DIALOGUE

What part of me is bleeding uncontrollably?

Posted by Bonnie Bright on May 13, 2010 at 10:38pm
In a recent article I wrote called "On Depth Psychology: It's Meaning and Magic"  (read the whole work at http://www.depthinsights.com/pdfs/On_Depth_Psychology.pdf),
I wrote:

External objects and internal events both reflect the same message. Jung refers to integrating the external world through the senses on one hand, but also suggests we “translate into visual reality the world within us” (Robert Ryan, 2002, p. 156). If we were to view the unconscious as a wilderness, it is possible to see how elements on the inside of our psyches are also represented by things that we see in the physical world around us, and to draw parallel meaning between them. The compelling monuments and features in the outer landscape can correlate what Ryan refers to as “structures of the psyche”(p. 156) becoming symbolic in the “inner psychic landscape of the mind” (p. 156).

      At this stage, if the outer reality corresponds to something in my inner reality, I'm wondering about the current crisis in the Gulf as the oil spews from the ocean floor unchecked. Today, reports said the oil is likely spewing at 10 times the original rate the experts estimated. I'm somehow not surprised, but am increasingly saddened to understand the rate at which the earth is bleeding out and how it seems like the general view is that if BP throws money at it, everything will be OK. Do you realize the Exxon oil spill off Alaska is still only 8% cleaned up after many, many years? (NPR.com).

      We have hit an artery in the depths of earth, and things look grim. But on a personal note, I'm wondering what part of my own psyche is also bleeding uncontrollably...what part of me is spewing out, potentially from a wound that is unchecked? What can stop the bleeding? In the case of my psyche, if I am identified with the wound, it will remain unchecked. If I feel the suffering of earth and my fellow human beings so strongly I cannot detach myself, what good am I to the world? If somehow, I can come into relationship with it and allow it to be shared and witnessed by others who are willing to regard the pain and suffering, I can come to new wholeness and eventually witness others in the same way. I can only offer my own sadness and, at the same time, a sense of trust that all will be well; that something bigger than me is at work and we will all learn and grow from this seeming horror. I must believe that I am sacred, too, and if I can step up and take responsibility for my own part in this, to enter into reciprocal relationship to the earth as Jerome Bernstein and many others advocate, things can truly change... What do you think?

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Tags: inner, landscape, oil, spill
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  • Roger Sessions November 6, 2011 at 3:24am

    Bonnie,

    I realize this posting is a bit old, but I just wanted to say that I read your article referenced above (On Depth Psychology: It's Meaning and Magic.) It is a great introduction to the ideas of Depth Psychology. Thank you for making it available!

     

    • Bonnie Bright > Roger Sessions November 9, 2011 at 12:21am

      Hi Roger. Thanks for taking the time to read it and respond. It's always great to have feedback--particularly on concepts that are a bit complex and not easy to articulate. Taking on Depth Psychology as a general topic was a bit of that--but I realized an article like that would have been helpful to me when I first discovered Depth Psych. So here we are! If you--or anyone out there--come across other sources that explain Depth Psychology, please don't hesitate to post the links so we can all benefit. Cheers!

  • Ed Koffenberger May 27, 2010 at 7:01pm
    The fact that we are having such a discussion on two parallel forums seems to say that the event has caused pain in a number of Earth's children. We have bit the nipple and have now drawn blood. Yet blood on the water flowing on the sea's currents, continues to add more concerned folks to the conversation. Blood is washing up on more shores affecting more people, not to mention - and we all need to - the death of Earth's other children. Maybe such darkness will call forth the compensatory light and lead us/drive us to a deeper unity with Earth and all her children. Just maybe...
  • Bonnie Bright May 27, 2010 at 3:54pm
    Oh, Ed. I hadn't heard about unexecuted plan for the pre-placed barriers. It makes me feel physically sick to think about it. Hindsight, as Craig Chalquist pointed out in his recent Forum entry about Myth in the Gulf, is one of Titans--and of course, the Titans are always present where hubris is.

