Visioning the New Year Part I: Mandala Misgivings

This year marks my 20th year of work in Jungian psychology, first as an analysand, and then as an avid member of the Analytical Psychology Club of New York and Jung Foundation of New York, through which I attended countless lectures, seminars, retreats, and workshops -- as well as read tome upon tome of Jungian work.

Many workshops involved creative processes including writing through active imagination, sculpture, movement, and most often drawing, painting, and other graphical art.

And yet I have never created a Mandala -- a contained work of art representing one's inner world. 

Jung himself refers to creating his own Mandalas, as well as to his analysands creating theirs -- my own analyst has suggested I give it a try -- and I've never doubted that doing so would be good for me. Yet whenever a Mandala creation workshop would come around, I'd somehow manage to have a scheduling conflict.

Truth is:  I think I've been afraid to. 

I've been afraid of the blank canvas as much as I've been afraid of the blank page. What if I chose the wrong symbols? What if I chose based on ego rather than intuition? 

What if I made a Mandala that showed me not who I really was, but who I wish I were, or was afraid I might be? Or what if it were a nonsensical jumble of images?

Well... even that could have been helpful.

As I've become more at home in my own creativity these past few years, I have become less afraid of things coming out wrong, and been more at ease with letting them simply come out ... and then going from there. 

A Mandala helps to restore order in the psyche, as well as free up energy for creativity.  

As Jung notes:

The mandala serves a conservative purpose—namely, to restore a previously existing order. But it also serves the creative purpose of giving expression and form to something that does not yet exist, something new and unique.

In my case, though, I was afraid it would be like opening an overstuffed closet -- and getting clobbered by an avalanche of psychological detritus. 

Could I bear to sift through it the misshapen, crumpled, boxed, bagged, and even broken parts of myself -- and recognize them as my own? 

And the answer is:  I don't know. 

I haven't done it yet.

But I did take my first tentative steps as the New Year began....

Continued in Part II: The Jason Journal.

The Best of Times

I am exhausted.

From Thursday through Sunday -- 9am to 7pm -- I went to a stage combat intensive and did more falling, rolling, punching, kicking (fake and not fake), sword- and knife-fighting, than I have ... probably ever.

And then Sunday night, I had my solo show -- which isn't quite a solo show anymore; three dancers now join me in certain parts, but within the mammoth two-hour performance time I am alone onstage talking, dancing, and even singing -- in Arabic!

So it's a tad tiring.

And on Monday, it was back to my full-time day job.

It usually takes a full day to recover from doing the show -- but that's without the four days of crazy workshops beforehand.

So, yeah, every part of my body hurts.

I am indeed completely and wholly exhausted -- deliciously exhausted -- and have never been happier in my life.

This Shaw quote from Man and Superman is pinned to my cubicle wall, and it has become my credo:

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

In other words:  The very source of my exhaustion is also recharging my battery!

Joseph Campbell said: "I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

And my experience of working on this show -- of pursuing all of the different crazed combinations of performance arts from stand-up to Shakespeare to bellydance to Bollywood to mime to stage combat and beyond that have congealed to form this work, and are even now conspiring in the back of my mind to create new and wonderful projects -- has borne that out in more ways than I can count.

The path towards it was never clear; in fact, I had been flat-out told to give up on performing altogether by teachers and colleagues alike during the course of my circuitous path through the theatrical world. (When one teacher "compassionately" told me many years ago that I should "consider other aspects of the business" a fellow student said, "Well aren't you glad to learn that now...?")

I was in misery for a lot of years knowing that there was something inside me screaming to be put onstage, but what and how and where ... ?? I had no idea, and no one to guide me, and was mostly discouraged along the way by those in "the business." (Thankfully I did have the enduring support of wonderful friends and family, but when one is discouraged, it is difficult to feel love and support.... )

That was The Worst of Times.

During those times I suffered from exhaustion too -- but that was the exhaustion of depression, of spinning wheels going nowhere, of confusion, doubt, and despair.

But I kept Campbell's words at the back of my mind and fine-tuned my bliss-sensors.

As I attended classes in improv and sketch writing, lectures on Jung and archetypal analysis -- and even went back on the stand-up stage -- I kept close watch on my Level of Joy. Where did I feel "tuned in, tapped in, and turned on"?

I kept asking:  Where do I find myself seeking the approval of others? And where is the endeavor its own reward?

Bellydance class was an earshattering clarion.

