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INITIATIONS: universal processes that spark transformation · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
0:06
Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
0:09
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
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Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19
Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
0:22
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:27
Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod.
0:37
Speaker 3: Hello everyone. Today we're going to take on an interesting topic, initiation.
0:44
Speaker 3: And if we just look at the word initiation, which
0:49
Speaker 3: comes from the Latin initium, it means a beginning. So
0:56
Speaker 3: the word is familiar when we talk about the initial
0:59
Speaker 3: thing or to take initiative. It all carries this idea
1:05
Speaker 3: of a first movement. a first new step in a direction.
1:12
Speaker 3: When we talk about initiation in a formal sense, we're
1:16
Speaker 3: talking about recognizable systems that facilitate personal growth from one
1:25
Speaker 3: state to a higher state. Jung was very interested in
1:30
Speaker 3: initiation because in his client's dreams, he saw that there
1:35
Speaker 3: were certain symbols of transformation, which he wrote extensively about.
1:42
Speaker 3: He was interested in how the inner life of a
1:46
Speaker 3: person facilitates that movement from an initial state, the prima materia,
1:54
Speaker 3: into an advanced state. What are the stages people go through?
1:59
Speaker 3: Can that be facilitated? Can outer rituals actually facilitate those
2:06
Speaker 3: same processes or not? But the archetype of changing from
2:12
Speaker 3: a lesser thing to a greater thing is visible in
2:17
Speaker 3: all ancient cultures and is still a strong and powerful
2:22
Speaker 3: presence both in Jungian analysis and in the world at large.
2:28
Speaker 3: So we'll talk about initiation today.
2:31
Speaker 2: And before we jump in, I just want to remind
2:34
Speaker 2: you all about Dream School, which is our 12-month online
2:38
Speaker 2: program that teaches you how to work with your dreams.
2:42
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2:45
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2:49
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2:52
Speaker 2: you through Dream School. So consider joining. You get to
2:56
Speaker 2: spend time with us every month. So we hope that
3:00
Speaker 2: you'll take a look. You can go to our website, thisunionlife.com,
3:04
Speaker 2: and check it out.
3:05
Speaker 4: What I'd like to add is at least go take
3:08
Speaker 4: a look at our website. Give Psyche a chance to
3:12
Speaker 4: rise up, respond, get lit up. Just take a look
3:17
Speaker 4: and see what happens inside you.
3:20
Speaker 2: That's good advice.
3:22
Speaker 4: It's initiatory.
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Speaker 3: It could be the beginning of something big.
3:27
Speaker 4: Exactly. I'm really taken with what you said, Lisa, the
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Speaker 4: part of that we go from a lesser thing to
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Speaker 4: a greater thing. And I think everybody's pretty familiar with
3:43
Speaker 4: that in terms of the life stage initiations that I
3:51
Speaker 4: think probably all cultures have had from from baptism to
3:56
Speaker 4: confirmation to marriage to childbirth, and that we have marked
4:02
Speaker 4: the stages of life as going from one thing to
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Speaker 4: another in basically a growth process, including end-of-life initiations of
4:17
Speaker 4: being sent on to the afterworld, to whatever is greater.
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Speaker 4: I'm curious about how that happens in the psyche, which
4:30
Speaker 4: of course is what Jung was so interested in as well.
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Speaker 2: Well, of course, ritual initiations have been of interest to
4:38
Speaker 2: anthropologists for a long time. I'm holding this classic book
4:43
Speaker 2: that we all had to read in training, The Rites
4:46
Speaker 2: of Passage by Arnold Van Ginnep. And he outlines in
4:50
Speaker 2: here that every initiation follows a common pattern. And maybe
4:55
Speaker 2: we can sort of start by elucidating that pattern and
4:59
Speaker 2: see if it recurs later in the life of the
5:02
Speaker 2: psyche without these kind of formalized rights. And those stages
5:07
Speaker 2: are first separation. And then there is kind of a
5:12
Speaker 2: liminal space and in betwixt and between space. And then
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Speaker 2: there's a reintegration or reincorporation or a return. So this
5:20
Speaker 2: is the fundamental structure. of a ritual initiation.
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Speaker 4: The word that is coming up for me is transformation,
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Speaker 4: that these initiatory processes change our state. And this is
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Speaker 4: an old trope, but sort of like the caterpillar changing
5:47
Speaker 4: into a butterfly, that there is a definitive state between
5:55
Speaker 4: the two states in the psyche. And yet there is
6:00
Speaker 4: also room for a process in what you just said, Lisa,
6:03
Speaker 4: about marking the separation and then a kind of in-between
6:08
Speaker 4: state and then really incorporating the change and being reintegrated
6:16
Speaker 4: in a new state.
6:19
Speaker 2: Well, there's this kind of collective cultural aspect of initiations,
6:24
Speaker 2: and maybe just to stay there for a second, you know,
6:27
Speaker 2: traditional cultures usually have these formal rights. And the big
6:31
Speaker 2: one is the rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.
6:35
Speaker 2: And that's the one that a lot of anthropologists have
6:37
Speaker 2: written about. And David Tacey, who's a Jungian scholar, writes
6:43
Speaker 2: about this conversation that he had with an Aboriginal elder
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Speaker 2: who explained that in their culture, adolescence lasts five days.
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Speaker 2: And that is the span of time for the initiation
6:54
Speaker 2: that before that five days, the person's a child, there's
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Speaker 2: the five day initiation, and then the person's an adult,
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Speaker 2: which of course is vastly different than what we have
7:03
Speaker 2: in our culture. But when you talked up about a
7:07
Speaker 2: change of state, I mean, some of that is that
7:10
Speaker 2: we're viewed as different by the outer world, we have
7:13
Speaker 2: a different status in the culture. And that, of course,
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Speaker 2: does impact our inner state. It does influence our psyche.
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Speaker 2: But initiations often have both this outer aspect and an
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Speaker 2: inner aspect as well.
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Speaker 4: And isn't that the hope, the purpose, that the outer ritual,
7:35
Speaker 4: the outer acts of the initiatory process, let's say from
7:40
Speaker 4: childhood to adulthood, as you just mentioned, effect and inner change.
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Speaker 3: I think that that's the hope, certainly, with an outer initiation.
7:52
Speaker 3: But from my perspective, all initiations, whether they're recognized as
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Speaker 3: spontaneous or whether they're induced by a cultural ritual or
8:02
Speaker 3: a spiritual ritual, has to activate an archetype. And the
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Speaker 3: archetypal activation is potent enough that it reshapes the meaning
8:17
Speaker 3: and the way libido flows in the individual's psyche. For instance,
8:22
Speaker 3: one initiation that I think many mothers would say that
8:28
Speaker 3: discovering that someone is pregnant and then feeling the way
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Speaker 3: the whole body, but the internal landscape changes as the
8:38
Speaker 3: archetype of the mother activates in the psyche. And many fathers,
8:45
Speaker 3: sometimes supporting the mother's gestation, but oftentimes after the child
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Speaker 3: is born, feel the activation of the father archetype in them,
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Speaker 3: and it radically changes their priorities, their sense of relationship
9:01
Speaker 3: to the world. It captures and redesigns. So many initiations
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Speaker 3: happen just So normatively that we don't necessarily think of
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Speaker 3: them as initiations, but again, an archetypal activation takes hold
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Speaker 3: of the psyche and it makes it different in a
9:19
Speaker 3: way that is generally kind of permanent. Yeah.
9:23
Speaker 4: What I'm thinking about is something you've used a lot, Lisa,
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Speaker 4: as a way to illustrate archetypal activation, which is that
9:35
Speaker 4: if we think of salt, for example, in solution and
9:40
Speaker 4: let's say a glass of water, what we need to
9:43
Speaker 4: do is to heat the water and salt will crystallize
9:48
Speaker 4: out of the water. It's as a unique and distinct
9:53
Speaker 4: crystalline structure. And other things have their own unique crystalline structures.
9:58
Speaker 4: It's interesting. in the water and it needs to be
10:03
Speaker 4: activated by, you know, let's say heating the water so
10:08
Speaker 4: that the water evaporates and the crystalline structure that was
10:12
Speaker 4: ready to be activated appears. And I think the parallel
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Speaker 4: to initiation is really really potent that the outer ritual,
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Speaker 4: rite of passage, culturally sanctioned ceremony, hopefully crystallizes the archetype
10:34
Speaker 4: inside the individual so that the inner change takes place.
