Energy going Upwards...

C.G. Jung writes to Dr. Schmitt (December 20, 1945). "In alchemy...is presumably meant a transformation of the destructive fiery spirit into a spiritus vitae. You are in the midst of an inner confrontation with yourself which is of the highest general importance....we must also inquire whether something that wants to go upwards has not taken a false route downwards into the body."

Today I'm completing my recovery from medical congestion. Psychologically, I've been blocked up. It went into my body and needed medical attention; but, I waited for depth of understanding, and it came. 

Dreams suggested that I needed to let go of what was no longer appropriate. I had been unwittingly holding on. It blocked energy, inspiration. Knowing what that was, I started to heal. Fresh insights came; rather than taking a false route downwards into the body, psychic energy could be transformed, move upwards into creative resolution.

The Self As The Heart of All Things...

A colleague teaching psychoanalysis and mysticism at NYU shared on our listserv the following quote, so I thought I'd pass it on for inspiration on an ages-old topic:

The Upanishads are also called Vedanta because they come at the end of the Vedas and contain the essence of their teachings. The word ‘Upanishad’… means ‘to sit close’ or draw close to the teacher or guru, and equally can be taken to mean to ‘go close’ to the teaching itself.

There is only one Power—
And it is That which is in the hearts of all…
It is the Self in the heart of all things
Which is the eternal amidst the ephemeral,
Consciousness within conscious…
There, in that Self,
The sun cannot shine,
Nor the moon or stars.
The light of lightening cannot reach It,
Much less a conflagration on Earth.
Yet by Its presence all these are lit
And light shines forth…
It is the eternal tree of creation
Reaching with Its roots up to the sky
And with Its branches down to the earth.
Its roots remain resplendent and immortal
And in Its branches the worlds come to rest.
There is nothing beyond That.
Let the five sense
And the mind they serve become still.
Let awareness itself
Cease all activity and become watchful.
Then you will have begun your journey…
Remain present only to that Presence,
Knowing that It is what is…
One hundred and one rivers
Flow from the heart in all directions…
One will take you upward beyond yourself…
That Inner Being is there
Present in the hearts of all.
Bring all that you are before That:
Draw it out as you would
A shaft from the center of a reed…
(Excerpted from the Katha Upanishad, translated by Swami Ambikananda Saraswati, Penguin, 2001)

Depression, Healing, and the Spirit World...

New York Times article, Reducing My Dose, Unblocking My Muse (5.26.15), stated "One thing you learn if you live with depression is that it’s a fickle child: something that mollifies it one day might have no effect on it, or inflame it, the next. Though writing and antidepressants have brought me the best and most reliable relief, I’ve also found relief in sunshine, friendship, falling in love, caring for others."

People suffer from depression. Some admit it, deal with it, others suffer silently. Either way, it is a reality for many, needless suffering for some, for others a path to discovery.

Individuals choose to either seek healing or not for their depression. Medication lessens symptoms, but does not treat underlying emotional causes. There are emotional and spiritual reasons why we suffer.

Turning within guides us into deep frontiers replete with healing energies, presences.  After spending a long while working through psychological issues related to trauma and depression a patient related a dream: "I approached the door of a surreal home, aglow with spiritual luminescence.  A black goddess waited for me with open arms. 'Welcome home,' she said. I wept. My journey was well worth the effort. I feel more whole, complete, than ever before in my life. My depression lifted."

Friendship, love, caring, and medication if necessary,  help us heal from depression; but, most profoundly, transformative mystic encounter makes us whole, complete, ravages of depression paling as we move into home, self, and are welcomed. 

Exercise Improves Rhythm of Life...

Depth psychology knows the psyche is a body/psyche. Jung wrote, "Psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing" (CW 8:418). What effects body effects psyche and vice versa. Life propels us forward when our energy is good. We cooperate with natural rhythms. Exercise improves our ability to be in and remain in natural rhythms of life.

Patients in depth therapy inevitably dream of exercise, diet, body self care. Once trauma/crisis has been addressed, soul turns to self care. Dreams open up with vivid imagery of food, specific types of exercise, need for rest and restoration.

A patient dreamt of a giant cupcake chasing her. "I ran and ran and it finally caught up with me and swallowed me." She awoke shaking, knowing she had to be truthful about her eating. The next day in therapy she admitted, "There's been stuff I've needed to talk about. I've been eating a cupcake every other night. It drugged my feelings. I don't have to face them in therapy." A dream helped her break the cupcake habit and opened and do her soul work.