Even though all rational sense told me I had no hope of dancing professionally -- EVER -- the level of joy I felt in those early classes surpassed everything. I felt compelled to practice every day, increasingly feeling more and more to be my True Self.

I practiced to exhaustion, and often to frustration, as I struggled with each new movement.

From the outside, it was a hopeless, unrewarding endeavor. But from the inside, something deep and powerful was being explored and expanded and expressed.

I could say it was like an addiction, but an addiction implies an easy, ephemeral high with a destructive aftermath; this bliss was solid work, and the work itself was pure joy and passion.

It's here that I begin to lose the words to describe what happened next... perhaps I'll find them in a later blog entry ... but the best I can say is that, having honed my sense of what James Hollis calls the "tuning fork of the soul" with this dance, I was able to return to theater with an ability to speak in a voice that was wholly mine.

And so came the show -- almost of its own accord -- fashioning itself from my life experience; and all I had to do was let it emerge. At least that was the first step. :-)

Then, of course, came the rough and painful work of building a compelling and cohesive narrative -- but even that was a joy, as people and opportunities appeared at exactly the right moment to give me the help I needed.

Take, for example, my dear director, Jeff, to whom I'd whine and moan for half of our allotted rehearsal hours about how much I hated a particular part of the script -- or sometimes I'd complain about some ridiculous and unrelated personal problem. But he, being a gifted writer who was all too familiar with the Creative Process, knew that even my wildest diversion would lead to the A-Ha! moments of finding the right words or movements or intentions.

Everything began to fit together, becoming clear -- like pulling back from a pointillist painting and finally seeing the image you had sensed existed all along.

And so The Worst of Times became The Best of Times ... and now I am realizing the one could not have come without the other.

Had it not been for what seemed to be rootless, frustrated searching -- for what seemed to others to be procrastination and wasted efforts -- had it not been for the very ability to endure confusion and despair that developed during that time, I would not have culled the very resources that are making this show and the intense efforts behind it not only possible, but absolutely, unambiguously, wholeheartedly, exhaustedly and exhaustively joyful!

How could I possibly ask for more?

Projection Reflection

In yet another discussion about my recent "Projection" entries -- my Adventures in Projection and Projection Flashback -- a friend suggested that Alice (of the latter entry) was jumping to conclusions rather than projecting.

Which made me ponder: What is the difference between jumping to conclusions and psychological projection?

They are both related, as both create a full, defined image of a person or situation based on very little actual data. And in Alice's case, I would say she certainly engaged in "Mind Reading" (per the Wikipedia entry) as she decided she knew my intentions, when of course she didn't and couldn't have.

So, yes, her conclusions were jumpily unwarranted.

But the intensity of her anger towards me and the ridiculous scope of her accusation indicated something more at work than merely a conclusion, which is more a mental process: You take a small amount of data and fill in the rest with data from your bank of personal belief and experience.

Now, yes, emotion may play a role here, but it's secondary to thought. And if given convincing contrary data, that thought process can be adjusted to a more accurate conclusion. (One hopes).

But I've found that two key elements of psychological projection are (1) strong emotion; and (2) a vigorous refusal to see anything other than the projection. Indeed, any contrary data is either ignored altogether, or mindbendingly woven into the projection. (In other words, if you are someone's screen o'projection, you will be damned if you do and damned if you don't -- everything will be used against you in their court of craziness to shore up their image of you).

According to Jung, the refusal to let the projection fall is tied to the projector's need to deny in him/herself the very qualities he/she is projecting.

So denial of one's own qualities is the third key element to projection.

The projector NEEDS to project the qualities away from him/herself, to create a scapegoat to be sent off into the desert. This has a dual purpose: (1) it deflects attention of the projector's unwanted qualities onto another (as though others aren't smart enough to realize "whoever smelt it dealt it"), and (2) it creates the illusion that the projector can rid him/herself of those qualities simply by destroying the object of projection -- which is exactly what Alice did. Great for everything from teen cliques to genocide. Yay humanity.

In Alice's case, it turned out that she, in fact, was very destructive to the relationships of the people around her. Most likely, her sister's fight with her financé was caused by something she herself had said or done. But of course, she was not able to consider that possibility, especially when it was so much fun to verbally beat the crap out of a naïve teenager.

Of course, I can look back now and say, "Oh yes... of course I was completely innocent. How could I have thought otherwise?"

Easily.

