Where There's Pain There's Cure

Pain Carries the Seed of Cure

More than we think, we as adults generate our psychic sufferings. We don’t think we do, but we do. We’re immensely biased to believe our problems come from outside of us. Often, they come from the inside. Of course, external childhood and adulthood traumas are real and take root in the psyche. They dig in and can cause an endless cycle of problems and illnesses. But one day, we realize that what came from the outside is now inside and needs attention. Otherwise, everything is projected outward and becomes traumatic, emotional drama after drama playing out in our life like an onstage play. Fortunately, psychic pain always carries the seed of its own cure. 

We Have a Choice

Patients in depth psychotherapy are caught in a whirlwind of relational pain and hoped-for cure. Life hangs in the balance. Over time, individuals learn to turn within and reflect on themselves and their life. Insights often unearth dark energies that have stirred up life troubles and uncannily drawn bad situations and dysfunctional people their way. It seems like bad things just happen out of the blue. But, when we take time to learn from our feelings and dreams, we come to see that there’s a reason for them. Then, we’re ready to understand that we can do something about our predicament.

 Humanistic and phenomenological depth psychology teaches about the reality of self-empowerment. Even in horrid predicaments, we have a choice. In an online professional listserv with other psychologists today, we talked about the ability to choose. I related a saying that we have a good dog and a bad dog in us. Which one lives depends on which one we feed. We keep feeding the emotional drama by blaming others rather than stopping and looking closely at ourselves and our life.

 Begin Your Healing Process

Our ability to choose empowers us to begin our own healing and growth process. People look for a different locale or a partner to change things up for them—make them happier. It doesn’t work. Outer changes don’t automatically translate to inner changes. We have to start with coming to terms with the dark emotions and dreams on the inside, then we stand a good chance of changing the outside for the good.

 Slowly and painfully, patients listen to vital feeling states and dreams. Emotions and dream symbols open up vistas of experience that lead to a greater understanding of self and others. Off in the distance, a light starts to faintly glow at the end of a dark emotional and spiritual tunnel. Along the way, step by step, we deal with buried feelings, set our attitudes on course, and let go of dead-end relationships. Dream images guide us along the way, inch by inch through the dark tunnel. Then, the light at the end of the tunnel grows brighter. Light dawns only after sensitive and patient turning within, soul tending.

 Pain is There—Cure is There

A person I knew socially complained about not sleeping. He asked me what I thought. I remarked that sometimes we don’t sleep because we fear our dreams. We run from going down deep into the unconscious mind, the realm of sleeping and dreaming. He resisted going to bed, nervous behaviors keeping him up till all hours. Headaches developed. Other physical symptoms followed. Some weeks later, he said that what I told him kept coming back to him. Our meeting again was a sign, he said, that he needed to take my words to heart. I encouraged him once again to allow extra time for sleep and rest.

 The pain was there, so I knew the cure was also there. Resistance to inner truth generates physical and psychic pain. He finally succumbed to sleeping more regularly. Dreams followed. They detailed relationship conflicts he had refused to face, decisions needing to be made and followed through with.

 I’m not sure how things went for this man since I haven’t seen him for some time. But I do know that once dark realities are brought to light, the potential to heal is set in motion. Once we see what’s wrong, we can find some clarity about what we can do to set things right. It’s never easy, but the tough going of following through with necessary life changes is a hundred times better than the misery of staying stuck. We initiate our cure by understanding that psychic pain always carries the seed of its own cure.

Feel the Hope

As a psychologist in training, I remember a deeply nourishing exchange with a supervisor that kindled my understanding of hope and healing. “Healing calls for hope. As a therapist, you’ve got to feel it for the patient. If you don’t, it would be best to refer them to someone you feel might be better for them. Maybe they simply would benefit from medication or need a neurological workup. Not everyone is ready for or needs therapy. But, if they come your way, check in with your feeling of hope. Is it there? Do you feel it for them? If so, then there’s potential for healing. Move forward and do your best, and they’re likely to find healing.”

 William James, father of American depth psychology, wrote in The Varieties of Religious Experience “let . . . hope be the atmosphere which man breathes in . . . and his days pass by with zest.” There are those who shield themselves from hope. It takes exertion of self to hope. You put yourself into it, the vital emotion of it requiring energy, an investment of self. People are afraid. I understand, but I also get it that to retreat into negativism, cynicism, and despair ends up at the end of a very dark and go-no-where back alley. It helps nothing and no one.

