Symbolic Life and ritual

Have we (I) lost sight of our spiritual life.?  Do we have rituals that bring us closer to the divine?  I used to have several altars around my home to remind me of the sacred and also a place to be called to worship.  I have only one now although my sacred objects are spread all around our home.  To remind me of a life greater than my own; a culture which honors nature more than I do, and I want to get to the place where my life is a ceremony:  not just a time and place, but each moment in my life.  I guess this would be the symbolic life.  It would be bringing to each step a sense of the greater meaning and value involved in each individual life.  Over the weekend, the father of my children had meaningful conversations with each of them.  It was good.  In some ways it healed the wounds left by his abandonment of them.  As we age, many things that seemed so important before begin to pale in significance as we reach a certain age where our mortality is felt.  Forgiveness happens without any intent.  Each of my children called him and had conversations which had not happened before.  Amazing!

Symbolic Life

In volume 18 of Jung's Collected Works, he clarifies what is meant by living a symbolic life.  I am very moved by what he says.  On page 273, "symbolic has to do with participation in the ritual of life."  page 274, he writes:  "only the symbolic life can express the need of the soul--the daily need of the soul mind you.!"  page 275, he says:  "Life the life that makes sense.   A career, producing of children, are all maya compared with that one thing, that your life is meaningful."  Page 276:  "Your soul has become lonely; it is ...in a state of no-salvation."  page 279: A symbolic life:  fulfill the secret will in yourself:  the unconscious produces the symbols that bring them back into the original symbolic life.

All of these quotes begin to energize my deep feelings of value and trust.  I feel very comforted by these quotes.  When Scott was dying, I believe I was deeply involved in the ritual of his life as it intersected with mine.  This is the symbolic life.  We were both living in a different reality from the ordinary life of others.  Although we did laundry, cooked, watched TV, we were both in tune with one another.  A true blessing under the worst conditions I have ever endured.  It also healed me, my parents, our relationship even in the midst of such horror.

Living a symbolic life

Not much happening in my dream life right now.  It puzzles me how dreams come and go.  I have no idea what determines how much we remember or what we dream about.  I know Jung says that dreams are compensations for daily life.  Perhaps I don't need any compensation right now.  My life is moving along in a way I never thought possible.  There has come an ease and kindness that I have been searching for forever, and here it is.  I don't even know how to account for it:  I just know that it is here.  I welcome these days where the world I live in is friendly, compassionate, sensitive, and welcoming.  Of course there are challenges:  I wouldn't want it any other way.  However the challenges are not overwhelming me or destroying me.  All of these current experiences suggest and validate for me that there is a self-regulating system at work in me that may be conscious at times and unconscious at other times.  Perhaps this is the result of living a symbolic life.

What change does to identity

I realized yesterday that it has taken me six years to move from my professional identity to my human identity.  I also see that being a professional brought me status in my family and in the world.  I remember that after I received my Ph.D. people listened.  I really hadn't changed what I was saying or lecturing about, but students listened and took me much more seriously.  I was amazed that a couple of letters behind my name gave me so much more status and respect.  Inside I was the same person before and after achieving my Ph.D.  When I moved to CT, I had vowed to sat aside my life as a professional and being a more human journey.  I was not prepared for the feelings of valuelessness and worthlessness that flooded my system.  I really had no preparation for what to do with myself if I weren't responsible to someone else.  

During that six years, I had to take time out to heal from breast cancer which took about two years of full time healing work and then some recovery which feels like it is completed now.  I have much more respect for change and the challenges those changes bring.  I expected to feel free, and in truth, I felt jailed by my former life.  I guess six years isn't so bad after all.

Patience and frustration:twins of change

The long time I have been wandering around the tree in my moccasins has finally paid off.  My libido has returned and I am filled with new energy to take my next step.  Patience and enduring long periods of frustration have ended up in being able to "come together" in a new way.  Maybe a further discernment of a new orientation to life.  Interestingly enough as this new way has opened up, my dreams have been many and when I awake, I have no memory of what they are.  This may be a compensation for how full my daily life is now so that all of my fullness doesn't come from my dreams.  I welcome the change.

A new world view

In order to be cured, one must undertake an completely new orientation to life.  So says Gerald Adler in his book, Studies in Analytical Psychology.  I completely agree.  After my cancer diagnosis, I was challenged to rethink and redo my life.  I went from an extroverted psychology professor to an introverted recovering cancer patient.  I could not have done this without the help from my dreams.  Many people have written about how their priorities changed following a brush with death.  For me, it has been a long, slow process of surrendering to a power greater than my ego who has been guiding me and supporting me through dark places that I never knew existed.  Some therapists propose that darkness comes from abuse rather than darkness is part of the human condition:  a confrontation that needs to happen in  order to grow.  I had totally accepted that any darkness must be from mistakes my parents had made rather than that darkness is the polarity to light, and must be taken seriously in all of us.  No ethical choices can be made as long as we attribute darkness to what our parents did or didn't do to us.  We grow by understanding the meaning behind any darkness that we encounter.  We do not grow from confronting the light:  rather we are challenged by confronting the dark.  Ekk