Mary Pipher, author, psychotherapist, and activist, spoke at the recent Future First Conference in Minneapolis, addressing the most dangerous defense the human race could adopt at this point, that of "willful ignorance". According to Mary, willful ignorance occurs when we are caught between facing something too dreadful to acknowledge yet too dreadful to ignore.

"Yet we cannot solve a problem we cannot face," she asserted, and she continued to lace the hard facts of climate change and the political corruption supporting its denial, with anecdotal, funny stories, including influencing state legislators with apple pies (and not in the face, either!)

"We have a disordered relationship with the web of life," she said. "We never get into the zone to work on issues." She told of her own activism in forming a group in Nebraska to oppose the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline through their state, and particularly through the ecologically vulnerable Sandhills, actions which have successfully tied up the passage of the pipeline through the state for a few more years.

"Never ever allow yourself to get caught up in either/or," she advised. "Move to a both/and." She discussed how her group found common ground among people who have been manipulated to be polarized around issues that should not be politicized. We all want clean water. We do not want to be poisoned into perpetuity by spills or dumping of toxic chemicals. And many of us love the place we live. In finding this common ground, and not being divided by corporate interests and corruption, we can find ground to make positive change.

There were other gems to take away:

"If you are going to be an activist, you had better have fun!"

"Every emotion about climate change is the right emotion."

"Once you face the truth about climate collapse, you can have a transcendent response: you grow bigger!"

"Acting as if we can change the situation is a healthy response."
"Amazement antidotes despair."

"We can grow and enhance our moral imaginations. Good increases moral imagination; evil decreases it."

Her recent book, The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture, describes her own path in dealing with what she calls planetary anguish, a book I found soothing and inspiring to read. The new normal of the new, unknown future will require we each find ways of dealing with planetary anguish over and over, and Mary Pipher's story offers guideposts.

One of the many phrases that will stay with me from this week at Women's Future First 2014 Congress is that of Joanna Macy: sustaining the gaze. Even though what we see in the world is frightening and enraging, it is so important we witness (not deny) what mankind has perpetrated upon our planet and to feel, to let ourselves have open hearts to Earth and her many inhabitants.

This conference is focusing on drafting of a Bill of Rights for Water. Joanna addressed three practices that have consequences for water with results that last forever: nuclear power and its radiation contamination; genetically modified organisms, which cannot be undone once in use ; and fracking, which forever contaminates ground water with chemicals that cannot be extracted.

She "met" with us by Skype from her East Bay home and spoke with wit about these matters so important to our children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, our seven generations. Historically it is women who are the stewards of water, she reminded us. As we 450 women of all ages and great diversity, from all over the country, listened to this lively elder who has done so much to move people from despair and inaction to  protectors and guardians of future generations, we were summoned. Women everywhere, and Men too, the time is here! The time for waking and action is now.

"It is a great privilege to be alive when the future ones want so much," she said. She spoke of being willing-- even glad!-- to be living in a time with so much uncertainty.

And then Skype suddenly clicked off, and her image flashed away, as technology will do. There was no goodbye, only the lingering feeling in the room: here is an elder who sustained her gaze. She showed us it can be done, that, in fact, grief opens hearts, softens us, opens us to gratitude for the abundance of Earth and for each other. That what we do needs to be done out of love of the Earth, of each other, of our ancestral lineage, and of future generations.

You too can join this movement. My friend and colleague Leah Shelleda is attending the conference with me. Next weekend, November 15,  Leah, Naomi Lowinsky, and I will be offering a writing seminar Wounded Earth, Wounded Psyche through the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco. Please join us. We have each other, most important in facing a crisis of this size, and writing helps heal and move us to action. We hope to see you there!

A recent seminar on Jung and Steiner and their contributions to an evolution of consciousness, held at the C. G. Jung Institute in San Francisco, was well attended by individuals schooled in both camps. This seems to be happening more and more: finding the common ground of these two men's great works.

Although contemporaries, Carl Jung and Rudolf Steiner never met. And although they did not have much good to say about the other, they shared a common philosophical ancestor, Wolfgang von Goethe. (Rumor has it that Jung may have shared more than a philosophical lineage as his grandfather may have been an illegitimate offspring of Goethe's!) Both men studied Goethe's book length poem Faust as teenagers, Jung at the suggestion of his mother, and Steiner encouraged by a teacher who was editing Faust at the time. Goethe's work presents an alternative approach to the natural world and the psyche, from the mechanistic way that has developed since Descartes. It reflects an approach that perceives the whole as a living substance, whether that be the human psyche or the flower growing along the roadside. Goethe developed techniques to communicate with the living substance of a plant, techniques which quiet the mind and require the use of imagination, love, and receptiveness.