Another patient encountered in a dream a body engineer. He taught her yoga and how it alters body and mind. The instructions were so clear  and powerful she wept in the dream. We processed this together in therapy and she began a regular yoga practice. Her  body and mind were positively transformed.

A New York Times Article (5.21.15) reviewed literature and summarized, "...among its many virtues, exercise improves the rhythm of our lives." Soul work, deep dreaming, communicates symbolically how body self care nourishes psyche. Rhythms of life stabilize, improve, as we tap into the reality that "psyche and matter are two different aspects of one and the same thing."  

Happiness Is A Process

     Happiness is the experience of being alive and knowing life to be beautiful. "I feel it in my body," said a trauma survivor. This person had felt the pain of being physically and sexually abused. Their body had gone numb and at times felt dead. "Now, I feel the change of seasons, the shifting light, different scents in the air. I'm alive. I'm happy."

     She went on to say, "Happiness is my life process. It's always in the works and I'm always working on it." Dream material depicted her, the dreaming ego, as shoveling through the debris of the day. Each day she would discover a luminescent stone. They were natural stones such as lapis, turquoise, agate.

Natural stones symbolize facets of psychic life. In general, they emphasize consciousness, the discovery of soul and soulfulness. They are the philosopher’s stone or the pearl of great price, symbols of wisdom and psychic treasure.

     As a trauma survivor, this woman learned that happiness is possible. She knew trauma, emotional drama, day-to-day ups and downs that seemed unending. Well being was a new discovery. Dreams symbolized it as the discovery of stones.

     Trauma survivors, those who’ve done psychic work and are growing, are spiritual people. They are earnest souls with a determined desire to get well. Working their way out of meaningless suffering is their priority. Trauma survivors who are healing learn that healing and happiness is a process. In the words of C.G. Jung trauma survivors in the process of healing learn to "direct libido toward things and people and to render them alive and beautiful."

Clear Out Emotional Debris To Set Yourself Free...

Working through psychic gunk, old pains and resentments, precedes the cultivation of happiness. We can’t put on a happy face and think that this is genuine well being. Authentic joy is hard won. It comes from have done underlying work that clears out psychic debris and sets us free.

Freedom is a challenging experience. I was tending to Social Media and came across a post that read, “If you have a self, you don’t have others.” I reposted it on Facebook and Twitter and was surprised at the number of likes and reposts. People can understand the importance of setting the self free, to include from inappropriate or unhealthy relationships and patterns of relating.

Emotional debris clings to dysfunctional relationships. Someone shared a dream in which cockroaches travelled head to toe over them and another person with whom they were involved. They complained of feeling stifled in the relationship, unfree. “I’ve learned that for me when cockroaches show up in dreams, they’re about denial. I’ve been in denial about how unhappy I’ve been in this relationship. We’ve tried, but there doesn’t seem to be any fixing it. It’s time to move on.” Their bug infested dreams stopped once they understood the dream and acted on its guidance.

I saw this person many months later and they commented that energy had been better since ending the dysfunctional relationship. They set themselves free by clearing out emotional gunk, dysfunctional relating and an irretrievable relationship. Happiness and well being slowly returned once they met the challenge of freeing the self and in turn finding their way back to emotional and spiritual equilibrium.

Happiness Is A Choice...

We can cultivate happiness once we choose happiness. We have choices. We aren’t victims of willy-nilly chance or meaningless circumstances. Things happen, then we decide what we’re going to do about them. If we don’t learn from them, we suffer; or we learn, understand, and grow.

Shamanic psychology teaches that illness and well being are choices. Don Juan, the shaman in Carlos Castaneda’s novels taught, “Well being is a condition one has to groom, a condition one has to become acquainted with” (Journey to Ixtlan p. 221). So easily, we become acquainted with negativism and illness, the shaman instructs earlier in the story. Disorder is an easy path—so many people set the example.

Psychic chaos and disorder can infect the atmosphere of everyday living and the self. Grooming well being is a challenge. One person told me, “I never realized that my foul moods contaminate the atmosphere around me. People suffer. I suffer.”

 When we open our minds to the potential for well being and happiness, we become more sensitized to moods and well being. What is on the inside inevitably makes its way out. People pick up on our state of mind. Awareness is the vital beginning of happiness.

