Monthly Archives: August 2014

August 30, 2014 · 8:04 am

On the Religious Nature of Mid-Life

In a previous post, I discussed some dreams I experienced at mid-life; my transition from a rational, too-masculine thinking type to one who could feel the emotions designed to relate to a symbolic reality. I mentioned dreams of a religious nature that supplemented the ones which were the focus of that post.

I would like to bring the religious ones into relation with those: to show how the unconscious attempts to reconcile deeper psychic facts with the more recent ideas of Christian social development — and the modern truths of causal education. The three intertwine today, accentuating an emotional confusion which only compels us more certainly into an all-consuming collectivism.

The dream-series about dogs was interspersed with others which began to draw me to very old ideas. I’d moved into a “fixer-upper” and had some leaks repaired under the house. Afterward, I dreamed I was looking at the plumber’s bill. Below the list of repairs was a penciled illustration of Christ on the cross. I was struck by how beautifully it was drawn, and it occurred to me that I’d drawn it!

I was still in a rational mind-set, though; anti-religious — I couldn’t reconcile the contradictions of traditional belief intellectually. Even so, the dream described the spiritual nature of the psychic energy leaking out (wasted, unused) underneath consciousness: I had no real feeling-experience of the ideas the unconscious seized on to inform me where I was in life. I was being prepared emotionally for dreams which would further elaborate that initial theme: the image of a man struggling under the tension of opposites.

I soon experienced what I now call “the fall into the hands of the living God”: an emotional state so intense and frightening, I felt like I’d lost my mind; I held on tight. After a wrenching sleepless night, it took all my efforts to get through the next day. I went to bed that night exhausted from the mental tension. I was so overwhelmed, all I could think was to read the Bible! I — who was raised with it as a youngster yet compelled to dispute every word of it! “Somehow”, I found myself reading about Abraham and Sarah.

I put the Bible aside, wondering whether I would be able to sleep for the tension which still held me in its grip. As I lay there, preparing for another sleepless night, an image appeared in my mind’s eye: Arthur Ashe, the great tennis player, was playing tennis with a shadowy opponent! He was from Richmond, Va., my “hometown”. He’d died of AIDS from a tainted blood transfusion. A sudden wave of relief swept over me, the tension disappeared, and I fell asleep.

(Later reflection on the image yielded its ideas: tennis as a symbol of the back and forth exchange process with the unconscious, Ashe’s death from AIDS, a “sexually” transmitted “disease”: how I saw the “creative” process “afflicting” me; the blood transfusion, death, the transition of an old attitude and re-birth at mid-life — exactly what I was experiencing in the analogy!)

I recalled only one dream that night: a chimpanzee in a blue dress looked at me intently. “I’m Sarah.” it said. The dress was the same one a friend described a few years before, when he’d confessed to me that he wore it to bed with his wife. He’d struggled with that since he was five, too ashamed to tell anyone else. He was an engineer, a rational, thinking man whose male image had diverted vital feelings. They appeared feminine to him, just as the unconscious reflected it back through the lonely compulsion which bid him wear its image.

You remember Sarah, right? She was barren, couldn’t “conceive” (just like me). She was older, Abraham’s second wife (a reference to the second half of life). The Lord yet decreed she would have a child. I remembered the alchemical parable in which a “king had a baby in his brain.” His kingdom was dry and arid; to fructify it, the unconscious birthed a new image to re-direct his duties to it.

I related the chimpanzee’s primitive nature; I thought about Sarah and my friend’s blue dress (the color of the sky, of lofty patriarchal fantasies), the dogs who’d turned against me. It slowly dawned on me that these pictures were describing the age-old spiritual longing inside: the unconscious direction of my own soul, the psychic function meant to mediate what I thought I knew about myself but didn’t know: what my nature revealed outside my collective viewpoint.

The image of Christ is not just a faded, antique form of imitation in which an undeveloped and over-compensating ego once convinced itself that it had already accomplished our deepest intuitions. It’s a profound historical model which today describes the psychic conflicts endured by one who turns inward and sacrifices his/her personal desires for something greater than itself.

Read the story of how intellect is drawn into an exchange process with the unconscious through the gradual development of symbolic thought.

Comments Off on On the Religious Nature of Mid-Life

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 15, 2014 · 8:14 am

Relations Between Conscious and Unconscious: The Exchange Process

Jung once wrote that it’s not so important to interpret dreams as it is to experience them. This is especially so at mid-life, when one may feel the need to make conscious emotions out of the educational stages which fortify ego into a separate identity — one stable enough to overcome its sensual illusions and confront an objective reality inside.

