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The Creative Power of Inner Tension · This Jungian Life Podcast

0:02
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
0:10
Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
0:14
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.
0:23
Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
0:28
Speaker 2: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today,
0:44
Speaker 2: there are two of us here, Joseph and me, and
0:49
Speaker 2: we will start to talk about the opposites. So in
0:54
Speaker 2: a way, it's sort of just perfect that there is Joseph,
0:57
Speaker 2: there is me. Are we a pair of opposites in
1:01
Speaker 2: some sense, in that there are two? This is a
1:07
Speaker 2: principle that was central to all of Jung's theory. of
1:14
Speaker 2: that discriminating and discerning the opposites was the basis of
1:20
Speaker 2: psychological work of growth and development, and that that was
1:25
Speaker 2: job one of what are the opposites and how to
1:29
Speaker 2: hold them and then how to relate them to our
1:34
Speaker 2: internal world, the psychological world. We all know about the
1:40
Speaker 2: opposites of north and south or in and out or
1:43
Speaker 2: up and down, but what are they in the psyche,
1:48
Speaker 2: consciousness and unconscious, and what are all the permutations and
1:55
Speaker 2: subtleties and important energetic dynamics? of working with the opposites
2:03
Speaker 2: within us. And before we leap into that or hold
2:11
Speaker 2: the tension, as Jung often said, let me tell you
2:16
Speaker 2: about a program in the Philadelphia Jung Institute that will
2:20
Speaker 2: be starting in September. It's not a new program, but
2:24
Speaker 2: it's being offered again this year by Mark Dean, one
2:27
Speaker 2: of our colleagues and friends and Jungian analysts. And it
2:32
Speaker 2: is the advanced clinical practice program for people who are
2:37
Speaker 2: already therapists and who have been in practice to understand
2:43
Speaker 2: and apply by working with cases, Jungian concepts in the
2:48
Speaker 2: context of clinical practice. This will be a seminar. It's
2:54
Speaker 2: limited to eight people. It's been much appreciated, enjoyed, and
3:00
Speaker 2: valued in the past. If you're interested, please go online
3:06
Speaker 2: to www.cgyungphiladelphia.org and get some more information. Okay, so here
3:18
Speaker 2: we are with the opposites, Joseph. Let's jump in or
3:24
Speaker 2: begin to hold that tension.
3:27
Speaker 3: The idea of the dynamism of opposites is something that
3:30
Speaker 3: happens around us. We see it so commonly that sometimes
3:34
Speaker 3: we don't think about it in that way. If we
3:39
Speaker 3: just look around the world, that life regulates itself by polarities,
3:46
Speaker 3: hot and cold, and things have to move on this
3:49
Speaker 3: spectrum of extremes in order for life to happen. Our
3:55
Speaker 3: bodies need a sympathetic and a parasympathetic nervous system. We
3:59
Speaker 3: have a right side of the brain and a left
4:01
Speaker 3: side of the brain. Cultures need to dissent as well
4:07
Speaker 3: as to be cohesive. So everything requires a pull and
4:14
Speaker 3: a counter pull. And Jung noticed something about that in
4:21
Speaker 3: the human psyche, that every time that we have a
4:25
Speaker 3: conscious experience, its opposite must constellate at the very least
4:31
Speaker 3: as a nodal point somewhere in the unconscious. So it's
4:36
Speaker 3: in some ways a somewhat radical way of thinking that
4:40
Speaker 3: every time you notice that you've fallen in love, somewhere
4:45
Speaker 3: in the unconscious there's a little point of hatred. and
4:50
Speaker 3: that those two energies must exist simultaneously or neither of
4:56
Speaker 3: them could exist. It's a very interesting, complicated thing to consider.
5:04
Speaker 2: So you might start with the visual image of the yin-yang,
5:10
Speaker 2: which is so familiar to everybody, that within that white
5:14
Speaker 2: part there is a little dot of black and vice versa.
5:19
Speaker 2: And the good news about all this is that this
5:22
Speaker 2: is how energy works, that this is the basis for
5:28
Speaker 2: all psychic life, according to Jung, is opposing pairs. And
5:33
Speaker 2: at some point, somewhere that I can't find in the
5:37
Speaker 2: collected works, is this idea of making the analogy to electricity,
5:44
Speaker 2: that the energy has to go back and forth. And
5:48
Speaker 2: as the energy goes back and forth between two opposing poles,
5:52
Speaker 2: that's how the energy manifests and is created. If there's
5:57
Speaker 2: only one pole, nothing happens. So it is the basis
6:03
Speaker 2: of all psychic life, as Jung said, and it presents
6:08
Speaker 2: an ever-present, ongoing problem for all of us because these
6:14
Speaker 2: opposites can get into a situation where because we're human,
6:18
Speaker 2: we think in polarities, it's just the way we're made.
6:22
Speaker 2: We think about all kinds of opposites. Is it up?
6:26
Speaker 2: Is it down? Do I want it? Do I don't
6:28
Speaker 2: want it? Am I going to go right or am
6:30
Speaker 2: I going to go left? As if the choices are
6:34
Speaker 2: between polarities. And the polarity that we most often construct
6:41
Speaker 2: is the polarity between you and me. And That's my problem,
6:48
Speaker 2: is there's a you in my life that I perceive
6:52
Speaker 2: as being difficult or inadequate or something else. And then
6:59
Speaker 2: we get into a conflict with, you know, whoever that you,
7:04
Speaker 2: and there are many of them, happens to be.
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Speaker 3: So the I-thou tension.
7:10
Speaker 2: I-thou, that's perfect. And the I and the not I. Oh,
7:15
Speaker 2: this isn't me. You know, this other person did that.
7:18
Speaker 2: It's not me.
7:20
Speaker 3: So I think that that example is important because that
7:26
Speaker 3: experience that the newborn infant has becomes the foundation for
7:32
Speaker 3: ego consciousness. Yes. The baby is in the crib and
7:38
Speaker 3: it flings its hand and hits the crib and there's
7:43
Speaker 3: a little ouch sound. But that's that first experience of
7:47
Speaker 3: I'm over here and something is over there and it's
7:51
Speaker 3: not me. And that the entire personality in a way
7:55
Speaker 3: of thinking is built up on this differentiation between the
8:00
Speaker 3: me and the not me. And sometimes later in life
8:03
Speaker 3: when we begin to have mystical experiences, if we do,
8:07
Speaker 3: that can be challenged, that very tight demarcation and can
8:13
Speaker 3: be rather unseating. to people. And yet, it is the
8:18
Speaker 3: building block, that differentiation. That's the building block of the
8:23
Speaker 3: beginning for us.
8:24
Speaker 2: That is absolutely right on, is that there is an
8:28
Speaker 2: I and a not-I. And then to follow along the
8:34
Speaker 2: developmental trajectory you just introduced, the not-I becomes the toddler
8:40
Speaker 2: and some adult. any one of a number of adults, of,
8:47
Speaker 2: you know, come on, let's go outside.
8:48
Speaker 3: No.
8:49
Speaker 2: But you want to go outside. We're going to go
8:51
Speaker 2: to the park.
8:51
Speaker 3: No.
8:52
Speaker 2: Because that toddler is just discovering ego and I and
9:01
Speaker 2: my ability to be different that is not necessarily infused
9:06
Speaker 2: with a great deal of anger or aggression or any
9:10
Speaker 2: of that, although it can be. But it is the
9:14
Speaker 2: separation of the not I from, let's say, mom. Of
9:21
Speaker 2: what mom wants isn't necessarily, that's not up for me,
9:24
Speaker 2: that's not for me. And so this sense of I
9:29
Speaker 2: and not I grows and develops and develops and develops
9:33
Speaker 2: and presents us with one after another of the developmental
9:38
Speaker 2: changes that Eric Erickson really delineated. in his still classic
9:45
Speaker 2: work called Childhood and Society, that he delineated something like
9:51
Speaker 2: eight different life developmental stages and an inherent conflict or
9:59
Speaker 2: inherent parallelism of opposites that we each have to wrestle
10:06
Speaker 2: with and find a new meeting place. So we start
10:12
Speaker 2: with trust versus mistrust, shame and doubt versus autonomy, industry
10:22
Speaker 2: by the time you're into middle years of childhood versus inferiority.
