I listened to yesterday's call and felt the energy coalescing, and moving in a significant way. Really wonderful - and hats off to Bonnie for pushing forward on this. Also somehow I got to understand a bit more of the issues that drive others. I would love to know what you do in your Psyche Salon's Donna. Can we do one online? I am also interested in having the technical conversation, as Bonnie discussed with James and Donna.
What particularly resonated was James talking about the numinous through music and the essence of religions. I felt a charge of affinity of interests, like he was talking to the religious function of the psyche as I understand it. For me dance and movement are the numinous and in an a mythological "once upon a time' time, the way of women in worship was through dance. So this has become the essence of what I teach women that sex is a spiritual practice and to be able to make love as worship you need to be able to dance as worship - certainly as something sustainable over time. I talk sex, but I know that what I am teaching in the end is God - or the divine of your (mis) understanding. Anyway a conversation - as was outlined as one of the possibilities in the discussion on the call - between the two of us might be wonderful. If you would like to explore it, James!
In terms of archetypal psychology I like to cultivate the imagining of holy harlot and how to live that within a committed relationship. My late husband represented a wonderful example of a mature masculine sexuality and I have written of it since which I can share if people are interested.
I intend to be on next week's call.
Wonderful, all.
Adele
Replies
I also felt "a charge of affinity interests" - I am so inspired by each of you and our group conversations together. I am thinking that there is an organic emergence of core themes, images, and interests that could be used for a joint project. I wonder if there were a way to begin to post images that are begining to arise - post them on their on board within our group? This could be art, personal or well known, that we begin to post as Psyche inspires us...
As I'm writing, we could also attach links to songs/music that resonates, too...
Adele, hi:
I enjoyed reading your reflections on Tuesday night’s call. I’m glad you resonated with my comments that music, especially devotional music, can function as a symbol of the numinous. I think you’re right that dance and movement can also function as symbolic expressions of the numinous. In fact, it is precisely dance and movement that separate most Western classical music from many other musics of the world. Most non-Western music is rhythm based, and that is precisely because it inspires ritual dance and ‘performance of the sacred’ (as one ethnomusicologist calls it). Dance is a primary element of many indigenous ritual devotional practices.
An important element of this for me, however, is the distinction between pre-modern and Jungian approaches to these ideas. For example, one of the great early Jungians, Esther Harding, wrote one of the first Jungian studies on the psychological importance of the goddess. Her book Women’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern (written in 1935) discusses ancient practices of goddess worship that included sacred temple prostitution and other explicit examples of sacred sexuality. However, these descriptions are of pre-modern people expressing their experience of the sacred-other through structured ritual activities in the outer world. The Jungian approach is to understand these expressions as being a part of the internal dynamic of the psyche. The value for modern people is to be in conversation with these internal dynamics of the psyche without allowing them to overwhelm the ego-self. To understand them exclusively as external phenomena is to concretize them and remove them from the world of psyche, thus allowing them to become vehicles of unconscious projection. Engaging with them in such a concrete way without the necessary institutional ritual structures that pre-modern people had in place can lead to identification and inflation.
I do agree that dance and love-making can (and perhaps should) be seen as sacred and as a form of worship. The key for modern people, though, from a Jungian perspective, is to be able to have enough structured awareness of the process to avoid being drawn into a regressive state of identification and inflation and to see them as reflections of internal dynamics.
In any case, I, too, am looking forward to next week’s conversation with Bonnie on the technical side of running a program through the DPA!
All the best,
James
I so understand your concern with identification and inflation, and it makes me uncomfortable with many of the neo tantra stuff on offer. However, we must also note the very real limitation of Jungian work which is that the real experience of body is somewhat ignored. Body is always an imagined body, and sexuality always begins begins in how it is imagined - whether from cultural or personal story. From where I come from and from my own work, the exploration of, and reimagining of these things, always through the imaginal, but also through body and the application of physio/spiritual (body/energy) practices, has yielded profound and real experience. (And for me personally the experience in real life of a conscious, mature and devotional relationship)
It could have been Jung who said " Sexuality is at bottom a religious issue, opening door of the psyche which permits the god image standing behind it an entry into ego awareness."
I like to think that my work (and the work at tamboo.co.za) genuinely explores the implication of this for modern people living real, ordinary but conscious lives. And really it starts with the sensations of "being body", the images of psyche, the myths and god image/s that live you. Distilling "pre-modern" practices does not have to be concretized but reimagined. When the sexual encounter is reimagined as sacred, then it does not need ancient ritual to contain it; the relationship becomes the container and the sense of ritual in the encounter (at least sometimes and by intention). Also the idea that it is not just personal pleasure; both personal and impersonal - the divine is always there.
The interface of spirituality and sexuality is always via body and the stories and images of psyche. I am finding it a difficult and subtle subject promote in this very "results" orientated age.
For me sex, psyche and sacred are one thing, certainly after early adulthood - otherwise the eros of life fades into blue pills and lots of headaches...
I am not sure if all this is relevant tot the group, but I have enjoyed the opportunity to ramble on. :)
Adele
Adele, hi:
Thanks for rambling on! I agree 100% that the reimagining of the body must include a solid grounding in the actual body, not simply a fantasy state. That would be dissociation. I think much of our culture today exists in a state of dissociation from the body, which is exactly why the kind of body work that you describe is so necessary. We need to inhabit our bodies, while still remaining in touch with and informed by our ability to think and to discern relative values. To run amuck with the body without input from the thinking and discernment function would be just another form of dissociation.
I think the path to wholeness is best served when we balance the functions and move toward integrating them all with a focus toward worthwhile values that support ourselves and others. My personal favorite model for this is the King, Warrior, Magician, Lover model (i.e. Queen, Amazon, Shamaness, Lover). When each these four quarters is equally honored and in touch with and informed by the others we can more effectively become a strong container for the regulation of archetypal energies.
So, that is all to say that I agree with your observation that pre-modern practices need to be reimagined!
All the best,
James