Next up, the Anima and Animus, which we’ve already touched upon in my particular journey. The Anima/Animus are the opposite attributes of what your physical make up is. We have both male and female chromosomes, why wouldn’t/shouldn’t we be utilizing the best of both? Sounds like wholeness to me.
A man must recognize, honor and incorporate his Anima–the feminine strengths of nurturing, compassion, and emotions. Emotions. Aaargh, say many men.
If you know anything of the decades of the 50’s and 60’s, there was a very strict delineation of female roles and male roles. A man just would never take on the responsibility of a ‘house husband’ with all the dirty diapers that entailed. Yet, that is exactly what has come to pass/evolve with the ensuing generations. More and more men are taking on nurturing, caretaking, housebound duties and roles. This is the male incorporating the nurturing feminine attributes of the Anima. Makes me happy.
Ode to the Anima
A long ago classmate of mine wrote a book sharing his journey into (and subsequent return from) the Land of Cancer. He had never married, lived alone. He was quite methodical in his detail of each of the precise radiation treatments and the young female technicians who attended him. He readily admitted that over the course of his treatments, he developed a strong, yet reserved attraction to one of the young ladies. He was quite naked in baring his innermost thoughts of her, eloquent in describing her kindness and caring, risking all with his bravery to finally confess his feelings for her, and her ultimate denial of like feelings. All I could think of as I read was, “She is your Anima.” I think his book was as much a manifestation to honor his Anima as a chronicle of his journey.
Rosie Leads the Way
For a woman, she works to integrate her Animus, masculine strengths. She must recognize, honor, and incorporate the Animus into her psyche—those masculine traits of taking care of herself, having her own opinions, being independent, and standing up for herself. While many suffragettes planted the seeds of Animus infusion, I believe it was the global circumstances of World War II that heralded the beginning of actual integration of the Animus. Rosie the Riveter breached this barrier for women and we’ve been pouring through it ever since. Women were forced (or allowed, whichever way you wish to look at it) to take on masculine roles and along with that the masculine attributes of strength and independence. That outpouring to independence through the 60’s was demarcated as ‘women’s liberation.’
Speaking of women’s lib, I really have to share this quote from Orson Welles that, to me, spoke volumes of what men were feeling after women shook loose their bonds. It was from a relatively unknown movie that I ‘happened’ upon who knows where or how, called, “Someone to Love,” written, produced and directed by Henry Jaglom. (somehow I stuck the Dot in the pertinent pocket!) Orson gives this dissertation:
“That brings us to the greatest revolution of our times which is the liberation of women. Butby liberating women we are freeing the last of our slaves. And for fifteen, twenty thousand years there has never been a civilization, there has never been a single civilization, which has not been maintained by slaves. There’s a tremendous diminution to men’s energy. It’s partly because men are sympathetic to the new revolution and partly because we are scared to death of it.”
Unfortunately, since fear is not a manly thing to display (or recognize), men flung it into the Unconscious/Shadow, There, it ‘acted out’ in a scary, irrational spate of backlash against women that is still simmering in smoldering volcanoes for men who cannot face the Shadow and accept it.
Still, not all women chose to venture onto the field of liberation. Freedom can be a daunting prospect. When their time comes, if it ever does in this lifetime, they will need the armor of the Animus, I believe.
The short version of the job of the Anima/Animus:
“Woman’s sacrifice is in freeing herself from entanglements of personal relations to fit her for a more conscious role as an individual in her own right.”
VS
“A man’s sacrifice – which is the surrender of his sacred independence. He becomes more consciously related to woman.” Carl Jung “Man and His Symbols (MAHS)”
Man must sacrifice his independence. Woman must sacrifice relationship to find her independence. Opposites sacrificing opposites in order to find completion/wholeness.
In dreams, the Animus and Anima usually appear as a ‘shadowy’ member of the opposite sex. Many times in real life, the call to recognize the Anima or Animus is projected onto a member of the opposite sex who is seen as an end-all-be-all love that must be attained. Here, one must become very attentive and discerning—the actual person may not be the end-all-be-all. It is their masculine (or feminine) attributes that your psyche needs to embrace and integrate on its way to wholeness. (Been there, done that!)
Opposites Attract for a Reason
Balance. Women need to recognize and incorporate some of the strong, independent masculine traits they see in their beloved. Men need to incorporate some of the feminine traits of nurturing softness they admire in their beloved.