 But when hope is the real deal, you feel it from your core. It’s not concocted. It’s not a fly-by feeling—a wisp of sentiment or superficial thought. No, genuine hope comes from the gut, it grabs hold and digs in then looks to you to give it expression. When we take the step to feel the hope, then it blooms. It provides energy, gray and black clouds lift. We can do things and move ahead.

 A patient walked into my office, their countenance dark, and their attitude dismal. They were in the grip of despair. They reported this dream: “I was at the edge of a cliff, a black abyss down below. Instead of stepping back, which I should have done, I stepped off and went down. When I woke up I felt depressed.” We explored the power of the symbolism. They were at the edge and the dream said they had a choice—to step off or not. Off they went. “It’s always been easier to go down the tube for me. I just let go and don’t try. I step off the cliff instead of taking the energy to move back and away.”

 What a compelling psychic scenario this dream painted. The patient was more empowered than they had admitted to themselves. They became conscious of their ability to exercise greater control over attitude and self-empowerment. Generative feeling states can be nurtured. Again, they’re not whipped up, they’re not inflated self-talk that comes from baseless notions. No, they spring from genuine inspiration. The soul whispers, You can deal with this. Move on it!

 I noticed when that patient stepped into the consultation office, my hope did not waver. I knew and felt to my core that despite how bad they looked, hope and the potential for healing was present. I felt it deep inside. By the session’s end, the clouds had lifted, their mood lighter. They left feeling self-empowered and that they could fix what they had messed up. So, word for the day is—keep the hope, nourish the hope, and the hope will heal and transform your life and your soul.

What It Takes to Change

Change takes time, months, and years or can happen instantly. It depends on where we are in life. Everyone says they want to heal and change, but the real thing, the stuff of true wholeness, requires a deep breath and a plunge. So, it’s frightening—easy to say, mind-shattering to engage.

A patient reported the following dream. “I was standing on the edge of a cliff. It was a drop down to the ocean. I wasn’t afraid. But I was. The roar of the ocean, winds sweeping across my body, and I teetered. I had to let go, drop. There was no way out. I woke up and decided I needed to get into therapy, do dreamwork, and see what was going on with me.”

Inevitably, today there will be a crisis. It could come in the form of a dream, or relationship conflict, or a sudden turn of events that smack you right where it counts. The original Greek meaning of the word crisis is turning point, a crossroads where we have to make a decision about which way to go. We will have choices today that will determine the course of the morning, afternoon, and evening. These are micro-crises, little decisions, turning points.

For the patient I mentioned, they never dropped into the ocean. In the dream, they stood frightened and paralyzed but did choose to enter depth psychotherapy. Then, they dreamt again, and they dropped down and down and down. It’s where they needed to go—into the vast ocean of soul. Over time dream images spoke to them about hidden things, mysteries that couldn’t be fathomed without dropping down and under. Inevitably, they led to a vast overall of perspective, relationships, and life itself.

Crisis is the time for change. Crisis signals a turning point. Crisis times/changing times can be moment to moment, in a single day, or at intervals in the life span. Babies are in crisis at birth, the mother in crisis, crisis hitting in adolescence, adulthood constant shattering old ways. Ahhh….soul evolution is a crisis!

We try to shield ourselves from soul crisis/change. Overly used life stuff — toomuchitis — numbs the pain that could clear the mind and propel the change. Instead, we eat too much, drink too much, exercise too much, do too much and discover a state of no more feelings. Then, emotions return and turn sideways and can go dark and destructive with a vengeance. It’s the psychological day after syndrome, the emotional hangover, from dipping into toxic unfeeling, not feeling, no feeling.

Toxic mind is irritable, negative, depressed and cranky, has no joy in anyone or anything. Thank goodness, we can steady ourselves and listen to that state of mind. It too is a crisis. It too speaks of change. It too has in it the capacity to turn our life around. A change of attitude, a reckoning with a conflicted relationship, a setting about a task we’ve tried to wiggle out of, is a beginning.

What it takes to change is a willingness to open up and begin. Stopping where we are right now, taking stock of the crisis we’re in, and deciding to do something about our life gets the wheels of change going. Listen to the pain, it speaks to you. Trust the pain, it has a message. Take the good but challenging step that pops into mind and forever transform your life.

That’s what it takes to change.

The Challenge of Bliss

Bliss and Years End

The transition from years end to a new beginning is challenging, even when things are going well. When the going is bad, we want to let go of the worst and ready ourselves to embrace the better and best. But, as we've all noticed, things can follow us. No matter the time, place, people, or space, things follow us. Stability, well being, and bliss is a challenge.

