by Dawn Garisch
One way of looking at a symptom, relationship difficulty or dream is that it is an incomplete glimpse of a particular non-rational force field. As illustrated in the previous chapter, if I had assumed that my sore shoulder was only the result of an inflammatory condition, and that the tightening in my throat was merely a way of restraining my tears, I would not have arrived at the underlying cormorant with its helpful and stress-relieving associations.
Psyche (or soul, the unconscious, or the image), communicates with us through what Mindell calls channels. The six main channels are visual, auditory, movement, proprioceptive (sensations like hot, tight, sharp, full), relationship and world. The first three have inner and outer components; for example, I can see something out in the world, or in my mind's eye.
The cormorant made itself known to me through sensations in both my shoulder and my throat (proprioception). Paying attention to this, the image fleshed itself out into a bird I could see clearly, with an injured wing and a banded throat. Her dark feathers glistened in the sunlight, and she looked about with quick little flicks of her head, blinking her eyes. Water flowed nearby, and she shifted on her perch. The trapped bird in me came alive, and I could feel her more deeply, and feel more deeply for her. Through my friend who gave me the Cormorant Man video, where the relationship between bird and man was symbiotic, my associations with entrapment were turned on their head. My fear and sadness were transformed into awe.
Interestingly, the friend who gave me the video has similar entrapment issues. Her mother was incarcerated for years in a concentration camp, and the daughter carries this motif in her flesh. My friendship was another channel through which additional cormorant information was ‘downloaded’ when the video arrived on cue – what Mindell would describe as the world channel.
Consulting the oracle yields multiple and partial information that arrives in fragments through our different senses, and requires the broad searchlight attention to notice and to value. My relationship with Psyche is like that of the cormorant with the cormorant man, a symbiotic conversation and nourishment. I serve the muse, who feeds me in turn.
When we experience a bodily symptom, or see something or hear a sound that excites or disturbs us, when we make habitual movements, or are embroiled in a relationship difficulty or a problem relating to society, Mindell suggests this is a sensate glimpse of the information that lies behind these clues. A bigger picture can be revealed through employing imagination in all the senses, uncovering the whole image that lies behind a tic, backache or a mugging, to give examples. When we increase the signal by amplifying or inhibiting the disturbance in one sensory channel, the pressure or tension increases until it crosses a threshold. Related material then starts appearing in the other senses. Exploring the same drive through other channels fleshes out the information still further until we stand in the presence of the three-dimensional image of the disturbance. Paying attention to what the image wants, and patiently awaiting answers in its own time and on its own terms, the image starts to shift towards a non-rational resolution.
A gesture can be amplified into dance, and dance into a physical sensation or vision which can be expanded further through painting the dancer or the dance. Sound might arrive as music, or as words or noises vocalised. Writing from the dancer's perspective enlarges the experience, and ushers in more information. Working in this way, we ourselves become more fully human, using creative capacities we have neglected for years.
When we have an initial intimation of an image, there is no way of knowing in advance where the work will lead, as images do not speak through the intellect. Our minds have dominated the way we process our lives for centuries, and for that we have paid a huge price. Intellect is a very valuable instrument, but it is only one out of the entire collection of faculties available to human beings. Initially, while approaching the image, we will ask our analytic minds to be still.
I have likened interpreting the symbol to closing the door prematurely. Another reason not to assign meaning too quickly is that the unconscious can be like a small wild animal that pokes its nose shyly out of its burrow. Approaching a dream or embodied image boldly and arrogantly with the razor of the dissecting mind can cause information from the psyche to hide. The whole animal might be encouraged to reveal itself if we wait quietly and patiently. We need to cultivate humility to be able to sit with the image, not knowing what it means or wants.
We can come to understand ourselves and our motivations better by making the images that underlie everything we do visible, or conscious. We can learn to interact with the richness of symbolic life by stopping to ask: What does the image want?
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Body as temple, wild animal, soft purse, vessel, stardust, sacrifice, altar, slave, ruin, caryatid, portal, doormat, instrument, drum, survivor, touchstone, lodestone, lighthouse, millstone, poem, cavern, hieroglyph, tomb, effigy, rebel, traitor, conduit, scribe, home.
***
A man led me into a huge cave dimly lit by ambient light. As the darkness settled into shapes, I became aware that it was filled with monkeys. Ahead, seated on a raised ledge, was their leader – a matriarch. She had the clearest eyes I had ever seen, and they were looking directly at me. In my hand, picked up from the ground, were small black oval pellets, and I found that they were olives. I put some into my mouth. They were the most delicious, salty olives I had ever tasted. The floor of the cave was covered with them. As I was savouring one, a bat flitted past. With horror I realised that what I had in my mouth was bat shit.
Or was it?