Psyches contain the Opposites…both the dark and the light; the male and the female. The opposites of all things. And all things have an opposite. We just don’t like to acknowledge the dark, scary, bad-rep parts, but we need to. How can you possibly be the whole you with only half acknowledged? By recognizing them as a part of you, you bring light to their darkness, and wholeness to your being.
The Microcosm and the Macrocosm.
Jung also felt that what the individual (microcosm) undertakes in the process to become whole is also played out in the evolution of humankind (macrocosm)—(i.e. The Animus being integrated by women everywhere after WWII and women’s liberation. Then the Anima being integrated in men incorporating the role of nurturer/caretaker)…a whole ‘nother realm yet to be explored.
What about the Shadow? Is the Shadow what we are seeing projected on ‘the Other’ in our drastically divided nation right now? Is the American psyche having to recognize those things we ‘hate’ in the “Other” as being a part of ourselves and accept them? Incorporate the Shadow?
For those who dare enter the dark forest on their own path to seek their holy grail—their true Self—dreams can become your on-board, in-house, fully-involved consultant.
The Shadow, yeah, that one even sounds scary, right? It may sound, even be, a little dark, but it only appears scary until you accept it. You remember what happened when the princess deemed to face that harassing frog and kiss him? He turned into a prince. That’s what happens when you face the scary Shadow in your dreams and ask what it wants from you—acknowledge, recognize, welcome it—give it a big fat kiss!
The Shadow is represented in dreams by an intruder in our house—or a dark figure, sinister feeling because it represents the part of ourselves that we “don’t want to recognize,” that we’re unconsciously afraid of. Our house is ‘us,’ our life, our psyche. When you have that scary intruder or monster dream, try to recognize it as some part of you that wants you to acknowledge it in your conscious life. When you refuse to acknowledge it as a part of your ‘whole self,’ it will continue to stalk and scare. Your dreams will report how the ‘scary’ changes and dissipates as you work to integrate the Shadow parts of your psyche.
The Shadow’s Backstory.
So what’s the Shadow’s backstory? How’d it get to be so scary? It represents the parts of ourselves that we’ve tried to ignore or repress by hiding ‘in the dark.’ It’s the unconscious parts of our psyche that our conscious/ego does not recognize in itself or (worse) refuses to recognize in itself. What you accept about yourself is ‘conscious.’ What you don’t want to accept, well, that’s what we hide in the ‘Unconscious’ aka The Bloody Room in ye old myths and fables.
Anything in the Unconscious WANTS to be conscious.
So, the object is to recognize it all, the good, the bad and the ugly as part of your entirety. It’s all gotta be recognized as a part of you to become whole—that’s all, just recognized and accepted. You don’t have to become “the Shadow,” just shine a light and say, ‘ok, bad stuff, you’re a part of me, too!’ Shining a light and admitting to what you see—being honest even when no one is looking—is all that’s required.
Containing the Opposites
We all contain the opposites of any attribute we have—the good and the bad. The nurturing mother and the devouring mother. Many times we do not want to lay any claim or recognize the ‘shadow’ side of the opposite—“Not as a part of me, by gosh!” We stick it in the Unconscious and hope to hide it in the dark. We’ll just forget it’s there. It now becomes the Shadow.
“Everything in the Unconscious seeks outward manifestation.” Carl Jung, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections (MDR)
WARNING! WARNING!
If you don’t acknowledge it on your own, that hidden shadowy part you don’t want to recognize will ‘act out.’ Yep, it takes on a will of its own. IT WILL BE KNOWN! You’ll be doing stuff you know you don’t even want to do, but that Shadow will make you do it anyway because, by god, it wants to be recognized! You don’t have the Unconscious under your control. It has you.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious,
it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Jung
Trying to keep something in the Unconscious? It’s like trying to hold a ball underwater. Ever tried that? Hard. Takes a lot of (emotional) energy. Produces a chronic tiredness that may cause you to take your tiredness out on other people. More than likely, you’ll tire out before it does and it will pop the hell up out of the water and smite you smack dab up the side of the head!
Just claim as your own any of those things you think “huh-uh, not me!” You just have to acknowledge that both the good and the bad are contained in you, are contained in each person. And it’s okay. It’s what makes you whole. You have to ‘contain’ both sides of the opposites.
The Projector Room of the Psyche
What your Unconscious wants you to deal with, it will ‘project’ onto another human, to get it out there where you can at least see it! It was my Unconscious projecting my Animus onto ‘the perfect man’ so that I could see the strong masculine traits I also contained to be able to integrate them into a whole life. Likewise why we ‘project’ those traits that we don’t want to admit we have onto others. This is why we ‘hate.’