Both Jung and Steiner developed their approaches based on this communication with the living substance, but for Jung, it was with the unconscious, and for Steiner, with the living Spirit, whether that be human or other spirits.

Is there a wisdom in these two men's teachings being kept separate for the most part these 100 years? Steiner was esoteric, being fiery and airy; Jung sought refuge from judgment in "the scientific" and was more earthy. Is it possible these last years have afforded a development of these men's ideas, and now we are in a time of purifying the good thinking of both men from the dogmatism that has also developed? Any philosophy is also a biography of a man's soul. To the extent that this is true for analytical psychology (Jung) and anthroposophy (Steiner), perhaps we are in a time critical for a distillation of their works, purifying them of the impurities of personalities and the aberration of dogmatism that comes from followers.

Is the common ground of these men's works a kind of feminine holding, of sorts, marrying an esoteric way of soul development back into a consciousness grounded in psychological development? To what end might this come? —dissolving back into the ethers fixed beliefs about our known disciplines and seeing what re-emerges? Will Goethe's respectful approach to living substance, a guiding force in both men's works, be a healing essence that remains?

When I was interviewing Napa therapist and water activist Charlie Toledo, Executive Director of the Suscol Intertribal Counsel, this week, we had a conversation not directly related to the drought and water that I found particularly healing. She told me that in pantheistic times, people had more fun.

"When I speak to elementary school kids, I always ask them, 'How do you think the California people used to pick their chief?'  And most little kids will say, Oh, the meanest one, or the toughest warrior.  The one who was the strongest or the best hunter.  I tell them that the Northern California people used to choose their chief by the one who kept everybody laughing, the one who knew the most songs.

"First People around the world spend a whole lot more time celebrating," she continued.  "If you go to places like Bali, they celebrate all the time. They're celebrating something  every day. Everyday is a holy day. Every three days they're having parades and feasts and flowers and candles in the river.  There's this whole thing of honoring the earth, being in balance with the earth.  They're not into the consumption and the accumulation of material goods. Because really, we don't need that much."

Charlie said that First People in our area (Napa County) used to spend two hours a day meeting their needs.  The rest of the time was spent in celebration, and singing, dancing, basket weaving, art:  "You know, creating art, creating dances, creating feathered things, having gatherings. 'Gathering' is another word for 'partying'."

"They would come together, all these different people, and party.  They traveled all the time, from Napa to San Francisco, San Francisco beyond. Young people would go on these long trade runs from the very north part of Alaska to the southern part of South America. People would spend the younger part of their life doing those trade runs, and going out to see the world, literally running back and forth and meeting people.  There's obsidian from Napa Valley way down in South America. So it got traded through these trade runs. People were spending a lot of time having fun. And we've lost that."

This reminded me of an experience two years ago this last August, August 7, to be exact. I was driving home from my son and daughter-in-law's home in Petaluma after spending the afternoon with my then two-year-old grandson, Wesley. Melissa was very pregnant and probably in labor. On the drive home to Napa along Old Adobe Road, I came across a runner along the side of the road, a young woman in traditional dress carrying a feather, and then a few miles further on Route 121, a young man in running shorts also carrying a feather. It felt like an omen: my second grandson was on the way!  And sure enough, a few hours later, I was be driving this same road back to Petaluma, shooting stars announcing his imminent arrival. In the early hours of August 8, Sabien was born! Such joy!

Later Charlie told me that these runners were part of a four year event, running from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego and that in 2012, they were running for water. My hope: this grandson of this generation, in his own way, will be one of those joyful runners who weave us together, honoring Earth.

Charlie told me another story in this conversation, a story of wholeness and beauty.

"Once I told one of my godsons about how we see the darkness as the grandmother that holds the stars in place, that's female energy and that it's so big that we can't imagine it. We were out by a fire, and he stayed up all night looking at the summer night sky. And when the dawn came, he said, 'I see it!  It's the grandmother.  She's holding us.'  The darkness, the stars, he could feel the movement. He could hear the songs.

"So when you think that we're a very small part of this very large web of life that extends through the infinity of the universe, it's pretty amazing not to think of how rich we are, and what a wonderful place we live in. If we keep ourselves in balance, then it's all good."

Of the recent Napa earthquake, she added:  "Occasionally the earth dances and moves. My three-year-old grandson was saying, "How come the earth has to be shaking?  That was bad!"

"I said, 'No, that was good.'  I said, 'Do you like to sit still for a long time?'  He goes: No, he doesn't!  And then I said, 'Why would we expect her to?'

"I keep telling people the night turns into the day, the day turns into the night, fall turns into winter, winter turns into spring, spring turns into summer.  People are born, they get old, they die.  Everything is constantly in flux."