10:28
Speaker 2: And so it goes. And this by way of bringing
10:32
Speaker 2: Jung's concept of opposites into you and me and our
10:38
Speaker 2: life stages and our psychological development, because that's what we're
10:45
Speaker 2: really wrestling with all the time is ourselves.
10:49
Speaker 3: So I think Erickson does a great job thinking about
10:52
Speaker 3: the tensions that each of us ideally moves through as
10:59
Speaker 3: we are maturing. And what Jung might say is, Erickson
11:04
Speaker 3: came after Jung, but Jung would have agreed that those
11:08
Speaker 3: tensions facilitate the growth of consciousness in the child as
11:13
Speaker 3: well as the concrete skills that Erickson was attending to. Now,
11:19
Speaker 3: in the beginning, we are often in a big mishmash
11:25
Speaker 3: inside of ourselves, a yin called the masa confusa, that
11:29
Speaker 3: all the psychic elements are just roiling around and there
11:33
Speaker 3: isn't a very differentiated process. And like one common experience
11:40
Speaker 3: of that is that there are a certain number of
11:43
Speaker 3: people that are unable to identify their emotions. It's called alexithymia.
11:50
Speaker 3: But if somebody was not raised in a home where
11:53
Speaker 3: a lot of psychological language was offered or there wasn't
11:56
Speaker 3: a lot of mirroring, people can get even into adulthood.
12:01
Speaker 3: And if you ask them, well, how are you feeling
12:02
Speaker 3: right now? They feel very surprised and maybe they'll tell
12:05
Speaker 3: you what they think or some action that they took.
12:10
Speaker 3: but being able to just pull up into consciousness the
12:15
Speaker 3: specific feelings that somebody has, soil and build big roiling
12:20
Speaker 3: mystery inside of them. So it takes some work to
12:24
Speaker 3: be able to put our hands in and discern one
12:29
Speaker 3: thing from another inside of ourselves. And Jung might say
12:32
Speaker 3: that that is, in some ways, the work of the
12:36
Speaker 3: first half of life. And just the simple thing of,
12:40
Speaker 3: I like this and I don't like that. That's much
12:43
Speaker 3: of what guides us in the first half of life
12:46
Speaker 3: is even just discovering preferences.
12:49
Speaker 2: So we have to separate. There has to be a
12:54
Speaker 2: difference between the I and the not I in order
13:00
Speaker 2: for us to be. Otherwise, we're just merged. And it
13:05
Speaker 2: presents us with a problem. the problem of ourselves. And
13:12
Speaker 2: how do we deal with that? Well, what Jung talks
13:16
Speaker 2: about is holding the tension of the opposites. What on
13:22
Speaker 2: earth does that mean? So let's pick a basic conflict,
13:28
Speaker 2: and I'll pick one from, I think I was in
13:31
Speaker 2: either fifth or sixth grade, and we had to do
13:35
Speaker 2: a report on some scientific sort of breakthrough or special thing.
13:42
Speaker 2: And I picked Alexander Fleming and the discovery of penicillin.
13:47
Speaker 2: And I thought that was pretty cool. And certainly the
13:51
Speaker 2: world has benefited from that. But I did not know
13:55
Speaker 2: how to do a book report. And I didn't know
13:58
Speaker 2: how to do a report from the encyclopedia, but I
14:00
Speaker 2: was supposed to give a report. And I didn't know
14:03
Speaker 2: what else I could possibly say about Alexander Fleming that
14:07
Speaker 2: hadn't already been said very well in the materials that
14:11
Speaker 2: I had. And that set up a huge inner conflict
14:16
Speaker 2: with myself. I mean, I was just distraught about it
14:21
Speaker 2: because I knew I was somehow supposed to make something
14:25
Speaker 2: from the raw ingredients of the encyclopedia and the library
14:30
Speaker 2: book or whatever I had. And I didn't know What
14:32
Speaker 2: on earth to do about that? So, you know, that
14:37
Speaker 2: was maybe the conflict that Erickson defines as industry versus inferiority. Of,
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Speaker 2: I can't do this. I don't know how. I don't
14:46
Speaker 2: know what do I do? It's all right here in
14:50
Speaker 2: the encyclopedia. There's nothing else for me to say. I
14:54
Speaker 2: was basically sort of forced to hold that tension of
14:57
Speaker 2: the opposites, and I didn't do a good job either,
14:59
Speaker 2: I inherited to tell you. I just didn't know what
15:02
Speaker 2: to do, and I've never forgotten it because basically what
15:06
Speaker 2: I did was to plagiarize.
15:07
Speaker 3: When in doubt.
15:09
Speaker 2: But I didn't hold the tension, which might have had
15:14
Speaker 2: my teacher been a little more helpful than she was,
15:19
Speaker 2: and she was not very helpful, of how to turn
15:22
Speaker 2: that into something that I wanted to say. What is
15:26
Speaker 2: the meaning of this for me? Why was I even
15:29
Speaker 2: interested in Alexander Fleming? And I was. And, you know,
15:33
Speaker 2: a lot of people in my family were in medicine
15:35
Speaker 2: and so on, so I thought it was cool. So
15:37
Speaker 2: I did not hold attention because I did not make
15:41
Speaker 2: something of my own from me do the book report,
15:47
Speaker 2: here's all the encyclopedic information. And I did not reach
15:52
Speaker 2: what Jung calls the transcendent function, which is the new
15:56
Speaker 2: thing that is neither one nor the other, but that aha,
16:03
Speaker 2: that breakthrough, a creative solution, whatever one wants to call it.
16:10
Speaker 2: And so then what happens if you don't hold the
16:13
Speaker 2: tension is one side, the side where I was supposed
16:17
Speaker 2: to do something with is collapsed. And what I got
16:21
Speaker 2: was a regurgitation of all the material from outside sources.
16:29
Speaker 2: And what's interesting about it is I still remember it.
16:32
Speaker 3: Yeah. Perhaps that tension between creating versus repeating, something like that.
16:39
Speaker 2: And so it goes of how do we resolve that tension?
16:44
Speaker 2: You know, and you were saying earlier somebody is madly
16:47
Speaker 2: in love, that there's this little place that is also,
16:51
Speaker 2: you know, really irritated or rejecting or angry or hateful.
16:58
Speaker 2: And people will say, no, no, no, that's not it.
17:01
Speaker 2: You know, this is the most wonderful, incredible, fabulous person.
17:05
Speaker 3: Hmm.
17:08
Speaker 2: So that takes us back to step one is discriminate
17:11
Speaker 2: the opposites. Step two, what do we do with them?
17:17
Speaker 3: When you were talking, I was thinking about that spate
17:20
Speaker 3: of movies that we see of two people who in
17:26
Speaker 3: the beginning of the movie hate each other and they're
17:29
Speaker 3: constantly in conflict. And then by the end of the movie,
17:31
Speaker 3: they're like in bed and getting married, you know, and
17:34
Speaker 3: that all of that rancor is, constellates actually a kind
17:41
Speaker 3: of erotic tension in the unconscious. And then that finally breaks,
17:46
Speaker 3: breaks through. So that, that is a theme that we like,
17:50
Speaker 3: we like to see clearly because we go to the
17:52
Speaker 3: theater and we pay to see it.
17:54
Speaker 2: Yes, we like to see the reconciliation of the opposites,
17:59
Speaker 2: which is, as you're saying, it's often imaged as, you know,
18:03
Speaker 2: falling in love and the union of the opposites represented
18:08
Speaker 2: by the two people in the couple who went from
18:13
Speaker 2: butting heads to abutting each other.
18:17
Speaker 3: This September, we are excited to be launching a brand
18:21
Speaker 3: new This Jungian Life Dream School program called Dream Studio.
18:25
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18:29
Speaker 3: exploring your dreams through artistic expression and Jungian depth psychology.
18:35
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18:39
Speaker 3: Simply join This Jungian Life Dream School before September 25th
18:43
Speaker 3: to take part. And if you're curious about Dream Studio...
