November 2020: Darkness and Light

surviving covidThe fall leaves portray the darkness and light of these treacherous times. We are surviving Covid – barely — as fall and winter surges are upon us now.

We are struggling with profound feelings of isolation, as we are reticent to see family and friends beyond one’s bubble as the “holidays” approach. It is challenging to have a holiday feeling under the current conditions. There are mixed feelings: anxiety, depression, then spurts of activation and projects to accomplish —such an up and down ride. Realize that it is a rocky ride for all and depression can set in when you least expect it.

That said our fall image portrays the beautiful depth of purple and red of transformation. We can find both our strengths and our weaknesses, down feelings punctuated by creativity.

We are taking on the times — even the ominous foreboding that lurks as we move forward day-by-day.

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Profiling Mass Shooters

mass shooter profileWe watched – again – nauseated, stunned, horrified – hearing the grief-stricken wail of dying innocence — a six-year-old, a husband, a mother gunned down — for what? Communities — again – face the loss of precious life randomly killed, en masse, so that one sick shooter could play out his deluded fantasy and make it big — a final violent hateful suicidal splash that he knew would flicker across the news like an impotent light before it was extinguished, bleeding into darkness.

We speak our outrage and despair: “DO SOMETHING!”

(I will not discuss our negligent, reprehensible senators blocking responsible gun legislation in this blog).

I have culled snippets from the NY Times and other sources on the days the mass killings took place, to focus attention on the profile of the shooters. You will see similarities amongst all of them. These individuals have serious mental health issues that do make them dangerous. To be clear, most individuals with “serious mental illness” are not dangerous; many are medicated appropriately and others are simply not inclined to violent acting out.

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Summertime

Are all of you giving-in to the lazy, restful dog days of summer? Well if the kids are home — maybe not (but at least you are not managing homework).

We may be working then vacationing or enjoying a staycation as we sense and feel the warmth in the air that heats us inside. I am taking a break from blogging this month allowing me more spaciousness in the month of August. So read good fiction, curl up and nap and create digital room away from your devices. I hope you choose to walk in nature, hike, bike, go to the beach and most of all allow rest and a sense of well-being that summertime affords us with all its pleasurable opportunities.

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Archetype of the Apocalypse: A Deficit of Consciousness

deficit of consciousnessWe are living through a critical time; a deficit of consciousness and juncture that leads us ever closer to the edge of environmental catastrophe. We hear daily of new catastrophes taking place all over the world, and in state after state, or close-in within our own neighborhoods. We are drowning in flood water, leveled by fires, and our food and water supplies are already endangered in many parts of the world. Today I heard a PBS report on the California central valley that has been dramatically sinking due to a century of exploitive water extraction since the gold rush.

We may feel our inner alarm signals going off repeatedly as eccentric, unpredictable weather patterns become normal. Our planet is under siege. We know coral reefs, animals, forests, parklands — all living entities are threatened.

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Finding Your Soul’s Code

transformational themesLeading 5-day workshops over 9 years at Esalen® Institute in Big Sur was always an experience to remember. I often utilized transformational themes that led participants into uncharted waters of reflection and life change. The retreats were incredible experiences and many of you who read my blog were there with me! Granted, the beauty of Esalen made a major contribution to the dynamic experience. Today’s post shares a theme from one of my workshops.

One of my favorite resources is Jungian analyst, Dr. James Hillman. His book The Soul’s Code is provocative in that he feels we all have and must discover our calling, what he calls “that essential mystery at the heart of each human life.” (pg 6) Hillman suggests that many psychological treatment perspectives perpetuate a stasis in clients’ lives, that is, if therapy repetitively spins and reinforces – like a broken record – the problematic narrative of one’s history. I agree that an over-emphasis on our historic travails may create a ‘victimized’ narrative that may diminish a sense of personal efficacy and responsibility in creating a meaningful present life. Identifying with a limiting narrative stifles one’s innate potential. An over-emphasis on our childhood experiences without a balanced focus on an adult transformational perspective results in a constricted and regressed perspective. Finding personal meaning and unlocking the code of one’s destiny elevates and refines our life, enabling its full potential to unfold. Of course, it is essential that we understand cognitively and emotionally how we became who we are now and do the work to unravel our non-adaptive defenses – and that is substantial work. That very broken character style and patterning clouds discovery of who we are and how we want to live. As we drop our defensive character style, we must propel ourselves forward with newly discovered self-knowledge – to find and live our calling.