After this interview, I slept well, perhaps because Charlie's stories brought some inner balance, the mark of a true healer! The earthquake, whose tail rests between the house and the goat barn, shook our foundations, scared us. Fear polarizes. Love—and joy— returns us to wholeness—to being held by Grandmother.

Although Racu has moved on to greener pastures, and in his place, less cantankerous llama Hijo guards, this true story about a rainmaker at another time of severe drought has never been more relevant. The blog first appeared in June 2011 at the beginning of California's drought.  

At first no one noticed the Buddha I had placed in the forest by the winter creek— except our llama, Racu. Racu sees everything! His job is guarding the goats. He witnesses what moves in the forest near their pen, alarming with his horse-like whinny if an intruder happens to be nearby: a mountain lion, coyote or perhaps a neighbor. On our walks he examines the hillsides. Although alert, he has a peaceful, aloof look to him, like he has been a meditator all his life.

Marqués de Riscal Hotel

This last Sunday the Curriculum Committee of the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco offered an intramural event for members and candidates on Contemporary Issues in Archetypal Theory in which several members and board members presented different perspectives. The concept of “archetype” is an ancient one with roots as far back as Pythagorus, Plato and Aristotle. Goethe took up the concept again in the late 1700's and 1800's,  which greatly influenced Carl Jung in the  20th century.

My thoughts were nourished by these presentations and discussions, which also reminded me of an experience of last April 2013. My husband Donald and I visited the Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, Spain, drawn mainly by its fame. The structure was designed by Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry and first opened in October 1997. Its photographs do not do it justice. Neither Donald, an architect himself, nor I expected to be particularly impressed. Nevertheless, we decided to visit such an acclaimed architectural feat and to splurge the night before by staying in another Gehry designed building, Marqués de Riscal Hotel, in the nearby village of Elciego.

Upon arriving at the hotel, we realized that we were in for an experience beyond anything we expected. The photos of the hotel give an impression of a building that looks like a wad of paper. In person, though, the space is transformative. One cannot assume anything about what is going to be experienced next. Our gently angular room was in the front of the hotel overlooking the entry, with a large wall of windows opening toward the vineyards and village nearly. In the morning we awoke to the sun rising into our sheltered space, the curve of the roof feeling very much like that of an egg. One was hatched into the new day!

The museum was a public expression of this experience. What I thought would be silly, in fact, stretched my imagination with potentialities. Through these structures, we accessed essence of space, the archetypal rendering of what contains and shapes us. I wonder, if in ripping away the common assumptions about what living and/or public space is, we experience something much more prime, and, as a result, we are renewed. Isn’t that what healing is? Being reconnected with the gods, in this case, the gods of space?

I suspect this is what happens in analysis. When it goes well, we do not enact archetypal processes, such as mother/child, or father/child, but actually hold the space in which these feelings and often unconscious complexes stemming from archetypal processes, visit the analytic container consciously. Through this, they are rendered to their essence and transform. What we experience is in fact a process, if we take Goethe at his word.  If we are to know the essence of something, Goethe says, we must hold all aspects of it at the same time. Then we may know the Spirit of it. This is true if we are talking about the essence of a plant or the essence of a human being.

Is healing ourselves or our relationships with each other, or the earth, about reconnection with Spirit? What is your own experience?

After the Tucson lecture and workshop, April 4-5, 2014, Friends of Jung, Tucson, Arizona ,
The Environmental Crisis: Birth of a New Consciousness?

Goethe:"sublimely towering, wide-spreading tree of God" Strasbourg Cathedral, from Wikipedia

Barbara Holifield

On February 22, 2014, the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco will offer the first of a series of eco-psychology seminars and workshops on the environment crisis. These workshops will be from differing perspectives but of one piece: the necessary crisis of consciousness in earth changes and what we can/must do. In this first workshop, Indwelling: Our Human Participation in the Dream of the Earth, analysts Barbara Holifield and Carol McRae will lead participants into active imagination states through drumming and authentic movement. Following is an interview with one of the seminar leaders, analyst Barbara Holifield. 

On February 22, 2014, the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco will offer the first of a series of eco-psychology seminars and workshops on the environment crisis. These workshops will be from differing perspectives but of one piece: the necessary crisis of consciousness in earth changes and what we can/must do. In this first workshop, Indwelling: Our Human Participation in the Dream of the Earth, analysts Carol McRae and Barbara Holifield will lead participants into active imagination states through drumming and authentic movement. Following is an interview with one of the seminar leaders, analyst Carol McRae, PhD. 

Carol, You approach the psyche in a particular way, using drumming and ally work. Could you say how you came to these practices? 

