The holidays are coming, and so are the blues. They hit when everybody around us is so happy. All of a sudden a pit opens up inside you and you're there. Depressed.
A depressed soul is a haunted soul. James Hollis in his book, Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives, notes that the greatest haunting we suffer is a lost relationship to soul. When the relationship to soul is lost something has crept into us and taken its place. Traumatic holidays, dysfunctional families, toxic religious
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If anyone’s going to kill me, it should happen now. – John F. Kennedy, 1962
At book talks I often ask, When did you lose your innocence? Common answers include 9-11 and the various political assassinations of the 1960s. Then I ask, When did you lose it again?
The trick question is meant to make people ponder a uniquely American situation. The idea of innocence lies at foundation of our national identity. It is as fundamental to our sense of who think we are as alcohol is to an alcoholic. Life for
Dreams tell of the past, present, and future. This is frightening, to be able to peer into the nature of things with clarity. This is much more than looking through a glass darkly as the New Testament writer proclaimed. If we want to see, really and truly see, then we can see with startlingly acuity in our dreams!
Problem is, then change happens. Change inspired by dreams prompts intrapsychic and relational transformation. It might mean divorce or marriage or moving or staying put. It always mean
There are numerous elements that can contribute to chaos or disorder in an addict’s life. When someone becomes entangled in addiction, the consequences and effects essentially govern the psyche in such a way that the addiction becomes the identity. The identity that develops with the addiction allows for the individual to become estranged from an identity prior to the addiction. In the disorder of addiction, the individual develops a sense of truth through the belief of a found solace in addicti
Dreams, especially nightmares, can be loaded with haunting! Exactly...you did read the right words, just as I wrote them. Nightmares have lots and lots of juicy psychic stuff for insight, enlightenment, and soulful growth in the form of haunting. Thing is, we're so often afraid to listen to it, to the haunting. To listen to inner disturbance as it comes out in nightmares means facing the ghosts that always bear tidings of one sort or another.
Halloween and All Souls Day proclaim the existence of
On suffering
I did it once.
Went through the dark night of the soul in a little row boat
And didn’t sink.
So I did it once.
Then again and again
I have been called to attend to separation
Suffer the stark, dark gritty agony of loneliness –
And realize
There is no cure for being human
I am almost sixty now
My hair is silver and gray
My eyes betray my years
As do the fine lines around my mouth
Smile and grimace both
I don’t much like getting back in the boat
To ride out the night
Or say hello to the now famili
Creativity happens when we make unusual connections…making what is familiar “strange.” We presume that certain things automatically go together—boat, duck, and water, for example. When we put unusual things together, we are in “creative” terrain. (As a silly example, ham sandwich and hair jell don’t go together…it’s a creative combination.)
When we put two paradoxical words like ham sandwich and hair jell together, the tension between the two creates a third space. Pairing two paradoxical things
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. –John Muir (Scottish-born American naturalist 1838-1914)
The impulse to go out, get out, hit the road, take a vacation, nearly always holds within its volitional energy the urge to re-create or re-vision one’s life. We think of these common, even mundane responses to life’s regularity, schedule and regimen as almost a mechanical release valve, and although it is certainly that,
I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in. –John Muir (Scottish-born American naturalist 1838-1914)
The impulse to go out, get out, hit the road, take a vacation, nearly always holds within its volitional energy the urge to re-create or re-vision one’s life. We think of these common, even mundane responses to life’s regularity, schedule and regimen as almost a mechanical release valve, and although it is certainly that,
On life
Opening and closing
Systole and diastole
How lucky we are!
We do not have to command our heart to beat
or control the expansion or contraction
Lungs fill, lungs empty
Organs, physical and spiritual together
We live without effort.
If only that were true when the heart is pierced by pain
Or our bellies drop with fear
When the throat parches
And the tongue sticks to the roof of the mouth
Then we need effort and the courage to risk
Standing
and standing still
Even when the winds blow
and the inner admon
In this morning's newspaper I read an article about how anxiety increases perceived pain for those diagnosed with chronic pain conditions or those suffering from acute physical pain. In other words, the research stated that anxiety makes body pain worse. Anxiety also increases emotional and spiritual distress. When we're uptight everything goes out of whack. We're seeing through a magnifying lens of grotesque proportions. The soul has become sick.
"We all got a push for the crazies inside us," a
In this morning's newspaper I read an article about how anxiety increases perceived pain for those diagnosed with chronic pain conditions or those suffering from acute physical pain. In other words, the research stated that anxiety makes body pain worse. Anxiety also increases emotional and spiritual distress. When we're uptight everything goes out of whack. We're seeing through a magnifying lens of grotesque proportions. The soul has become sick.
"We all got a push for the crazies inside us," a
http://madnessatthegates.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/barrys-blog-72-the-greatest-generation/
This is the people’s memorial. Our veterans should be above politics. – Sarah Palin
Protests
Now that you’ve had your chuckle, I’d like to unpack a recent event. This October, the Congressional impasse forced national parks and monuments to close. Palin and Ted Cruz co-opted a veteran’s march at Washington’s World War Two Memorial, which featured tearful old vets in wheelchairs – and men carrying rifles outsi
I'm quoting from an email from Michael Eigen Ph.D., author of The Psychoanalytic Mystic. As I was having morning coffee and doing first of the day reading, it so struck me that I wanted to post it word for word. It's a source of inspiration from old masters in depth psychology and spirituality!
This is the email:
Here is a quote from Emmanuel Levinas. Some of you might find it worthwhile. I quote it in the chapter Guilt in Emotional Storm, which brings together work of Bion, Levinas and Wittge
It's one thing to talk about dreams, it's quite another to actually take them to heart and follow their inspiration. With a new book out, I've been listening to them; but, really taking them to heart has been a challenge. Outside voices from the book industry have said do this or do that. Dreams come and offer guidance in gentle whispers.
Gentle whispers from dreams mean that there is genuine inspiration coming our way. We don't have to have nightmares to get the message if we listen to the whisp
Photo by Kevin McElheran
“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…” ~ from the song “Anthem” by Leonard Cohen
In the blog post titled “Follow Your Bliss” (May 14, 2013), I write about a tree in a dream, followed by a string of synchronicities that led to my attending a week-long women’s retreat at the Ocamora Center in Ocate, New Mexico. The retreat, Feeding the Moon: Creativity and the Divine Feminine - faci
There's a brief and intriguing article in today's New York Times, asserting that psychotherapy has an image problem. Whether the author is being deliberately provocative or not, I like the article for the conversation it has generated - and in particular, this response, from a practising psychologist in Pittsburgh:
'In reality, psychotherapy is nothing like a drug. Rather, it is a complex but profoundly rewarding process of examining one's life, history, desires, relationships, hopes, and fears
To write my Jung book, a critical examination of Jung's thought from an educator's point of view, I'm rereading him, including Psychology and Alchemy. Perhaps because of the topic, Jung ignores the wealth of Norse mythic imagery in Wolfgang ("Path of a Wolf") Pauli's dreams. Some seem to be about his personal myth, which could be the one-handed war god Tyr. Things often broke around Pauli ("the Pauli Effect"), and he was obsessed with handedness in physics. Entire Norse legends appear in Pauli's
The careening arrow of time, relentlessly moves on, and I, the surprised passenger, catapult along, happy to be.
While sitting in converse with another, I gave a fancifully brief, "invented" dream to make a point about the non-temporal overview that seems to manifest in dreams and creative activities. It (the invented dream) was "made up" on the spot, but it reminded me that this is an ever present process, this upwelling from the unconscious and realms beyond, which we (I) tend to quantify i