18:46
Speaker 3: or about how dreams and creativity feed one another.
18:50
Speaker 2: We're offering a live free event on Saturday, September 13th
18:56
Speaker 2: at 10 a.m. Eastern Time so you can have a
19:00
Speaker 2: taste of how art can be a bridge between your
19:05
Speaker 2: conscious and unconscious world. So this is not about artistic skill.
19:10
Speaker 2: No artistic ability is required. Just an open mind and
19:14
Speaker 2: by all means bring some basic art materials we also
19:20
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19:24
Speaker 2: samples of your dream art they can be analyzed and
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19:32
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19:35
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19:39
Speaker 2: seminar hope to see you there.
19:42
Speaker 3: So one of the opposites that we've also talked about
19:45
Speaker 3: on the podcast many times is between persona and shadow.
19:49
Speaker 3: That the persona is this archetype of the mask. It's
19:53
Speaker 3: a kind of social lubricant. So we might put forward,
19:57
Speaker 3: let's say, a great generosity. That that's a forward kind
20:03
Speaker 3: of value. But then we have to kind of banish
20:07
Speaker 3: into the shadow our miserliness, our Scrooge part of ourselves.
20:14
Speaker 3: And once we repress it, you know, it's like, you know,
20:21
Speaker 3: something we've put into the fireplace. It goes up as
20:25
Speaker 3: smoke and everybody else smells it, but we swear that
20:28
Speaker 3: it isn't ours. So we will split into rather than
20:33
Speaker 3: hold the tension of the opposites, that we can be
20:36
Speaker 3: generous and live that out, but also have impulses of
20:41
Speaker 3: being very withholding or miserly. And often that's not too
20:46
Speaker 3: hard for us to see inside of ourselves. I guess
20:51
Speaker 3: it depends on how much we are defended against the other.
20:54
Speaker 3: I've also seen the opposite, where people are incredibly tight
21:00
Speaker 3: with money, even to the point of harming themselves which
21:04
Speaker 3: I have seen I knew a woman once who complained
21:10
Speaker 3: many many decades ago who complained to me several times
21:15
Speaker 3: that she kept getting food poisoning and it finally kind
21:18
Speaker 3: of surfaced that her parents were raised in terrible circumstances
21:24
Speaker 3: and she had this enormous tension to never throw out
21:27
Speaker 3: food and so she was eating old food in her
21:29
Speaker 3: fridge but what came to surface later is that she
21:34
Speaker 3: actually was profoundly wealthy despite the fact of this profound
21:41
Speaker 3: wealth she still had this tremendous anxiety about poverty so
21:47
Speaker 3: poverty and wealth are another pair of opposites and if
21:50
Speaker 3: we split off that realization of the resources we have
21:56
Speaker 3: we can wind up clinging to a kind of impoverished attitude.
22:00
Speaker 3: And for her, it was making her physically very sick.
22:04
Speaker 3: That's another strange, uncanny way that we can split and
22:09
Speaker 3: put ourselves out of balance.
22:11
Speaker 2: So, you know, for me, what you are talking about
22:16
Speaker 2: in that example is how one-sided we can be. That
22:23
Speaker 2: that first... act of discrimination is noticing that there are opposites,
22:29
Speaker 2: that for this particular woman, her felt experience of poverty
22:36
Speaker 2: and scarcity, there was no other opposite.
22:43
Speaker 3: Not in her consciousness, yeah.
22:45
Speaker 2: And we might point out as therapists, aha, yes, and
22:52
Speaker 2: you have great financial means so that we're growing that little,
22:59
Speaker 2: helping to grow that little nodal point of an opposite
23:03
Speaker 2: where the first step might be for somebody like this
23:06
Speaker 2: person to say, oh my God, that's right. You know,
23:12
Speaker 2: I have plenty of money. You know, why am I
23:16
Speaker 2: keeping all this awful old food? Why am I depriving
23:20
Speaker 2: and starving and harming myself, and to make that a
23:24
Speaker 2: much more lived, immediate, emotional reality of that first place
23:30
Speaker 2: that says, wait a minute, this doesn't really make sense.
23:34
Speaker 3: That's right.
23:35
Speaker 2: And then become what Jung calls a problem to herself.
23:42
Speaker 2: You know, that was my experience with the ill-fated book report.
23:48
Speaker 2: It was one of my first experiences in being a
23:50
Speaker 2: problem to myself. And, you know, I clearly recognized that
23:56
Speaker 2: I was the one suffering and having a problem. For
23:59
Speaker 2: somebody like this client of yours, the step might be
24:04
Speaker 2: to get to that of like, whoa, I'm my own problem.
24:08
Speaker 3: I'm the one who's the architect of my own food poisoning. Right.
24:14
Speaker 2: And then we have two opposites. that generates energy. That's
24:20
Speaker 2: the good news. It's not just because you want somebody
24:24
Speaker 2: to feel terrible about it. But now there's another pole.
24:27
Speaker 2: There's the pole that says, I'm deprived and I'm poor
24:30
Speaker 2: and things are scarce and I'm starving. And now there's
24:34
Speaker 2: another pole emerging that says, wait a minute, I do
24:37
Speaker 2: have means. Wait a minute, I have made myself sick
24:40
Speaker 2: from eating food that was not good. Wait a minute,
24:45
Speaker 2: And then we have two things where energy starts to
24:48
Speaker 2: go back and forth. And maybe the person, as we
24:53
Speaker 2: all have been, is just frustrated. Like, I don't know what's,
24:56
Speaker 2: you know, people say this. I don't know. I just
24:58
Speaker 2: can't do it. I just can't make myself do it.
25:02
Speaker 3: And even though we might intellectually look at the bank
25:05
Speaker 3: statement and say, I'm bountiful or I'm in a state
25:09
Speaker 3: of bounty. but I still feel impoverished, I feel at risk,
25:14
Speaker 3: I feel small and vulnerable and desperate. So even though
25:19
Speaker 3: we might intellectually assume there is a bountiful reality, if
25:26
Speaker 3: we can't experience ourselves as bountiful at the same time
25:34
Speaker 3: that we feel at risk, small, constrained, We have to
25:41
Speaker 3: experience them as simultaneous, and that's when the good stuff
25:47
Speaker 3: starts to happen, although it can be very painful in
25:51
Speaker 3: the beginning. It takes a lot of energy to keep
25:55
Speaker 3: consciousness on a felt level between those things. So parents
26:01
Speaker 3: have to experience this all the time. They love their kids,
26:04
Speaker 3: and boy, sometimes they hate them, and they just feel
26:06
Speaker 3: it at the same time. Oh, I could just scream
26:11
Speaker 3: my head off, and I love you, and I would
26:13
Speaker 3: just like to give you hell.
26:15
Speaker 2: It's a great example. I mean, as a parent, I
26:22
Speaker 2: know how huge those opposites can be. And You know,
26:29
Speaker 2: I think it's one of the most powerful life experiences
26:32
Speaker 2: anybody can have because children are, oh God, it's such
26:39
Speaker 2: an intense experience to be a parent of this precious, wonderful,
26:46
Speaker 2: incredible being that is endlessly, ceaselessly, 24-7 demanding. And how
26:57
Speaker 2: do I wrestle with my need for some rest? I mean,
27:02
Speaker 2: I'm talking about how do I wrestle with my need
27:05
Speaker 2: to take a shower, for Pete's sake. All I want
27:08
Speaker 2: is 15 minutes to get a shower. And reconcile those
27:13
Speaker 2: opposites of the versus me, rest and my own individual
27:19
Speaker 2: need versus activity and being other-oriented. going toward you, the baby,
27:28
Speaker 2: or moving into myself. And these experiences, as you were saying,
27:33
Speaker 2: I mean, they're really intense. It's frustrating. It's not enjoyable
27:41
Speaker 2: when we are wrestling with the opposites. But when those
27:46
Speaker 2: polarities are really far apart, The next step, one way
27:50
Speaker 2: or another, is how do we get them to relate
27:53
Speaker 2: to one another? Where is the new thing? Where is
27:58
Speaker 2: the third thing? So that we're one, as you said,
28:03
Speaker 2: in the masa confusa, or in my way of thinking,
28:06
Speaker 2: the mishmash. And then we have to separate out. And
28:11
Speaker 2: then we have to find a new way of coming together.