My shamanic emphasis with drumming and ally work began in 1979 with a dream of a snake jumping at my heart. I tried to deflect the snake, caught it behind its head. The next day I was to be diagnosed with breast cancer and I was afraid. I tried to find someone to help me understand what to do. I looked for help in an academic setting (through thinking) but found no help there. Further work with the dream in active imagination led me to direct conversation with the snake, who called herself Rosie. I have been guided by Rosie ever since. Drumming comes from work I did with a Lakota woman teacher at Rosie's urging. Ally work comes from the work of another Jungian Analyst, Jeff Raff, who has written The Practice of Ally Work.

Could you explain what you mean by ally work? 

Ally work is an extension of Jung's active imagination, which invites the unconscious to come forward to consciousness in whatever form it chooses. To find an ally, one develops this capacity of receptivity with a particular focus, that of finding an inner guide, a wisdom figure and connection to the Divine. Rosie is that figure for me.

How do you use drumming in this work?

I drum as the Lakota drum, at the rate of double the human heartbeat. This constant sound creates an altered state over time. From the state achieved, images, feelings, whole stories can emerge. A traditional shaman uses drumming to help her/him in journeying to the underworld, which bears a striking similarity to Jung's active imagination. The shaman goes deeply into this state FOR the healing of the patient she/he is helping. I go deeply into this state WITH the person(s) I am helping.

Who have been some of your important mentors along the way?

Rosie, of course, is a mentor, a teacher of the highest order. As with Jung's relationship with Philemon, his Ally, I discovered quickly that Rosie is not me. She knows more than I know and can teach me from her wisdom. Other mentors include Don Sandner, who I consider my spiritual father; Steve Wong, who taught me a combination of psychotherapy and shamanic practice; and Pansy Hawkwing, my Lakota spiritual guide.

What happens in ally work that is potent? How is it different from other ways of approaching the unconscious?

Ally work is particularly powerful because It calls up one figure to dialog with again and again. This figure may first appear in a dream as she did with me. The ally may also come forward in active imagination itself. By setting an intention or focus before opening to the unconscious, one can ask for an ally. Jeff Raff has outlined a helpful approach to this process in his book on ally work, which I use in my classes for helping people to find their own allies. As Jeff says, "An ally is a divine being, a face of God that is unique to each human being. Every one of us has an ally with whom we could live, but of course most people are unaware of this fact, largely because they have been cut off from the imagination." (The Practice of Ally Work, p. 3) Active imagination is a broader form of contacting the unconscious which is receptive to whatever emerges from the unconscious. Dreams offer invitations from the unconscious to become conscious of particular material which it conveys. Art and dance offer ways to express unconscious material without words and may lead to greater understanding of particular personal material if approached as active imagination, an invitation to unconscious material to come into consciousness.

Do you have stories that you would like to share about your own work?

My work with Rosie has had its dramatic moments, although much of it concerns my everyday learning. During my first vision quest, in this case a 24 hour time by myself in a forest, I had a particularly powerful experience with a woodpecker. For six hours he pecked on trees surrounding where I sat, moving in a clockwise direction beginning in front of me and ending six hours later in the same location at which point he was joined by a female woodpecker and flew away. I considered him a spirit guide (not an Ally, because he was a member of a species, not an individual like Rosie). Ten years later at a new home shaded by live oak trees, a woodpecker flew into a window in a direct line to where I was sitting and died. When I asked him why he had come (in active imagination), he said he had been sent to tell me to take this work seriously. I was to get up each night when I heard a bird song which imitated a woodpecker's pecking and go outside and speak with Rosie. I did this practice for about an hour each night around 3AM for three years. The woodpecker as a spiritual helper specializes in helping me get through difficult places. He opens a new space with his pecking.

Why do you think these approaches can help us in the crisis of the earth changes? 

This question is very important to me. I am very concerned about the crisis of climate change. It offers us both a horrifying possibility, the loss of much of the human race because we are destroying the earth system that sustains us, and an opportunity to develop a deep connection to the earth and a sustainable relationship to all that is in it. I feel ally work offers a way for everyone to feel a deep connection within themselves and to recognize all of earth and the beings on earth as related to them in a giant pattern of allies, our connection with the Divine. One of the major maladies of Western Civilization is loneliness, a break in connection with anything beyond oneself. Ally work offers a constant connection and a deep ongoing relationship. One is never alone again. Furthermore, the Ally, often an animal, connects one more deeply with the earth. Earth connection is what is lacking in our culture. We have thought of the earth as something to harness for our own purposes rather than a being to respect and relate to, to cherish even. All kinds of attention to the unconscious: dreamwork, art, dance, Jungian Analysis help to heal the split we feel between and within ourselves. For me, ally work, in particular, offers a way to heal and to dialog about what we can do to make this planet a sustainable environment again.