Jung: “To the degree that you condemn others and find evil in others, you are to that degree unconscious of the same thing in yourself…Or at least of the potentiality of it.”
Why We Hate.
The aspects of our personality or psyche that we find difficult to accept about ourselves (and deny, deny, deny), we will impose or “project” onto another individual (or group or sect). That’s how the psyche works to get us to recognize we contain both the good and the bad. It will project the ‘shadow’ aspect that we don’t want to claim for ourselves onto another person, another race, another religion, or any one not like us, referred to as “The Other.” The Other holds all those horrible attributes that (we think) WE DON’T HAVE!
“We Bitch Most About Those Things We Do the Worst.”
That’s projection. Your Unconscious/your True Self has gotta get it out there for you to see it in yourself. No harm. No foul to admit it. Makes you whole. Makes you empathetic. Makes you stronger. I have another saying: Repression Is the Root of all Evil. Repressing that admission will only bring harm, dis-ease in your soul and psyche. I love the way Kari Hohne describes the projection of the Shadow in her blog:
“Jung pioneered the study of the Shadow and referred to it as the repressed and undeveloped aspects of the personality. Jung described projection as changing “the world into the replica of one’s unknown face.”
“The replica of one’s unknown (repressed/hidden) face.” That face is the part of you that you don’t like, can’t admit to. That face is exactly the part of yourself you need to give a big fat kiss! And look at what the ‘replica of one’s unknown face’ is looking like in the world today.
If you hear yourself complaining and pointing a finger at a particular friend, or group, those 3 fingers pointing back at you carry a message for you. When you can’t see, admit, own, and accept that you do anything bad like all those ‘other’ people, those are the exact things you think are too horrific to admit could ever be a part of you. And you are always going to project what you can’t see in yourself onto ‘the Other.’
That’s a hard life. An angry life. A tiring life.
You have to shine the light on your dark side, recognize it and accept it. It requires that you own both the good and the bad of every opposite out there.
Here’s the bonus round:
Once you recognize and accept your own failings, shortcomings, bad traits, you will no longer have to ‘hate’ them in others. You’ve hated those things in others because it was easier than to hate them in yourself. (Do you know how much energy hate takes???) You’ll be more accepting. Life will seem to get a whole lot easier. Less angry. Less tiring. What you accept in you, you will no longer hate in others.
I don’t know if incorporating the Shadow is easier to do for women than men. Women, since Eve, have been told we were the root of all evil in the world, even down to every thorn on every rose, according to my Baptist pastor. Perhaps it’s easier for us to accept the dark side and lead it into the light.
Gold Among the Dross
If the Shadow sounds like bad news, remember: we’re talking about opposites, so here’s the good news! The Shadow also contains all the good parts of our selves that we have ripped from us and thrown away (repressed) into what the myths call ‘The Bloody Room.’ How’d those good parts of us get torn off? Bloody stumps thrown into a locked and hidden room? More than likely because someone in authority in our lives—parents, church, teachers, friends, peers, and other authority figures—made us feel bad about those good parts or didn’t accept them, many times shaming us for them. We felt we had to get rid of them to be loved…or to be accepted…or to keep peace…or not to show weakness…or to be a part of the group.
Good parts among the bad-rep parts. Yup, thar’s gold in that thar dross darkness.
In myths, The Bloody Room is always locked and forbidden, but if we have the courage to look, we find gold in the dross (from the Bible also). We find outstanding attributes, traits, talents, feelings and abilities that we have hidden in The Bloody Room, the Unconscious—living quarters of the Shadow. That, in and of itself, should give us courage to look inside. Shining the light on the Shadow and accepting it into the conscious, you will also dis-cover hidden assets that came with your whole Self.
Anima and Animus for Everyone–Why Opposites Attract.
If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.
Parts ‘n Pieces. I’m not sure where I picked up that phrase. Feels like it was in a commercial from years ago, where some chicken sandwich purveyor was slamming some other chicken sandwich purveyor’s chicken as ‘parts ‘n pieces.’ That ring a bell? But it has the alliteration I am drawn to, so it fell into the ‘pertinent-pile.’ It fits when you’re talking about becoming the whole you. Gotta put together the parts ‘n pieces.
Jung lived what would become his Psychology of Individuation. He was his own beta test. I guess if I hadn’t read about Jung living through all that I was experiencing, I probably would have written off my circumstances as there being ‘something wrong with me.’ I was just odd, imagining things, seeing coincidences as pertinent, thinking I was getting some sort of voices, guidance from…where?? Following them and finding more synchronicities to lead me yet further.