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Speaker 3: And if it doesn't activate the archetype, then the individual
10:43
Speaker 3: might receive information, cultural information, even religious information, fundamental attitudes
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Speaker 3: may actually not change. LS Right.
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Speaker 2: So you could go through a rite of initiation in
10:58
Speaker 2: an outer form and really not be changed. So Joseph,
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Speaker 2: you were really speaking to the way, and I think Deb,
11:05
Speaker 2: you were getting at this too, the way that archetypes
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Speaker 2: mobilize psychic energy. They mobilize it, they shape it, they
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Speaker 2: move it, that something new takes form or takes shape
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Speaker 2: when an archetype gets constellated. And I want to say
11:23
Speaker 2: a little bit about the liminal phase, because in some sense,
11:27
Speaker 2: that's the really key phase of an initiation. So liminal
11:32
Speaker 2: means threshold. It's a space that's neither here nor there.
11:36
Speaker 2: If you think about the threshold in a doorway... You're
11:41
Speaker 2: not in one room, you're not in the other. You're
11:43
Speaker 2: in an in-between space. And psychologically, that is marked by
11:48
Speaker 2: kind of threshold experiences. It's marked by disorientation. It's marked
11:54
Speaker 2: by confusion and a kind of abasement, a kind of
11:59
Speaker 2: lowering of the threshold of consciousness when we're in a
12:02
Speaker 2: kind of liminal space. It can be very pleasant, but
12:05
Speaker 2: sometimes it's not pleasant at all. But this is structurally
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Speaker 2: part of most initiatory ceremonies, that there is a space
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Speaker 2: that's in between. And that's when the trials are experienced.
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Speaker 2: That's when the descent is experienced, if there is a descent. Psychologically,
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Speaker 2: what that looks like is that we might find ourselves
12:29
Speaker 2: in a betwixt and between place in life, where, Joseph,
12:33
Speaker 2: to use your example, we're pregnant. We're not maiden anymore.
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Speaker 2: We're not a mother yet either. We really are in
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Speaker 2: this in-between space and that can feel uncomfortable and disorienting
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Speaker 2: and requires, challenges us to kind of reintegrate a new
12:50
Speaker 2: sense of our reality. And I want to bring in
12:54
Speaker 2: a quote here from Michael Mead. My very favorite book
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Speaker 2: about initiation is Michael Mead, The Water of Life, Initiation
13:03
Speaker 2: and the Tempering of Souls. Just a great, great book.
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Speaker 2: And here's a wonderful quote in which he gets at this,
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Speaker 2: the kind of, what is that like psychologically to be
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Speaker 2: in that liminal space? So he says, the dynamics of
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Speaker 2: initiation begin in youth, but recur at critical crossroads throughout
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Speaker 2: the course of life. Initiation becomes the ruling archetype during
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Speaker 2: the struggles that accompany the onset of each new life stage.
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Speaker 2: The psyche's sense of initiatory process also gets triggered whenever
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Speaker 2: a person is unexpectedly thrown into circumstances of separation and disorientation.
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Speaker 2: The psyche interprets any radical change as an initiatory adventure.
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Speaker 2: I want to read that last line again because I
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Speaker 2: think it's so perfect. The psyche interprets any radical change
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Speaker 2: as an initiatory adventure. So if you think about that
14:05
Speaker 2: with your own life, sometimes when some curveball has been
14:08
Speaker 2: thrown at you, you know, I'm thinking about a woman
14:12
Speaker 2: that I worked with who's given me permission to share
14:15
Speaker 2: just a little bit of her story. You know, she
14:18
Speaker 2: was going along about her life just fine when she
14:24
Speaker 2: unexpectedly fell in love with someone who was very inappropriate.
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Speaker 2: And she was married and this was quite surprising and
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Speaker 2: it disrupted her sense of who she was and it
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Speaker 2: shook things up and it was a kind of initiation.
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Speaker 2: She had to reincorporate a new sense of herself with
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Speaker 2: this new information and she had to face the trials again.
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Speaker 2: which are often part of an initiation. So I love
14:58
Speaker 2: that we can think about it as, you know, what
15:01
Speaker 2: are some difficulties that we've been through, some unexpected struggles
15:05
Speaker 2: that we have, and how were they initiatory?
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Speaker 4: You know, I wonder if at the very beginning, it's
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Speaker 4: such a way to adjust how we see things, that
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Speaker 4: if it is disruptive and it's a radical change and
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Speaker 4: we're disoriented, Do we read that as misfortune and, oh God,
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Speaker 4: why is this happening? Or do we read this as
15:33
Speaker 4: it's initiatory? Because if it's initiatory, then there's a call
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Speaker 4: to ride out to meet it. Whereas if it's some
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Speaker 4: kind of injustice or trauma, we may shrink back from it.
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Speaker 4: So it's really very encouraging to think of radical change
15:57
Speaker 4: as initiatory.
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Speaker 2: I love that ride out to meet it. What a
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Speaker 2: great image. Thank you for that.
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Speaker 3: I think that, as you were saying, Lisa, in the reading,
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Speaker 3: that anything that happens in the life that we are
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Speaker 3: exposed to, that the ego cannot defend against, activates some
16:20
Speaker 3: kind of archetypal level. And I Right now I'm thinking
16:24
Speaker 3: I have a family member who's just been diagnosed with
16:28
Speaker 3: stage four metastatic cancer and it's inoperable and there were
16:34
Speaker 3: very little signs of it coming on. And I used
16:38
Speaker 3: to work as a medical social worker in a burn
16:41
Speaker 3: trauma unit where devastating sudden things had happened that could
16:46
Speaker 3: not be reversed. And so there is a process when
16:51
Speaker 3: the archetype of death constellates in the psyche as a reality,
16:59
Speaker 3: as a true possibility that one is moving towards. And
17:06
Speaker 3: how it changes how people feel about their bodies, their
17:10
Speaker 3: attitudes towards their loved ones, their relationship to spirituality often.
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Speaker 3: And there's a very intense purification of the attitudes that
17:26
Speaker 3: are not congruent with preparing for the process. They come
17:32
Speaker 3: to crisis very, very quickly. So I think the appearance
17:36
Speaker 3: of a terminal disease is an initiation, and as you
17:41
Speaker 3: were saying, the liminality, the several months that my family
17:47
Speaker 3: member may have as they transition into active dying, is
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Speaker 3: a liminality where all manner of things are going to
17:57
Speaker 3: change in the psyche. Jung spoke about doing dream work
18:02
Speaker 3: and analysis with some individuals who came in and only
18:07
Speaker 3: had several months left in their lives and he observed
18:13
Speaker 3: a profound pressure in the psyche to resolve and to grow.
18:21
Speaker 3: What he remarked on is that the psyche itself didn't
18:25
Speaker 3: seem concerned about the degradation of the body. It didn't
18:30
Speaker 3: seem worried at all that the body's life would cease.
18:37
Speaker 3: That the prioritization of individuation coming into knowledge of who
18:45
Speaker 3: we could have been or how that would have felt
18:49
Speaker 3: becomes the the task that demands attention, often as the
18:57
Speaker 3: archetype of death appears. So that's one kind of an
19:00
Speaker 3: initiation that is both natural and shocking and archetypally activating.
19:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
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Speaker 4: You know, in every initiation, starting with birth, there is
19:16
Speaker 4: a separation. sometimes a real cutting away, as in the
19:22
Speaker 4: cutting of the umbilical cord, and a cutting away in
19:27
Speaker 4: many rites of initiation from childhood into adulthood. And then,
19:33
Speaker 4: of course, at death, there is another separation, a separation
19:40
Speaker 4: from bodily life on this planet into whatever is next.
19:47
Speaker 4: And I think you know, in a way to see
19:49
Speaker 4: it as initiatory is really revelatory because in a lot
19:54
Speaker 4: of initiations, especially childhood into adulthood, there are trials, sufferings, hazings, punishments,
20:04
Speaker 4: you know, physical challenges. And the initiate who is most
20:10
Speaker 4: often a boy, what we would consider a boy, really
20:14
Speaker 4: does not know what is coming next. And some of
20:19
Speaker 4: these rituals are pretty severe and result in death. And
20:24
Speaker 4: I think, you know, our last initiation is we do
20:28
Speaker 4: not know what is coming next, but we will undergo
20:32
Speaker 4: this initiation.