28:16
Speaker 2: That's not something we can think our way through. If
28:19
Speaker 2: you could do that, you'd do it. Most everybody would.
28:23
Speaker 2: But where is the new reconciliation, the new mode of unity?
28:33
Speaker 2: And I can say, in my case, with two little babies,
28:40
Speaker 2: it was being able to tolerate one of them crying
28:45
Speaker 2: Everybody's fine. Everybody's clean. Everybody has fresh diapers. Everybody's been fed.
28:52
Speaker 2: And now, hey, kids, guess what? You're on your own
28:57
Speaker 2: for 15 minutes. And it's okay. Everybody will live through this.
29:03
Speaker 2: And being able to move into my own inner opposite
29:09
Speaker 2: and come back and not be, you know, overcome with worry.
29:14
Speaker 2: What if the sky had fallen while I was in
29:16
Speaker 2: the shower?
29:18
Speaker 3: To tolerate the instinctive demand, you hear the baby scream
29:24
Speaker 3: and something wakes up inside of you and to have
29:26
Speaker 3: to hold that consciously so that you can take a
29:29
Speaker 3: shower and care for yourself a little bit. And holding
29:34
Speaker 3: that consciously puts muscle on us. It creates a kind
29:39
Speaker 3: of vigorous inside of us over time, although in the
29:42
Speaker 3: beginning it's confusing and difficult for us to even understand.
29:47
Speaker 2: We have to be able to tolerate our own affect,
29:52
Speaker 2: whether it's guilt or helplessness or uncertainty or anxiety. of
30:00
Speaker 2: the opposites in ourselves around what James Hollis calls the
30:05
Speaker 2: three A's of, and has always resonated with me, of anxiety, ambivalence,
30:15
Speaker 2: and ambiguity. We don't like feeling anxious. We don't like uncertainty.
30:24
Speaker 2: We don't like things that aren't clear. And we especially
30:27
Speaker 2: don't like facing our own shadows. And the part of
30:34
Speaker 2: me in this story about my infant twins was I
30:41
Speaker 2: didn't like facing the fact that I wasn't always filled
30:46
Speaker 2: with joy and loving tenderness and devotion, and that my
30:53
Speaker 2: fear of taking a shower and leaving and not doing
30:55
Speaker 2: my job actually had something to do with the fact
30:58
Speaker 2: that in my shadow, there was a level of real
31:03
Speaker 2: anger in me of I was enslaved by the needs
31:09
Speaker 2: of these two little beings. And I was plenty pissed
31:13
Speaker 2: about it. And so instead of being able to say
31:16
Speaker 2: to myself, look, everybody's fine. I'm just going to go
31:18
Speaker 2: take a shower for Pete's sake. It's not a big deal.
31:21
Speaker 2: It was a big deal because it meant that I
31:27
Speaker 2: also had to acknowledge the feelings in me that were saying,
31:32
Speaker 2: the heck with you. I'm tired of you guys demanding
31:35
Speaker 2: everything all day, every day. So, yes, there was a
31:41
Speaker 2: part of me that wanted to abandon them to their
31:45
Speaker 2: terrible fate in their cribs for 15 minutes.
31:51
Speaker 3: I mean, it's laughable now, but in the moment, it
31:53
Speaker 3: was an enormous tension. Of course it was.
31:58
Speaker 2: Right. And we're always wrestling with our very own shadows.
32:06
Speaker 3: The first step, which we're talking about, is to be
32:10
Speaker 3: as exacting as we can to name the conflict inside
32:15
Speaker 3: of us without being too euphemistic. You know, I want
32:20
Speaker 3: to leave and I want to stay. And I just
32:24
Speaker 3: feel them.
32:25
Speaker 2: I want to be the perfect mother and I'm sick
32:28
Speaker 2: of this.
32:29
Speaker 3: Right. And I want to just be single again, you know.
32:34
Speaker 3: This is something that I feel, you know, I crave
32:39
Speaker 3: making an impact in the world, but I also crave anonymity.
32:43
Speaker 3: I mean, I feel that tension very much inside of
32:46
Speaker 3: myself and try to find some way of, holding both
32:51
Speaker 3: of that. So we can all find many examples, but
32:55
Speaker 3: how we get our way through it is unique and
33:00
Speaker 3: in many ways has to do with paying attention to dreams,
33:03
Speaker 3: because often the dreams will lift up the opposite, because
33:08
Speaker 3: dreams are always compensating for the ego attitude. And what
33:12
Speaker 3: that means is the dream is offering the unconscious parts
33:17
Speaker 3: of an ego situation that we're not aware of, but
33:20
Speaker 3: would benefit us to be aware of. And many times
33:24
Speaker 3: it's just competing feelings, frankly, that we've kind of banished somewhere.
33:29
Speaker 2: I think the two pitfalls here of the two ways
33:37
Speaker 2: we can fail to hold the tension and feel the
33:41
Speaker 2: feelings and identify them, and they're just... feelings. That's all
33:49
Speaker 2: they are. One of the pitfalls is, you know, if
33:55
Speaker 2: we have these two poles, one of them is we
33:58
Speaker 2: can collapse one pole by deciding to think about it.
34:04
Speaker 2: I'm just going to do what the very sensible thing
34:06
Speaker 2: is here to think my way through this. There's a
34:10
Speaker 2: sensible solution. So to use my example of the shower,
34:15
Speaker 2: I'm going to schedule everybody that we're going to have
34:19
Speaker 2: the morning with babies and baby care. And then at
34:23
Speaker 2: 11 o'clock every morning with everybody on schedule, I will
34:28
Speaker 2: take 15 or 20 minutes and attend to myself. No,
34:32
Speaker 2: because I have not acknowledged what's going on inside me.
34:38
Speaker 2: And that is not a psychological solution. That is not
34:42
Speaker 2: a way to hold attention. of the opposites. And the
34:46
Speaker 2: other way is the other pole can collapse if I
34:49
Speaker 2: just get overwhelmed by feeling of like, no, I can
34:54
Speaker 2: never leave. I can never leave these poor, vulnerable creatures
34:58
Speaker 2: without my care and so on and so forth. And
35:01
Speaker 2: that feeling of guilt or duty or any of those things,
35:08
Speaker 2: not to mention my feelings of wanting to abandon them
35:12
Speaker 2: to their for 15 minutes. I never get acknowledged. But just,
35:18
Speaker 2: I'm overwhelmed because then I've just sort of fallen into
35:22
Speaker 2: feeling and there again, no real new awareness is possible.
35:34
Speaker 2: Which I mentioned before and I'm going to come back
35:36
Speaker 2: to it, the transcendent function. And sometimes it can just
35:41
Speaker 2: be as simple as an aha of like, wait a minute.
35:47
Speaker 2: You know, this is okay. And we can practice. And
35:51
Speaker 2: sometimes it's really powerful. And as you were saying, it
35:57
Speaker 2: comes to us in a dream that we wake up
36:00
Speaker 2: with a dream and we go, whoa.
36:02
Speaker 3: And the ice breaks.
36:04
Speaker 2: And we get dreams like that all the time from
36:08
Speaker 2: listeners who may send it in as one of our
36:13
Speaker 2: supporters where we will entertain and analyze a dream from
36:18
Speaker 2: one of our supporter communities, sign up for Patreon. Go
36:22
Speaker 2: on our website. Or it may be one of the
36:27
Speaker 2: dreams that we do at the end of every podcast
36:31
Speaker 2: where people have all kinds of amazing dreams and there
36:37
Speaker 2: is a part of you helping to identify an impasse,
36:44
Speaker 2: identify the two polarities, identify a conflict, or sometimes really
36:51
Speaker 2: pointing to some new but symbolized way of handling it.
36:57
Speaker 3: So I'll quickly tell a story which I have used
37:00
Speaker 3: before on other podcast episodes because it's such an elegant example.