But something felt right. Something made me feel that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing. You remember those little rolling toys you pulled along with a string? Yeah, that was the feeling sometimes. Life-changing decisions came up—I’d feel there was a forward pull to one answer—(usually) NOT the easy answer. Answers that were right for me felt wrong to others. No wonder my friends wanted to brush me off with a superficial piece of advice!
If you’ve been a good princess, i.e. female, you are familiar with sacrifice; it comes as a default in your original factory settings. It’s hard to make the right decisions for yourself if someone tells you it’s wrong for them. Or if they hurl the label, “Selfish” at you. This is where those balancing masculine attributes are utilized, to stand up for yourself, make your own decisions, do what is best for you. Sure, there were also other times I just felt totally alone in that dark forest…and I survived. I would come to learn that’s all about opposites and balance (we’ll get to).
On to the parts ‘n pieces—the Persona, the Shadow, the Anima/Animus.
Persona vs Ego, Round 1
The Persona is probably the first to be reckoned with as it is pretty well controlled by the ego. Remember: the ego has to relinquish control to that inner leading.That little ‘knowing’ that something bigger is afoot here…growth…wholeness…the Self. While ego wants you to feel like it’s the boss of you, in actuality, ego is but a very small part of the total psyche, the Self…it just wants to feel BIG.
Persona is the Latin word for “mask.” Your Persona is the ‘face’ you present to other people, how you want to be seen or perceived. How you ‘clothe’ yourself. Many times it does not necessarily match up with what your private life and feelings may be like.
I’ve likened the Persona to the need to identify yourself by the job you have, the house you own, the part of town you live in, the car you drive, the labels you wear, the clubs you join, the school you went to, the friends you have with ‘names’ you can drop, the letters behind your name. It’s that outer image that you want to ‘sell’ to everyone else, no matter what moss and mildew may grow underneath. In dreams, it is many times represented by ‘apparel’ or “outer” clothing. That’s why we ‘buy stuff.’ We need to feed and clothe the outer image, the Persona.
What does becoming whole require of the Persona? If you are measuring your worth by your need to ‘be seen’ as a specific image, here’s another closed eye exercise. Close your eyes and imagine yourself if all that were stripped from you. All of it gone. No great job. No labels on your clothing. No latest car or toy. No friends to define your status. Do you still see you surviving? Would you be able to pick yourself up and function and feel good about yourself? If you feel a shudder and panic, yeah, it’s time to take a look on the inside and fortify! In the words of Van Halen…Jump!
This is a hard one to deal with because you think (or more than likely the ego inserts), ‘what will I have if I don’t have those things?’ ‘Will people even still like me?’ Well, that’s what the whole process is about. Getting something on the inside that is far more valuable than what is on the outside. Something BIGGER! Something more connected.
The Persona wasn’t a high hurdle for me. I didn’t have a degree to wear, no initials after my name. Had a pretty good work ethic, which was usually recognized, so didn’t have to strut to be noticed. Lord knows I couldn’t claim Persona with the clothes I wore! Not a designer label in there, unless it was one from Sam’s. Until I was 35 and worked with a Child and Family Services counsellor, didn’t have much self-esteem, so a Persona would have been an upgrade for me! No self-esteem probably also meant I didn’t have much ego to wrest control from. So, Persona was a borderline ‘gimme’ for me, already under control.
But for some people, not being ‘seen’ as the Persona can seem almost unthinkable and unconquerable. That’s when courage comes in. Remember: “Jump; it is not as wide as you think.”
The encounter with The Catalyst and the feeling that I’d just woken up.
Wandering and wondering, I lean into some inner leading via feelings mostly and active searching for an answer to what am I supposed to do—is it the man, or something more?
Five years of that and I have a ‘feeling’ that dreams are important and start writing them down. Within weeks I find Carl Jung whose psychology incorporates the importance of dreams as a communicator for that inner leading.
The next synchronicity coming up—I ‘happen’ upon a book that answers the persistent “Why?” questions. (Remember, every answer to a “Why” question can always solicit another, “Why?”)
You may remember how I found Carl Jung synchronistically. My trip down the Natchez Trace for a day off, the intriguing mystery of Meriwether Lewis’ death, and off to visit the library for a book to decide for myself if Lewis was murdered or committed suicide. Then seeing Carl Jung among all the other A to Z biographies in that section, and pulling his book off the shelf. The reading of his bio, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” bringing a feeling of ‘elation’ as I read what had been happening to me in the previous five floundering years.