What advice do you have for those who would like to begin these kinds of work? 
I recommend reading Jeff Raff's book and doing the exercises he describes. This can lead you to a sense of deep connectedness. The process is not always easy. He describes the resistances that may come up at each stage. It helps to join— or form— a group of people committed to exploring in this way. You can share difficulties and discoveries together. I encourage you to keep at the process; it may take time to access the ally and to stay connected to Her/Him. It's worth the effort. Don't forget how connected we all are to each other and to the earth and all its beings.

Donald says that he remembers a year when the hills did not turn green. He was forced to pump water from the lower pond, which fills first and quickly, to the upper, much larger pond, to capture and save what rain water he could.

This has not happened in the 20 years that I have lived on our ranch, but I do remember drought years in the late '80’s, and some before in the mid '70’s. We were living in Marin County at the time, and the reservoirs went dry. We were put on water rationing, only 40 gallons per person per day. Large pipes were laid on the Richmond Bridge to bring water across the bay. We quickly learned to live an examined life when it came to water usage: to flush the toilet for solid waste only, to save grey water from the house to flush the toilet and to water outside plants, to plant only drought tolerant plants, to put on reduced-flow shower heads. We never let water run in the sink when we brushed our teeth or rinsed dishes. When it rained again, we continued some of these habits, but mostly, over time, many of us went back to our old ways.

We live in a Mediterranean climate in northern California. Our 20 to 40 inches of rain come between October and April. The rest of the year is dry. Native plants depend on this rhythm, with some species of oaks dying if they receive summer irrigation. In our farming, rain in the summer is a problem for the grapes, supporting mildew and botrytis. We depend on the reservoirs to provide water for the limited irrigation we do. Biodynamics practices have improved the soil enough that we can almost dry farm the grapes.

But what happens if there is only a few inches of rain in the winter? Besides the health of the trees and the increasing fire danger (this January day is a red flag day until 1 pm due to dry winds), what does it mean? Across the valley resounds the pounding of drilling rigs. Wells have gone dry and for some, there is not water for household use.

It is easy to fear the worse: this is global warming and this is how it is going to be. It could be part of the natural cycle of drought and then flooding, which often follows.

But we also know, droughts are intensified by the particulates of pollution. Rain simply doesn’t reach the ground. And the weather is becoming increasingly erratic everywhere. The pattern that we have depended upon may not be the pattern that sustains us into the future.

Dennis Klocek, philosopher, climatologist, and scientist, states that key to any shift in our relationship to the earth is acknowledgement of our vulnerability to the earth (Climate: Soul of the Earth, Lindisfarne Books, 2011.) Our old stance of dominion over and our work to subdue nature, seeing the earth as only a resource for our own use and not as a living being in her own right, has brought us to where we are now.

What changes come when we address the earth as She? How do our actions change if we consider all who also live on Earth, humans and animals, plants, and minerals, as living beings with rights to exist of their own?

Drought reminds me of the sacredness of water, of its importance for life, and of the ways that I have taken its abundance for granted. It is the dark gift of this time that I again become mindful of my relationship to water and to the Earth.

Are you also in drought? (or are you in another extreme weather situation?) What dark gifts have you gleaned from the situation? Are there changes that you have made in your everyday life?

Some of the reasons I am willing to suffer knowledge of my participation in climate change.

When I think of the best approach to the issues we have created in our environment, I think of the old Buddhist adage: Show up. Pay attention. Tell the truth. Detach from outcome. The problem lies in being so overwhelmed that we cannot show up to pay attention. Then we deny the truth, effectively participating in a horrible outcome! It is critical that we are not paralyzed into denial by our fear.

In the recently published Sacred Agriculture: The Alchemy of Biodynamics (Lindisfarne Books, 2013), Dennis Klocek emphasizes the importance of this "showing up." It is important that we acknowledge our vulnerability to the earth, he says, versus feeling in control and above it. "The only way I can turn my soul from existential guilt into the willingness to imagine my role in the Earth's destiny is through active imagination (110)."

On February 22, 2014, the C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco will offer the first of a series of eco-psychology seminars and workshops on the environment crisis. These workshops will be from differing perspectives but of one piece: the necessary crisis of consciousness in earth changes and what we can/must do. In this first workshop, Indwelling: Our Human Participation in the Dream of the Earth, analysts Carol McRae and Barbara Holifield will lead participants into active imagination states through drumming and authentic movement. "We will allow what emerges to build on Thomas Berry’s idea that hope for our future lies in our human participation in the dream of the earth."