While it’s instructive (and somewhat flattering) to work a dream into a form acceptable to intellect, nature works over centuries to produce even smaller fruits of Eden ripe enough to be ingested by the conscious part. They attain the clarity to appear as associable ideas only by the added energy of attention. That (somewhat figuratively) is how Jung’s energic theory describes the exchange between conscious and unconscious.

A dream doesn’t stop working when something valuable is discovered in it. At mid-life, it’s only the beginning of a process designed to form a relationship, just as two strangers might establish common ground. But, the figures confronting you inside are vital parts of you who want attention doubly on that account.

They’re sometimes comforting, but at other times, too, are very contrary — even hostile — especially when they want you to inspect needful things that you may have been taught were of no importance by a backward (causal) and collective ego-worship.

At such a point, I dreamed of a small white poodle busily re-arranging my house. As I watched, I became incensed. The damn thing set up a fan in my kitchen to draw outside air in through the window — in the winter! I screamed at it: “This is my fucking house!” Yet it went right on, paying no attention to my ranting.

I associated the black poodle of Goethe’s, Faust: the supportive instinctual form of the creative force of Lucifer (the Light-bearer) yet to shine the light of consciousness onto darker conflicts. I awoke anxiously but fell back asleep. The dream continued: the white poodle was in my bed stimulating me sexually!

I considered the color white, a reference to consciousness — the opposite of unconscious blackness. I thought about Jung’s premise that sexuality symbolizes creative nature in its most profound sense — an instinctual function of relationship. When I became hostile and screamed, it was the reaction of an anxious and defensive ego being re-arranged to make room for creative (fucking) processes outside its perception.

It portended intimate relations (the bed and the sexual stimulation) with this feminine poodle (the unconscious), to compensate a rational, too-masculine ego. I saw myself as an action figure, as I was expected to be in the outer world; an actor, a worn-out Sylvester Stallone: an aging, faked-up hero-idol clinging to a moribund masculine image.

Along with other dreams, I went back to it again and again over the next two years. That was ten years ago; I couldn’t describe it symbolically then as now. But — I felt it, intuited it; able only through devotion (conscious attention) and the aid of Jung’s ideas. When I’d experienced its emotions enough to satisfy the unconscious that I was ready to move on, it changed into my black lab who’d died years before. She’d come back in my dreams!

But, her friendly form didn’t last long. Over the next year, she became threatening, snarling, biting at me. Toward the end of that dream-series, I could only ward her off on my back, with my feet (my deepest conflicts), as she attacked me viciously.

In a later dream, I explained to a shadowy figure that she’d had a psychotic episode. I had more dreams about dogs turning “psychotically” against me. Over the next year, still more dreams embraced religious ideas, and they slowly bore their core meaning into my stubborn consciousness. The dream which tipped the scale found me shouting at an old, disheveled woman in a square with a dark pond surrounded by apartments: “You’re crazy!” I screamed as she stared uncannily.

My soul, which I had accepted was of so little importance in a world of men; of power, wealth and social striving, was sick — in full rebellion of the way I treated it. I felt sick. Well, I was — but not in the way I thought…

My dreams showed me that it wasn’t she or I who was crazy; I only thought the unconscious was crazy! It reflected back to me the way I was looking at it. I saw it as crazy — which it is in the sense that it’s irrational, beyond collective judgment.

Within a year, I was writing poetry, making emotions out of the strange dreams which continue to reveal who I am — outside the ego I identified with. Three more years of intense self-analysis, guided by my dreams and Jung’s ideas, found me constructing the symbolic tale of my own inner journey. It’s as profound and insightful as the figures which lurk behind it, and though it may appear strange to the rational mindset — it is a reality.

Along with my posts, the book is one small man’s effort to shine just a little new light on its mystery. Read more about the events leading to it here, or visit Amazon.

Comments Off on Relations Between Conscious and Unconscious: The Exchange Process

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,

August 7, 2014 · 5:54 pm

Symbolic Thinking, Reflection, and Mid-Life

The value of religion and philosophy lies in their power to evoke ideas which the unconscious seizes upon to express itself. That value was semi-conscious in the past, though another factor today reveals the complement which would lead us into the next developmental stage: psychological reflection. The last fifty years have brought into stark relief how easily ego can lose touch with inner reality when its needs aren’t recognized and projected onto the material world.