20:34
Speaker 3: I think in that purely psychological way that with the
20:40
Speaker 3: the diagnosis, we begin that process of separation from the
20:44
Speaker 3: beliefs and attitudes and particularly the expectations that have been
20:49
Speaker 3: woven into the psyche and into the body and into
20:52
Speaker 3: the minds of others, that those things no longer are
20:57
Speaker 3: tethered to the ego or slowly are being released and
21:04
Speaker 3: cut away. And then moving towards acceptance, which is that
21:09
Speaker 3: new state, even before one leaves the body, but as
21:13
Speaker 3: one prepares for that ending process.
21:19
Speaker 2: Well, Deb was mentioning trials, which we also touched on before.
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Speaker 2: I think trials are a part of every initiation. You
21:28
Speaker 2: go through something difficult. You go through something frightening. You
21:32
Speaker 2: go through something that maybe you don't know if you're
21:34
Speaker 2: going to survive it. And I think this is because
21:38
Speaker 2: at bottom, and I believe this is something that Mircea
21:41
Speaker 2: Eliade says, every initiation is about the mystery of death
21:47
Speaker 2: and rebirth. And this was true of the rites at Eleusis,
21:54
Speaker 2: that it was explicitly about that. And if you'd been
22:00
Speaker 2: initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, you were a different person
22:04
Speaker 2: because you had faced death and you understood what that meant.
22:08
Speaker 2: But even in smaller initiations, it is life and death.
22:13
Speaker 2: I'm going to give you an example. Most people are
22:16
Speaker 2: actually quite terrified of public speaking. If you Google sort
22:20
Speaker 2: of like what are people's top fears, public speaking is
22:23
Speaker 2: way up there. And I can certainly relate to that.
22:27
Speaker 2: But if you think about it, being in front of
22:30
Speaker 2: a room of 400 people and standing up to talk
22:34
Speaker 2: is like facing death in a way. It is facing
22:37
Speaker 2: a trial that you're really not sure you're going to
22:40
Speaker 2: come through the other side. It does feel that to
22:43
Speaker 2: the body anyway. Maybe in your mind, it's not the
22:46
Speaker 2: big deal. What's the worst thing that's going to happen?
22:48
Speaker 2: But some part of you feels like you're going to
22:50
Speaker 2: die anyway. if you are afraid of public speaking. And
22:53
Speaker 2: so I'm thinking about one modern day or one initiation
22:59
Speaker 2: rite that has survived into modern day, and that is
23:03
Speaker 2: the bar and bat mitzvah, some of which are a
23:07
Speaker 2: fairly kind of pale form of initiation, really just an
23:12
Speaker 2: excuse to throw a big party. But I've been to
23:15
Speaker 2: my fair share of them, and there was one That
23:19
Speaker 2: was just remarkable because, you know, this young girl stood
23:24
Speaker 2: up and not only read her Torah portion, but led
23:29
Speaker 2: the whole service. She was up there in front of
23:32
Speaker 2: this packed temple. You know, there must have been several
23:36
Speaker 2: hundred people there. And she led the whole service in Hebrew.
23:40
Speaker 2: I was really impressed. And I thought, no, you are
23:44
Speaker 2: a different person after you do that as a 13-year-old.
23:47
Speaker 2: You're different. you know something about yourself that you didn't
23:51
Speaker 2: know before. And I think that's always true of initiation
23:54
Speaker 2: because we're tested. And I believe that adolescents have a
23:59
Speaker 2: need for that. And Michael Mead talks about that. He
24:02
Speaker 2: says something like, you know, young people yearn to throw
24:06
Speaker 2: themselves into the fires of life. You want to know
24:09
Speaker 2: what you're made of. And once you've tested yourself, You're bigger.
24:16
Speaker 2: You know, there's a very interesting op-ed piece in the
24:18
Speaker 2: New York Times today, actually, about a simple treatment for
24:23
Speaker 2: childhood and teen anxiety, which is just let them do
24:26
Speaker 2: things by themselves. Let them stretch their wings. And I
24:31
Speaker 2: think that we want to test ourselves so that we
24:34
Speaker 2: can hold our head that little bit higher and our
24:36
Speaker 2: back a little bit straighter because we know, you know, hey,
24:40
Speaker 2: if I can survive that. What else can I do?
24:43
Speaker 2: Or I shouldn't be worried about these other things. So
24:47
Speaker 2: there's a real need. And if we don't provide those
24:50
Speaker 2: structures and those experiences to young people, they'll often seek
24:55
Speaker 2: them out on their own. So, you know, you have
24:58
Speaker 2: kids who join gangs and there are elaborate initiatory rituals
25:03
Speaker 2: to join a gang. I'm thinking of my own daughter who,
25:06
Speaker 2: when she was 12, she found out about this program
25:11
Speaker 2: to go overseas. And she just came to me. She
25:14
Speaker 2: had never been more insistent about anything. She said, I
25:17
Speaker 2: want to do this. And she sat right down and
25:20
Speaker 2: she filled out the whole application. And she was 13
25:25
Speaker 2: years old. We put her on a plane to France.
25:26
Speaker 2: She didn't speak a word of French. And it was hard.
25:31
Speaker 2: She had a hard time. It was a language immersion.
25:35
Speaker 2: She was living with a It was difficult. It was
25:40
Speaker 2: a difficult three months. But she came back, and she
25:43
Speaker 2: knew something about herself she hadn't known before. So I
25:47
Speaker 2: think that initiation tests us, exposes us in some sense
25:52
Speaker 2: to our worst fears, and therefore inures us against future
25:57
Speaker 2: anxiety and makes us bolder, stronger, and fuller versions of ourselves.
26:03
Speaker 4: I really like that. And what I'm... wanting to go
26:07
Speaker 4: back to is experience. That the young woman who led
26:15
Speaker 4: the whole service at her bat mitzvah experienced that in
26:23
Speaker 4: her body, her mind, her voice, the spiritual dimensions, all
26:28
Speaker 4: of it, the audience, the interaction. She was immersed in it.
26:35
Speaker 4: And so was your daughter. She was immersed in a
26:38
Speaker 4: whole different world of French speaking people. That's an important
26:45
Speaker 4: component of initiation. It seems a little facile, but I'm
26:49
Speaker 4: appreciating the profundity and the depth of it that we
26:53
Speaker 4: have to really live it. It can't just be intellectual knowledge.
27:01
Speaker 4: And neither can it be sort of a bolt of
27:05
Speaker 4: lightning just striking us unawares. We have to bring ourselves
27:10
Speaker 4: to it and really be immersed in it, be able
27:14
Speaker 4: to use it so that it is a test from
27:18
Speaker 4: which we emerge different and bigger. Otherwise, it's trauma. And
27:26
Speaker 4: that may be the shadow side of initiations. I think
27:29
Speaker 4: there is a shadow side to initiation.
27:32
Speaker 3: Certainly a failed initiation. Maladoma Somi, in one of his books,
27:37
Speaker 3: in the Dagarren tribe initiations, talks about the boys, the
27:42
Speaker 3: young men being trained, and then the testing was taking
27:47
Speaker 3: them into the jungle, burying them up to their necks,
27:51
Speaker 3: and then leaving them alone for a night. And with
27:56
Speaker 3: only whatever psychic, capacities that they have to protect themselves
28:02
Speaker 3: from whatever might occur. And that some of the boys
28:09
Speaker 3: did not survive that. Some of the boys had remarkable
28:12
Speaker 3: stories of encounters that then turned away from them. And
28:17
Speaker 3: some of the boys simply did not have to face
28:21
Speaker 3: what might have been dangerous. There is a belief that
28:27
Speaker 3: if the psyche is forced to activate in a certain
28:31
Speaker 3: psycho-spiritual way, that it will then exert an observable potency
28:39
Speaker 3: in the environment, and if that activation cannot happen, then
28:44
Speaker 3: one has failed to make the transition, and that can
28:48
Speaker 3: sometimes mean the person does not survive, and this is
28:53
Speaker 3: speaking in an ancient environment, but it speaks to The
28:58
Speaker 3: idea of being put under so much stress that the
29:02
Speaker 3: ego must fail and that other depths of the psyche
29:08
Speaker 3: must come forward and add themselves to the personality in
29:15
Speaker 3: order for the person to then emerge from the ground,
29:19
Speaker 3: as we were saying, this death and rebirth, and actually
29:22
Speaker 3: be a different person with different capacities with something they
29:28
Speaker 3: know about themselves, whether it's that I can lead the
29:33
Speaker 3: congregation for an hour, whether I can lecture to 500 people,
29:37
Speaker 3: whether I can show up in a country and not
29:41
Speaker 3: speak the language and be up against the enormous anxiety
29:46
Speaker 3: and uncertainty and discover the activation of a potency inside
29:52
Speaker 3: of the psyche that one then lays claim to I'm
29:55
Speaker 3: that person who gives lectures to several hundred people I'm
29:59
Speaker 3: that person who goes to a foreign country and learns
30:04
Speaker 3: that language.