Many years ago when we were first learning Biodynamics we worked with a consultant who I've called B.B. in my recollection of that time (Farming Soul: A Tale of Initiation. Soon to be republished by Leaping Goat Press, 2014.) He helped us on many levels, giving us tips and how-to’s about the practicalities of biodynamic farming but also direction in learning to perceive spiritual/subtle energies.

One morning as B.B. and I were walking in the vineyard, B.B. was pointing out things that I normally paid little attention to. See those birds flying in a spiraling circle? he asked. The diva there is orchestrating that, showing you something. 

As we walked on he pointed out an energy spout across the valley. I saw a kind of shimmering rainbow of color, which he explained was the work of the nature spirits trying to integrate energy into the valley.

At one point he described tiny swirls of energy around the vines. We had sprayed the biodynamic preparation 501 that morning (horned quartz, or silica,) and he told me these were the sylphs (air spirits) at work. Close your eyes for 30 seconds to clear them and then look, he instructed. As I opened my eyes, an orangish red surrounded the vines momentarily, then was gone.

The old slip of moon rose this morning, the Valley Oaks backlit by the beginnings of Dawn. It is the end of 2013, the darkest time of the year.

I admit: I love the dark, a time that it is easier to live inward. The plants are quiet, and there are fewer demands on my husband and me. We are in drought, it having rained only twice so far this rainy season. When I worry I so easily miss the beauty of the clear, cold dawn.

So seldom do we see brown fallowness here in the Napa Valley, but this year the vines have lost all their leaves and the grass has barely thought of sprouting. Still, there is beauty in the neutrals of the vineyards as well as in the flame of red in the tops of the Valley Oaks as the sun tips over the eastern range. The cold, dry air of a morning walk is invigorating!

Fire of sun in boughs of Valley Oak at Dawn.

I wonder about this worry, as if I have control over the rains! I am told the best way to access the energies that grow things, the energies of the earth, is through gratitude. Our hearts open then, and we listen. Time and again this has proven true. Worry doesn’t fit in here, in my book, anyway.

There are reports of floods and ice storms and fire, all part of what we are all beginning to acknowledge as climate change. Extreme weather is like the dark night of the soul for Earth and for us. In analytic psychological work, the dark night signifies a period of moving into oneself, listening another way to what needs a voice. Only then can something new sprout. 

When you stop and feel the beauty, when you hear the Earth, the trees, the animals, what do they tell you? Are there changes you will make in your relationship with these Other in 2014?

Play is the highest form of research.– Albert Einstein

If it is important even for our survival on the planet to relearn re-entering the Mystery of the Present, what serves this end?

This question is one I contemplate this season as the dark comes before 5 in the evening and stays well past 7 in the morning. Mystery crackles in the fire I build in the wood stove, glows in the candlelight on the altar, sparkles in the Christmas tree bulbs we put on the little blue spruce we brought in for its second year. If only I notice!

Do introverts have it little easier in these tasks? I am not sure. We so love the quiet, the time alone with a fire or a candle. Apprehending beauty always brings mystery for me, something it is so easy to not see when I am busy rushing around.

But there is also the Mystery of the Other, Mystery that comes when I don't know and am open to listening. It is a discipline I exercise regularly in my analytic practice when I sit with someone whose pain is an enigma to us both and yet a guide into new territory. But at home it is so easy to assume I  know my husband, my children and grandchildren, my friends, or, for that matter, the graceful old Valley Oaks in the meadow, or a dear goat. It is so easy to forget the Mystery of the Other in efficient, busy states of mind!

One of my favorite Mysteries

I have been wondering, do laughter and fun promote the apprehension of Mystery in the Other?  I love lingering meals with friends and family, long walks with friends or goats, the meanderings of uncharted days with loved ones, experiences which render me open.

I read where it is important to do nothing some part of every day.  Is doing nothing play?

Does play serve opening into mystery?

Mysterious questions!  Ones of the season? What opens the door of Mystery for you?

Santa greeting children and adults alike in Petaluma, CA

I have been thinking about Santa Claus, that jolly old Christmas saint of giving. To me he is as sparkly as Christmas lights, one of the few mysteries we participate in collectively.

As a young child I remember being taken to the “real” Santa who arrived in a parade the day after Thanksgiving and took up residence in a yearly assembled Christmas house in the center of town. We stood in long lines to see him, always a little intimidated when we finally got to sit on his lap. My mother told me that the Santas we saw on street corners and other places were not the real Santa, only his helpers, and this made sense to me.

Christmas eve we were instructed to go to sleep “so Santa Claus could come.” This was torture! I remember trying to sleep and my mother coming to the door to check on me. Once I thought I heard sleigh bells and this panicked me even more.

Eventually, though, I slept, and then my sister and I woke early. We peered into the darkened living room to check if Santa had been there yet, (Yes, he had!) and then raced to wake my parents.