I like bliss. It's not some mind-popping state. In actuality, mystics of old and seasoned depth psychologists would describe it as subtle energy. Gaston Bachelard, French philosopher and psychologist of archetypal realms, wrote of the Platonic ideal of bliss: ". . . to stand over every single thing as its own heaven, as its round roof, its azure bell, and eternal security." We soon discover that such a perspective and experience comes with a price.

Bliss as State of Mind

Bliss is a challenge because it requires we move out so we can move on. The end of a year and transition into a new year calls us to take stock, let go of what no longer is meaningful and embrace the unknown. It's filled with potential. Inevitably, there will be ups and downs, dark matters to go through, and, hopefully, light at the end of dark tunnels.

Bliss is a state of mind, one we can lean into and trust. It can be with us, in the background, during trying moments. It's consciously experienced when things go well. However, we realize it's always there once awareness is raised, appreciation for self and others discovered, and we immerse ourselves in each moment of life.

Bliss as Moving Out and On

Treating patients all year in depth psychotherapy, has brought to mind gratitude for the human capacity to move out so we can move on. As long as we're willing to make the sacrifice, pay the price, the bliss of knowing and feeling ongoing growth and change will be sensed. It's subtle. Patients report, and I, from experience, confirm, it's like a butterfly landing on your shoulder or a snowflake on the palm of your hand. It's there, comes and goes, and leaves the sense of it behind, the wonder of nature at work. Patients move out of what no longer works and into what does, butterflies and snowflakes and inspiration and insight alighting then departing, internalized as soulful nourishment.

Bliss as Subtle Current

So, moving out of one year and toward and into the next means letting go. It means embracing. Then, the subtle current of bliss arrives with surety as a genuine sense we are growing and going on. To be stuck leaves us unhappy, perhaps emotionally and spiritually unstable. As we sort through how we're stuck, then working on letting go and moving on opens us to the subtle current of bliss that is the nature of a soul always growing and moving on.

Curing the Disease of More

 We crave to know more, do more, have it all. First, you have to admit to yourself what I just wrote. Yup – if you don’t fess up and come clean about the disease of more, then there’s no helping you. Okay, right now your mental clock ticks through the microseconds as you decide.

Bam…you’ve made it to this sentence. That means you’re in. For sure, if you’ve made it this far, you’re willing to concede that you’ve victimized yourself. You’ve made yourself vulnerable to and nurtured the disease of more. You’re reading, your mind, deep inside, intrigued. It doesn’t want to stay infected with the insatiable hunger for more.

As a depth psychologist of forty years, I’ve treated the unconscious mind of hundreds of patients. The disease of more, if you open your heart and let yourself see, is there. It lurks like an alleyway predator whispering, Psssst, buddy have I got a deal for you. It lures then hooks. The disease of more is an unconscious dynamic that generates pure misery. Fortunately, misery doesn’t square with one’s deeper and authentic self.

Inevitably, if we succumb to the disease of more, there’s trouble. It may give us what we want up front – that rush of the impossible becoming possible – but then time to pay up. The first to go are relationships. They’re hurt. Fracturing starts, maybe split-ups. Then productivity gets a jolt because what goes up must come down. Last of all, we figure out we’ve gone the wrong way. We’ve expected too much and gone too high. Down in the dumps and sobbing bad tears happen sure as summer monsoons.

Good news is, we can learn from experience. That way we don’t keep doing the same thing repeatedly expecting a payoff when all there’s been are dead ends. We stop, reflect, turn within. Deep feeling states, dreams, those who care about us can help us listen and learn. Curing the disease of more is inevitable if we listen and learn from our missteps, and do it for life.

Spectacular Light

The thing about living is light. It surrounds us, breathes through us – not in us but through us. The force of it is subtle as the New Mexico breeze I hardly notice under the hot summer desert sun then suddenly become acutely grateful for when under the shade of a hundred-year-old cottonwood tree.

Light informs my psychotherapeutic work with patients who’ve suffered from complex childhood trauma, a terrible pain stemming from years of chronic abuse. There are horrid memories deposited in mind and body. Stepping out the door of my home each morning to go to my office, early before the sun rises over the Sandia Mountains in Albuquerque, I anticipate, hope for the light. Yes, there is hope because there is no guarantee that light, insight, will come and help the suffering to see and be a little freer.

Light, the way my patients and I experience it while sitting doing depth psychotherapy in my wood-paneled consultation office, is a subtle movement of energy. They sometimes comment, “The light in here has shifted. Have you noticed? It’s different, not brighter but clearer.” I often smile silently, acknowledging the reality of what I realize as numinous.