I did not know, and stood, confused. Were they fabulous olives, or disgusting pellets of bat shit? The queenly monkey, still staring straight at me, was able to differentiate, every time. I woke, understanding my task: to develop the capacity to know the difference between partaking of sacred fruit and eating shit.
The dream images spoke directly to my situation in my midlife crisis. They shook me awake, and assist me to this day.
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32. In Service
[God] is the name by which I designate all things that cross my wilful path violently and recklessly all things that upset my subjective views, plans and Intentions and change the course of my life for better or for worse.
Jung141
We are all in service to someone or something, whether we know it or not. It is worth recognising and acknowledging the nature of one's service. We can create all kinds of difficulties for ourselves and the planet if we do not.
The ego likes to be in control. Of course, control is a good thing in many ways: it allows us to apply appropriate restraint, like not assaulting someone who makes us angry, and not wetting our undies. But our egos can be little dictators, not allowing new information in, and manipulating or bullying others to be in service to our own beliefs and desires.
We are all members of social and political systems that are in service to something. Government ministers ideally serve the people, but they could equally be in service to power, money and their own clique of friends and family. Religious institutions, constituted to serve deities, their congregations and the tenets of religious tracts, can be corrupted to serve the ruling dogma. The hatred, discrimination and vilification that the church has shown historically towards women, homosexuals and those of other races and faiths are examples where the church failed in its service to the spiritual tenets of love.
If society buys into the belief that we are born into a position in society that God has ordained, it makes the ruling elite more secure and revolt less likely. Women who accept everything their husbands decide, or a man who cannot stand up to his abusive boss, are examples of serving patriarchy.
Alcoholics and other substance abusers are in service to their addiction; those people close to them who ‘help’ them by endlessly forgiving them and lending them money are also in service to the problem.
Compulsive shopping is being in service to our own greed and the worst manipulations of commerce and capitalism, as is corporate refusal
to take responsibility for cleaning up pollution and for the abuse of employees. At work, we might be applying ourselves to earning money only, no matter the consequences, or to getting away with as little effort as possible.
Scientists can be in service to ego, capitalism or their own glory. They can enter a curiously amoral, or even immoral territory, where compassion, conscience and restraint can vanish in the quest to be the first to discover something new. The breeding, confinement and torture of animals for experimental purposes, genetic modification, and the use of human embryos for scientific research, throw up the question whether there are occasions where we should restrain from certain actions even though we have the means to initiate them.
What is our guiding light in these matters? The search for scientific truth might sometimes savage another more important truth about how to conduct our lives.
In the poem ‘Discovery’,142 Wislawa Szymborska, examines the dilemma. She depicts a man who makes a great discovery, but who secretly destroys his years of work instead of achieving fame and fortune, because he realises that the consequences for the world will be too terrible.
The Dalai Lama has said that we should try to make the world a better place. Many people have dedicated their life's work to discovering or inventing things that some say improve our lives, and others say make things worse. It can be difficult to predict how things are going to turn out so as to avoid serious error, or unintended consequences.
A failure of humankind is to set ourselves above nature, similar to the way the mind is set above the body. We regard the earth as an endless resource we are entitled to. If, instead, we were in service to the earth, our actions would have to change.
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Jung suggested that the first half of life is an opportunity to explore what we are good at, and to strengthen our egos in the world. He proposed that events in the second half of life call us to turn inward, in order to review who we are and to assess what tasks we have ignored while we established ourselves in work and relationships.143
This is not a neat division, and some are called earlier to reconsider their path. His view implies that, at some point, we will all have to reconsider our lives using tools that bear no relation to how we ordinarily measure our progress in the world – via fame, fortune and status. What does life, or Psyche, want of us? Being in service to something other than fame, status and fortune requires acquiescence, willingness and submission. It is likely to lead us through failure and suffering as much as through pleasure and satisfaction.
Being in service to the notion of the muse, or God, or the good of humankind, or of nature, does not in itself mean that we will make the world a better place, as we know from history. The Crusades, the Inquisition, the War on Terror, Nazism, Total Onslaught and Jihad, to name a few, have all been initiatives supposedly in service to the good and/or God.
Yet, What am I in service to? is an important question. It is a question worth living.
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A writer friend was lamenting his inability to get down to writing commissioned pieces. He noted the irony that this block had occurred only once his writing was recognised and valued. Yet he knew he was born to write. I suggested that a way through the obstructions that unseated his best intentions, was to hold fast to the idea that he was in service to that which needed his participation to get ideas and information onto the page. Being in service would prioritise how he spent his time, effort and money, and allow other hindrances to fall away.
Being in service to something other than one's own ego-desires is a great stress reliever. If I plan a course of action that is important to me, and it doesn't work out, I still feel disappointed. But my distress and frustration is ameliorated by submitting to the thought that perhaps I was rowing up the wrong creek. This opens me to the possibility that something else essential to my course in life may happen, but which I might have been too blinkered by desire and cultural constructs to notice.