 Many have doomed themselves to psychic dis-ease. They don’t feel or see any way out of miserable living. Some don’t want a way out even if they see one. “I’m so used to my grouchy ways I couldn’t live any other way,” one old guy admitted. Thus, once our psychic eyes are opened, we come to understand that happiness is real and is a choice.

 Pete arrived early for his 7:00 A.M. session. He told me he could hardly wait to get to session, a sense of hardy anticipation in the air. He had become enthusiastic in the course of his care as to what he might learn about himself in a given session. “It was one thing to get this far in therapy, to find happiness and find that it’s real. It’s another to take care of it and keep learning. There’s a tending to the soul that has to go on. I get that now, and I’m excited about it. It’s an ongoing adventure.” 

Happiness Is A Cultivated Ability...

C.G. Jung wrote, “…the world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido toward things and people and to render them alive and beautiful.” (CW vol. 5:253). Happiness interests me because it can be so lacking. People seek depth therapy, the treatment of the unconscious mind, in order to heal. However down deep, they want to be happy. You want happiness, I want happiness, and happiness lies in potential within each of us.

As Jung noted, happiness is a cultivated ability. We have to set our heart on it and work toward it. It doesn’t just materialize out of thin air one day after a lifetime of sick living, thinking, and feeling. As we set our minds on well being, we can find our way to the treasure of great price, happiness and well being.

 Happiness is an attitude. It begins with knowing it’s there and is accessible. Soon it moves from attitude to feeling and then living. What we have on the inside eventually makes its way  to the outside.

 Pete, a solitary man, consulted with me in depth psychotherapy due to persistent anxiety. It disabled him at times and was of mild to moderate clinical proportions, lingering in his life like a “bag of rocks I carry around on my back.” He couldn’t eradicate it no matter what type of meditation, exercise, or self-help programs he attended.

 Pete’s dream life was active enough that a number of nightmares finally propelled him to find professional intervention. He knew I worked with dreams, called me, and we scheduled an initial consultation. When we first met, I liked him immediately. His manner was straightforward and sincere. I thought we might be a good match as therapist and patient.

 He entered my consultation office from the reception area and immediately commented on a large painting. It is of two eagles in flight, one older, the other learning to fly. He commented, “Ah…doctor, I see what we might be about here.” Needless to say, he impressed with his potential for self reflection and insight. Simply shaking his head without commenting further, he sat down and began to tell me about his suffering and his life.

 After over a year of working through emotional and spiritual conflict, he began to experience a measure of happiness he had never before experienced. But, it didn’t last. Repeatedly he sabotaged his well being. “I go from doing one thing after another to get myself miserable. I’m used to misery and go back to it like steel to a magnet.”

I had to agree with him. He seemed, as are many individuals familiar with being unhappy, to return to his old state. This happened time and time again. As a psychotherapist this was one of my many ways of learning that the past calls us back over and over again because we are familiar with it. It is home and we want to go back.

 Pete finally grew to the point of being able to insightfully admit, “I’m addicted to misery. I need to break the habit. It’s going to take time and patience. I hope you can stick with me. I’m determined to do my work and kick the misery habit.”

 Patients and I do dream work together. Pete was, by this point in his therapy, having regular dreams. He dreamt of a little boy crying when suddenly someone presented him with a basket of jellybeans. This stopped his tears and he was happy. To this he associated the psychic fact that he believed suffering and happiness were entwined. He had to suffer before he could earn happiness; so, once he was happy he then, as an adult, had to generate misery so he could once again be worthy of happiness.

After a long while longer in depth treatment he dreamt that he lived with two men inside of him. One was well, the other had an illness but it was in remission. They both were there to stay. We understood this as meaning that his past could not be eradicated. He had to live with it. But, it need not be inflamed. It was in remission and would stay that way as long as he did not return to old ways of relating to self or others.

 There was a sense of having coming to terms with himself with this insight. He knew that he was no longer disabled by his illness. Also, he wasn’t a “picture of health and perfection” either. He was a man, a mixed bag of emotions who needn’t be perfect to cultivate happiness. He could keep growing and changing, using depth therapy to help him, knowing that happiness is a cultivated ability.

A Practical Soul...

"I really need practical changes from my therapy," a new patient asserted. I affirmed that practical changes within depth therapy are inevitable. "We face what's dark, we face what's bad, then come to terms with what's healing and good. Practical change happens."

