort is my suggestion to myself.  That is much harder for me than to be busy working on something.  I know working on waiting is the task at hand, but I have no preparation for this task.  When the busy right now is my own creativity, I am challenged in ways I have not been before.  Of course teaching and seeing clients both demanded creativity on my part, there were others involved.  I have an audience or a dialogue work with.  Now it is just me:  no one to talk over the conflicts I feel.  Purpose behind saying some of this out loud on this blog.  

Second half of life

In the second half of life, we are to begin to prepare for death.  With the possibilities of living longer than we ever have before, I wonder.  As I am now a permanent member of the second half of life, I do not think about death.  However, I do feel a certain peace of mind and heart because I feel held by a hand perhaps.  Like the Rumi poem of how the leaves fall into the hand of god.  I feel now that I have always been led by a force or energy greater than my own.  Even when things were horrifying, I know now that a particular crisis was happening because I needed to change the direction of my life.  That doesn't mean I didn't live in the horror, devastation, disorientation, lost, and all of that.  It means that each experience led me to something I had not known before and could not have chosen it on my own.  As Jung discovered in his "confrontation with the unconscious", psyche has lessons for each of us to learn in our own individual ways.  All of these awarenesses are more conscious now, and that alone gives my life more meaning.  I imagine that this peace I speak of is a preparation for death.  

Listening to the music

I have not posted for awhile because I have been deeply involved with my dreams, and have been researching some meanings of the symbols that I have received.  I am noticing cycles that occur in both my waking life and my dream life.  When I am out of touch with my unconscious, I dream of old friends, old past times which I now believe reflects a longing to return to "paradise".  I am projecting "paradise" outside of me and once I find the truth in that, I then return to deeper work with my unconscious that come up in my dreams.  Most recently, I dreamed that monks were teaching me how to make singing bowls so I could "listen" to the music in my dreams and in my reading.  I often listen with my mind and try to understand the words that I am reading rather than being open to the deeper meaning which comes through my unconscious.  One of the parts of Jung that touches me so much is that he can listen to a dream and then his associations reveal many different avenues.  He is listening to the music of the dream rather than just the manifest content.  This takes time, reflection, acquaintance with a vast amount of material in history, science, mythology, physics, etc.  The rewards are great.