30:06
Speaker 4: I really like that phrase that you said, Joseph, about
30:10
Speaker 4: that the ego must fail. And isn't that nice that
30:14
Speaker 4: something else comes on board as you stand up in
30:18
Speaker 4: front of the congregation? Of course, your ego is in
30:21
Speaker 4: a very literal way still there, but something else is
30:26
Speaker 4: taking you on a ride down a whole new river
30:31
Speaker 4: of life. And the same thing with your daughter, Lisa,
30:36
Speaker 4: that you're like, okay, you get off the plane and
30:39
Speaker 4: you don't quite know where you've landed. And ego is
30:43
Speaker 4: not going to be able to figure it all out.
30:46
Speaker 4: It is different and it is scary and it is
30:50
Speaker 4: exciting and it is a lot of other things. I'm
30:53
Speaker 4: thinking about some of the initiation of being buried up
30:57
Speaker 4: to your neck. I mean, that really does mean that
31:02
Speaker 4: ego has to fail. And I'm thinking about some spiritual
31:07
Speaker 4: initiations where ego surrenders to something greater. And maybe they're
31:14
Speaker 4: all variations on the same kind of theme. But one
31:18
Speaker 4: way or another, we have to learn that our egos
31:22
Speaker 4: are not all there is to us.
31:25
Speaker 2: Deb, I just picked up on that same sentence that
31:27
Speaker 2: Joseph said. It's almost like an initiatory right is designed
31:32
Speaker 2: so that the ego will fail. And by extension, you
31:36
Speaker 2: could say that anything that overwhelms the ego is initiatory.
31:41
Speaker 2: And I want to say that I believe that we
31:46
Speaker 2: could make a case that trauma is initiatory. People that
31:50
Speaker 2: have been through terrible, terrible traumas First of all, I
31:54
Speaker 2: remember when I worked with Vietnam vets, you know, my supervisor,
31:57
Speaker 2: I'll never forget, you know, listening to these horrible stories.
32:01
Speaker 2: She said to me, don't forget, they survived. The thing
32:06
Speaker 2: that happened to them may be awful, but they survived it.
32:09
Speaker 2: You know, you can listen to it. You can listen
32:12
Speaker 2: to it because they survived it. And they need to
32:14
Speaker 2: know that they survived it. And you can remind them
32:16
Speaker 2: of that. The ego may have failed, but some part
32:20
Speaker 2: of them, you know, either By some means, they manage
32:24
Speaker 2: to survive it. And then they know something that they
32:28
Speaker 2: didn't know before, and they know something that most people
32:30
Speaker 2: don't know. They know how violent and awful and frightening
32:35
Speaker 2: and devastating war can be, for example. They really have
32:39
Speaker 2: had that experience, Deb, to go back to what you said.
32:42
Speaker 2: So it initiates you in a very dark way into
32:46
Speaker 2: a version of reality that most people don't have access to.
32:50
Speaker 2: I want to say the other thing that I'm thinking
32:52
Speaker 2: of with that about the ego failing is our propadoidicum exams.
32:58
Speaker 2: And in analytic training, we had to take these exams
33:01
Speaker 2: and they were oral exams, most of them, which again,
33:05
Speaker 2: turns up the notch on the anxiety. You walk into
33:08
Speaker 2: a room with usually three analysts and you have to
33:13
Speaker 2: start ready to talk about what you know about the
33:16
Speaker 2: topic and anything could come up. You don't know what's
33:19
Speaker 2: going to happen. And you don't have, it's not written,
33:23
Speaker 2: so you can't just sort of count on just your intellect.
33:26
Speaker 2: And I remember being told, and I think it's true,
33:29
Speaker 2: a lot of it is anxiety management. So it's not, yeah, yeah,
33:33
Speaker 2: you need to study. You need to know some material.
33:36
Speaker 2: But really, you need to be managing yourself. And it's
33:39
Speaker 2: very much like being buried up to your neck. Like
33:42
Speaker 2: there's only so much that you're going to be able,
33:44
Speaker 2: your intellect is going to be able to do in
33:46
Speaker 2: that room. You've got to find some other parts of you.
33:50
Speaker 4: Those exams and the inner process that is required in
33:58
Speaker 4: order to engage the outer process of being buried up
34:02
Speaker 4: to your neck in front of a group of analysts
34:07
Speaker 4: somehow made me think about dreams and that dreams can
34:12
Speaker 4: be initiatory. As anyone who has had a really.
34:19
Speaker 4: Impactful, perhaps life-changing dream can attest that you are a
34:29
Speaker 4: different person. There's a different awareness after that kind of
34:36
Speaker 4: an experience. It's all inner. So I'm going to tell
34:40
Speaker 4: my story about being in my first analysis, which took
34:45
Speaker 4: place shortly after the War of 1812, And my analyst said,
34:54
Speaker 4: let us work with dreams. Well, I was having a
34:56
Speaker 4: life crisis. We had just moved to a whole new
34:59
Speaker 4: part of the country, didn't like my job, I didn't
35:02
Speaker 4: know anybody. I mean, I didn't really see what dreams
35:06
Speaker 4: had to do with any of what I considered to
35:09
Speaker 4: be my essential problem. But I figured, well, okay, this
35:14
Speaker 4: must be, she must know more than I do, and
35:17
Speaker 4: so we'll do dreams. So I faithfully brought in dreams.
35:22
Speaker 4: It was kind of a not unmeaningful but not deeply
35:27
Speaker 4: meaningful process either until I had a different kind of dream.
35:36
Speaker 4: And the dream was that I was riding some sort
35:39
Speaker 4: of big, shaggy animal, kind of like an elephant but shaggy.
35:44
Speaker 4: Let's call it a cross between a buffalo and an
35:47
Speaker 4: elephant but huge. And I was riding somewhere in the
35:51
Speaker 4: southwest where I had never been, but that was the
35:54
Speaker 4: kind of scene that it was, along everything very dusty
35:59
Speaker 4: and ochre-colored. And I came to a canyon that was
36:03
Speaker 4: bordered by these big rocks so that there was a
36:07
Speaker 4: narrow passage through which one went. And on top of
36:12
Speaker 4: one of the rocks at this narrow passage stood a
36:15
Speaker 4: woman that was... obviously in a priestess role with long
36:21
Speaker 4: hair and long gowns and so on, in a position
36:25
Speaker 4: of regal authority. And, of course, I stopped to figure
36:30
Speaker 4: out what would be required for me to go through
36:34
Speaker 4: this gateway, in effect, into the canyon. And then along
36:39
Speaker 4: came a man on a horse, and the horse was galloping, lickety-split,
36:45
Speaker 4: And he reined in the horse at this gate and
36:48
Speaker 4: looked up at the priestess. And the priestess gave a
36:51
Speaker 4: sign that said, halt. He looked up at her and
36:55
Speaker 4: he went, ha. And then he dug his heels back
37:00
Speaker 4: into the horse's ribs and galloped into the canyon as
37:04
Speaker 4: if she were nothing. And poof, she incinerated him. All
37:10
Speaker 4: of a sudden, in a flash of sort of light
37:13
Speaker 4: and fire, Kabingo, he was gone. I was riveted sitting
37:18
Speaker 4: on my beast still outside these gates in the canyon.
37:23
Speaker 4: I was so blown away by the power and by
37:27
Speaker 4: what had happened, I woke up. So, you know, of
37:33
Speaker 4: course I'd wanted to get through the canyon and get
37:36
Speaker 4: permission and so on and so forth, but that dream
37:39
Speaker 4: was initiatory. Something happened in me that I experienced the
37:47
Speaker 4: reality of the psyche, the reality of a dream. What
37:52
Speaker 4: could really happen in a dream to me? And that
37:57
Speaker 4: was the first dream that really impacted me of now
38:01
Speaker 4: I get it why we're doing dreams. Now I get it.
38:06
Speaker 4: Something is alive in me. I didn't create this experience.
38:11
Speaker 4: It was landed on me and in me in very
38:16
Speaker 4: much the same way that an outer world initiatory right activates,
38:24
Speaker 4: as you were saying earlier, Joseph, an archetype.
38:27
Speaker 2: And how did it change you?