37:06
Speaker 3: The transcendent function in general means It's that if the
37:12
Speaker 3: waking personality, the ego, can find a way to dialogue,
37:18
Speaker 3: to actively dialogue with the unconscious, that that dialogue yields things, insights, feelings, symbols, images, dreams,
37:31
Speaker 3: but it creates a kind of dynamism. And that dynamic
37:35
Speaker 3: conversation sometimes can allow us to transcend the tension of
37:41
Speaker 3: the opposites and as David said a minute ago, the
37:45
Speaker 3: transcendent function or the symbol is remarkable in as much
37:50
Speaker 3: as it does not diminish either of the polarities and
37:55
Speaker 3: at the same time somehow resolves the tension in a
37:59
Speaker 3: third thing. Here's the scenario as I was working with
38:05
Speaker 3: a lovely college professor. and she worked in a university
38:11
Speaker 3: in the music department, and she was very dedicated, very rigorous,
38:15
Speaker 3: very successful. She lived in the city and lived close
38:20
Speaker 3: to the university, and in the tradition that she was
38:26
Speaker 3: raised in, being a professor was kind of an all-consuming position.
38:30
Speaker 3: You lived close to the campus. Maybe you even lived
38:34
Speaker 3: on the campus, and everything was about taking care of
38:38
Speaker 3: the students and perfecting oneself as the professor. And then
38:43
Speaker 3: this person began to have this great desire to move
38:47
Speaker 3: out to the country and buy a plot of land
38:51
Speaker 3: and set up something closer to a little farmette. And
38:56
Speaker 3: this vision of moving out to the country kind of
39:00
Speaker 3: tortured her that She would feel agonized, but I can't leave,
39:06
Speaker 3: and if I go there, this will happen, and I
39:08
Speaker 3: can't do this. And listening to it, it seemed very
39:13
Speaker 3: easy to me. It's like, well, move to the country
39:17
Speaker 3: and then keep going to work. Get in the car
39:19
Speaker 3: and drive to your job. But there was an internal
39:23
Speaker 3: process that was much more fraught about values and where
39:29
Speaker 3: one is allowed to invest energy and for many months
39:34
Speaker 3: this tension and dialogue and there were tears and all
39:39
Speaker 3: kinds of other agonies and then she had a dream
39:44
Speaker 3: and in this dream she was in a rocking chair
39:48
Speaker 3: on a porch in a home out in the country
39:50
Speaker 3: And above her was a wind chime. And when the
39:53
Speaker 3: wind blew through the chime, it created symphonic music. And
40:01
Speaker 3: when she saw that symbol, the tension broke and she
40:06
Speaker 3: felt she could have both because the symbol had both.
40:12
Speaker 3: So the symbol was activated by wind, by nature. The
40:16
Speaker 3: wind would blow into the chimes. But what came out?
40:20
Speaker 3: was linked to her work as a professional musician. So
40:25
Speaker 3: there was a way in which nature and music or
40:29
Speaker 3: perhaps other tensions which we couldn't even clearly define had
40:34
Speaker 3: somehow come together in this single symphonic wind chime. And
40:40
Speaker 3: then she went out, she found this place in the
40:43
Speaker 3: country and she kept her job in the city at
40:46
Speaker 3: the university. But She needed that symbol to give herself
40:51
Speaker 3: permission to have both, but have a new feeling about
40:57
Speaker 3: having both. And it's a very uncanny process. No one
41:03
Speaker 3: would have predicted that that's the symbol that would have
41:06
Speaker 3: relieved the tension.
41:08
Speaker 2: But, you know, what I am paying attention to in
41:12
Speaker 2: that story is is how important it was for her
41:18
Speaker 2: to stay with this tension, you know, in the process
41:24
Speaker 2: with you, a therapist, but that it was worthwhile to
41:31
Speaker 2: generate that energy between the two opposing poles as she
41:35
Speaker 2: wrestled with this life issue, wrestled with herself, with you,
41:42
Speaker 2: It builds energy going back and forth, back and forth,
41:45
Speaker 2: back and forth until something new can arise. So she
41:53
Speaker 2: engaged it. And Jung says life is born of the
41:59
Speaker 2: spark of opposites. And so that spark had to become
42:04
Speaker 2: a sustained charge, a sustained level of inner voltage.
42:10
Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
42:11
Speaker 2: Around this issue. And it would not have done to
42:15
Speaker 2: simply say, well, you know, if you can afford it,
42:17
Speaker 2: why don't you just buy a place out in the country? No,
42:21
Speaker 2: it was an inner conflict. And if we can stick
42:26
Speaker 2: with it and hold the tension, then something like a
42:31
Speaker 2: dream and the realization of the wind chimes. That it's
42:37
Speaker 2: nature and the wind blows through and it's a musical thing.
42:42
Speaker 2: And there is that aha moment. And it's not entirely rational.
42:46
Speaker 2: I mean, we could sit here and say like, yeah,
42:48
Speaker 2: but I mean.
42:49
Speaker 3: It's mysterious.
42:51
Speaker 2: I mean, what does a wind chime really have to
42:52
Speaker 2: do with? It doesn't really make sense. And that's the point.
42:58
Speaker 2: But we come to a knowing where body, mind, spirit
43:03
Speaker 2: are all click in alignment and we know. in a
43:08
Speaker 2: way that is whole and real, and we just take
43:14
Speaker 2: a moment to really exhale, oh, that's it. And then
43:19
Speaker 2: we move forward. This is, I would say, in many ways,
43:25
Speaker 2: the essence of the process of individuation that Jung talks about.
43:32
Speaker 2: is we have to discriminate the opposites, and then we
43:35
Speaker 2: have to find the union of the opposites in some
43:39
Speaker 2: way that makes psychological, spiritual, symbolic sense. And we can
43:48
Speaker 2: only do that by holding the tension of the opposites
43:51
Speaker 2: and wrestling through these issues with ourselves.
43:56
Speaker 3: And it isn't a fully rational process. Like, you know,
43:59
Speaker 3: we could put these factors in chat GPT and it
44:02
Speaker 3: might say, buy the farm and buy an apartment, you know,
44:06
Speaker 3: or something like that. Yes, exactly. But we knew that,
44:09
Speaker 3: you know, it's not like she didn't know she could
44:13
Speaker 3: do this materially, but it was on that energetic and
44:17
Speaker 3: feeling level. So holding the tension of the opposites and
44:22
Speaker 3: the evocation of a symbol is not a choice, right?
44:26
Speaker 3: On a felt level, there's something deeper than the conscious
44:30
Speaker 3: mind that has to help us out to give us
44:33
Speaker 3: a felt sense that we can move forward.
44:37
Speaker 2: We all know that. We all know when something has
44:41
Speaker 2: happened in us and it feels just right of like, yes, now,
44:51
Speaker 2: says your client to herself, now I can go ahead
44:55
Speaker 2: and by a place out in the country. You know,
44:59
Speaker 2: young people, like, now I can go ahead and ask
45:04
Speaker 2: this person to marry me. Now is when I've thought
45:09
Speaker 2: about going to graduate school forever and ever, but now
45:14
Speaker 2: is the time all the parts of me are aligned.
45:21
Speaker 2: And I'm going to add something in the way of
45:23
Speaker 2: we all have want to be helpful and supportive to
45:29
Speaker 2: friends who come to us with some sort of real-life quandary.
45:34
Speaker 2: And the cautionary tale here is not to bring a
45:38
Speaker 2: common-sense approach to it. Of like, well, you know, you've
45:41
Speaker 2: been thinking about going back to school for a long time,
45:45
Speaker 2: and you've always been interested in this, and why don't
45:48
Speaker 2: you just, you know, start applying? That's not the problem.
45:54
Speaker 3: Because we kind of knew that already.
45:56
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, you know, of course. So we want
46:01
Speaker 2: to help people hold the tension by just acknowledging, you know,
46:06
Speaker 2: tell me more about this. Because clearly you can fill
46:12
Speaker 2: out application forms for a job or school or travel
46:16
Speaker 2: or a million things online. So we want to help
46:20
Speaker 2: people hold the tension of their inner opposites. And identify
46:24
Speaker 2: what is the internal nexus of this problem. What is
46:29
Speaker 2: going on here? And generate that ability to add more
46:36
Speaker 2: life to it so that the opposites can start really
46:40
Speaker 2: talking to each other.