For the next three years he faced trauma demons from the past. He'd been badly abused as a child. The fact was that he'd also replicated this abuse in present day life. All this needed to be dealt with, worked through. Changes in relationships proved inevitable. Life changes happened. They were hard, painful but necessary. He commented, "I didn't count on so much change. But, it's all been helpful and good. I'm better."

We are practical souls. We desire creative change. Sometimes, our proverbial prayers are answered in abundance. We can get more change than we bargained for as we tend our inner life. 

C.G. Jung (CW 8, 262) wrote, "...William James, whose psychological vision and pragmatic philosophy have on more than one occasion been my guides. It was his far-ranging mind which made me realize that the horizons of human psychology widen into the immeasurable." William James, father of American depth psychology, inspires a practical outlook for practical souls-human psychology widening into the immeasurable.

You Can Be Happy...

C.G. Jung wrote, "..the world is empty only to him who does not know how to direct his libido toward things and people and to render them alive and beautiful." (CW vol. 5 253). The capacity to feel happiness is thus a cultivated ability. Shamanic psychology teaches that illness and well being are choices. We direct energy into life and beauty and happiness becomes possible.

Of course, this depends on clearing out emotional debris. We can't put on a happy face and suddenly experience authentic joy. Emotional falsity and superficiality do not create genuine well being. Working through underlying psychic gunk, old pains and resentments, must precede the knowing of joy.

Happiness is the experience of being alive and knowing life to be beautiful. "I feel it in my body," said a trauma survivor. This person had felt the pain of being physically and sexually abused. Their body had gone numb and at times felt dead. "Now, I feel the change of seasons, the shifting light, different scents in the air. I'm alive. I'm happy."

She went on to say, "Happiness is my life process. It's always in the works and I'm always working on it." Dream material showed her, the dreaming ego, as shoveling through the debris of the day and each day discovering a particular luminescent stone. They were natural stones such as lapis, turquoise, agate. Each symbolized a particular understanding of importance to her for that day. Conflicts and contention held potential for meaning and insight. She learned to, in the words of Jung,  "direct libido toward things and people and to render them alive and beautiful."

Creativity and Stilling the Mind...

Stilling mind conjures creative psychic images. Archetypal presences come our way once mind becomes calm, receptive. They speak to us of what furthers growth, prohibits stagnation. They are energies that in old religious language were referred to as angels.

Carl Jung on “Meditation in Alchemy" noted, " ..But the alchemists really try to establish an objective relation to a "second" in their meditation, and this "second" has been regarded since olden times as the so-called "paredros", a spiritual helper, who is present during the work and who gives instructions.There is a text where the "spiritus Mercurii" first appears as a vapour which gradually condenses until it takes on a more or less recognisable human form. "

Thus, spiritual helpers, seen as creative psychic images emerge from the unconscious during times of calm receptivity. They further our psychological, alchemical, work. Simply put, when we are relaxed and open we are better able to access a realm of helpful invisible realities.

An advanced yoga practitioner related, "I was in deep meditation and saw a cup of Black Lightening Coffee. Energy whipped through me. I had been depleted and after asana practice and meditation I received the vision I needed." The vision of the Black Lightening Coffee, a brand she preferred, brought the jolt of energy, consciousness, she has been lacking. A still mind conjured a creative psychic image that furthered growth and present moment energy--Mercurius, he who creates and controls lightening! 

looking for god in all the wrong places...

People are looking to find their way spiritually. I used to believe that religious guilt and fear were the primary culprits in thwarting spiritual growth. Now, as I've treated hundreds of individuals who've freed themselves from oppressive religious pasts, I see that one thing really holds people back from spiritual freedom: inertia.

Religious nightmares bolt a stuck psyche out of inertia. A patient reported, "I've gone to the same old church, listened to the same old dogma, and it's where I've been stuck, stuck in a rut because I've been used to it and didn't know where else to go or what else to do." 

A nightmare bolted her mind out of its religious rut. "I had gone to Church that morning, was wasted afterwards, so I took a nap after and voice from above spoke to me and said, 'The Church is dead.' Well, I'll tell you that hit me hard and knocked me out of my old way of thinking."

She found herself no longer drawn to old religious practices. "Old ways had long lost their meaning. My life is enough. There's plenty to draw on for spiritual sustenance and growth. I listen to my dreams, I meditate, I have good people in my life. This is where god is for me. This is what's real and good for me."

