Depth of personality and depth Psychology juxtaposed to make a box to crawl into or out of. A conceptual box of quandaries and upside-down opportunities. If I crawl in, can I get out? Will I want to? Like an Alice in Wonderland world where up is down and down is up – a dizzying array of directions all pointing the way. The work, the handiwork of generations laid before us, to meander the steppingstone path. But we are sliding and gliding away. Not touching the earth – in thin air, we are high from the thin air intoxicated and happy. Don’t look down at the dizzying valleys and vortexes and tumble.
Remember me to myself. I recall a tall tale made to fit and outfit. A shimmer of recollection, a shining shadow of dancing. Moving into the present and gone. We expect the golden tabernacle to be laid at our feet or would it be a yellow winged enchanted incantation? We are flat and slanted – too thin to begin. Waffling and wafting all dialogue and tributes. Give me something to hold on to – some fat and hair and bone. Let me coax and coddle my way with sweet talk. Coming around to the backdoor like in a shotgun house where the front and back door are diametrically in line. A through shot through. Under hand and sleight of hand a magician’s trick to feign a play. These are the lessons of the day! Not to be grabbed and grasped at, batted at, and battled, a sweet surrender to catch the glistening catch in the net.
The path – the way – they do not say. Can I catch a ride? Do I hide? Do I slide? Glide? How to find the way as they say? Is it an enigma without an answer? Do I need a guide to find it? Do I need to look at a book? If it’s within me, how can I touch it? These are a few pertinent questions I have in mind trying to tease the “raveled sleave of care.” A wound coil of thread to mend the mind – a piece makers task to patch and piece. A slow roll to pace but progress made is progress kept. Step wise forward and retread – to mark the place. No haste to make but steady footfall on the race.
What does Shakespeare say about the raveled sleave of care?
“Sleep that knits up the raveled sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labor’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
https://www.collinsdictionary.com › dictionary › sleave
1. Obsolete. a. a fine silk thread separated from a large thread. b. untwisted silk that tends to mat or tangle; floss · 2. Rare. any tangle, as of ravelings
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth
William Shakespeare cuts to the heart of the matter and eloquently points to a deeper law. Sleep as the leveler and the elevator, sleep as the trickster and the clown, the changeling of our imagination waiting in the wings for applause. I bow down at the hem of sleep and prostrate myself. I fabricate new ways to tease the edges of sleep and paw at its soft textures.
Conventions of change and transmutation are best case scenarios and approximations. Change and adaptability and the ability to live comfortably in our own skin is the science of modern man’s existential mission. If I try to mold myself to form, I must form the mold, try to stuff myself into the mold and apply some technique to make the molding take. I want to cut to the chase, forget rhetorical elaborations and embellishments and forgo the torturous contortions and flagellations. Going straight to the task at hand without the intermediary, without the interpretation and the canon of law to interface at the membrane level. I enjoy transmutation anyway I can get it – an unexpected turn of events and the possibility of doors opening on to new avenues make me a player. I want to get led down the garden path and maybe into the secret garden even through the back gate.
The mind gets stuck – geared in place without constant play and interplay. Plasticity is the word of the day because every day we are ostensibly a different person because of the brain’s plasticity. I demur to Shakespeare and his soliloquy, “To be or not to be”. Could he have been referring to clinging to yesterday’s denuded self in place of reveling in personal transformation anew every day. Renew, accentuate, and maintain are the orders of the day. Movement like a winding watch is the tool making the machine roll. Sitting on our laurels will not make the cut. We are moving animals with spinning heads. Wind, wind, the works to make them work! It is static which we must filter out to hear ourselves clearly. The noise, the rumbling and rambling of people trying to get our attention. The quiet of past times – a milieu to be cultivated to tease sense from the daily cacophony. A quiet respite from sound, sounds so nice. My brain is ringing with sounds, and it needs a rest. I am planning a quite retreat time in my day when the cream can rise to the top of the can.