Because when one is the object of projection -- especially in the midst of it, without the perspective of years and self-knowledge -- it is very difficult to tease out the real self from the projected image precisely because the projection often contains a hint of truth about the object.

As another friend noted, when he read the story about Alice:

"The same thing has happened to me more than once. Nothing I really care to share with the public but... yeah. I can relate!"

In the case of Alice, and from the vantage point of many years' growth and introspection, it is very clear that I was innocent. Although I didn't feel that way at the time... for weeks I believed I was exactly what she told me I was. Or worse, I didn't know what I was...

Usually in these situations, there is always the specter of: "Are they RIGHT?" Because a lot of the time the other person will be a tiny fraction right ... but they make it their entire vision of us.

As Jung observed: "Something that strikes [the projector] about [an] object [of projection] may very well be a real property of that object. …it frequently happens that the object offers a hook to the projection, and even lures it out. This is generally the case when the object himself (or herself) is not conscious of the quality in question."

And this is a curious thing...

If Jung is to be believed, Alice had in fact seen a part of me of which I was unaware, and which was calling both my and her attention to bring it into consciousness.

So what was this part of me? I believe it was related to sexuality -- or at least what sexuality represented to me at that time, in terms of being "grown up."

Although I was a "precocious" teen (as the Older Men who hit on me liked to say), I was extremely young psychologically and emotionally. Ironically, I had spent the bulk of my childhood intently focused on Being Mature -- to join the utopic World of Adults as soon as possible -- so in many ways I prevented myself from growing up.

I was very unpopular with boys my age (well, with just about everyone my age), but as I got tall and womanly, I seemed at least 10 years older than I was. And there is no shortage of Older Male fish looking for a taste of jailbait...

I think part of me must have sensed the negative aspects of sexuality -- that it is used destructively, to control, manipulate, even injure -- but I did not want to deal with that part at all.

I wanted the good part:  affection and attention. Because affection feels so good, and attention looks an awful lot like love, because when we love a thing, we give it our full, adoring, undivided attention. Unfortunately, the reverse is rarely the case....

And this is the truth that was burrowing its way into my awareness, and which I was desperately suppressing: Sexuality is attractive, and it seems to bring love and connection, but it can also very often do the opposite, injuring and exploiting both parties.

So perhaps many women are completely unaware of these negative aspects, and so they don't form a compelling shadow that attracts the kind of projection that I was receiving; or they have no problem embracing the negative side and gleefully cock-tease their way towards ego fulfillment.

And maybe it works for them... I have seen many romantically successful women get away with all kinds of crap that would make me want to crawl into a sewer. And their men put up with it... dare I say, even want it. (Hence books like Why Men Marry Bitches).

Hell, my own grandmother's "feminist" advice was to marry a rich man, then divorce him and take all his money.

Ugh.

But that's not what I'm about.

And even at that age, as I was becoming aware of these negative aspects, I was also at deeper levels realizing that I did NOT want to be a part of that dynamic. Yes, I wanted attention and affection, but I wanted it to be real, to be personal -- not the result of a biological response, and not to be exploited for material gain.

And I suppose it took Alice's telephonic witch-burning to cast the first light on what I truly did want.

Sleepless -- But Not Dreamless -- in Glasco

This weekend I went upstate to a convent in a tiny town called Glasco, about two hours north of NYC, to do some dream work.

I've been going up here for over ten years, about once or twice a year, on Dream Analysis Retreats. We -- usually a group of four to seven women of a wide range of ages and life experience -- relate and discuss our dreams in Jungian terms.

Dream work is an extremely important part of Jungian analysis, and is one of the surest indicators of healing and growth. After all, your dreams don't lie, so if you believe you have processed some recurring problem or complex, yet the dream symbolizing it continues, then you know pretty well that your psyche is screaming at you that you are not as far along as you'd like to believe.

Likewise, you know you are healing if the dream transforms....

For example, for many years I had a recurring dream about being chased by the Evil Man. I'd lock myself in a room, yet the door wouldn't close, or the lock would be broken, or the door would mysteriously shrink and he would burst right through to attack me.

So what does this symbolize?

For much of my life my thinking (masculine) and feeling (feminine) selves have been at war, and usually the masculine has won out -- as I have talked and rationalized myself into allowing far too many situations that have ultimately harmed me.

Strange as it may sound, it is the strength of the feminine that is required in such situations -- the wisdom that just knows when a thing is wrong, and that knows and cherishes our value just for being ourselves. It is not rational and requires no justification; it simply loves and nourishes. One need never be good enough for it.