The American depth psychologist William James wrote, "The place of the divine in the world must be more organic and intimate. An external creator and his institution may still be verbally confessed at Church in formulas that linger by their mere inertia, but the life is out of them, we avoid dwelling on them, the sincere heart of us is elsewhere." (Pluralistic Universe p. 24).  The sincere heart of us is in what's real and good for us and this is where we look, listen, and live. 

Decisions make the soul...

 

We can hide from pain. A person told me, "I stayed in a  bad relationship because I could hide there. I didn't have to face what got me into it to begin with. I didn't have to face what kept me in it. I hid out so I didn't have the light I needed to get out and live my life."

CG Jung wrote, "There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." 

Jung's words hit hard if we've taken time to reflect on our lives. When there's been big growth there's always been birth pains.  For the person in a bad relationship, it meant facing this reality and then getting out. For another it might mean taking the chance of entering into relating on an intimate level. 

Decisions make the soul. We decide to hide, to come out and live, to make the soul from deliberate choices. Birth pains, life pains, choice pains make us who we are. We are in the making process, unless we choke it off from fear, don't live, don't make the choices that need to be made. Decisions make the soul.

You Must Turn Back To The Simple Things...

 

February 10, 2015  /  Paul DeBlassie III

How we complicate life. We razzle and dazzle others and ourselves and try to make thing harder and more complicated. Fact is, that life can be remarkably straight forward. There is that which nourishes and that which diminishes and destroys. We cultivate  one and let go of the other.

Trick is to find out which is which. A sincere soul commented, "Before getting into depth therapy I dreamed I was walking along a busy avenue with a hyper amount of foot street traffic. This guy came out of nowhere and tripped me. I went blind. He held the salve that would cure me. But, I needed to find my way to him as he spoke to me, listen, and slowly reach out toward him so he could apply the ointment."

"Making my way to soul work in therapy was my salve. It opened my eyes. I was going too fast, my mind cluttered. There were things I needed to see and feel but couldn't because my life was cluttered. I slowed down, dreamed and healed. It was slow and that was good because things were complicated and fast before and that got me in trouble."

There's more to us...

Life seems at an end. We're going to give up, thrown in the towel, we say. There's nothing more for me, we  go on. Lights out, a voice inside echoes.  When emotions are troubled to the point of despair, things are stirring in the mind. Something's cooking in life.

There's no way around the lights going out. It's going to happen. When it does, it's time to go still. A patient said, "When I began therapy I was suicidal. Everything was gone. There was no hope. It's taken time, but I learned to see in the dark. Those dark places held secrets. I needed to hear them. I needed to let myself hear and be willing to be quiet and see into the dark. I learned that there's more  to me than I thought. That was the beginning of letting go and moving on."

William James, father of American depth psychology, wrote, "Every bit of us at every moment is part and parcel of a wider self, it quivers along various radii like the wind-rose on a compass, and the actual in it is continuously one with possibles not yet in our present sight."

Where we are  now is where we are now. Our challenge is to see into dark places. There, we just may discover, are possibilities "not yet in our present sight."

You Cannot Have Both Church And Freedom

C.G. Jung wrote "You cannot have both, Church and freedom, and if you want both undiminished, no Solomon will be found to pronounce judgement." (C.G. Jung to Pastor H. Wegmann, November 20, 1945) Patients often struggle with the issue of feeling bound to church. They crave a freedom of spirituality. Dogmas bind them to one way of seeing and experiencing the spiritual world.

A patient recently told me of how they came to grips with this during the holiday season: "Christmas for me isn't about religion. It's about goodwill. I take stock of my life and the reality that I do wish well being for all individuals and that I do my part to help to make this happen in the small ways that I can." When I think of religion, I'm immediately bogged down. With Christmas, the holidays, about well being I can relax and replenish. I feel free."

Psychological consciousness offers us the potential for increased spiritual freedom throughout life. The end of the year signals a time to be grateful and, in the words of my patient, offer well being to others. I noticed, as I meditated on this insight, a freedom within that was brought to light and nurtured. We cannot have both church and freedom, but we can have both goodwill toward others and a free soul!