Trying to get a line on a story line of your life can be like trying to catch a fish with your hands if you have had trauma in your past. I am speaking from personal experience and not as a professional or paraprofessional. The reason I am speaking about this is because as much as we try to avoid this topic in thought or conversation it is the block and the stumbling block which is the key stone. Navigating these tender memories are best dealt with by a supportive helper such as a therapist because treading into deep waters alone can be treacherous, with beguiling sink holes and unseen headwaters. A helping hand to support and rescue in times of distress is the smart backup plan; a guide who has gone on the trek – like hiring a Sherpa when trying to stage up Mt. Everest. The Sherpas are acclimated to extreme elevations because they were born and bred in the Himalayas and have a deep knowledge of the dangers and have specialized skills to stay safe. To get past the crevasses to a staging ground to rest for a while and stage up when you are rested, and conditions are clear. With hindsight this is how I now look at my progression to higher ground. I see the necessity of proceeding slowly and taking care of yourself along the way and hiring the Sherpa as a guide.
Delving into deeper waters is an exciting venture but one that holds trepidation. I remember stepping off the cliff into the abyss. I must have had faith that I would find a landing because I couldn’t go back and moving forward into the unknown was very scary. Luckily, I found a support system in the classroom setting while I was studying Drug and Alcohol Counseling. The daily structured space served as outpatient therapy for nearly a year! Many topics in class became triggers to my over sensitive psyche. I believe it was that cushion of a supportive space which gave me the strength to soldier on because I was floundering like I couldn’t get air. The care of myself which free time after class afforded me helped to get me on firmer footing. I started doing my yoga practice again which helped to bring me back into my body. I was not embodied; my mind was floating detached in disarray. Being detached made daily life uncomfortable and ineffectual. I could function on an elemental level, but at higher-level functioning I was not productive. All was pain and dissociation covering deep wounds.
Stepwise moving forward, building the blocks up from the ground. There is hope for the future even when darkness keeps us from seeing things clearly. There is a way forward – small baby steps marching toward joy, and happiness. Mapping the empty spots, the deficits and holes, the painful parts so the healing can start. Points on the map like GPS signals can point the way out of the dilemma. The holes we try to avoid coalesce to become black holes sucking in everything around them. Happiness and joy get consumed – causing us to feel like we are shrinking, so we go into survival mode.
How to plug the black holes? Let me begin with an example of what a black hole is like from the inside out by an image which appeared during a guided meditation session. I was flummoxed by the startling image of a large cardboard box. Immediately I was off kilter and defensive. I didn’t share my experience at the time in the round robin after the meditation session ended. The box started to occupy my mind. Impending danger – embodied – a visceral gut punch which left me reeling. I wrestled the box for a few months before I fully addressed the disruption the box was causing me. My shock and dismay eventually dulled by desensitization of time wearing away. Like a black hole – it was contorting my everyday life with unresolved tension. I was helpless in its grip; the anxiety led me to deconstruct the box to find out it was empty! The existential message the box expressed was explicit, simply depicted and eloquently designed. The plain brown cardboard box was me – empty! It was very painful to process, and it took time for me to assimilate. Slowly I came back to life. Turning the box inside out, it became a platform for a new beginning is one way to look at it. The amazing imagery which helped me to transform my life was a box wrapped in plain brown paper.
I attended the Refuge Recovery meeting, not knowing the protocol I participated in the meditation session which is the focal point of the meetings. Toward the end of the guided meditation session the image emerged from the black background to the foreground and caught me off guard. The box laid at my feet; a quixotic image was somehow upsetting. Deciding what to do with it was on me. Blinders compressed my line of sight, leading to tunnel vision. Tunnel vision led to hibernating, resting, and healing and the ability to come out the other side into the light. The subconscious mind can heal and be a guide for healing. This is my mantra now and my prayer.
Complexes are constellations of holes in the subconscious – acting together forming “blackhole” force fields – gravitational like pull affecting the entire personality. The tug and pull of the deeper content which torque and wrenches our foundation. Because we are unable to access the deeper content, we are unconscious of it. The symptoms are the color code of what lies beneath. Something is there – active but hidden. We seek to be free, to feel free, which means to be free to live without the pull of unconscious complexes and undercurrents guiding our life. The mantra to follow is that the truth will set you free, the truth of your own story.