    I was also talking to a professor/mentor a day or two ago and he alluded to the strategic decision that one person (or a handful of people) at BP made: that is, to pay the fine if they got caught not adhering to standards or to invest a much larger sum of money to fix what they knew was already inferior or broken. Someone was definitely playing roulette. This is such a clear case of not taking responsibility in the sense of "where much is given, much is required". And yet, he also alluded to the capacity we each have to make such a decision---not that we would, but we could. How many times in my life, I catch myself thinking, have I done something dishonest because it was convenient or safe or would provide something I wanted?

    Erich Neumann, in "The Meaning of the Earth Archetype" suggests the devouring feminine which devours everything that is born and demands blood (her blood/oil for ours??) is at the center of every initiation, the "place of death in the hero's path" (p. 190 in "The Fear of the Feminine"). In light of this, I'm wondering about the initiatory event the Gulf spill symbolizes--and what kind of face each of us on the path of individuation--both individually (especially myself included as I lament the spill and complain to others day after day) and collectively--are going to turn to this event?

    Do we decry the perpetrators of this horror, effectively turning the Earth into a powerless victim at the hands of mankind run amok?--or are we to understand the event as a sacrifice where Earth is offering us the opportunity--albeit at the expense of herself and many--to reflect and come to some kind of new consciousness?--perhaps even preventing something far worse (hard to imagine, I know) in the future.

    I don't know. Am I too Pollyanna about this? I just realized how much it has drained me to resent and to despair over this event. I want to figure out the meaning--or make meaning--and I can only do that by looking at it from another angle than simply pointing a finger at the evilness of BP....
  • Ed Koffenberger May 27, 2010 at 1:38pm
    I think it was quite telling that the governement had a plan to have the floating barriers in storage near the coast lines that would be most affected IF such a disaster took place, but had not acted on it. Human hubris? Total disregard for the shadow side of technology? Total disregard for Nature or a belief that no matter what screw-up humans may cause, Nature can fix herself? The fact that the government does not have the expertise and the one who made this mess is expected to clean it up begs the question whether BP or any of the other oil-giants are able to think even a little bit outside their boxes to ask the simple question, "What if something breaks?"
  • Bonnie Bright May 19, 2010 at 1:04pm
    Thank you both for your stimulating and lively conversation. I agree that sometimes people (no doubt myself included) are so familiar and almost comfortable with the wound that we don't even notice how we brandish it, favor it, or simply bleed out all over others we come in contact with --because the wound "does something for us". Either, as Ed pointed out, gives us a comfort zone that defines us, allows us to "manage" difficult emotions,--or makes us feel special in some way. The key, as with all things of course, is to first become conscious of it and then we have options. The way to do this in Depth Psychology, of course, is through inner work.