God as Intimate Soul (cont. III)

The dark, destructive, side of religion intrudes on the natural psychic disposition toward intimacy with soul. Patients suffer the cruelty of religious impositions based on psychic manipulation. Archetypal energies turn destructive as survivors defensively cope with symptoms of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and psychosis. In the words of one ardent spiritual seeker and survivor of religious abuse, “When the priest got to me, it was God who got to me and nearly did me in.”

Many old religions depict an outer god inflicting judgment and wrath on the vulnerable soul. Inevitably, this construct is internalized and generates a psychic terrain replete with demons of guilt and fear, the dark side of archetypal numinosity unleashed. Oppressive and damaging demonic assaults charged with religious meaning hit the psyche at full speed for the sufferer of religious abuse. Onslaughts of self-loathing and shame cripple the psyche. As one psychoanalyst colleague remarked, “When our god is a tyrant we need another god.”

From the perspective of American depth psychology, vis- à-vis William James, a transformative spirituality cultivates intimacy with an inner sense of the sacred, numinous aspects of psyche. James (2006, p.25) noted, “The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to the tenderer parts of man’s nature.” One of my most tender dreams ushered me to an inner sanctum, an angelic presence speaking, “Freud touched the face of God.” Upon awakening deeply moved, I felt touched by the sacred, intimate soul. As the result, I discovered that I, as Freud encouraged, was better attuned to painful feelings and memories of patients. Together, we more sensitively plumbed unconscious depths to healing, perhaps, touching the face of God.

Michael Eigen (1998 p. 71, 72) stated that “the soul keeps opening . . . no end to opening. . . . It explodes downward (into knowledge, understanding, feeling . . . ).” Such a depth psychology encourages a downward nourishing of intimacy with soul. I remember a dream in which I could ascend to the heavens and there encounter God. A group of men and I were in the desert, a great expanse of earth before us and the blue sky overhead. Just as I looked heavenward and prepared to jettison upward, an old holy man, a desert prophet, appeared and pointed downward. Where the holy man pointed was a fathomlessly dark and deep hole at least five or six feet in circumference that led to the center of the earth. He and his followers, the men who were with me in the dream, made the descent into the abyss, something at once mystifying and terrifying. I followed despite feeling overwhelmed by wonder and trepidation.

The desert holy man as symbol of the wise-old numinous self led the way into realms of mystery and transformation, intimate soul. Terror felt by my dreaming ego was a normal response of the conscious mind to the unknown, to intimate soul. I made my way to the opening in the earth, smelled the rich, loamy soil. As I entered this moist and earthy realm, the past space of the old and dry earth and distant sky faded into a vague and far off memory.

William James (2006, p. 136) referred to this depth of being, as “a great reservoir in which the memories of earth’s inhabitants are pooled and preserved, and from which, when the threshold lowers or the valve opens, information ordinarily shut out leaks into the mind.” Intimate soul draws us into a grounded and deepening relationship to self and life. Patricia Berry (2008, p.12) in depicting a vital aspect of psychic evolution and movement wrote,

Earth became a divinity . . . she was no longer ‘nothing-but’ a physical ground, a neutral ground without quality; because she was experienced as a divinity, she was experienced psychically so that her matter mattered to and in the psyche.

“In the midst of crisis,” one person confided, “I was terrified yet I knew I had to enter into a cave in the earth. There a dark goddess appeared. I was abandoned by my birth mother. The dark goddess deep within the earth helped me to heal. She has been there for me ever since.”

The human psyche nourishes itself on intimate truths. We see through a dark light as the scriptural author refers to seeing through a glass darkly. The psyche births mystery, causing deific presences of intimate soul to appear leading to transformation. James(2006, p. 138) referred to entering into this downward knowledge as a calling for “possibilities that take our breath away, of another kind of happiness and power, based on giving up our own will” to god as intimate soul.

- See more at: http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/god-as-intimate-soul-by-paul-deblassie-iii-ph-d/#sthash.NaKbKisS.dW0T3Y1q.dpuf

God as Intimate Soul (cont. II)

In my psychotherapeutic specialty in the depth treatment of religiously abused patients I have found that damaging the god image traumatizes the soul. Ardent Buddhist devotees have been seduced by ostensibly sincere roshis. Stories of Catholic children quietly ushered into a priest’s dimly lit quarters and sexually exploited run rampant in the media. Yogis cultivated followers and then plundered emotionally and physically those who seriously sought their wisdom and guidance. In instances such as these, the god image within the self is traumatized, often to the point of fracture and collapse. When the inner sanctum of soul holds trauma, intimacy with it, with god, becomes overwhelming and frightening.