That fateful trip down the Trace was a Thursday, August 22. A note in my journal shows that I started reading the Jung bio on Friday, August 23, with the note, “Elation!” On August 28, less than a week after my sojourn down the Trace, I had this dream:
(From my dream journal) “After starting to read Jung’s autobiography: I had a remember-able dream about going to some foreign country, an “S” country—I just remember it as “S” and cold/white)–and landing in an airplane backward (the tail section first) and thinking it funny with the people I was traveling with—or was sitting beside in the plane—looking out the window and realizing the plane was tail first streaming down the runway. Seems like my travel or seat mates were an older man (Jung?) and an older woman. When I got into the airport/customs area, I realized I had no passport/credentials to enter a foreign country and started to feel dismayed until brightly I realized I would still be able to get into the foreign country. It would just take me 45 min to 1 hour longer to get cleared. A young girl, helpful, efficient, personable, tall, set about clearing me. I was never worried about it at all, just confident it would work out even though I was ‘breaking the rules’ and not doing it like everybody else. It would just take me longer.“
It would be the first of many directive, insightful, instructive, and encouraging dreams that I would have.
From Jung:
“To me dreams are a part of nature, which harbors no intention to deceive, but expresses something as best it can, just as a plant grows or an animal seeks its food as best it can.” …I regarded the unconscious and dreams, which are its direct exponents, as natural processes to which no arbitrariness can be attributed and above all no legerdemain. (trickery or sleight of hand) Carl Jung “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” (MDR) p 161
Apparently my subconscious works on getting me to understand while sleeping. For the nights following the plane dream, it was like I would only feel about half asleep, the other half working subconsciously on figuring things out. I’d sorta figure out parts of things, then semi-wake up to realize it, cement it in my memory. (I’m thinking that probably the subconscious can work better with the rigid, objective mind when it is half asleep.) My interpretation became pretty clear on September 2.
This from my journal:
“I was trying to be admitted to a “foreign land” without the proper “official credentials.” (In real life, I was trying to understand a foreign area—the unconscious…Jung’s psychology) S-country could be Switzerland, Jung’s country. Without the proper official papers—a degree. I was happily confident I would be admitted: it would just require a very small, pleasant, (patient) unruffling delay. Is the foreign land the unconscious rather than just Jung’s psychiatry? The unconscious feels to be the avenue I need to approach now…to see “where” the really “big picture” comes from.”
I may have already mentioned that when you delve into the unknown, time warps, maybe elongates. So I wondered how long the “45 min to 1 hour time” depicted in the dream would take to be “admitted to the foreign country.” Relatively speaking, 45 min to 1 hour delay in Customs didn’t seem too unreasonable. I would later learn that the Unconscious was oft depicted as a ‘foreign land.’
The Unconscious, you may note, has now taken on a Capital “U.” Important.
Is it the Unconscious that is doing the leading here? How long would it take for me to be “admitted” to an understanding of Jung’s psychology? Or would it be the Unconscious itself that would take the time? What is the Unconscious and how does it affect me?
The next synchronicity was just around the corner. I’m driving home from work one day and on a last minute whim, I whip off the interstate to hit up a bookstore. (I remember slashing across two lanes of traffic to make the exit in time.) Whims can be dangerous. This one was worth it. Once inside the store, just browsing, seeing what attracted my attention. I see a sale table. Nice. I like sales. Thumb. Thumb. Thumb through…and there…oh-oh, a big Jung book, “Man and His Symbols.” Hmmm…might as well…if dreams are communicators of the psyche, best to start learning about their symbols, right? And at a sale price!
I would learn that I was neither a singular, nor an anointed case.
No specialty required to get synchronicities or dreams or books dropping breadcrumbs. Jung’s Psychology of Individuation assures that these things happen to anyone who opens themselves up to something bigger than outward appearances. To the hero and heroine who enters the forest on his or her own path to search for the holy grail, their true Selves.
“The Self can be defined as an inner guiding factor that is different from the conscious personality…how far it develops depends on whether or not the ego is willing to listen to the messages of the Self.” Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols, (MAHS) p. 162
Jung’s psychology came from his lifetime of having lived all that he writes about… understanding the human psyche, recognizing how the myths that mankind laid down are pathfinders, and following his own unknown leading, In his bio, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections,” Jung tells about his experiences as a doctor, psychiatrist, and scientist who submitted to the leading of his Unconscious.