The problem lies in how to tease the truth out of the matrix of the formed persona and personality. The persona is ground and fore-ground – a working model. If we start fiddling with the working model, how can we function as usual? This is a conundrum and to get around it some special planning is necessary. An active support system with a therapist is the baseline. The care of the physical self, like getting plenty of rest and good nutrition is paramount. I also like the regime described by Dr. David Sinclair in his book Lifespan. It is something to consider – adding the nutrients that he personally subscribes to can smooth the course by supporting cognition and the physical body. I have made more progress and deeply experienced transformations since being on the regime he writes about as his own personal regime. I found many of the nutraceuticals before I found Dr. Sinclair. His work reinforced my own search; he is a trail blazer! Preparing the ground for excavation is wise and self-care with solid footings is too.
Looking for ways to access the subconscious is at the core of many religious practices. It makes sense to look for experiences that are extracurricular – out of the ordinary experiences if we are looking for meaning in our life. At a fundamental level we try to access meaning through practices that align with traditional religious practices. For instance, in Hinduism the chanting and ritualized service with music, singing, and elaborate mood trappings is set to make a dreamy state of mind. The Catholic Church also has the trappings of ritualized stagecraft to suspend the thinking mind and to access a deeper level of experience. These are tricks to reach a place which is unpredictable and squishy. The faithful devote their entire lives to the promise of a payoff with a lifestyle thrown in to boot. Like a plug and play answer to the existential question of who we are – we should not be surprised when we are disappointed with the answer. The question remains how to access the well-spring of information we need to clear our lives of the rubbish from the past which keeps us hamstrung?
Let us call it the little engine that could – the moniker of a primer in my early education. A powerful effect can be elicited from a small tweak; in my estimation a worthy bet to make because it is within us. The quest for deeper knowledge about our human potential led me to circumnavigate unlikely terrain. I stumbled on to a topsy-turvy landscape by accident, where the counterintuitive rules and space and time are micronized. Instantaneous and time bending melded together – warping the continuum like riding a rainbow, sucking up the colors – jet fueled colors which propel and propagate.
In the post-modern world everyone is designated to find their own answers on how to wrench meaning from life. The nuclear family is expected to function independently and tie it up with a bow. C.G. Jung wrote about the Catholic Church, that the priest functioned as the absolver of the confessor and the mediator of anxieties for his flock. He thought the therapist usurped the priest’s role when priests lost that role. Jung discovered or rediscovered that the subconscious also contains what he called the collective consciousness. Here lies the well-spring of creativity, meaning, and individuation. Jung said individuation is the major life task each person is designed to accomplish. I have had many jump-starts which helped to set my course and I am grateful for them.
Thinking about the nature of the subconscious and its working cohort, the collective unconscious and trying to find an analogy, I began to think of A.I. where the accumulation of input is resynthesized into new content. The background data gathering happens unawares, and the processes churn unbeknownst to the conscious mind. Then the data in the form of imagery pops up seemingly out of nowhere which can be jarring and off putting. Learning to generate and process these kinds of images is a way to jump-start the individuation process because this is the fuel needed for individuation. Leaving important content on the cutting room floor could result in living a smaller life and a loss of potential happiness. We can expand and enlarge our perspective like flowering which is automatic and dependable. It is the stoppage of the flow of information and processing of the information which is the killjoy, and the repercussions of that stoppage can be unpredictable. Neurosis and narcissism can be countered by fostering the potential of the person. The way forward is inward and outward, an enigmatic prescription and one with a bitter bite. As in the culinary arts – a bite of bitter to balance savory enhances the meal; meaning that this course of action can be torturous as it is rewarding. It demands an unswerving allegiance to recover what has been lost and lies hidden.
The religious proclamation of fealty and adherence in having faith to reap the benefits of “believing.” Keeping faith being an imperative in finding the answers you are seeking; it is also important to have substantial results from a realistic process which doesn’t take years of practice. This is why I like to say – cut to the chase and get down to business. A gentle coaxing of my body on my own terms and in my own time is what feels safe to me. I found a practice which dangles a promise of hope in action, and I can see benefits for more people. I am not prophesying. Having reaped benefits far beyond what I could have hoped for, I am speaking from personal experience.
Carl Jung used a methodology he called, “active imagination” to wring, content from the subconscious mind. Honestly, I am not sure what it involved or if he explained it in a way which can be transmitted and taught? My methodology is different and comes at the problem from the backside almost literally! The beauty of it is that it is reliable, constant, and easy! Relaxation is at the core of the method, which has the added benefit of being both destressing and strengthening at the same time for the course ahead. The routine is straight forward and easily replicated. I almost always experience something unique and useful even if it’s just a good nap. Open mindedness allows the space to be filled as your practice proceeds. I call it counterintuitive because the process is not directed toward a goal, yet it delivers in evocative and esoteric ways.