38:30
Speaker 4: Of course, we talked about the dream, but the dream
38:33
Speaker 4: interpretation honestly didn't matter. What mattered was that there was...
38:40
Speaker 4: as we've already mentioned, a real experience of the failure
38:44
Speaker 4: of ego and that something else could have an impact,
38:51
Speaker 4: a radical life-changing impact. And there was inside me this
38:59
Speaker 4: canyon where I was going to need an official permission
39:06
Speaker 4: and a rite of passage to enter. But boy, did
39:09
Speaker 4: I get it that entering that canyon was going to
39:13
Speaker 4: be a big deal.
39:15
Speaker 3: It reminds me of a dimension of formal ritual initiation
39:20
Speaker 3: where a ritual drama is performed for the initiate and
39:25
Speaker 3: they are in the audience. And this happens often in
39:28
Speaker 3: Scottish Rite Freemasonry. where there is a ritual drama and
39:33
Speaker 3: maybe a number of people are observing it. And of
39:37
Speaker 3: course this goes to the origins of theater itself. That
39:41
Speaker 3: theater was part of the ritual of the Temple of
39:46
Speaker 3: Dionysus and was a kind of initiation into the world
39:52
Speaker 3: of the gods and their influence on human beings. But
39:58
Speaker 3: by observing a ritual drama, one is offered a perspective,
40:02
Speaker 3: a wideness of perspective. And I think the tradition in
40:08
Speaker 3: that formal presentation of ritual drama a dimension of suffering,
40:22
Speaker 3: which is central to the entire mystery tradition. We can
40:27
Speaker 3: become wise that the high priestess must bestow permission before
40:35
Speaker 3: we move into the valley and take risk. And we
40:38
Speaker 3: can integrate that wisdom that we don't have to careen
40:42
Speaker 3: into the canyon because we now have information about how
40:46
Speaker 3: that domain functions. We know something that we didn't know before.
40:52
Speaker 3: Now the ego could still decide to disregard the wisdom
40:56
Speaker 3: in the dream and careen through the canyon and just
41:01
Speaker 3: take its risks. Or it could step back and say,
41:05
Speaker 3: I now know something and therefore I can orient differently
41:08
Speaker 3: without having to make an unwise decision and then have
41:15
Speaker 3: to learn through suffering. I think also in that internal place,
41:22
Speaker 3: the body and the individual psyche respond very similarly to
41:27
Speaker 3: something that is imagined or something that physically occurs to
41:33
Speaker 3: the body. And this was one of the discoveries of
41:37
Speaker 3: Fritz Perls. And he used that so many times in
41:41
Speaker 3: his therapy, for instance, in the famous empty chair exercise.
41:47
Speaker 3: Somebody had a lot of unfinished business with a father
41:52
Speaker 3: or a mother that had passed away and it seemed unsolvable.
41:56
Speaker 3: He or she is gone, we'll never have that conversation.
42:00
Speaker 3: And then Fritz Perls, through experimenting, found that if you
42:07
Speaker 3: can imagine vividly enough that your father or mother are
42:10
Speaker 3: sitting in a chair before you and initiate a conversation,
42:14
Speaker 3: that some part of the psyche in that ritual drama,
42:19
Speaker 3: we'll still experience that as a kind of reality that
42:24
Speaker 3: changes the attitude inside of us. And that speaks to
42:29
Speaker 3: that liminality. We can be between the worlds and witness
42:35
Speaker 3: the mystery of the priestess, the knight and the valet,
42:39
Speaker 3: or we can be in the liminal space and witness
42:43
Speaker 3: the vision of the parent who is across the room.
42:46
Speaker 3: and effect something or something is effected in the psyche.
42:51
Speaker 3: And that is such a central part of ritual initiation
42:55
Speaker 3: because they are symbolic gestures often. The feeling is that
43:00
Speaker 3: the symbolic motion will still be interpreted as valid and
43:06
Speaker 3: real by the psyche and therefore effect change.
43:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also there's something about the symbolic experience that
43:15
Speaker 2: transposes ordinary experience into a higher key, a broader, more
43:23
Speaker 2: capacious understanding that connects us with a kind of cosmic
43:27
Speaker 2: sense of meaning. And it can also transform suffering. It's
43:34
Speaker 2: very much like what you were saying, Deb. If we
43:35
Speaker 2: think about a trial in our life as an initiation,
43:38
Speaker 2: then we can ride out to meet it because... It
43:42
Speaker 2: has this telos to it. Deb, I think your dream
43:46
Speaker 2: is just, it's kind of just bone chilling, that dream.
43:51
Speaker 2: And I love that there's this kind of gateway into
43:55
Speaker 2: the canyon. It's a real image of threshold. And there's
44:01
Speaker 2: even this kind of archetype of the guardian of the
44:05
Speaker 2: threshold and that you must get permission to pass through. which,
44:11
Speaker 2: which I think is an aspect of initiation. You know, it's, um,
44:16
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting because again, to go back to
44:19
Speaker 2: our training back when we were in training, you did
44:23
Speaker 2: have to ask for permission. You had to ask for
44:25
Speaker 2: permission to take your exams and you might be told, no,
44:30
Speaker 2: you can't, you know, you can't pass. You can't do
44:33
Speaker 2: that yet.
44:33
Speaker 4: And I was, I.
44:38
Speaker 2: Think they've done away with that now, but, um.
44:40
Speaker 3: Logisius has to face, you know, what is it, the Sphinx,
44:45
Speaker 3: and has to answer the riddles. Well, the Sphinx will
44:48
Speaker 3: kill him. He wants to stand before the high priestess
44:52
Speaker 3: and to engage in the right way in order to
44:55
Speaker 3: get passage. And we in the Propodoticum, it's not only
44:59
Speaker 3: the right answers, but constellate, much like Melodomasomes being buried
45:04
Speaker 3: in the jungle. You can have the right information, but
45:07
Speaker 3: you still have to constellate the right, psycho-spiritual field in
45:13
Speaker 3: the interaction in order to, you know, get the blessing
45:17
Speaker 3: of one kind or another and how, uh, ineffable all
45:22
Speaker 3: of that is when it's playing out. I thought that
45:25
Speaker 3: I would like to just go through a little bit
45:29
Speaker 3: more detailed, some of the processes that happen in a
45:35
Speaker 3: formal mystery school initiations. that I think might be interesting
45:41
Speaker 3: to just tease out a bit more that most ritual initiations,
45:48
Speaker 3: particularly in the modern world, this might happen in any
45:52
Speaker 3: number of different organizations that are sincere about the process
45:55
Speaker 3: of archetypal activation. It starts one with something happening in
46:03
Speaker 3: the individual where they are motivated to seek out the
46:10
Speaker 3: mystery as a solution. Just that initial feeling that there
46:17
Speaker 3: is something more or something wrong or something that is
46:22
Speaker 3: desperately needed that sets somebody in motion, that we begin
46:28
Speaker 3: to listen, to hear, to seek. In most of the
46:34
Speaker 3: ancient mystery traditions and even in modern Freemasonry, which has
46:38
Speaker 3: a footprint through that ancient time, somebody had to knock
46:43
Speaker 3: on the door. You know, the Temple of Zeus didn't
46:46
Speaker 3: walk around, you know, saying, ringing a bell, saying, anybody
46:50
Speaker 3: who wants initiation, you know, I'm over here. Actually, something
46:55
Speaker 3: had to awaken. When the individual sought out or seeks
47:00
Speaker 3: out initiation, one of the early dialogues is, framing and
47:08
Speaker 3: accepting the current state of ignorance. That there's no room
47:15
Speaker 3: to facilitate an archetypal activation if one doesn't believe that
47:21
Speaker 3: there's any value in it. So initiation can't happen if
47:26
Speaker 3: we have nothing more than a perverse curiosity. And that's
47:30
Speaker 3: why some people will, for instance, take psilocybin and have
47:36
Speaker 3: an experience and they'll say, that changed my life. Somebody
47:40
Speaker 3: else will take psilocybin and say, that was the best
47:43
Speaker 3: rock concert I ever had. Which are wonderful in a
47:47
Speaker 3: certain way. Depending on whether the seeking has activated in
47:53
Speaker 3: the soul, it changes what's constellated and where we go. Similarly,
48:01
Speaker 3: as analysts, People call us up and they say, oh,
48:05
Speaker 3: I'd like some therapy or I have a problem. And
48:09
Speaker 3: they want to do a bit of work and maybe
48:10
Speaker 3: learn a bit about dream analysis. And that's lovely and
48:14
Speaker 3: they have a positive experience. But that's quite different from
48:19
Speaker 3: somebody who's coming because they have a curiosity about the self.