When we can no longer relate to symbols, we lose the use of vital functions. We begin to feel signals from the unconscious to compensate the loss; symbolic, too, because it’s the language of psychic reality. They consist of a litany of disorders designed to re-connect us to the living Deity (not the one of wishful fantasy, but the one who makes demands, remember? like the one from the Old Testament, in league with Satan, who afflicted Job?)

You wouldn’t know why you felt such things as Job suffered, if you had no blueprint of the design. You’d see a doctor and take “medicine” for problems that were conceived materially (just like in the old story), because the doctor had no modern concept of psychic reality, either. One in ten adults takes anti-depressants (not to mention everything else we take), and that jumps to one in four among women in their forties and  fifties. Is it significant given the patriarchal mid-life myth we fancy we’ve outgrown — yet are discarding without having reflected on its meaning?

Jungians prescribe a heady brew of archetypal symbolism; it makes sense, but much of it is even further removed than the more recent symbols of our Christian heritage. Jung used alchemy to illustrate the connective stage between the medieval Christian world and the modern rational view; to show how the unconscious described the changing conditions. But, alchemical symbolism, too, is very abstruse to a modern mind in search of meaning.

I’ve recently been absorbed in James Branch Cabell’s 1920’s re-telling of two medieval folk tales: Jurgen: A Comedy of Justice and Figures of Earth. A friend who knew the peculiar workings of my mind saw a local PBS program on Cabell; we live in his hometown of Richmond, Va. Funny, how such books may fall into one’s hands! It sold poorly — until local courts declared it obscene, at which point sales soared briefly. It was Cabell’s own symbolic mid-life mystery.

Not only did the tales allow the unconscious to express itself through them, he lent conscious development to them by his reflective work. But Cabell was no psychologist; he was a writer and philosopher, a thoughtful man drawn to the ideas by the process he gave himself to. Like alchemical ideas, they described natural, creative instincts outside the dogma of conventional belief.

In the tales of Jurgen, the same exchange process as in the partriarchal story of Job takes a more modern, personal form. Jurgen’s journey began in search of his wife (!) who, upon returning from the market, was lured into a dark cave by a “black gentleman (poor fellow!)”:

Chapter 24, The Shortcomings of Prince Jurgen, describes a meeting with Queen Anaitis, “whom Jurgen found to be a nature myth of doubtful origin connected with the Moon… who furtively swayed the tides of life… It was the mission of Anaitis to divert and turn aside and deflect: in this the jealous Moon abetted her because sunlight makes for straightforwardness… These mysteries of their private relations, however, as revealed to Jurgen, are not very nicely repeatable.”

Jurgen, in conventional reverence to Sunday, had offended the Queen by not paying proper respect to Monday, to the unconscious. “But, you dishonored the Moon, Prince Jurgen, denying praise to the day of the Moon. Or so, at least, I have heard.”

But, Jurgen was a “monstrous clever fellow”: “I remember doing nothing of the sort. But I remember considering it unjust to devote one paltry day to the Moon’s majesty. For night is sacred to the Moon… night, the renewer and begetter of all life.”

“Why, indeed, there is something in that argument,” says Anaitis, dubiously.” Jurgen knows he must propitiate her power, for hers is “the werke of an High Deity.”

” ‘Something’, do you say! why, but to my way of thinking it proves the Moon is precisely seven times more honorable… It is merely, my dear, a matter of arithmetic.” Anaitis is apparently somewhat innocent of the rational, deceptive ways of men: “Was it for that reason you did not praise… Mondays…?”

“Why, to be sure,” said Jurgen glibly… Then Jurgen coughed and looked sidewise at his shadow.” This shadow followed Jurgen throughout his journeys; only in darkness could he cast off the silent reminders of its constant presence.

“Anaitis appeared relieved. “I shall report your explanation. Candidly, there were ill things in store for you, Prince Jurgen, because your language was misunderstood. But that which you now say puts quite a different complexion upon matters.

“Jurgen laughed, not understanding the mystery, but confident he could always say what was required of him.” Jurgen “… found that unknowingly he had in due and proper form espoused Queen Anaitis, by participating in the Breaking of the Veil, which is the marriage ceremony… His earlier relations with Dame Lisa [his wife] had, of course, no legal standing in Cocaigne, where the Church is not Christian…”

Jung discovered a language by which symbols may be more clearly understood by the rational viewpoint today, but they require reflection. Read here about a symbolic mid-life tale in more modern form.