In depth psychology, soul-work therapy, numinous refers to spiritual awakening, an energetic force that awakens consciousness. It happens when we have a “big dream,” one that shakes us to the core and leaves a lingering sensation of mystery. Numinous and luminous are partners in life healing and transformation. It’s subtle, a shift we hardly notice, at times absolutely see, but always feel in our muscles, ligaments, and bones. Light, insight into self and others, awakens psychic truth and a sensation that the very luminosity of the room we are in and the world in which we live has shifted, transformed, for the better.

I call the numinous/luminous encounter spectacular because there is an instant, a millisecond even, when my breath stops, heart quickens, and my mind expands. Patients experience it, tears, sighs, and relief palpable. Spectacular light comes in moments of heart-to-heart conversation, a kindling of human understanding. It is subtle, meaningful, and spectacular.

It’s A Good Day

Every day we have choices to make. Our outlook determines our mood, energy, and relationships. I was struck today at the wonder of the day, looking outside at the New Mexico rain, a sorely needed respite to dry days and hot months. Today I thought and said to myself, It’s a good day.

 When good feelings, positive energy and states of mind, arise spontaneously they speak of sincere and enlivening feeling. It’s important not to take them for granted. Patients suffering from emotional and spiritual burdens often lose good energy and positive emotions. Having a good day is as far away as north from south. Authentic well being happens as the source of bad feelings is discovered and worked through and out of. Then, suffering yields to nourishing emotions that lift the veil from psychic eyes so that once again we see and feel that it’s a good day.

 When negative emotions and spiritual states interfere with well being, they can be dramatized in dreams. Dreams help us to see what we don’t understand consciously. They pop out and clarify what is murky to our conscious mind. This gets the psychic ball rolling, helps us stop and take stock of how we are living.

 A person, tormented by years of depression, reported the following dream: “I was lost in a maze. Round and round I went. It was dark outside. A cold wind was blowing. I didn’t know how I got in there nor did I know how to get out. All was lost until a voice spoke and said this way. A hand with an outstretched finger like Michelangelo’s Creation of David painting appeared. It hovered in the dark sky then came close. I then had enough light to see that the maze was a cornfield. The finger had the power to part the stalks so I could find my way out. At the exit was a house, the family home in which I had been raised.”

 This was the first session of our psychotherapeutic work together. It spoke of light coming to darkness. Luminous spiritual energy guided the way to the source of confusion, chaos and crisis. Family issues had to be addressed before the person could heal. There was no way they could authentically feel the goodness of any day before facing the truth of darkness within.

 It’s important to see the goodness in each day and be grateful. We can honestly feel it and sense an emotional appreciation for the sun, the rain, the wind and the stillness only when the stalks of emotional defenses part. We need emotional and spiritual help to do this. This comes in dreams when we’re most in crisis, dreams playing out healing truths.

 Gratitude for each day may be a genuine state of mind, heart and soul for you right now; or it may require some soul work to discover. If your heart is open, spiritual and emotional forces can come when you’re most in need. Wherever you’re at, remember there’s a good day out there ready to be discovered.

Breaking Free

You want to break free. It’s what led you to read this blog. I’m writing about the things that hold us back and down. We’ve all experienced them in one way or another. Treating patients in depth psychotherapy for the past forty years, I’ve witnessed the emotional and spiritual ravages that come from not dealing with hangups. It’s time to face what we need to face, get through it, and break free of hangups.

Holding ourselves back and down results from hangups in the psychological closet. They are things, attitude and behaviors, that are inevitably destructive to self and others. Things like chronic negativism, addictive behaviors, and engagement in dysfunctional relationships keep us back from entering into who we are. The self is clogged and thwarted by such lack of care; conversely, the self thrives with sensitivity and nourishment via positive actions, generative relationships, and healthy minded attitudes.

Healthy mindedness, of course, is a tall order. William James, father of American psychology, essentially referred to it via his philosophy of pragmatism. He contrasted healthy mindedness with the sick soul consumed by its own negativism. With healthy mindedness, we nourish health of mind and soul. We nourish a good life, one marked by generative attitudes and feelings toward self and others.

Some have criticized breaking free as self centered. It is anything but that. True breaking free keeps in mind the practical needs of others as well as the self. What is good for self is also good for others. They may not understand it as such since preformed ideas about what constitutes love or goodness can overshadow what is practical and sound. In essence, breaking free allows us to be free and permits others to live life according to their own light as well.

A patient had a dream that they and their best friend were at a crossroads. It was in an old New Mexican town. They had been friends since childhood. Darkness descended over the desert landscape. No words were spoken, and they both caught glimpses of the sun as it flickered away in the western horizon. We processed the symbolism and saw that the time of the parting had come. The west often speaks to the end of things, the crossroads to a time of decision. The patient admitted that the relationship had run its course and had really long outlived the vital feelings that they had once shared. It was time to move on, break free.