48:24
Speaker 3: They've had some dream or read a book. Someone has
48:29
Speaker 3: conveyed to them that there is some possibility some transpersonal
48:34
Speaker 3: center that is making a demand upon them and that
48:37
Speaker 3: they are in that journey. And how different the experience
48:42
Speaker 3: is for us as analysts escorting people in the different paths.
48:49
Speaker 3: So the framing of the current state has to do
48:51
Speaker 3: with the discovery of the prima materia. And ritualistically, almost always,
48:59
Speaker 3: the initiate comes often in a white or black robe.
49:03
Speaker 3: And makes a declaration of ignorance. I don't know what
49:07
Speaker 3: the light is. I'm new. I'm a novice. I am
49:12
Speaker 3: coming here seeking what I do not know. And that
49:18
Speaker 3: is a readiness of attitude. which is ritualized. But again,
49:22
Speaker 3: you can't put water in a cup that's full, and
49:27
Speaker 3: we can't inflict enlightenment on each other, and we can't
49:31
Speaker 3: be forced to know something that we don't want to know.
49:35
Speaker 3: So the first piece is the discovery of a true
49:40
Speaker 3: and legitimate desire, makes us want to have an authentic engagement.
49:47
Speaker 3: Once we find that, there is that separation which can
49:50
Speaker 3: look like any number of different things. In the Eleusinian mysteries,
49:56
Speaker 3: there was the travel by foot along miles, to the
50:02
Speaker 3: city of Eleusis. Am I pronouncing that right?
50:06
Speaker 4: Eleusis, 13 miles outside Athens.
50:09
Speaker 3: There was all the preparation in Athens, but then there was,
50:13
Speaker 3: take your shoes off, you're going to walk for miles.
50:17
Speaker 4: There was a year's worth of preparation before you could
50:21
Speaker 4: go to the sacred rites at Eleusis.
50:23
Speaker 3: Exactly. So all of this preparatory work that is done
50:28
Speaker 3: with the ego, learning, training, And often the discipline. You know, we,
50:36
Speaker 3: that movie Karate Kid, that was in the early 80s
50:41
Speaker 3: or something, and this kid goes to Mr. Miyagi, you know,
50:44
Speaker 3: he wants the mysteries. He wants to become this powerful
50:48
Speaker 3: martial artist. And Mr. Miyagi says, clean, wipe on, wipe off. Clean,
50:54
Speaker 3: wipe on, wipe off. And the kid's just furious about it.
51:00
Speaker 3: And Miyagi reveals to him that The discipline, the repetition
51:04
Speaker 3: of the motion, the building of physical strength, the ability
51:08
Speaker 3: to concentrate over these long periods, this is all preparatory work.
51:13
Speaker 3: Giving you the secrets without any fundamental muscle isn't going
51:19
Speaker 3: to be useful. You won't be able to make anything
51:23
Speaker 3: out of it. So I love that year of preparation.
51:27
Speaker 3: And the preparation and the travel are have a different place.
51:32
Speaker 3: And in the preparation, which often happens when one arrives
51:37
Speaker 3: at the portico of the temple, so we get to Eleusis,
51:42
Speaker 3: so we get to the temple of Athena, we get
51:46
Speaker 3: to the magical organization. And before one can go into
51:52
Speaker 3: the inner temple, there are rites of purification and consecration.
51:56
Speaker 3: And that can be quite literally. a baptism by water,
52:02
Speaker 3: and then a declaration or an oath. But purification and
52:07
Speaker 3: consecration at a deep level is again very much like analysis.
52:14
Speaker 3: Because purification is coming into enough self-knowledge that we can
52:19
Speaker 3: separate what is indigenous and true in our psyche and
52:26
Speaker 3: what has contaminated us. which is very much what Jung said.
52:31
Speaker 3: We've been colonized by the collective and we have to
52:36
Speaker 3: sort out what's really me and what's my complexes or
52:41
Speaker 3: what did I hear from my preacher or my third
52:45
Speaker 3: grade teacher that really doesn't belong inside of me. So
52:49
Speaker 3: purification is that sorting, filtering and consecration is the process
52:56
Speaker 3: of dedicating to a purpose, which again is an ego
53:02
Speaker 3: decision that the silver chalice will never be used for
53:06
Speaker 3: anything other than the sacred wine. We're going to protect
53:09
Speaker 3: it from any other uses. So the capacity both to
53:14
Speaker 3: consecrate oneself or an aspect of oneself, or to be
53:19
Speaker 3: fully and totally aligned with a higher purpose without evasion,
53:25
Speaker 3: even the capacity to do that, And then there's a transition,
53:30
Speaker 3: the liminality, from the portico of the temple into the
53:35
Speaker 3: inside of the temple. And there often was another ritual
53:38
Speaker 3: space that would be set up. And those were often
53:41
Speaker 3: the places of the tests, and literally the tests. What
53:46
Speaker 3: are the names of the planets? What are the secrets
53:50
Speaker 3: of these colors? What does this numerical thing mean? The propodoidicums.
53:58
Speaker 3: You will have to at least have prepared intellectually, even
54:02
Speaker 3: though you haven't had these experiences. But if you don't
54:06
Speaker 3: have wisdom integrated into the ego, you won't be able
54:10
Speaker 3: to hold on to the extraordinary experiences if they were
54:14
Speaker 3: to happen. Jung writes about this in Alchemy, that he
54:18
Speaker 3: wants people to read Alchemy so that you can capture
54:21
Speaker 3: the experiences if they actually happen and hold on to
54:25
Speaker 3: them conceptually. If one passes the tests, then one is
54:31
Speaker 3: introduced into the temple and there are a series of
54:35
Speaker 3: trials and confrontations that happen ritualistically and the figures represent
54:43
Speaker 3: the internal forces that oppose the enlightenment. And some of
54:48
Speaker 3: them are easily recognizable like indolence, you know, that wonderful, uh,
54:55
Speaker 3: children's movie, The Neverending Story, and in the swamps of sadness,
55:02
Speaker 3: Atreyu loses his horse, or that if he doesn't give
55:06
Speaker 3: the princess a name, then nothing will take everything over.
55:11
Speaker 3: It'll just destroy all meaning if he doesn't make a
55:15
Speaker 3: decision about how to name the princess. So indolence is
55:20
Speaker 3: often represented, and there is a ritualistic response which allows
55:24
Speaker 3: one to pass Violence is often depicted in a ritualistic response.
55:31
Speaker 3: Often intellectualization will be represented. Materialism is always represented. And
55:38
Speaker 3: there are many other, undoubtedly depending on the culture. What
55:43
Speaker 3: are the obstructions to the archetypal activation? Part of the
55:50
Speaker 3: trials also are involved, particularly in the ancient world, with
55:55
Speaker 3: wearing down the ego so that it cannot or is
55:58
Speaker 3: less likely to defend against the archetypal activation. So fasting,
56:04
Speaker 3: staying awake for days or even longer, walking, singing, and
56:10
Speaker 3: dancing for hours and hours and hours so that the
56:14
Speaker 3: ego descends down into that abasement and is closer at
56:20
Speaker 3: least to that unconscious realm secondary to whatever's inside of there.
56:27
Speaker 3: And then comes the revelation and the encounter. And often
56:32
Speaker 3: that was ritualized. It might be that the high priestess
56:35
Speaker 3: comes in this extraordinary costuming and masks of gold and
56:40
Speaker 3: fire around her and a retinue, you know, of others
56:46
Speaker 3: that comes upon the initiate who is just barely stand
56:50
Speaker 3: on their legs. and speaks and behaves in a way
56:54
Speaker 3: that the god or the goddess suddenly feels absolutely real
57:00
Speaker 3: in the psychic life of the individual and remains real.
57:05
Speaker 3: And something is imparted, often an object is shown, which
57:10
Speaker 3: is sacred, and then there is a withdrawal and reintegration.