46:41
Speaker 3: Absolutely. And if we begin to look for it, we
46:47
Speaker 3: really can find many of these situations inside of us,
46:52
Speaker 3: but Generally, as you were saying, Deb, that one part
46:56
Speaker 3: of the issue will just fall off because for whatever reason,
46:59
Speaker 3: but often we just don't feel we have the strength.
47:01
Speaker 3: The ego doesn't have the energy. So somebody else may
47:05
Speaker 3: have had that same tension of, you know, should I
47:09
Speaker 3: make this move over here? And then we just find
47:13
Speaker 3: that holding that question is too much. And so we
47:17
Speaker 3: jettison it. It's like, ah, forget it. I'm just going
47:20
Speaker 3: to live in town and I'm going to stop worrying
47:22
Speaker 3: about this. And, you know, that's true too. We only
47:26
Speaker 3: can do what we can do, but some of these
47:30
Speaker 3: things will plague us as it did for this person.
47:34
Speaker 3: And that's when the unconscious is really not going to
47:37
Speaker 3: take no for an answer. It's like, you shall contend
47:43
Speaker 3: with me, and we are going to figure something out here.
47:47
Speaker 2: And we can be helpful to one another sometimes. in
47:53
Speaker 2: helping a friend, a family member, a colleague, a client,
47:59
Speaker 2: hold that tension. And then when the time is right,
48:04
Speaker 2: sometimes somebody does say something to you that just breaks
48:08
Speaker 2: the spell. You know, and I had a life experience
48:15
Speaker 2: where that happened. I was wrestling and wrestling with whether
48:18
Speaker 2: I should go back to school and have this dream
48:21
Speaker 2: of becoming just a therapist, a social worker. And I said, yes,
48:26
Speaker 2: but I said this to a younger cousin. I said, yes, yes, yes,
48:30
Speaker 2: but I'm in my 40s. I'm going to be 50.
48:35
Speaker 2: And this person broke the spell and said, yes, but
48:39
Speaker 2: you're going to be 50 anyway. It just broke the spell.
48:46
Speaker 2: So that third thing, The emergence of something new that
48:54
Speaker 2: resolves it can come from within ourselves. It can come
48:59
Speaker 2: from another person. It can come in a dream. It
49:02
Speaker 2: can come in a therapeutic process. But the point is
49:06
Speaker 2: it's worth holding the tension because there will be a
49:11
Speaker 2: resolution that has that union of the opposites, the new thing,
49:17
Speaker 2: the new sense of permission to do something, a new realization.
49:23
Speaker 2: Without that, then there you are, either having achieved no
49:28
Speaker 2: resolution or an artificial resolution. And it's not about should
49:33
Speaker 2: you stay or should you go, is it me or
49:36
Speaker 2: is it you? It's about your own inner development of
49:42
Speaker 2: your own course of growth and individuation. And that's the goal.
49:50
Speaker 2: It takes us all our lives.
49:54
Speaker 3: And to be conscious. So, I mean, there's so much
49:56
Speaker 3: going on just a few inches below the surface of
50:00
Speaker 3: our personality that we're still becoming acquainted with. There's a
50:04
Speaker 3: whole world around. of ideas and feelings and images that
50:10
Speaker 3: as soon as we, 15 minutes after we close our
50:13
Speaker 3: eyes at night, it starts talking to us, starts moving around,
50:16
Speaker 3: but it's there all day long. Lots of life going
50:20
Speaker 3: on in there. Right.
50:21
Speaker 2: We have an inner helper there for us every single night.
50:26
Speaker 2: Always offers us something.
50:28
Speaker 3: So here's another example of attention that I think is
50:32
Speaker 3: common enough that I've seen it in myself and other people.
50:36
Speaker 3: The tension between ambition and contentment. And if the ambition
50:45
Speaker 3: falls into the unconscious, we can be vulnerable for a
50:50
Speaker 3: kind of addiction that we have this sense of wanting more,
50:55
Speaker 3: but we won't let ourselves know what we want. So
50:59
Speaker 3: it winds up being kind of a free-ranging process. We
51:04
Speaker 3: can cut off contentment and kind of stick it in
51:08
Speaker 3: the unconscious and that can plague us with a kind
51:12
Speaker 3: of sedation of the personality or even such a willingness
51:17
Speaker 3: to betray our own selves so holding ambition and contentment
51:24
Speaker 3: together can take a lot of strength particularly if we're
51:30
Speaker 3: you know for instance raised in a home that may
51:33
Speaker 3: be prized one side much more than the other, but
51:37
Speaker 3: I've seen that when people can honor both sides, yes,
51:42
Speaker 3: I'm ambitious, yes, I also can feel deeply content, what
51:48
Speaker 3: I have observed in myself is an attitude that resolves
51:52
Speaker 3: that tension is devotion, that that deep feeling of being
51:58
Speaker 3: devoted to something seems to mix contentment and ambition together.
52:04
Speaker 3: And when I have that feeling, which doesn't happen all
52:08
Speaker 3: the time, but when I feel devoted, then I have
52:12
Speaker 3: a sense that that conflict is somehow resolved. I am content,
52:18
Speaker 3: and I'm highly active, and I'm goal-oriented, and I feel
52:22
Speaker 3: very internally supported.
52:25
Speaker 2: Well, we have talked about being supported internally by our friend,
52:30
Speaker 2: the dream maker. So.
52:33
Speaker 2: Let's turn to a dream and see how this may
52:37
Speaker 2: bear on our topic or lots of other things, as
52:42
Speaker 2: dreams do.
52:43
Speaker 3: And as we lean into our dream interpretation today, I
52:47
Speaker 3: would like to remind people that as part of the
52:51
Speaker 3: podcast and the maturation of our work together, we three,
52:55
Speaker 3: we've also created Dream School. which is an online learning program,
53:01
Speaker 3: which does have live components where you will have a
53:05
Speaker 3: chance to meet Lisa and Deb and myself, as well
53:09
Speaker 3: as get to know and participate in a community. And
53:13
Speaker 3: there are modules that we have organized and distribute to
53:16
Speaker 3: you over 12 months. Dream School is a, really, I
53:21
Speaker 3: don't know anyone that does anything comparable. It's a wonderful
53:25
Speaker 3: opportunity to really sink into this process of interpreting dreams
53:31
Speaker 3: and feeling confident at the end of the process. So
53:35
Speaker 3: if you're interested in that, you can go to our website, thisjungianlife.com,
53:39
Speaker 3: and click Dream School. We have a 19-year-old female who
53:55
Speaker 3: is a zoology student. student, and here is her dream.
54:01
Speaker 3: The setting is a seemingly never-ending pool, filled with clear
54:05
Speaker 3: blue water. White tiles make up the floor of the pool.
54:09
Speaker 3: A tile border in the shape of a semicircle creates
54:14
Speaker 3: a small divide in this huge pool. I, by naked
54:19
Speaker 3: human form, was floating in this water. In front of
54:23
Speaker 3: this tiled divider, and I was simply looking around. I
54:30
Speaker 3: remember feeling so alone, but had a sense of peace
54:34
Speaker 3: with this. As quickly as the dream had begun, life
54:39
Speaker 3: forms began to rise from the bottom of the pool,
54:43
Speaker 3: appearing to just come into existence. While these forms were
54:48
Speaker 3: not those of living things in our world, I knew
54:52
Speaker 3: they were living. This was creation. I was simply taking
54:58
Speaker 3: in this phenomenon when I was struck with the realization
55:02
Speaker 3: that these things, forms, must be being created behind the
55:08
Speaker 3: tile divider. But as I went to look over it,
55:12
Speaker 3: a force stopped me. Unfortunately, I didn't take that as
55:17
Speaker 3: an indication that I was not to look. I thought
55:20
Speaker 3: it was simply a barrier that I couldn't see, so
55:23
Speaker 3: I waded around the barrier. And as I looked down,
55:28
Speaker 3: all I saw was darkness before I awoke. I awoke
55:32
Speaker 3: with a great sense that this dream was vital to
55:35
Speaker 3: pick apart. However, I have no clue what to take
55:38
Speaker 3: from it. As for context, she writes, During this time,
55:44
Speaker 3: my boyfriend was introducing me to Jungian psychology and philosophy. However,
55:49
Speaker 3: I was not taking much in that he was saying,
55:52
Speaker 3: as I simply didn't have the background information that would
55:55
Speaker 3: have allowed me to. Furthermore, around this time, I came
55:59
Speaker 3: off of the hormonal birth control pill, if that's of
56:03
Speaker 3: any relevance. And then she says her main feelings in
56:07
Speaker 3: the dream were, I felt as though I was in
56:09
Speaker 3: the presence of power. I was in awe and at
56:13
Speaker 3: such peace. After observing the darkness for a fraction of
56:18
Speaker 3: a second prior to waking up, I felt great fear.