We need to break free so we can have a life; otherwise we remain stuck. Unhappiness breeds unhappiness when we need to move on and don’t. Breaking free sets us free, to live fully, happily and loaded with potential.

Can't Have It Both Ways

The proverbial having our cake and eating it too applies to our psychic life and to the world of dreams. In order to heal and grow, we need to heal and grow. Quite often, I find that people say they want healing when in reality they only want relief. Healing takes seeing our way through tough times with tough messages. They challenge us to look at ourselves, our dreams, and our life situation in new ways that can upset old patterns and perspectives.

I think it makes common sense that we can’t grow and stay the same. Yet, the pull to not make necessary changes in life is strong. The old habits and ways of relating that go counter to well being have to go if we are to get better and stronger. That requires living in a way that is positive and generative and not in ways that are destructive and land us in one dead end after another.

Patients seeking depth psychotherapy frequently struggle to understand that the way they are living affects the way they are feeling. They think bad feelings somehow come out of nowhere and inflict themselves. They think they are the victims of invisible forces that have targeted them and made their life miserable. Over time in dream therapy, we come to understand that it’s not just about what has happened to us in life that shapes us. What also matters is what we have done with what has happened to us. We have a choice to deal consciously with what’s happened to us or to close our eyes and be victims, whining and complaining about our sorry lot in life.

In dream therapy, symbols and images come to the rescue. When we sleep at night, our unconscious mind tries to get through to us. We find ourselves face to face with a dark foe. I love these dreams, the image of the shadowy figure providing just the medicine we need for the illness at hand. Inevitably, it’s the scary dream that gives the most enlightenment. It shakes us to the core with what we need in the way that we need it. In dreams like this, there’s no way out. The terror stalks us, won’t let up, demands recognition and reckoning. It’s the psyche’s way of saying it’s time to take care of emotional and spiritual business.

A person related, “Last night was rough dreaming for me. It was nightmare time. I couldn’t run fast enough from whoever it was that was chasing me. It was the dark of night, and there was nowhere for me to go. Footsteps pounded behind me, caught up with me no matter which way I turned or where I went.” The individual looked up at me and stated, “I don’t know what that dream was about, but here I am and so I thought I’d tell you about it.”

“Do you have any idea what it might mean for you? How it might speak to you?” I asked not really thinking they would be able to pull the image together in a coherent way or with meaning. They seemed overwhelmed by the lingering emotional effects of the dramatic scenario. “The best I can say is that I can’t keep up running from what I need to face. I can’t have it both ways—running and dreams don’t square up.” I replied, “I’m impressed. It’s time to face the feelings and situations you’ve been trying to outrun.” Over the course of many months we explored the life conflicts that propelled him to have this dream and to enter dream therapy.

Dreams speak to stopping, turning around, and facing what we’re running from. We can’t have it both ways, our cake and eat it too. Emotional and spiritual therapy sees us along our way through life’s tough times, dreams leading the way.

Surface or Depth . . .

We often say we want to grow. The question is are we willing to do what it takes. It’s easy to read books or hear talks or read blogs. It’s hard to look within, take stock of ourselves and quietly apply ourselves to genuine soul work. It requires movement away from what we’re used to, surface, and descent into what we are not, depth.

I’m finishing an article about Freud’s interest in the occult. In many ways, he preferred this area of study to psychoanalysis but was afraid to go further for fear of academic rejection. He stayed on one plane, that of the personal unconscious, and refused to deepen into the transpersonal unconscious, the spiritual dimension of life. I believe this may have contributed to what he termed the misery of everyday life. When we stay on the surface, stuck with where we’ve been and not letting go and changing – deepening - then misery results. The mystic balances and heals the mundane just as everyday realities ground the mystic.

And then there’s Jung – what a prophet of the mystic, and what a disappointment! The man who proclaimed the wholeness of the self yielded to the collective pressure to form an institute bearing his name. The one who said, “Thank god I am Jung and not a Jungian” actually agreed with the ordination of followers who are called Jungians. How silly we can be as a species. We know there’s another way, the way of truth to self and depth of experience, and yet yield to superficial ways that bring acclaim – not even a tepid handclap in the thunderous immensity of the transpersonal universe.

And now we come to our daily life. Surface or depth? When we’re in pain, we’re willing to consider what we haven’t. We’re willing to open up and see so that we’ll feel better, so the pain will stop. But, the telling time really comes in the daily living. To be able to choose depth, truth to self no matter what others say or how they pressure us. This is depth. Surface bids us go for the tepid pat on the back, the weak handclap of those who in the light of the transpersonal universe are wisps in a cold ethersphere, passing and then no more.