57:15
Speaker 3: The god or goddess withdraws, the initiate sometimes passes out even,
57:21
Speaker 3: They're escorted, fed, tended. And then there is a whole
57:27
Speaker 3: other educational cycle that's provided by the fellow adepts in
57:32
Speaker 3: terms of how does one live going forward now that
57:37
Speaker 3: you know this truth? And that often is an acceptance
57:40
Speaker 3: of certain behaviors and vows. So any number of those
57:47
Speaker 3: parts can happen in a dream, just as you were saying, Deb,
57:50
Speaker 3: with your dream. They can, parts of that can happen
57:54
Speaker 3: naturally through pregnancy, a terminal disease. For boys, I would
58:00
Speaker 3: say not to be overly provocative, but the first ejaculation,
58:03
Speaker 3: the god Phallos has been introduced and that boy is
58:08
Speaker 3: never the same. Like the body is transformed. The body
58:11
Speaker 3: did something shocking and unprecedented and something is known in
58:17
Speaker 3: the psyche on an archetypal level that can't be unknown.
58:21
Speaker 3: And that the ego's got to figure out how to
58:24
Speaker 3: be in relationship to the great godfellows, the first menses,
58:29
Speaker 3: the goddess Demeter has arrived. And one cannot unknow that.
58:36
Speaker 4: That's really wonderful that we can't unknow things. When something happens,
58:43
Speaker 4: it happens. I mean, even something as sort of concrete
58:47
Speaker 4: as learning to ride a bicycle, once you know how
58:49
Speaker 4: to ride a bike, even if you don't ever do
58:52
Speaker 4: it again, you know how to ride a bike. And
58:57
Speaker 4: I think that is a wonderful image for the change
59:00
Speaker 4: in state of when you know something, you've lived it,
59:05
Speaker 4: you've experienced it. And through all these stages, often, you
59:11
Speaker 4: cannot unknow it.
59:12
Speaker 3: It is now part of you, and you'll make of
59:16
Speaker 3: it what you will.
59:18
Speaker 4: And you're bigger.
59:19
Speaker 3: You are bigger.
59:21
Speaker 4: One way or another, you know something you didn't know before,
59:26
Speaker 4: and that has enlarged you. Even in the case of trauma,
59:32
Speaker 4: like with your Vietnam vets, Lisa, you can't unknow it.
59:38
Speaker 3: And Viktor Frankl offers something to all of us that
59:43
Speaker 3: have undergone trauma and offers a way, a possibility, where
59:49
Speaker 3: trauma can become a kind of initiation. Frankl survived being
59:53
Speaker 3: in a concentration camp. He had many thoughts about how
59:58
Speaker 3: he was able to survive that. And he also was
1:00:03
Speaker 3: horrified because massive numbers of camp survivors were committing suicide
1:00:12
Speaker 3: once they were released. Because living with what had happened
1:00:19
Speaker 3: to their families, to themselves, to the nation, it was
1:00:23
Speaker 3: more than they could possibly wanted to tolerate, could tolerate.
1:00:28
Speaker 3: And so Frankl had his own revelations, but he also
1:00:33
Speaker 3: wanted to save others from that fate, to escape the
1:00:39
Speaker 3: despair that kills. And his wonderful discovery, which I think
1:00:46
Speaker 3: many of us take for granted now because it's ubiquitous
1:00:50
Speaker 3: in the culture, but that human beings are fundamentally driven
1:00:56
Speaker 3: by a will to meaning. Will to meaning. Freud said
1:01:02
Speaker 3: the will to pleasure, Adler the will to power, but
1:01:06
Speaker 3: he said the will to meaning as an innate desire
1:01:10
Speaker 3: to find purpose and significance in life. And we are
1:01:15
Speaker 3: often put in circumstances that are or involve suffering, death, guilt, pain,
1:01:24
Speaker 3: or on a lesser degree, apathy, boredom, depression, depression. powerlessness,
1:01:31
Speaker 3: and that the Logos, the mind, has to get involved
1:01:37
Speaker 3: with that. The Logos, Mercury, the Logos is an archetype.
1:01:43
Speaker 3: The Logos is the word that made all things. In
1:01:48
Speaker 3: the beginning was the word. And so Viktor Frankl tells
1:01:53
Speaker 3: us that in the absolute chaos of trauma, that it
1:01:59
Speaker 3: is like the beginning of Genesis, that there is a
1:02:01
Speaker 3: darkness and a void. And archetypally, the word is the
1:02:08
Speaker 3: only way to set life, to initiate life in the
1:02:13
Speaker 3: void and chaos of trauma. And that secret or lost
1:02:18
Speaker 3: word must be a word of profound meaning for that
1:02:23
Speaker 3: individual that they alone can locate they alone can discover
1:02:30
Speaker 3: their secret word, and that that's enough to save and
1:02:35
Speaker 3: transform a trauma into an initiation, into a new beginning
1:02:40
Speaker 3: in the midst of the darkness. Frankl's insights were remarkable,
1:02:44
Speaker 3: really remarkable.
1:02:46
Speaker 4: You know, before we stop, and I'm so appreciative of
1:02:52
Speaker 4: the depth, the rituals, the preparation of, that surrounds initiation,
1:03:01
Speaker 4: real initiation, into, as you're saying, Joseph, the word, that
1:03:07
Speaker 4: the shadow side, I think, is when collectives from fraternities
1:03:15
Speaker 4: to gangs to whatever, arrogate to themselves powers that they
1:03:22
Speaker 4: do not have real legitimate claim to. And then what
1:03:28
Speaker 4: should be initiatory is simply brutal, violent, cruel, and it
1:03:37
Speaker 4: does not have meaning. So there's no quick and easy
1:03:42
Speaker 4: way to just say, oh, we'll construct our own rituals
1:03:47
Speaker 4: and we'll have an initiatory process here. Real initiation goes
1:03:54
Speaker 4: way beyond the profane. English boarding schools, of course, were
1:03:58
Speaker 4: famous for this too. And that what happens is it
1:04:04
Speaker 4: creates such a cognitive dissonance in the person who's being
1:04:08
Speaker 4: hazed that there is a kind of negative bonding that
1:04:12
Speaker 4: follows because you want to say, well, you know, it
1:04:15
Speaker 4: was worth it to go through all this. But that
1:04:18
Speaker 4: is not a true initiation. That is a truly... Profane and,
1:04:25
Speaker 4: may I say, pointless from a psychic point of view process.
1:04:31
Speaker 3: Calling something an initiation doesn't make it an initiation. Sometimes
1:04:35
Speaker 3: it's just marketing.
1:04:37
Speaker 4: Exactly. Before we switch to a dream, I would just
1:04:42
Speaker 4: like to say thank you once again to all of
1:04:46
Speaker 4: you who support us as our patrons on Patreon. And
1:04:53
Speaker 4: you who are regular listeners know you can go to
1:04:56
Speaker 4: our website, thisjungianlife.com, and click on Become Our Patron. We
1:05:04
Speaker 4: need you. We appreciate you. Thank you.
1:05:08
Speaker 2: And you get lots of good stuff, too.
1:05:17
Speaker 3: So our dreamer is a 29-year-old male who's a gardener.
1:05:21
Speaker 3: And he titles this short dream, Therapist Obituary. And here's
1:05:28
Speaker 3: his dream. Someone is telling me my therapist has passed away.
1:05:33
Speaker 3: I'm shocked. They show me a very brief obituary that
1:05:38
Speaker 3: says she was 44 years old. I'm saddened. He gives
1:05:44
Speaker 3: a context here. I've been seeing my therapist for a year,
1:05:50
Speaker 3: a cognitive behavioral therapist. Initially, we were discussing some problems
1:05:54
Speaker 3: with my relationship with my partner and my tendencies towards
1:05:58
Speaker 3: anxiety and depression. We've made a lot of progress and
1:06:01
Speaker 3: my relationship has improved significantly. I was married to my
1:06:05
Speaker 3: partner two days ago, and this is my first dream
1:06:08
Speaker 3: since then. Now I'm wondering if I should bring this
1:06:11
Speaker 3: dream to my therapist. The main feelings were shock and sadness.
1:06:16
Speaker 3: And he has a few more associations. I've had a
1:06:19
Speaker 3: very positive and happy experience with my therapist. She has
1:06:23
Speaker 3: represented somewhat of an oasis of emotional expression for me.
1:06:27
Speaker 3: I am still saddened by the dream.
1:06:31
Speaker 2: Well, here's someone who's just gone through an initiation into
1:06:34
Speaker 2: a new phase of life. And I just want to
1:06:37
Speaker 2: extend our congratulations on your wedding. And I mean, there's
1:06:42
Speaker 2: a lot. that comes up even in just this brief dream. One,
1:06:46
Speaker 2: one is something that we've talked a little bit about
1:06:48
Speaker 2: on the podcast, but I think it's been a while
1:06:50
Speaker 2: is dreams of the therapist. I mean, that's a whole category.