56:23
Speaker 3: It's a powerful dream for a 19-year-old to have. So
56:26
Speaker 3: she's in the never-ending pool. Sounds like the name of
56:30
Speaker 3: an album.
56:31
Speaker 2: Well, you know, we have some opposites here. I can't
56:34
Speaker 2: resist starting with what we've just been talking about. We
56:40
Speaker 2: have water, and then we have... Earth in the form
56:45
Speaker 2: of tiles and borders and, in a sense, let's call
56:50
Speaker 2: it land. So we have some opposites. We have darkness
56:55
Speaker 2: that's behind that barrier, and we have the light, the
57:00
Speaker 2: light of the water. And the opposites have been discriminated.
57:08
Speaker 2: The water is contained within tiles, and there is a divider.
57:14
Speaker 2: between the light and the dark reminds me of the
57:19
Speaker 2: words from Genesis, which I always love, which is, God
57:26
Speaker 2: separated the light from the darkness, the known versus the unknown.
57:32
Speaker 2: And I can't resist commenting on the end of the dream.
57:37
Speaker 2: I awoke with a great sense that this dream was
57:39
Speaker 2: vital to pick apart, meaning to separate to understand its components,
57:50
Speaker 2: to discriminate them more. So let's see what we can
57:54
Speaker 2: do that might be useful to this dreamer. I'm paying
57:59
Speaker 2: attention to the pool, the water, the primordial waters from
58:05
Speaker 2: which life develops, from the primordial chaos, the waters, the depths,
58:12
Speaker 2: the deeps.
58:13
Speaker 3: And it's a never-ending pool. So now we know we're
58:16
Speaker 3: already in an archetypal beginning.
58:19
Speaker 2: A never-ending pool, generative of life, as is the ocean,
58:25
Speaker 2: with what must have been such a magical element of
58:31
Speaker 2: the world of the ancients, that you go fishing. And
58:36
Speaker 2: sometimes you get fish and sometimes you don't. And here's
58:39
Speaker 2: this generative, sustaining... element of life that no one really knows.
58:48
Speaker 2: How does this really happen? And of course, there's sea monsters.
58:53
Speaker 2: But again, the generative depth.
58:57
Speaker 3: So she's giving us a cosmology.
59:00
Speaker 2: Exactly, exactly.
59:02
Speaker 3: There is water, which is knowable in some measure. I mean,
59:07
Speaker 3: it's never-ending, so she could never escape. swim to the
59:10
Speaker 3: end of it, but she can know it's a pool.
59:14
Speaker 3: She can look down. She can see there are tile.
59:17
Speaker 3: So to me, that the pool represents the psyche, and
59:23
Speaker 3: one of the ways to define psyche that the brilliant
59:26
Speaker 3: Murray Stein described says in his book Map of the
59:30
Speaker 3: Psyche is, Psyche is everything that could be known by us,
59:38
Speaker 3: and anything else is the collective unconscious. So even though
59:43
Speaker 3: it's difficult to think of for swimming for all eternity,
59:48
Speaker 3: but it is knowable in as much as it's still
59:50
Speaker 3: a pool, and it still has a tile floor, these
59:54
Speaker 3: are things that can be known. Then underneath that, there
59:59
Speaker 3: is this boundary. And sometimes that boundary between the conscious
1:00:05
Speaker 3: and the unconscious is symbolized by the urus burus, which
1:00:10
Speaker 3: is something that contains. And what we discover is it's
1:00:16
Speaker 3: separating out these extraordinary layers inside of the psyche.
1:00:21
Speaker 2: Here she is, paying attention to sort of a birth
1:00:28
Speaker 2: type of image. My naked human form was floating in
1:00:31
Speaker 2: the water and feeling alone, you know, and in a way,
1:00:37
Speaker 2: aren't we alone in the womb of the primordial waters?
1:00:43
Speaker 2: And had a sense of peace. So the feeling tone is...
1:00:49
Speaker 2: really does echo sort of the uroboric experience, the oceanic
1:00:56
Speaker 2: experience that we assume babies have in the womb as well.
1:01:03
Speaker 2: Everything is peaceful. There's nothing you have to do. There's
1:01:07
Speaker 2: nowhere to go. You can just be. And then, given this,
1:01:15
Speaker 2: if you're in a pool and if you're feeling like this,
1:01:20
Speaker 2: life forms begin to rise from the bottom of the pool,
1:01:25
Speaker 2: appearing to come into existence. And she says they're not
1:01:29
Speaker 2: things of our world, but they were living, and this
1:01:32
Speaker 2: was creation. So here is a creation myth of the
1:01:36
Speaker 2: coming into being, the generativity, the something out of mystery. Oh,
1:01:44
Speaker 2: we can't fix it to a cause. And our dream
1:01:49
Speaker 2: ego is taking in this phenomenon. And then, as in
1:01:54
Speaker 2: a fairy tale, you're not supposed to go and look
1:01:59
Speaker 2: in that room. Here's the key. Here are all the
1:02:02
Speaker 2: keys to the castle. Go anywhere. Open all the doors.
1:02:05
Speaker 2: Make yourself at home. Except, you see this one little
1:02:07
Speaker 2: key right here? There's a room up on the fifth floor.
1:02:12
Speaker 3: Don't go in there. Like, uh-oh. So....
1:02:18
Speaker 2: Our dream ego, and this is not just fairy tales,
1:02:23
Speaker 2: but I want to go look. I want to go
1:02:27
Speaker 2: and look. So a force stops her, and this echoes
1:02:34
Speaker 2: Adam and Eve in the garden, but I didn't take
1:02:38
Speaker 2: that as an indication that I wasn't to look. The
1:02:41
Speaker 2: apple looked pretty good to me. I don't take that
1:02:45
Speaker 2: as an indication that I'm not really supposed to eat it.
1:02:48
Speaker 2: Off she goes, she wades around the barrier, and all
1:02:52
Speaker 2: she sees is darkness.
1:02:55
Speaker 3: So, to me, this really is a model of the psyche,
1:02:59
Speaker 3: that she is actually observing the machinery of herself, so
1:03:05
Speaker 3: to speak. And I think the tile floor is very important.
1:03:11
Speaker 3: It could be interpreted in a number of ways, but
1:03:14
Speaker 3: as human beings... We have this extraordinary innate trait that
1:03:22
Speaker 3: invisible forces inside of us interact with some layer of
1:03:28
Speaker 3: our psyche and then take on representative shapes or images,
1:03:37
Speaker 3: that we have an image-making function inside of us. Hmm.