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Cultivating Clear Eyes

Eyes in orgonomyOrgonomy is a mind-body approach to health. Allopathic medicine (in some quarters) is shifting toward embracing this paradigm, as physicians understand that diseases emanate from a complex interactional mind-body field rather than being limited to a silo of discreet symptoms.

In Orgonomy, we outline a map of the body as it correlates to character structure, and each area – eyes, mouth, cervical, chest, diaphragm, belly and pelvis – has its own functional capacity to open or close its gates to the movement of energy (including sensation, perception, capacity for movement and release) throughout the body.

We designate this map as the seven segments of armoring and describe how each segment acts to either fulfill or limit our capacity to experience aliveness and pleasure; depending on how armored (tense, unyielding, slack) each segment is (see blog Reich’s Understanding of Character and Body Expression, August 30, 2017).

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Your Authentic Self

your authentic selfA major goal of therapy is to help our clients build, often from the ground floor up – to find your authentic Self. Many of us suffered adversities that impinged on the developing Self as it traversed the earliest developmental years. There are significant stages of development that culminate in young adulthood where our sense of self becomes stabilized as it manifests in our inner life and in activations (actions) in the ‘real world’.

The Self is formed in years 0 to 5 and becomes consolidated in the teen years and in an additional launch phase after high school — further solidifying in college and/or early career years. Fantasy, for example, plays a role in our toddler years (if allowed) as we learn to create imaginary tales that later become the basis of our creativity and translate into unique life endeavors.

If life conditions are sufficiently healthy to foster and support growth in personal awareness and self-examination, we develop qualities needed to persist: frustration tolerance, ability to stick to our endeavors, resilience, discipline, and emotional intelligence that allow the maturation of the authentic Self.

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The Value of Work

There are times in our life when well-established work structures fall apart and we are set adrift. Work, in all its shapes and sizes, creates definition – an outline that contains the wild and woolly elements that comprise a human life. When we lose our employment or our artistic purpose, or the on-going project of running a family — we feel shapeless and our life feels in disarray. Why is work so important?

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Envy’s Message

My muse, the NY Times, piqued my interest with an article: The Upside of Envy, written by Gordon Marino (May 6, 2018), a professor of philosophy at St. Olaf College. Dr. Marino highlights how our envious feelings may provoke an internal response of judgmental criticalness towards those we envy. He describes his negative attitude toward “fanatic” elder exercisers– who are dedicated to their sport and amazingly fit for their age – and disparages them as “clear cases of modern-day self-care gone wild”.  His honest look at his own reactions (which he encourages) illuminates this mechanism: underneath his grousing he confesses to envious feelings toward these “supercyclists”, because he can no longer strive for athletic prowess which he always enjoyed immensely, due to his accumulated injuries.

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Take-on Your Life

Esalen InstituteDuring my years leading workshops at Esalen Institute (2000-2009), I was inspired and motivated by the transformational spirit that imbued the center, — majestically seated on the edge of the cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. The Esalen legacy has been dedicated to provoking metamorphoses in all who participated since its inception. That spirit often burns up and reconstructs its dedicated participants. They come from parts hither and yon to partake of the profound opportunity for dissolution and rebirth. Esalen’ s natural beauty, and its thriving vegetable gardens and rugged isolation, create excellent conditions for alchemical transformation. In examining my lectures given at 5-day trainings I decided to share a bit of Esalen inspiration with you.

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