He writes,
“…my life has been singularly poor in outward happenings. I cannot tell much about them, for it would strike me as hollow and insubstantial. I can understand myself only in the light of inner happenings. It is these that make up the singularity of my life.”“…my life has been in a sense the quintessence of what I have written, not the other way around. The way I am and the way I write are a unity.” Carl Jung, “MDR”
Aniela Jaffe writes in the forward of the book:
“I often asked Jung for specific data on outward happenings, but I asked in vain. Only the spiritual essence of his life’s experience remained in his memory, and this alone seemed to him worth the effort of telling.”
He retained that which was pertinent to his survival.
Jung’s entire life and life’s work was committed to understanding the human psyche. His early experience with schizophrenics and the mentally ill led him to recognize that many of their delusions were rooted in ancient symbols and myths which he then steeped himself in so that he could understand them. It was his own dreams that gave him answers and clues leading him all the way back to the Alchemists and the Gnostics. This commitment many times caused painful separation from his colleagues, including his break with Freud, but he felt a conviction to stay true to his internal leading. He persevered to provide an answer…that I needed to find many decades later. I particularly loved this line because it plucked a string of my heart and soul, and validated a thought I’d already had in a poem, “Phantom Questions.”
“I also think of the possibility that through the achievement of an individual a question enters the world, to which he must provide some kind of answer.” Carl Jung, MDR, p.318
Be All That You Can Be
Jung’s psychology: The Process of Individuation. I’ve shorthanded it, “the process of becoming whole.” The Army copped it and made a slogan out of it: Be All That You Can Be! (Who knew the US Army was Jungian.) Whole. Becoming Whole. That sorta intimates parts and pieces need to be put together to become whole. Parts and Pieces are next up, but first, here’s why and what the process entails.
“The actual process of individuation—the conscious coming to terms with one’s own inner center…the Self—generally begins with a wounding of the personality and the suffering that accompanies it. This initial shock amounts to a sort of “call,” although it is not often recognized as such. On the contrary, the ego feels hampered in its will or its desire and usually projects the obstruction onto something external.
Or perhaps everything seems outwardly all right, but beneath the surface a person is suffering from a deadly boredom that makes everything seem meaningless and empty. Many myths and fairy tales symbolically describe this initial state in the process of individuation by telling of a king who has fallen ill or grown old.
One is seeking something that is impossible to find or about which nothing is known. In such moments all well-meant, sensible advice is completely useless—advice that urges one to try to be responsible, to take a holiday, not to work so hard (or to work harder), to have more (or less) human contact, or to take up a hobby. None of that helps, or at best only rarely. There is only one thing that seems to work; and that is to turn directly toward the approaching darkness without prejudice and totally naively, and to try to find out what its secret aim is and what it wants from you.” Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 166
Can you feel the excitement that I must have felt reading those words? The call. Breaking of the heart. Boredom. Turn directly into the approaching darkness. What does it want from me? This was me. This was my life. This was my answer!
I’d been bucking the ‘good advice’ of friends and family in an effort to find my answers. No one had understood my dilemma because it was un-understandable to anyone but me. It was my individual path, my path to find, my path to walk. I had started the Process of Individuation, to become the real me. My first step after ‘awakening, I was learning about and incorporating the animus as one of the parts and pieces to become whole. Would I be led to find the other parts and pieces to becoming whole?
I had lived some distant day into another answer. What amazed me was that, the universal description that Jung gave…it couldn’t have been more personalized exactly for me!
“…symbolically this points to the fact that often the urge toward individuation appears in a veiled form, hidden in the overwhelming passion one may feel for another person. (In fact, passion that goes beyond the natural measure of love ultimately aims at the mystery of becoming whole, and this is why one feels, when one has fallen passionately in love, that becoming one with the other person is the only worthwhile goal of one’s life.”) Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 206
Jaw-dropping disbelief, that shaking of your head back and forth when you just can’t fathom what you’re seeing or reading! Universal. For the ages. For every human. My exact circumstances! Validation. Explanation. Exultation!
Synchronicity led me to the book, “Man and His Symbols,” and it turned out to be underscore, underscore, underscore. The Dots were connecting so fast there was an audible clicking! Breadcrumbs? Listen to this (and I’m going to go bold on the things that underscore what we’ve been talking about):
“The individuation process is more than a coming to terms between the inborn germ of wholenessand the outer acts of fate. Its subjective experience conveys the feeling that some suprapersonal force isactively interfering in a creative way. One sometimes feels that the unconscious is leading the way in accordance with a secret design.”