Waking up on the first day of the new year, I remembered a dream. It spoke of forces from my past, professional groups demanding allegiance, old family dysfunctional relationships demanding allegiance, friends who demanded adherence to their “liberal” liberal way of seeing things. In the dream, I saw from a distance what had once been so up close and personal. A breath from the transpersonal flow of all things swept through me, and I turned and left the scene, ready to move on with my life and new decisions regarding surface or depth.

Self Care and the Psyche . . .

It’s one thing to get well; it’s quite another to stay well and thrive. The psyche is such a confluence of negative and positive dynamics. One day we’re set on healing, the next instant we’re working against ourselves. Self care, its stabilization and furtherance, I’ve come to believe after nearly forty years as a depth psychologist, is the most challenging aspect of psychotherapy and personal healing and growth.

Dream images play out the necessity of self care especially when the dynamic has been impaired by adult or childhood chronic trauma. We learn to not take care of ourselves when we’ve been injured over and over, first by others or terrible situations, and then by the dark side of self. I dreamt of a patient showing me the rolls of fat on his abdomen, pointing to them as evidence of needed body sensitivity to the lingering aftereffects of trauma. Therapy needed to continue being sensitive to encouraging, within the context of empathic care, diet, exercise, time of appropriate relationality, and overall body sensitivity. He came to me at night, within a moving dream, and told me how much he needed support when it came to self care and his body.

This patient came into my office first thing the next morning and asked (right off), “Do I really need to follow through with everything we’ve talked about - diet, exercise, and all the rest? It seems like a bit much. This is psychotherapy, not body therapy.” Remembering the dream, I answered, “Of course we need to follow through. And, remember as we’ve talked about, the psyche is body and body is psyche. The psychological work we’re doing affects your body, helps it to heal. We need to follow through with everything that helps you to heal, including all the body work.”

Over time this insight settled in, self care becoming more habitual, not perfect but certainly good enough. In essence, our care of self is reflected in the care we provide for our body. Engaging in far-flung esoteric understandings of images, symbols and dreams are unnecessary if we but tend to the immediacy of self care, especially sensitivity directed toward the body. Self care, body care, will teach us all we need to know about well being of body, mind, and soul. Such body care is imminent, chthonic, inner, deep and tangible - the true reflection of how well we are caring for psyche, the treasure that is our soul.

Lunchtime Vision Anyone?

I usually break for lunch around noon after a morning of depth psychotherapy. There’s time to quietly read, reflect, and have a period of rest and meditation. Not infrequently, a vision surfaces. In a liminal state, my brain downshifts from beta waves to alpha and theta, images and symbols from the psyche emerge.

University of Pennsylvania research in sleep and chronobiology reports, "Humans are biologically programmed to sleep at night, and to take a nap in the midafternoon, though scientists aren’t sure why. “There is no melatonin triggering the sleep, it just seems to be this harmonic phenomenon,” Dr. Dinges says. The consensus among his colleagues, he says, is that human civilization evolved mostly in equatorial climates, where it got very hot later in the day, and napping during the extreme heat optimized work performance. "(A Window of Opportunity WSJ 9.1.9.17)

Without a regular time for an afternoon rest and meditation, I’m not quite myself. To take the descent into the unconscious, simply put—to nap, permits not only physical replenishment but psychic healing and balancing. When we have a vision, it’s different than a dream during sleep. It’s a single image or scene that informs, inspires, and helps set us right for the rest of the day.

Relationships That Sustain

So often we look at how relationships trip us up. It’s easy to overlook how they also sustain us. If we are isolated, without meaningful connection and intimacy, we’re tripped up in life. If we have that one other person who knows us and wants to continue to know us, we’re wealthy and very much in the midst of finding our way.

Dreams speak to us of relating. Our inner life is reflected in the quality of our outer relationships. A person dreamed of having sex with a foul human being. Another had an erotic encounter with a lovely individual, sensitive and satisfying. Both dreams spoke to the quality of their relationship with self and other. When our inner life is humming, we understand and respect ourselves, the nature of our outer relating reflecting this.

An old mystic said you only love god as much as the person you love least. In more contemporary terms we might say that we only have our act together to the degree that our relationships are dealt with or being dealt with. We part ways with what is not generative and loving, leave behind chronically negative and destructive situations and people. We nourish creative and loving encounters, potentials in life and relationships. This is our challenge life—to always be in the process of cultivating relationships that sustain.

What Matters Most . . .