Comments Off on Symbolic Thinking, Reflection, and Mid-Life

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 1, 2014 · 10:24 am

The Value of Religious Ideas

“And they relate that while… Manuel sat cosily… and noted how the snow was drifting by the windows, the ghost of Niafer went restlessly about green fields… in the paradise of the pagans. When the kindly, great-browed warders asked her what it was she was seeking, the troubled spirit could not tell them, for Niafer had tasted Lethe, and had forgotten Dom Manuel. Only her love for him had not been forgotten, because that love had become a part of her, and so lived on as a blind longing and as a desire which did not know its aim.” — Figures of Earth, James Branch Cabell.

This quote poignantly expresses a modern problem which is yet as old as humanity. It came into being with consciousness: you know, the mysterious complex of associations by which nature evolved a sense of personal identity for each individual of our species. (It grows out of your childhood, its foundation too dark and ancient for memory or knowledge.) Its greater purposes can only be surmised, though we know much about its immediate advantages.

The capacity to think, to learn and anticipate causal effects in the environment, along with the evolution of social instincts, were unique in nature. A basic quality of personal identity was its conflict with its inborn social structure, and the tension between them yielded creative energies which excelled other beasts. The conscious/unconscious exchange between individual and group was a catalyst for development so sweeping, it changed the face of the earth.

(Over your own centuries, it changes your face, too, often in ways unknown to you; for, the partial complex also has hidden liabilities. You can’t see them; they impose an invisible fence around everything we do…)

The fear, uncertainty, and confusion caused by its inner conflicts produced unconscious defense-reactions which compelled it to cling to the security of an illusory present as long as it could. Only the tension of creative conflicts endured by certain individuals pushed it forward into an irreversible future (the nature of time perception).

(You may remember the psychic distress which sparked awarenesses of yourself in your own primitive history — or they may return only as fleeting images and feelings at night, when the “old brain” recalls them in its own strange way to sketch out your tomorrows.)

The unconscious energy intended for its development naturally guided it toward solutions for relieving it. Beyond the demands of physical survival, a kind of psychic devotion slowly differentiated itself. It was the “excess” energy reserved for inflicting the painful tension of conflicts meant to guide the beast toward its still-evolving human potential.

(You actually resembled this beast psychically when you were in grade school, preparing you for the medieval stages of puberty and young adulthood.)

The battle for survival shifted more and more onto a psychic plane, and “the unbearable surfeit of energy” (as Jung called it) — the reserve intended for development — presented existential religious and philosophical problems as a means of stimulating self-discovery. They were so fundamental to human nature, they were innate in it as a blind longing, a need, which could only be filled through devotion to it.

(You were probably beginning to think about ideas of God, spirits, ghosts, even your dreams at that time, weighing your feelings against what you’d been taught — if your attention wasn’t constantly diverted by electronic devices. In any event, you would be soon to fall headlong for a very attractive image which would entice your development further — its conflicts and compromises, too. This is where the love factors in.)

Though the tensions steadily evolved into ever higher aims, the silent anxiety and clinging to the security of the known convinced the general consciousness that it had attained to its final stage at every temporary signpost. Only when very grave conditions threatened it through the unintended consequences of its repression and its hostile projection onto others was it slowly driven to change its notions of inner reality.

New ideas circulated through mythic messengers, creative individuals, designed to make the partial complex reflect on itself, to re-orient it — to guide it out of the grave conditions it had half-created…

(This was when your philosophical and religious education had long since ceased and mass illusions of ego/intellect and the certainty of rational thought stopped up your ability to observe what was happening inside you; you were carried along in the collective frenzy, never thought about where you were; you were seized by vague desires that couldn’t be repressed or satisfied; you got depressed, had obsessive thoughts, felt compulsive urges, misplaced hostilities, became moody and sensitive, took “medicine” to relieve stress or help you sleep.)

So nature decreed. For a split consciousness with limited, personal notions of time, however, spiritual ideas required centuries of upheaval to take root. Only when enough individuals had reflected on the need for them were the rest drawn to participate in the task of lifting humanity out of the heavy burden of its primitive heritage — and its flighty rejection of it. Nature also decrees that each is bidden to confront it anew on a higher level with every generation.

If you’ve never experienced such things, I leave you with this statement by Cabell from the same book quoted above:

“But of living persons, I dare assert that you will find King Helmas appreciably freed from a thousand general delusions by his one delusion about himself.”

Read more about this inner confrontation with psychic reality here.

Comments Off on The Value of Religious Ideas

Filed under Psychology

Tagged as , , , , , , , ,