We were not a wealthy family, getting “big” toys only for Christmas or, to a lesser degree, our birthdays. So to rush into the living room and see the very thing we had asked for was a most amazing experience! Those years the ultimate toy was a doll, one we perused the Sears Christmas catalogue to choose, and here she was! Our grandmother made complete wardrobes for these dolls. (She was another of Santa’s helpers, my mother explained.)

There were other gifts too: a stocking full of doll baby bottles, doll shoes, candy cane, and a red delicious apple on the top, a variety my mother never bought because it was too expensive.

I believed in Santa until I was six when one of my first grade classmates told me my parents were really Santa. When I asked my mother about this, she pulled me aside so my younger sister would not hear and told me that moms and dads are the helpers and that Santa Claus is a spirit. I don’t remember being particularly devastated, but I didn’t tell my younger sister, who believed in Santa until she was nine. Christmas was not quite the same after I found out. This transition to spirit Santa involved a kind of coming-of-age, the mantle of which I more fully accepted when we “played Santa” for our own sons.

This year Santa came to Petaluma, California, on a tug boat, which blasted down the river into the center of town. He and Mrs. Claus stood by the mast waving to the crowds as the tug, horn booming, streamed by. Suddenly I felt overcome with emotion! I felt the crowd’s excitement as Santa disembarked the tug and walked through a long receiving line to his temporary strip mall office.

The phenomenon of Santa Claus is a collective imagining of a saint of giving, most popular in United States, but with 2000 year old European ancestors in Saint Nicholas (a bishop living in 300 A.D. Patara, now Turkey), Father Christmas (England), and Kris Kringle (Germany). It is said that the first Dutch settlers coming to United States had a figure of St. Nicholas on the bow of their ships, much like in Petaluma!

Santa is vulnerable to being hijacked by commercial interests, or by intellectual reasoning. Yes, there is a let-down in the news of the lack of concreteness of his identity, but that does not negate the importance of his reality as an inhabitant of the mystery of the season. (Einstein held that imagination is more important than knowledge.) Santa inspires awe, and generosity, opening us to Spirit of timelessness and hope, but he may also serve as an initiator for children and adults alike— into a more mature version of the imaginal realm.

What are your own thoughts about the mysteries of this time and the importance in our collective participation?

In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled… And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the city of David, which is called Bethlehem…to be enrolled with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. And while they were there, the time came for her to be delivered. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, for there was no place for them in the inn (Luke 2: 1-7).

Burrrrrr!!!!! (Okay,  I know, some of you are much colder! But we Mediterranean climate people aren't used to frost!)

Besides being a Jungian analyst, I am also a biodynamic farmer. This blog is from both perspectives.

When you need gloves to walk the goats in the morning, and when the grass sparkles at sunrise like stars, you seriously consider spraying Valerian on tender young plants, if you didn't the evening before! (What is that expression about the barn door?)

Rudolf Steiner claimed Valerian regulates the phosphorus processes, bringing in light and warmth. Valerian tincture of pressed flowers is one of the six especially prepared plants we use in our compost pile. We also spray a stirred version of the tincture on tender, frost cloth-protected rose geranium and lavender plants still getting their grip on the earth this time of year.

But valerian also seems so appropriate as hours of daylight decrease. It is a channel for forces of Light, the return of the Light in the darkest time. Homeopathist Jungian analyst Edward C. Whitmont states, "The symbolic significance of light, as a transcendental force-principle, represents the 'inner spiritual man', and the qualities of consciousness, wisdom, and intellect. Darkness stands for the realm of the unconscious psyche (Whitmont, Psyche and Substance: Essays on Homeopath in the Light of Jungian Psychology, p. 106)."

As above, so below. There is so much to fathom in the ground we live on! Such willing teachers wait! In listening to frost and to Valerian, we enter a consciousness which is related, not purely using. As a result, we feel how we are intertwined. Perhaps some light even reaches dark recesses of our individual psyches.

What light do you dream these dark days?

For more on Valerian:
The Challenges of Valerian
Pruning and Winter Light
Valerian
It's a Messy Job, But Somebody's Got to Do It! 

Detail of Gaia, Ceramic Piece by Genevieve Haven

Carl Jung defines the benedicta viriditas, "blessed greenness," as

…the state of someone who, in his wanderings among the mazes of his psychic transformation, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him to his apparent loneliness. In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner, more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding of the promise of future harvests. It [signifies]… on the one hand the “leprosy of the metals (verdigris), but on the other the secret immanence of the divine spirit of life in all things. … Therefore this virtue and the preservation of things might be called the Soul of the World (CW 14,❡623).