The dark, destructive, side of religion intrudes on the natural psychic disposition toward intimacy with soul. Patients suffer the cruelty of religious impositions based on psychic manipulation. Archetypal energies turn destructive as survivors defensively cope with symptoms of anxiety, depression, suicidality, and psychosis. In the words of one ardent spiritual seeker and survivor of religious abuse, “When the priest got to me, it was God who got to me and nearly did me in.”

Many old religions depict an outer god inflicting judgment and wrath on the vulnerable soul. Inevitably, this construct is internalized and generates a psychic terrain replete with demons of guilt and fear, the dark side of archetypal numinosity unleashed. Oppressive and damaging demonic assaults charged with religious meaning hit the psyche at full speed for the sufferer of religious abuse. Onslaughts of self-loathing and shame cripple the psyche. As one psychoanalyst colleague remarked, “When our god is a tyrant we need another god.”

From the perspective of American depth psychology, vis- à-vis William James, a transformative spirituality cultivates intimacy with an inner sense of the sacred, numinous aspects of psyche. James (2006, p.25) noted, “The inner life of things must be substantially akin anyhow to the tenderer parts of man’s nature.” One of my most tender dreams ushered me to an inner sanctum, an angelic presence speaking, “Freud touched the face of God.” Upon awakening deeply moved, I felt touched by the sacred, intimate soul. As the result, I discovered that I, as Freud encouraged, was better attuned to painful feelings and memories of patients. Together, we more sensitively plumbed unconscious depths to healing, perhaps, touching the face of God.

- See more at: http://www.depthinsights.com/Depth-Insights-scholarly-ezine/god-as-intimate-soul-by-paul-deblassie-iii-ph-d/#sthash.NaKbKisS.bkd4wcdR.dpuf

God as Intimate Soul (I)...

The idea of practical spirituality emerged out of an alchemical mix of William James and Carl Jung, and their respective psychic perspectives on the soul. As a clinical psychologist in private practice for the past 30 years specializing in depth psychology and psychology and spirituality, I have treated scores of individuals in the midst of making their way across the dark and troubled waters of the unconscious mind. Serving as therapist and guide, a Hermetic dynamic at work within the treatment relationship, we frequently witness the emergence of a natural and immensely practical spirituality that nourishes the soul. It is of course, a vital relationship with the Self that supplants old, outer, religiosity.

In developing this relationship, William James (2006, p. 24) hit upon a revolutionary idea: God as intimate soul. Transformative numinous experience is nourished as we cultivate intimacies with soul. Sensitive listening to emotions, dreams, synchronous life events, and nuances within daily relationships actuates connection with intimate soul. As a colleague told me yesterday over a cup of afternoon tea, “I really need my daily times for reading, meditation, thinking, and good talking time with my partner. They take me into myself. There I find what the ancients called god.” God is intimate soul.

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Winning Your Battle...

In a letter dated June 12, 1933 C.G. Jung wrote, "You have a mind just as well as any other human being and you can use it if you only know how to apply it. Any of my pupils could give you much insight and understanding that you could treat yourself if you don't succumb to the prejudice that you receive healing through others. In the last resort every individual alone has to win his battle, nobody else can do it for him."

No one else can win our battles. We alone have to face the monsters and beasts within our psychic dungeons. They lurk during waking hours in the forms of other people and troubling attitudes that challenge us and our conscious way of thinking, seeing, feeling. At night they emerge as dreams or nightmares that frighten, even terrorize.

A woman confided, "A hideous man, a monster really, appeared in my dream. I was in a nightmare. But, he turned into a shaman, touched me on the forehead and I entered into a sacred cave where I was to dwell." 

Her parents were demanding that she enter medical school. Her heartfelt desire had always been to become a depth psychotherapist. She commented, "By going into my own depth therapy and becoming this sort of healer, I feel like I'm entering a sacred cave. This is my life and my life's work." The nightmares subsided with this insight. She applied to and  entered depth psychotherapeutic training. 

Over time she learned to treat herself, to listen to dreams and spontaneous images that would arise in her mind throughout the day. Personal psychotherapy helped to set her on this path. To this day, she continues to do what only she can do for herself, in the words of Jung, to alone win her battle.