Leading 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.
We 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.