If I am in service to something-that-knows-better-than-I-do, this deference must reset the way I approach my life. It effectively deals with the negative critic who continually infers that what I do and how I do it is never good enough, it helps me to pay attention to minimal cues showing me how to proceed, and it requires me to reconsider my priorities.
Being in service requires sacrifice of something held dear by the ego. Stopping habitual activities and making space to render myself available to service initially increases my anxiety – until I find myself in the zone of the download. Then the artist becomes an instrument of the artwork. Success and failure become less important than focusing on the form, content, feeling, tempo and music of the piece arriving onto the page through the conduit of my body.
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33. The World in a Grain of Sand
I am not the composer of the song of life, I am but its singer;
Puleng Nkomo144
There are tools common to the disciplines of science, art and living creatively: curiosity, observation, a beginner's mind, being prepared to take risks and to be wrong, and imagination.
When Rilke suggested to a young poet that he ‘live the questions’, he was encouraging an attitude of open-mindedness. He was suggesting that we should not fix our attitudes too quickly, and that, even when we do have strong opinions, we keep a door open for contradiction to enter. He was saying that there are questions that cannot yield simple answers, as they involve complexity and mystery.
Whether we know it or not, many of us have mistaken the questions for answers. We live the hypotheses unquestioningly as though they reflect reality, for example: loyalty is always a good thing, men are violent, children must always be protected, I can't draw, or Chinese people don't care about the environment.
Beliefs, or attitudes, are often extrapolated from a lone experience, or are views adopted from our parents or society. Beliefs are like touchstones. They tell us who we are, what we think and where we belong. They give us identity, inform our decisions and help us feel better because we think we are right. But denial and self-deceit are rife, as is political, economic, religious and relationship manipulation by those who stand to gain if we buy into a particular view of the world. The so-called facts are sometimes right and sometimes wrong, and it is essential to differentiate. If we rephrase attitudes as questions, we can open ourselves to finding out whether they contain any truth.
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The film maker David Cronenberg commented that we are all mad scientists, experimenting in the lab of life with ways to resolve problems, and to ward off chaos.145 Yet I am not going to set up a randomised, double-blind controlled trial every time I want to observe whether something is true or not. A simpler method is a reality check, taking stock of both my internal environment and the external situation.
Checking in means pausing to find out how I feel, or how I am managing on the inner front. This is not easy when a complex of emotions is present. But not checking in means that I might go with my usual way of doing things – which might not represent adequately who I am, nor be the best solution to that situation.
A stressed patient of mine who worked as a secretary for a man who was getting divorced was in a hurry to get through her appointment with me as she was worried about being late to pick his children up from school. When I expressed surprise that this was part of her job description, she said she felt sorry for both her boss and for the children. She also realised that her employer was manipulating her capacity for compassion, and had managed to transfer his issues around childcare to her. Checking in, she identified that she habitually tried to save people at her own expense, and was able to access her anger at what was essentially abuse of her position. She resolved to refuse to do personal tasks for him in the future.
When a man complained about suffering from chronic insomnia, I asked him whether there was something that he needed to accomplish in life before he could rest properly. He stopped and thought about it, and then confessed that he needed to finish his doctoral thesis, but had been putti
ng it off. When last I heard, he had completed his thesis and was sleeping well.
I encourage patients who need to lose weight to check in with their bodies to see whether they are hungry before they put food into their mouths. There might be another kind of desire that needs attention. Identifying what that is can be difficult if one has developed bad habits around eating. It is also worth checking in as to whether the food available is even desirable. If you slow down and use your taste buds instead of wolfing the food down, you might discover that the processed food so tantalisingly displayed on television actually tastes like cardboard, or is too sweet.
Checking in is not just about the moment. It is about reeducating our feedback mechanisms. They are innate, but we override them repeatedly. Feedback is the way life prevents one-sidedness and excess. Overstep the mark to the left, and a little helper kicks in to steer us gently to the right. It keeps us on track.
Physiologically, this mechanism is called homeostasis. Chemically, the body cannot survive unless it is kept within narrow margins of temperature, acidity, levels of glucose, biliruben, urea and other by-products of metabolism. From an immunological point of view, symbiotic organisms need to be kept in balance for optimum health and wellbeing. Behaviourally there is a complex interplay of endocrine and neurological guides that ensure that we get off our butts to find food and shelter and mates in order to produce offspring, and also to avoid dangers in the environment.
When we are hungry, a peptide informs us of this, and we eat. When we have had sufficient, another peptide switches off the hunger triggers, and ideally we stop eating. Humans override these natural correctives by eating when we are not hungry: out of boredom, self-hatred, anxiety, obedience, reward, misery, habit, routine, a ‘sweet tooth’ and politeness.