The constellations of holes in the personality which revolve and coalesce into gravity defying “black holes” are what I call complexes. Similarly aligned dysfunctional arrays of patterned thinking evolved around similar circumstances and occurrences can become drawing forces guiding our personality. Breaking the chain of repeated patterns of habitual behaviors by breaking the monotony of a straight-jacketed life is available to everyone. We can escape to live a free life. Breathing is the engine powering the body and the movement of the body in a patterned way sets up a cascading effect leading to unexpected responses. Exercise and breathing feed upon each other to oxygenate the body. I believe oxygenating the body is one of the activities driving the cascading process leading to a perfect storm.
I wonder if an autocratic leader like Putin or Xi or Erdogan could go through the process of individuation? I believe they would try to prevent their populous from experiencing anything as empowering as that. But could they themselves participate in the process? I cannot equivalently deny the possibility. I am hesitant to reveal all the potential possibilities though Carl Jung has retained the corner on the market on that content. The lies manufactured necessarily to keep their underlings – underling and the façade they project over reality must prevent them from overcoming the many obstacles necessary to accomplish the personal goal of individuation. The preeminent tool to pry the truth from the lie is the same tool required to find our truth from our own fictional account of ourselves. You cannot be a consummate liar on one hand and use the other hand to reveal the truth. I do not think it is a viable path for dictators and liars because of the scrupulous attention to truth in action that is necessary to unveil what lies behind the veil. Here lies the conundrum; you can save your soul, or you can sell your soul for power. The road quickly forks, and the way back can become quickly impossible. Here lies the power of trauma to lend the arm to wield the tool to unwind the film, process the film and edit the story. To make a tool of the pain from trauma is counterintuitive but like a vaccine that originally was a killed version of the vector and used to stimulate the immune response; the remnants of pain, disappointment and shame are bits from trauma which can be used to stimulate the quest for recovery. There must be a push to get past the status quo and on the route to homeostasis, an equilibrium of healthy functioning.
A second image occurred under similar circumstances while doing my exercise routine. Coming to a state of repose when the thinking mind fades out without it being noticed; the image presented with startingly rapidity. It expressed and receded into the background from whence it came, photographic but in dark sepia tones. It was immediately apparent what it was even though the darkness of the tonal display. Words identifying it rang in my ears – the details crystallized and then it was gone. Crystal clear as a photograph and disappeared in seconds. Another mystery, another gift laid on my lap. What to do now – process and piece the tailings of coincidences to see what has been wrought. The image succinct – clear as a bell – tailings of a message but from where and to whom. Through the sepia toned background, a shape evoked – a round shallow pan perfect in dimension – a tarnished darkened brass pan for a small weighing scale. Inside the pan six, six-sided finely wrought metal cylinders nestled together as if for the ages. Bullion or brass weights, each collared with a gold band of embellished design. Lovingly wrought evidenced by the beautiful craftmanship – as if pictured and stored on a rolodex of memories – indelible. A treasure chest opened and closed with a snap like whip lash. Available and evocative then disappeared leaving behind a trace of memory.
Love in action is the name of the game because love is an action word! The words, “I love you”– words that oft have rung hollow with me like a slippery slope of sentiment to be avoided like a dangling participle unsure if acting as verb or adjective? Modern romantic love is a work in progress not made to order. The coinage of the realm is envisioning a future together and working together clarifying a shared vision. Love as a platform – a scaffold of strength and support enabling each person on their journey toward individuation. Carl Jung said that individuation is the life goal of every person and I concur. The process of individuation happens over the lifespan with the incorporation of all the unique aspects of each person enabling all aspects hidden and unseen to come online. The capital we are inherently endowed with becomes our working capital; the wealth of a lifetime is the freedom to roam our inherited domains. These are the gifts we give ourselves to make every day like Christmas. Not hyperbole, not a dream but of the dream world. The source whence this power comes is the nebulous world we retreat to every night. To get a handle on the information that lies hidden in this secretive, sleeping, world we need a methodology; a way to retrieve a bit of information to bring it back into the daylight. We are miners for a heart of gold just like Neil Young said!
Raconteuring 