Last night my wife, Kate and I were watching a television series we've come to enjoy, Jack Taylor. He's an Irish detective, a rogue rough-and-tough guy. He lives hard, barely gets by, but has some real depth to him He quoted Emerson saying that what matters most is not the past or the future but what's inside a person.

Kate and I spoke about this Emerson essay on self-reliance. It's a soulful piece, one that brings psychic reality down to earth and into everyday life. We are surrounded by the wisdom of the psyche and of life itself. We needn't travel to Zurich or New York, or immerse ourselves in the heady volumes of complex theories about depth psychology.

Life speaks to us each moment of every day some of the finest wisdom available. It can come through a television show. It happens when we allow ourselves to enter into conversation, a feeling exchange, one true and heartfelt, with someone we care about and love. Wisdom comes from what daily surrounds us and is inherently within us. We need only tune in, listen, take to heart, and consider what matters most.

Synchronous Soul Seeds . . .

Unexpected life circumstances, synchronous events, hold seeds of growth. Opening our eyes to the possibilities that surround us daily can startle us as events and encounters take us by surprise. They soulfully speak to us. They, in a split second or over time, tell us something we need to know. And, it all happens without planning or expectation.

Once we're aware of this, we can tap into vital experiences. They nourish the soul. Answers to problems can come our way in seconds if we're open and willing to see.

Yesterday I wondered about an upcoming publication. It was a concern that lingered in the back of my mind. Midway through the day, someone mentioned that "times are changing in the publishing world and it's critical to change with it." This person's comment resonated with me and answered my question. She didn't know I was struggling with this issue. 

This morning I was thinking about writing this post on synchronicity and also developing the theme into a chapbook. I turned on my NPR podcast and up came Hidden Brain on meaningful coincidences. It struck me as a meaningful coincidence, suggesting that I proceed with my inspiration. I had been pondering whether or not to move ahead with this chapbook project for a number of days, and I decided to go forward.

"Personality is a seed that can only develop by slow stages throughout life," wrote CG Jung (Analytical Psychology and Education (1926/1946), CW 17, 288.) Soul seeds are planted via life circumstances. They provide inspiration for which direction to take, what to do or not do. It takes time or it can happen in a second. But, what is sure and genuine, is that throughout life the overall weaving of our development has taken place in deliberate stages, furthered by the planting of synchronous soul seeds.

Dreams, Births, and Ghosts . . .

Dream images of having a child, a newborn, are familiar within depth psychotherapy. Also, symbols of haunting spirits, poltergeist, come at a certain point. We either do inner work and birth new developments and potential, or we suffer from haunting in the inner world and outer reality, archetypal energy turned dark and destructive.

When we hold back, don't permit ourselves to experience new things, we thwart our growth potential. It is best to live in the conscious world with full confidence. Then, at night, our dreams help to keep us in balance. 

"Doctor, I dreamed of a ghost haunting me. Then I got up and swore I saw flickers of the same presence out of the corner of my eye. Going into the bathroom, I noticed the rug along the floor was wrong side up. I went back to my bedroom, and the pillows were tossed on the floor."

He looked at me wide-eyed and continued, "Strange thing was I dreamt it all. When I got up, saw the flickers in my bedroom, went to the bathroom and then back to my room, shocked at what I saw, I'd been dreaming the whole time. I was haunted in my dream so I wouldn't be haunted in waking life. It's happened before, and I know it could happen again.

We explored the presence of the ghost in the dream within a dream. He admitted to emotionally "clutching up," holding back out of fear in his professional life. He needed to take a risk, be more expansive. Dreams may have been those of having a newborn to care for, tending to the creative dimension of his psyche. To pull energy inward, without purpose or reason, was dangerous. It became a haunting in his dreams that could have turned into a haunting in his daily life.

Ghostly dreams and synchronous meetings of inner and outer energy happen when we need to pay attention, and when it comes to spiritual haunting in dreams it's best to listen, so they don't become outward problems, mischief making from the unseen world of creative energy gone south. Ghosts are unseen potentials calling for attention, tending, nurturing so that our life might flourish. 

The Mystic Relational Sea...

William James in The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy asserted, "our science is a drop, our ignorance a sea" (1897, p.54). What we do not know, our ignorance, extends into science and everyday life. Relationships, especially, hold witness to what we know and what we do not know. Truth is reflected in the quality of our relating, an imminent and mystic fact.

Through decades of dream tending the symbol of the sea comes to me when I'm most in need. The quality of the sea reflects my everyday relating. Turbulent waters in dreams signal that my relationships are having troubles. Calm waters point to peaceful relating. 