1:03:42
Speaker 3: where that layer of the psyche, the tiled layer of
1:03:46
Speaker 3: the psyche, acts as a kind of artist that renders
1:03:52
Speaker 3: things in the unconscious. This is something that people do
1:03:56
Speaker 3: often in many different therapeutic traditions. For instance, you're feeling upset,
1:04:04
Speaker 3: you have a distressed feeling, and so you focus on
1:04:08
Speaker 3: the feeling until you see an image. But What is
1:04:13
Speaker 3: that image-making function? And in this cosmology, perhaps it's the
1:04:19
Speaker 3: tile itself, or perhaps it's the tiny skin on the
1:04:24
Speaker 3: underside or the top side of the tile, but that
1:04:28
Speaker 3: the mysterious thing that can't be seen becomes a thing
1:04:33
Speaker 3: that can be seen, which then can be represented within
1:04:38
Speaker 3: the proximity of the ego, of the dream ego. So
1:04:44
Speaker 3: she leans in underneath that, which we would call the
1:04:46
Speaker 3: collective unconscious, and she's a bit horrified. And Jung tells
1:04:51
Speaker 3: us very wisely, the waking ego cannot interact safely with
1:04:57
Speaker 3: the collective unconscious. We need a kind of linking function
1:05:02
Speaker 3: or a translator. And then he called that translating function
1:05:07
Speaker 3: the anima animus, which sometimes is anthropomorphic, or it actually
1:05:12
Speaker 3: seems to be the bottom of the pool, seems to
1:05:16
Speaker 3: be functioning in a kind of linking way or a
1:05:21
Speaker 3: way that represents unconscious content to her. But she's given
1:05:26
Speaker 3: this extraordinary initiation, and it really is an initiatic dream
1:05:30
Speaker 3: where she looks, peeks into what's behind the image maker,
1:05:36
Speaker 3: and then goes, holy shit, There's the great cosmic void
1:05:43
Speaker 3: that is so alien to me, I can only represent
1:05:47
Speaker 3: it as darkness.
1:05:50
Speaker 2: I like a lot your calling this an initiatic dream.
1:05:58
Speaker 2: And it does have a lot of these archetypal components
1:06:02
Speaker 2: to it, especially that impulse and the need to go
1:06:11
Speaker 2: and look. That, you know, in a lot of the
1:06:16
Speaker 2: fairy tales or in the story of Adam and Eve,
1:06:22
Speaker 2: it's the development of ego, of agency, of a greater
1:06:27
Speaker 2: sense of self, and taking the risk of consciousness and
1:06:34
Speaker 2: a new kind of separating. which is what initiation is
1:06:39
Speaker 2: all about. You are separated from a previous stage of
1:06:44
Speaker 2: life through various trials and tribulations in order to become more,
1:06:52
Speaker 2: in order to attain a new stage of development and
1:06:57
Speaker 2: maturation or individuation. So the first experience of this is
1:07:03
Speaker 2: the void, the darkness. There's nothing there.
1:07:08
Speaker 3: Or I would say nothing that she can perceive. It's
1:07:13
Speaker 3: a pregnant darkness. Yeah.
1:07:16
Speaker 2: And exactly. And then she adds in her comments that
1:07:20
Speaker 2: she's come off the birth control pill. So, you know,
1:07:26
Speaker 2: whether that's an intention toward literal generativity in terms of
1:07:30
Speaker 2: getting pregnant or some other shift, it is nevertheless... a
1:07:36
Speaker 2: sort of resonant of fertility, a readiness for fertility of
1:07:44
Speaker 2: not blocking it in this organic way. Maybe some other
1:07:50
Speaker 2: form of birth control can be used, but something is
1:07:53
Speaker 2: going on here. And she says with her boyfriend, she's
1:08:01
Speaker 2: being introduced to all those really difficult, dangerous ideas that
1:08:07
Speaker 2: have to do with all this Jungian psychology stuff.
1:08:11
Speaker 3: Huh. A most dangerous method.
1:08:15
Speaker 2: That's right. The name of a book about Jungian psychology.
1:08:22
Speaker 2: And it is a dangerous method and a consciousness-making method
1:08:28
Speaker 2: and an adventure and a wonder. And do we dare
1:08:34
Speaker 2: to look? especially at ourselves, inside our own darkness. And
1:08:42
Speaker 2: is that darkness generative, or is it simply nothingness and
1:08:49
Speaker 2: engulfing nothingness?
1:08:52
Speaker 3: And here in the symbolism of this dream, it's highly generative.
1:08:57
Speaker 3: that this life comes from the mysterious darkness the dream
1:09:03
Speaker 3: also on a feeling level has to do with this
1:09:08
Speaker 3: idea of the relativization of the ego to the self
1:09:11
Speaker 3: that yeah and she's quite young to have this experience
1:09:15
Speaker 3: at 19 but There's a wisdom inside of us that
1:09:19
Speaker 3: makes these decisions. But to peek underneath what is visible
1:09:25
Speaker 3: and known and to be full of awe and fear.
1:09:29
Speaker 3: And many sacred texts talk about coming face to face
1:09:34
Speaker 3: with the divine and feeling awe and fear. Fear of
1:09:38
Speaker 3: the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Pachad, fear. But
1:09:42
Speaker 3: awe combines both that The numinous, the overwhelm, the fear,
1:09:51
Speaker 3: the beauty, and awe is a rare emotion in the
1:09:55
Speaker 3: modern world because we have created so much control over
1:10:00
Speaker 3: our environments that we rarely gasp with awe. But here
1:10:06
Speaker 3: she gets that.
1:10:06
Speaker 2: I really like that of adding the word awe. Something
1:10:14
Speaker 2: of the tremendum has happened here. So I would say
1:10:21
Speaker 2: to this dreamer, this is what has happened to you.
1:10:25
Speaker 2: This is an experience and an experience of knowing. And
1:10:31
Speaker 2: we have these experiences all our lives. We take them
1:10:34
Speaker 2: often for granted of that, you know, when a child
1:10:38
Speaker 2: masters a new skill, for example, learning to ride a
1:10:41
Speaker 2: two-wheeled bike. then it's done. And you know for the
1:10:45
Speaker 2: rest of your life, even if you never go on
1:10:48
Speaker 2: another bike ride, you know how it works. You know
1:10:51
Speaker 2: you can do it. And for this dreamer to ramp
1:10:54
Speaker 2: it up into something much more numinous, you know something.
1:10:59
Speaker 2: Something has happened to you. You've been introduced to something,
1:11:05
Speaker 2: the tremendum and awe and initiation of And the knowing
1:11:12
Speaker 2: is not going to be reduced to something cognitive. The
1:11:17
Speaker 2: knowing is the knowing that here is a darkness that is,
1:11:26
Speaker 2: you will have to discover what it is for you.
1:11:28
Speaker 3: And I so appreciate that she's calling it darkness rather
1:11:34
Speaker 3: than a void. Because darkness just connotes that I don't have,
1:11:38
Speaker 3: I haven't developed the sensory organs with which to perceive
1:11:44
Speaker 3: within this darkness. But you will. Part of becoming more
1:11:51
Speaker 3: conscious is inch by inch claiming a bit of the
1:11:54
Speaker 3: darkness as known territory, which is a life's work. But
1:12:00
Speaker 3: the unconscious is added to the conscious and there is
1:12:03
Speaker 3: kind of a, a blending of those territories. So it
1:12:08
Speaker 3: really is, it is a remarkable dream. And I think
1:12:11
Speaker 3: she gets that as she's writing at the end, like
1:12:13
Speaker 3: there's something, it's got to be going on here. It
1:12:17
Speaker 3: really is remarkable. This is the kind of dream like,
1:12:21
Speaker 3: if this were my analysis, and I love doing this sometimes,
1:12:24
Speaker 3: is that's the kind of dream that you should read
1:12:27
Speaker 3: for 40 days and 40 nights, that you read that
1:12:31
Speaker 3: dream every morning, and you just carry it with you,
1:12:34
Speaker 3: and you don't let yourself fall asleep, and just see
1:12:38
Speaker 3: what bubbles up. And that little exercise of just choosing
1:12:43
Speaker 3: to read it once a day as a meditation, boy,
1:12:48
Speaker 3: that lets you sip, sip in the magic. And not
1:12:54
Speaker 3: every dream can yield that, but it seems like this
1:12:57
Speaker 3: is the kind of dream you can read for 40
1:12:59
Speaker 3: days and 40 nights.
1:13:01
Speaker 2: Absolutely so. We are going to wish you really well
1:13:06
Speaker 2: with this. And stay tuned to subsequent dreams, of course.
1:13:12
Speaker 3: Stay tuned.
1:13:14
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. To submit a dream, suggest an episode topic,
1:13:18
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