My initial experiences of the secret immanence of the divine spirit of life in all things were at once compelling and frightening. I had recently remarried and moved to my husband's ranch, returning to an agricultural life, albeit one quite different from the Midwestern farm where I was reared. Yes, my heart opened, that is for sure. It was like a secret love, not unlike that for my husband and sons. The absolute beauty of seeing the gold in grass (what else can I call it?) shocked me, reminding me of poet Robert Frost's line, nature's first green is gold, her hardest hue to hold. I am sure he meant "hold" to mean "to sustain", but for me it was more along the lines of her hardest hue to behold.   

Madrone, poison oak, bay, and The Light.

How can I best describe those years? I was a candidate in analytical training to be a Jungian analyst and working with a mentor/analyst who had studied with a Navajo medicine man. I was also a member of a group studying the overlap of analytical psychology and Native American spirituality, so I was receiving spiritual as well as psychological training.

But nothing prepared me for the witnessing of immanence of Spirit in Matter, of the gold in the green. Although the experience was ecstatic, I also feared that I was dying. Was I being prepared to enter another dimension?

I took photographs, trying to find a reflection of my perception. The brilliance opened my heart even more, and I felt at-one-with the vines, the grass, the valley oaks, the birdsong that echoed in the canyon.

Helichrysum and Valley Oak. Photo by Art and Clarity.

Is this the experience of the Eternal, enabled by love? Early in his career Jung stated that our Promethean task is to deal not only with theft of fire generated in response to blocked instinct (i.e., consciousness), but also with the anxiety of psychic energy that may result as well (1916/1947, 189–190; 1911–12/1952, CW 5, ¶250). Our task is not adaptation but taking on the demands of developed awareness of psychic reality.

What are the demands of a such a developed awareness? Is this apprehension of blessed greenness part of such awareness?

I would love to hear your own experiences of and comments about the blessed greenness.

Some topics are so controversial we cannot discuss them. Jane Davenport Platko’s In the Tracks of the Unseen: Memoirs of a Jungian Analyst brings one of those topics into full view: when the doctor and patient fall in love.

While we psychoanalysts and psychotherapists have thorough discussions as to why these kinds of relationships are problematic, we seldom have open discussions about what happens when they seem to work. Those who have entered such relationships rightfully fear judgement.

I will be honest. I have a bias. Having barely survived the 1970’s in psychology after early experiences with therapists and teachers who did not know the power of the tool of the transference, I developed a healthy respect of the need for “boundaries,” as we put it in the talk of our trade. As a result, I often have had a hair trigger reaction when these boundaries are transgressed. For the most part, I think my stance has merit.

But Platko’s story demonstrates it is not so simple. What happens when the analytic vessel cannot contain the feeling within a transference format, when the Self has something different in mind? Are there times the therapeutic meeting is a springboard into the soul connection of friendship or romantic love and this is not exploitive of the patient?

With great integrity, honesty, and courage, Platko lays out her vulnerabilities and history, antecedents to both a friendship with her first analyst and then marriage to a man who had been her patient. Her decisions are not impulsive. In fact, she deeply and openly suffers them with her then current analyst and with her then husband.

In the preface she quotes Jung, “My story is my truth.” This story is Platko’s truth, and one can only feel compassion, awe and concern for a woman reveals herself so openly in order for us to understand the decisions she has made. There will be judgement!

When I began reading In the Tracks of the Unseen, I did not want to put it down. Platko is a good storyteller, and I have not read a book like it. It is well written, albeit disturbing, submerging the reader in the rawness of human attachment and the lonely quest of a woman who followed her heart. This is an important book in that it questions some suppositions of the last decades, taking the structure of love in analytical relationships down to the studs. There are no answers here, only a kind of solutio. Perhaps it is only now that we can follow “the tracks of the unseen,” to a larger playing field that may redefine ethics and the challenges of the human connection in the vessel of analytic work.

Twenty four years ago this fall, my candidate group began our training to become Jungian analysts. We were the last group to meet with Jo and Jane Wheelwright, some of the first generation analysts from our Institute, meaning that they were analyzed by Jung. They were also two of the founding members and must have been in their early nineties at the time of the meeting.

I remember the early October seminar well. We were four women very excited to begin our candidacy at a time the Institute was in great flux. We had no idea of the extent of change to be. The old guard was leaving, and the new, not yet in place. Tom Kirsch, a senior analyst at our Institute and the son of the founding members of the Los Angeles Jung Institute, brought the Wheelwrights and together with them gave us a historic perspective of analytical psychology. I will not go into those details here, but I do want to talk about the Wheelwrights and some of their personal stories.

Jo was tall and lanky. He declared early on that he was "going off my rocker." He wore a brown sport coat with leather around the cuffs, which I suspect he had had a very long time.