The sea is a mystic image reflecting self and unplumbed depths. Conflicted times and peaceful enjoyment are both parts of being human. We get along with some and not with others. On a particular day at a specific moment dealings with a person may be positive or negative.

At night our dreams open up and comment on what happened with this person or that. "I knew I was right in feeling the way I did. My dreams said the guy was out to lunch. I doubted my feelings so the dreams came and confirmed what I felt down deep." This insightful person's dream led to greater trust in self and consequent relational enlightenment. 

The positive and negative aspects of relating form a mystic whole. We learn from both good times and bad. Dreams light up the relational sea, that imminent mystic dimension, and add a drop more truth to the always evolving soul.

Dreams ~ Revealer of Secrets

If we require an answer to a problem, we need to go no further than our dreams. They speak to us; they spill the beans about what the concern is really about and what we need to consider or do about it. I was at a psychoanalytic conference in which dreams were discussed in highly technical and empirical ways. Raising my hand I offered, "Let's cut to the quick here. Dreams spill the beans. They tell us what's going on in situations, in relationships, and what people are about as opposed to what they seem to be about." They are the revealer of secrets.

C.G. Jung wrote of the dream as the "harbinger of fate, a portent and comforter, a messenger of the gods. Now we see it as the emissary of the unconscious, whose task it is to reveal the secrets that are hidden from the conscious mind, and this it does with astounding completeness" (On the Psychology of the Unconscious 1917/1926 CW 7, 21).

A while back I thought of attending a conference on the soul in clinical practice. I thought it would be a very good time to meet others with whom I've had a virtual relationship for years. That night a dream spoke. It showed me with a tightly-knit group of conference attendees. Everyone was drinking Kool-Aid. I thought in the dream, Oh no, they're drinking Kool-Aid. I stopped just before placing the glass to my lips.

The dream told me that I'd weaken or lose my individual perspective by attending the conference and engaging in professional schmoozing. I listened. I didn't go. A dream revealed what I did not know, saved me time, energy, and recovery. There was no question in my mind what the dream was saying. It said it directly and with "astounding completeness."

One of Many Worlds . . .

Dreams take us to a certain and more intense point of consciousness where higher energies filter in. William James wrote, "The whole drift of my education goes to persuade me that the world of our present consciousness is only one out of many worlds of consciousness that exist, and that whose other worlds must contain experiences that have meaning for life also, and that although in the main their experiences and those of this world keep discrete, yet the two become continuous at certain points and higher energies filter in" (The Varieties of Religious Experience 1902/1929, p.509).

At night, during dreaming, we find that our conscious mind is suspended. This happens so that our defenses are lowered. We then cross a threshold into another dimension. What we learn there, via images and symbols, alters our conscious state of mind.

Patients, when first entering depth psychotherapy, are often shocked that dreams have such profound meaning. "They're telling me how I can live so I can be a better person" commented one sincere soul. Another stated, "It's like I have a hotline to incredible wisdom. I tap into it when I sleep."

Sensitizing ourself to the reality that dreams can speak to us, a hotline to another dimension of profound wisdom, often causes them to become more real and intense. "As I've been writing down my dreams, I seem to be dreaming more. They're speaking to me right away." These words are the hard-won knowledge of one who discovered that our conscious life is only one of many worlds and that dreams offer transport to quite another world of higher energy and wisdom.

Are You Ready For A Therapy Journey?

Colleague and NYU psychoanalytic scholar, Michael Eigen writes in his book Under the Totem, "Are you ready for a therapy journey? . . . We are a repository of age-old trauma, catastrophic happenings and fears. Good feeling competes with bad, a balance that shifts and sometimes places us in jeopardy. One thing therapy can do, depending on luck, circumstance, and skill, is shift the balance for the better. Even a little can go a long way" (p.27).

In between patients, I often pick up a volume in depth psychology and read an excerpt. Today it was this passage that nourished me. It struck me that depth therapy is truly a journey into the unknown. Of course, as a seasoned therapist of over thirty-five years, I know this. But today, its reality became clearer and more vibrant. Life is journey and, for many of us, deep therapy helps along the way.

Dr. Eigen comments on luck, circumstance and skill as vital in shifting the balance in life for the better. I would add, the chemistry between patient and therapist to this mix. There is a mysterious healing force activated between a therapist and patient who are in sink. The patient feels understood, that things are moving along and being worked through. They couldn't have done it alone. The therapeutic relationship is the catalyst for healing and growth.

To be ready for the therapy journey is no small thing. It requires knowing that good is competing with bad. It requires admitting that we are in jeopardy. It requires trusting that the balance can potentially shift for the better, and that even a little can go a long way.