Whew! And, yes, there’s more:
“…in order to bring the individuation process into reality, one must surrender consciously to the power of the unconscious, instead of thinking in terms of what one should do, or what is generally thought right, or of what usually happens. One must simply listen, in order to learn what the inner totality – the Self – wants one to do here and now in a particular situation.” Carl Jung, “MAHS” p. 163
“The ego must be able to listen attentively and to give itself, without any further design or purpose, to that inner urge toward growth.”
I had listened to that little inner voice that ran like a sentence through my head and heart. I chose to give my self, without any further design or purpose, to an inner urge that turned out to be growth. It may not be the easiest, quickest road or follow-through, but it is perhaps the most satisfying. Just look at the encouragement you tap into that comes to keep you reinforced, armored up, and excited to get the next clue! To find the next part of You…to become all that You can be…were intended to be…that you planned for You to be!
So much of what we learn in Life can only be recognized by looking back, sometimes over years or decades. It’s actually very important to press Pause and look back occasionally. We get so lost in eyes-on-the-ground-one-foot-in-front-of-the-other-everyday-minutiae. We need the curiosity to look back over the years. Assess. Where have we been? Where have we come from? See how much we’ve come through. It’s sorta like heading up 30,000 feet in the air and taking a look-see—seeing the beauty of the patchwork quilt land below. Perspective. You can only get a Big Picture from Perspective. Perspective and Paying Attention.
Once awakened, I felt I was ‘tabula rasa,’ blank slate, for what was to happen next. Life continued to roll on in the day-to-day job, home, children, husband, friends. But something felt different. It made me all eyes and ears and heart and mind and feelings and anything else that would help supply data of what to do, what lay ahead, what might be expected of me. I laid any preconceived notions aside, wouldn’t formulate my feelings about beliefs until I collected data.
“Trying to give the living reality of the Self a constant amount of daily attention is like trying to live simultaneously on two levels or in two different worlds. One gives one’s mind, as before, to outer duties, but at the same time one remains alert for hints and signs, both in dreams and in external events, that the Self uses to symbolize its intentions – the direction in which the life stream is moving.” Carl Jung, “Man and His Symbols (MAHS) p. 212
So it is with Paying Attention and the Perspective gained by having lived and thought longer about all this, that I have garnered enough data to postulate several theories and/or beliefs, in my life, for my Life. All in the name of trying to understand just why a Creator wanted us human beings to be a propagated species, and what that Creator might have wanted from us as that species. It may feel like I’m jumping ahead of myself here, but this does tie in with The Catalyst.
Here are the Dots: Synchronistic events led me to The Catalyst who jolted me out of my life of being asleep. What made me suspect (and search to confirm) that this was not just a love affair but something more? Something intended just for me? What was I to do with this awakening? What was expected of me once I felt ‘awake?’ What made me feel compelled to find these answers and not just take the easy road and continue being asleep? It would be a challenge: the man or the mission. And what part was the prince to play once he had awakened me?
One foot in front of the other, one day after the next, one year, then another, I strove to get answers to the myriad of questions that populated my wondering life! I had the “Who?” the “Where? the “When,” even the “What?” But the peskiest of questions is “Why?” I needed the “Why?” Why did this prince find me and how was his kiss able to awaken me?
I was open-minded, open-eyed, open-hearted to what experience came my way. Tabula rasa. Once ‘open’ to the Call to look inside, finding your parts and pieces, doing the work to become whole, you sense you have tapped into some unnamed ether or Part of You that starts throwing breadcrumbs, sending signs and synchronicities, finding the right books, running into the right person, hearing the right words, et al. Where does that come from? How do all those things just ‘show up’ to lead you forward into the unknown?
The Schematic of Life
If you believe you have a soul and that it is eternal—well, you may not, so I’ll qualify that. I have researched and reached my own singular conclusion: I believe not just that we have a soul, but that we are soul; it is the eternal part of us. Therefore, it was ‘before’ and will be ‘after’ and ‘forever,’ right? I believe our soul already knows eternal things—before, during and after. It knows the future (and all possible futures).
Watching my life progress like a series of stepping stones after wakedom, I came to believe we come to this life with a plan, a schematic if you will, of what lessons we need to learn in this life, how to accomplish them with all of the possible gees and haws of free will to choose right or wrong.
It’s like your soul, the place of the unknown (or Unknown), knows which lessons you chose to learn this life, including but not limited to, all the possible-option-futures compounded in the choices you make at every moral decision-time.