    I don't necessarily agree that bleeding has to be stopped...sometimes, as Ed pointed out, bleeding can be a good thing. And, as we all know the term "wounded healer," those who have been wounded can often provide the best medicine for others who are likewise struggling. But it seems like its not so much the "uncontrollable bleeding" that is problem, but rather "unconscious bleeding"....
  • Ed Koffenberger May 19, 2010 at 12:18pm
    Personally, I think everyone has a wound of some sort - some bigger and/or deeper than others. As to bleeding, a certain amount of bleeding from a wound is intended to help cleanse the wound and alert the wounded that there is something with which to be concerned. At least open bleeding can be dealt with more quickly. It’s the internal bleeding that is more dangerous by its "invisibility." My opinion is that to be fully human and aware, one bleeds from time to time. There is only one type of human that I know of that does not bleed, a dead one. My optimism about this is that if we all recognize our own wounding, we can be more genuinely present for others.
  • Ed Koffenberger May 19, 2010 at 11:31am
    Dimitri: Bonnie's comment about identifying with the wound keeping it unchecked is informative for your #1. My personal experience is that its hard to identify the wound when I am in the middle of it, or once I identify the wound, I have no idea how to work with it. Your #2, sharing (whether among supportive friends or therapeutically) is a way to hear and share “stuckness” in a wound. I had a client once who would introduce herself to a new person and within the same conversation mention her wound as if it was the definition of her total personality. Unfortunately, this caused her much social isolation. Only the intervention of a close friend helped her see this dynamic. Of course, some friendships are based upon keeping similar wounds fresh - such as a support group for a particular trauma that no one ever leaves. Luckily for her, this friend was not such a person. As to balance, I think of a teeter-totter where to find balance you need a similar weight on the other end. As a child I remember discovering, while standing across the teeter-totter from my friend (Don’t tell my mother!), if we moved more towards the middle together, our standing was more stable.
  • Ed Koffenberger May 16, 2010 at 8:02pm
    Not wanting to make this area a dialogue (Others, where are you?), my image has always been one of a single wave, like a wave of sound that is eternal and constant - music of the spheres, or central note. Whenever we (individual or communal) are in sync or harmonize with that note, all moves well and a level of cosmic congruence is sustained. This, however, is so rare. Our individual and communal "lines" so often diverge from the central note in such a way that life itself feels dissonant. This especially happens when we (individual & species) think we are the only ones initiating and playing the music.
    I still believe that there is room for human agency that might be lost if the "what will be, will be" is taken too fatalistically. I believe I know you well enough to not believe this of you, but I have run into folks who use that phrase to cover inaction, or meeting minimal resistance have thrown up their hands. Frankly, I strive to ride the wave, (This from a mountain boy in Kentucky!!), or dance to the music. And I am less comfortable dealing with people who are not actively searching to do the same, as if their personal stanzas are the only ones that exist.
    Maybe the “universe” can teach humanity with a carrot or a stick.
    Oh yes, the bleeding imagery – so it is with birth. Maybe we need to invite Mother Earth to midwife again, for she can help us stop the bleeding and tell us how to care for the new idea/life once it is born.
  • Bonnie Bright May 15, 2010 at 9:19pm
    Ed: Thank you SO much for engaging in this discussion. It is clearly a topic that is close to me, something that elicits deep emotion--not the least of them being fear and despair. But, to your point, I do remain hopeful. I know on a global level we are moving quickly toward destruction--of our species if not our planet. I recently attended a talk from journalist and best-selling author Alan Weissman who wrote "The World Without Us." who claims that if human activity (i.e. the human race) ended this moment, it would take millennia for the earth to recover from our forays and exploits into manipulation and abuse. However, I think where you and I converge into essential dialogue is, as you pointed out, the "all will be well". My current view of that, since you require that I reflect more directly, is that "well" means whatever is meant to be will be. I have, given recent events in my personal life and lifepath, certainly found new reasons to think that I am part of a bigger pattern over which I have no control--and while I can make choices that put me more in alignment with that pattern--and thus make my life a little more effortless and filled with less (self-inflicted) suffering, I guess I have to come clean with myself and admit I finally think that whatever is happening "out there" is what IS. Therefore, though we are committing such destruction (ie. our demand for fossil fuels--oil--is at the core of the leak in the gulf--and our greedy nature is to blame on some level for the current spill and the controversy surrounding it--there must be some reason for it--if only to bring more of us to awareness that what we are doing isn't working for our greater good. I don't know that an overall enlightenment of the species or quantum leap of consciousness will occur in my lifetime. I can only wish, desire, intend, and actively engage with my surroundings, ancestors, spirits, and fellow humans to take responsibility for my part and will it to happen.... What do you think?

    Ed Koffenberger said:
    Bonnie, you are hitting several targets at once! Two points in the last paragraph draw me. The first is the statement "a sense of trust that all will be well." My question, all will be well for whom? or what? If I take the long look, and subtract human existence, all may be well. (I'm not sure I buy the notion that the earth needs human existence) Even if this leads to some ecological/energy enlightenment, it will take a species wide (or at least a Western world subspecies) confessional experience to gain that quantum leap of consciousness. Is humanity ready or able to make such a leap starting from bended knee? You sound hopeful so I'll travel on your coat tails for that one.
    Second, I enjoyed your combining sacredness and responsibility. Sadly, it seems that sacredness has been claimed most strongly by those who profess otherworldly perspectives, whether escapist or spiritualized materialism (the earth is ours to use and abuse, or at least neglect to our benefit). "Sacred is as sacred does" appeals to me. Would love to hear more discussion along this line of sacredness and being-in-the-world.
    The artery imagery is so rich I'll have to sit with it awhile.
    What part of me is bleeding uncontrollably?
    In a recent article I wrote called On Depth Psychology: It's Meaning and Magic   (read the whole work at http://www.depthinsights.com/pdfs/On_Depth_…
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