1:06:54
Speaker 2: It's very normal in case you didn't know to dream
1:06:57
Speaker 2: about your therapist or your analyst. And I think it's usually, well,
1:07:03
Speaker 2: if you're seeing a union, it's a good idea to
1:07:05
Speaker 2: bring your dream to them because the, the dream maker
1:07:09
Speaker 2: is often commenting perhaps about, on aspects of the actual
1:07:14
Speaker 2: relationship that can be helpful, sort of supervision by dreams.
1:07:18
Speaker 2: I've certainly been subjected to that. But I guess what
1:07:22
Speaker 2: I wonder is it struck me that this is the
1:07:25
Speaker 2: first dream since the wedding. And the psyche may be
1:07:30
Speaker 2: letting you know that there is now a shift, that
1:07:34
Speaker 2: you will no longer be in the same relationship to
1:07:39
Speaker 2: the therapist as you were before. Because there has been
1:07:42
Speaker 2: a change of state. And now your most intimate emotional
1:07:47
Speaker 2: partner will be your wife. That doesn't mean that you're
1:07:51
Speaker 2: going to tell your wife everything, that you're going to
1:07:53
Speaker 2: make your wife into your new therapist, or that anything
1:07:57
Speaker 2: in fact has to materially change between you and your therapist.
1:08:02
Speaker 2: But there is some subtle shift where now you are
1:08:06
Speaker 2: bonded in this new way to your partner. So there's
1:08:12
Speaker 2: sort of been a depth and aspect of that relationship.
1:08:16
Speaker 3: I was thinking how we come into analysis or therapy
1:08:20
Speaker 3: and we have a lot of positive, sometimes negative projections
1:08:24
Speaker 3: onto the analyst, the therapist. We don't know a lot
1:08:27
Speaker 3: about them, so it's easy to have a lot of fantasies.
1:08:31
Speaker 3: And just as you were saying, Lisa, that the transference
1:08:36
Speaker 3: of strong attachment to the new spouse perhaps or maybe
1:08:42
Speaker 3: just the evolution of withdrawing a projection, can feel like
1:08:47
Speaker 3: something in the therapist has passed away, that the magic,
1:08:52
Speaker 3: the idealization. Some people fantasize that their therapists can read
1:08:57
Speaker 3: their minds, or... touch them from afar. Any number of
1:09:02
Speaker 3: those things, when we realize, oh, wait a minute, I
1:09:07
Speaker 3: just saw my therapist on the road eating a sandwich
1:09:10
Speaker 3: in 7-Eleven. I remember the first time I saw my
1:09:13
Speaker 3: second grade teacher in the supermarket. I was shocked. I
1:09:16
Speaker 3: was shocked. I ran to my mom and said, Mrs. Salmeiden,
1:09:21
Speaker 3: she's standing over there. I mean, it was literally, it
1:09:25
Speaker 3: was shocking to me. I remember looking at me like,
1:09:30
Speaker 3: what is happening here? But it hadn't occurred to me
1:09:32
Speaker 3: that my second grade teacher would shop in a supermarket.
1:09:40
Speaker 3: But all of a sudden it's like, wow, whatever my
1:09:44
Speaker 3: fantasy or some aspect of the fantasy has passed on
1:09:49
Speaker 3: And there's a sadness to that loss of innocence sometimes.
1:09:54
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think you're both onto something that I agree with,
1:10:00
Speaker 4: which is that he says in his comments that the
1:10:04
Speaker 4: therapist had represented somewhat of an oasis of emotional expression.
1:10:10
Speaker 4: And now he's married. And so there's going to be
1:10:14
Speaker 4: a whole new realm of intimacy and confidences, sexuality, all
1:10:22
Speaker 4: of that kind of connection, that his therapist helped him
1:10:27
Speaker 4: to achieve. And he says that she helped him through
1:10:33
Speaker 4: some of the relational difficulties. And I am likening it
1:10:39
Speaker 4: to our episode on initiation because there is a separation
1:10:45
Speaker 4: in some way from the therapist. That doesn't mean that
1:10:49
Speaker 4: he doesn't have to see the therapist anymore. It's just
1:10:53
Speaker 4: that there's a different kind of transference, a different relationship
1:11:01
Speaker 4: in him. And so too, I'm wending my way toward
1:11:07
Speaker 4: an answer to his question of, you know, he says,
1:11:09
Speaker 4: you know, should I bring this dream to my therapist?
1:11:12
Speaker 4: The answer is yes. Absolutely. There has been a state change.
1:11:17
Speaker 4: He is a married man now, and it has shifted
1:11:21
Speaker 4: his relationship with the therapist. There's been a separation in
1:11:27
Speaker 4: the psyche represented as her death. And, as we've learned today,
1:11:34
Speaker 4: a new beginning.
1:11:36
Speaker 2: You know, Deb, what you just said sparked something for me,
1:11:40
Speaker 2: which is I wonder if sometimes dreams are little messages.
1:11:44
Speaker 2: I've told this story before in the podcast and I
1:11:46
Speaker 2: have this permissions, this person's permission to share this. So I'll,
1:11:50
Speaker 2: I'll share it again. I'd been working with this woman
1:11:52
Speaker 2: for a long time. We'd done really good work. She
1:11:55
Speaker 2: was in sort of a better place and she, she
1:11:58
Speaker 2: had this dream that it was like, I don't know,
1:12:00
Speaker 2: three 30 in the morning and she was coming for
1:12:02
Speaker 2: her session. And I was there like, here I am.
1:12:05
Speaker 2: And I just, it was such a strange dream and
1:12:07
Speaker 2: I didn't quite know what to make of it. And I,
1:12:09
Speaker 2: and I sort of, and I just said, do you
1:12:11
Speaker 2: think this dream is saying that our work has kind
1:12:14
Speaker 2: of reaching a conclusion or do you think it's time
1:12:16
Speaker 2: to stop and she just laughed and that was it
1:12:20
Speaker 2: that was the end of our work and i it
1:12:23
Speaker 2: was like okay this is too much you don't need
1:12:26
Speaker 2: to do this anymore and i i wonder a little
1:12:29
Speaker 2: bit if you could explore the possibility that this dream
1:12:32
Speaker 2: might be saying the same thing a graduation yeah it's
1:12:36
Speaker 2: a graduation dream maybe possibly The dreamer didn't say, you know,
1:12:41
Speaker 2: if all the work feels done. But Deb, as you
1:12:43
Speaker 2: point out, there's been this major piece of work. He
1:12:45
Speaker 2: was going to work on the relationship. Now that's reached
1:12:48
Speaker 2: a kind of culmination. And it might be that the
1:12:51
Speaker 2: dream is saying, maybe it's time for this to be
1:12:55
Speaker 2: done for now, possibly.
1:12:57
Speaker 4: That's such a good point. And that is perhaps hinted
1:13:03
Speaker 4: at as well in the fact that in the dream,
1:13:07
Speaker 4: the obituary shows that his therapist is 44 years old.
1:13:11
Speaker 2: Oh, yes.
1:13:13
Speaker 4: So for Jung, the number four, and this is a
1:13:18
Speaker 4: double four, is a structural completion. You know, in every
1:13:25
Speaker 4: fairy tale, it's the third time. You know, we have
1:13:28
Speaker 4: a saying, third time's a charm. You don't do it
1:13:30
Speaker 4: the first time, you don't do it the second time.
1:13:33
Speaker 4: Third time is when happiness the transformation into the new
1:13:37
Speaker 4: state occurs. So four is often symbolic of completion of
1:13:45
Speaker 4: a process. So that's something for our dreamer to consider
1:13:50
Speaker 4: as well.
1:13:50
Speaker 3: I was also thinking of the two fours as perhaps
1:13:54
Speaker 3: being him and his partner.
1:13:56
Speaker 2: Oh, and maybe just a final word. We celebrate weddings
1:14:01
Speaker 2: in our culture regularly, going back to our topic today
1:14:05
Speaker 2: of initiations, we don't usually acknowledge the loss that comes
1:14:12
Speaker 2: with something like getting married. And there is a big,
1:14:15
Speaker 2: big loss. So the shock and sadness, it makes sense
1:14:19
Speaker 2: that it's there because although we're ushering in many wonderful
1:14:23
Speaker 2: new things, we're leaving other things behind. So just want
1:14:27
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that that's completely understandable and Wish you all
1:14:33
Speaker 2: the best.
1:14:37
Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
1:14:43
Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
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1:14:49
Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
1:14:54
Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
1:14:56
Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
1:14:59
Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
1:15:03
Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.