In other words, each time you come to a decision, it’s a fork in the road. The decision you make takes you down one fork only. You have chosen one future over the other. The next decision is a fork, and the future that comes with that choice—which looks different from the future you would have had if you chose the other fork.
A new future, a new life at every decision you make. Your life—what you came here to learn, why you chose this particular set of circumstances, the souls you planned to meet and work with or work through—all have meaning. The ups, the downs, the mistakes, the misfortunes, the milestones, the good, the bad, and the boring—all are contained in the Schematic you designed—in the place you were before you were born and will be after you die. In the eternal, you have the wherewithal to know it all, plan it all, in every possible, simple-and-complex decision you will ever make, every future you can exponentially choose.
Oh, it’s not just me who extrapolated this way. Listen to this Dot that was dropped and I picked up on somewhere along the path:
“There’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, called ‘An Apparent Intention of the Fate of the Individual,’ in which he points out that when you are a certain age—the age I am now—and look back over your life, it seems to be almost as orderly as a composed novel. And just as in Dickens’ novels, little accidental meetings and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot, so in your life. And what seem to have been mistakes at the time, turn out to be directive crises. And then he asks: ‘Who wrote this novel?’ Life seems as though it were planned… ” Conversations with Joseph Campbell “An Open Life” (Schopenhauer 1788-1860)
(Note the “—and look back over your life.” He pressed Pause.)
He even says it right there, “little accidental meetings (The Catalyst) and so forth turn out to be main features in the plot” and then, “Who wrote this novel?” It’s very easy for me to get from there to the conclusion of a Schematic. I also want to make it perfectly clear, I knew none of this when I took that first leap into the deep dark abyss. I want credit for that courage! I was following something that can only be described as some “inner” urging. And it’s not that I’m that special.
After accumulating more knowledge and understanding with more reading, more learning, more asking questions, I now believe we all have some inner urging to find our true Selves, not just play assigned roles our entire life. Hence, the Myth: the knights being called to search for the Holy Grail on their own paths.
Here’s another Dot that I recognized and put in my ‘pertinent pocket’ from the book a father wrote of his daughter’s descent into madness and his search in every nook and cranny for the mysterium that would bring her back.
Carl Jung has written about the importance of seemingly happenstance events in our lives. He called it synchronicity, implying that there is a logic and a destiny to such events, a hidden blueprintthat derives from our own particular natures, or the force of the world around us, or perhaps from a supernatural power beyond human understanding. To the extent that our conscious choices move in harmony with this design, our lives find fulfillment. If this is so, there exists the possibility that the suffering and the joy, the defeats and the final victory, were all part of a highly personal yet supremely cosmic pattern that remains, and may always remain, a mystery.” Frederich Flach, M.D. in “Rickie”
Looking at life this way should give a certain reassurance. Certainly it paints a bigger picture to the minutiae. You can learn (sometimes hard) lessons without feeling sad, disillusioned, disappointed or bummed—knowing they are merely lessons that you chose to go through. You can sorta lean into them knowing you’re learning something…keep looking for that. What is the lesson? Keep heart, eyes, ears open. It’s your story; you already know the outcome—like a Perry Mason program where you know, you’ll win the case!
So when I asked, ‘How do you know you know someone you’ve never met before?’It’s because your Life overlays with the Schematic you planned…
Have you ever met someone and immediately fell into link-step with them in practically every perfect way? You both remark, “It’s like I’ve always known you.” Well, you probably have always known them—you just don’t remember on this plane.
What about those people who say, “I always knew I was going to be a (fill-in-the-blank, singer, sculptor, scientist, et al) from the time I was real little.” And they became GREAT at it? Were they born to do that? How did they know?
Geniuses, prodigies in all the arts and sciences—can’t be all ‘nurture.’ Where did the ‘nature’ come from? Did they bring it with them in their soul? And if so, how did their soul get that much talent or intelligence?
It just seems that some people were born to do what they do (or did) in life. It’s like they planned it, or it was predestined. Read “A Prayer for Owen Meany.” Everything in the Schematic of his peculiar life was designed for just one life-saving cataclysm.
The goal of Life may be trying to align your decisions with the Schematic you designed—“Right Choosing.” Leaning into some unconscious directing for making the right decisions to learn the lessons you came here to learn—the good, the bad, the boring.
Have you ever Landed in a Plane Backwards?
If you are new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it is best to start at Post 1 and continue in numbered sequence, like connecting Dots.