Now, as warm and fuzzy as this sounds, if we live only in this feminine womb-scape we would never grow, develop autonomy, or strive towards our dearest dreams and powerful fulfillment. We would never know what we are. So separation, judgment, criticism is necessary -- but without the feminine to softly protect and care for us, the masculine just runs roughshod over us.

Which is how things have been through much of my achingly self-critical life.

As this dream persisted, my therapist would encourage me to talk to the attacker. A crazy idea I thought, and yet in a dream around 2004 (coincidentally, when I started bellydancing) I successfully locked the door against this animus figure, only to decide to open it and talk to him. Far from the insane marauder I expected, he shriveled into a lanky milquetoast who could barely get a word out.

One of the dreams I related this past weekend involved this figure -- but this time, he was a serial killer locked in the bathroom of my childhood home. In the dream, we call the police (psychical reinforcements) to bring him out, but he won't come out. The cops tell me to call his name -- but I can't remember it, which surprises my mother because "he has been living with us for so long."

So, clearly this problem persists in me -- but it has changed. He is no longer attacking; he has now reverted to pure vulnerable boyish silence. Seems he is more scared of me than I am of him. And perhaps he is not so happy with me for forgetting his name...

So that was the realization I had during the first evening of the Dream Retreat, and went to bed pondering it -- unable to think of anything else, actually.

I started to drift off around midnight, hoping to get up around 7:30 and go running along the beautiful trail up there.

But barely an hour later, a frenzied thumping, knocking, banging slammed me awake. And I had forgotten my earplugs!

And this continued through the night: I'd start to sleep for maybe a half-hour, and then -- WHAM, SLAM, BOOM!!

Around 4am I crawled out to the fire escape to see if I could figure out what was causing this...  I knew the nuns had been having some work done. Was there a tarp on the roof? Some loose cord, cable, rope? (Something I could use to hang myself maybe?!?!)

As the sleepless, dreamless Night of Misery continued, I bargained:  I'd turn off my alarm. If I missed the morning session, then so be it. But if I was still awake when the sky got light, then I'd go out running, no matter how miserable I felt.

The latter won out.

As the sun bleached its way through the venetian blinds, I was a knot of restless anguish -- all the more miserable because I did not have a dream to share. But I dragged myself up anyway and got dressed around 7am.

I'd be OK, I told myself (but I brought my mobile just in case...)

The day was absolutely stunning. A bit frosty, but no longer windy. On auto-pilot, I chugged up the gravel road towards the labyrinth about a mile away. I made a left onto a paved road and hoofed down to the town's main drag, Route 32.

Starting to feel a bit better, I finally came to my second-favorite part of the run: A tight little enclave of McMansions along Joseph's Drive with streets named Canterbury Drive, Lancelot Drive and Camelot Court.

Usually I go straight through on Joseph's, which takes me right back to the convent. But suddenly I was feeling better -- much better -- better than I had in weeks, actually. And those street names were just so darned charming!

So I took a left on Canterbury, figuring it would loop me straight back to Joseph's, but instead I ended up on Lancelot which twisted around, leaving me completely disoriented.

I pulled out my Android, figuring Google Maps would get me out of this. No such luck.

I ran back a few houses, then returned to where Lancelot had left me. I saw a single green street sign to my right. I ran up to it.

And this is what I saw.



"You do realize, don't you, that this sounds like a very interesting dream?" a good friend observed as I related the story some time later.

Yes, indeed it was....

It had all the elements:  Misery, anguish, running, joy, bliss, being lost (and lost among such mythically resplendent names!) -- and finding my way -- yes MY way, at a time -- and in a "way" -- that I had least expected.

Nutshells, Coffee Shops and Scaling Down Area 51

"I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." Hamlet, Act II, Scene ii

I have been writing down my dreams since 1995.

Sometimes I can go a week or two without remembering a dream; and other times I will have so many that I am overwhelmed, and any attempt to capture their details is paralyzed in frustration.

But for the most part, I try to write them down fairly regularly.

Dream analysis is an extremely important part of Jungian analysis, which I began in 1994. Although some consider dreams simple jetsam and flotsam as the brain processes the day's activities and concerns, the Jungian school holds that they have important information and guidance not only about current concerns, but can point to greater trends and psychological developments -- after all, we can't hide from the truth of dreams.

Granted, we can force gratifying interpretations on them, but this becomes more difficult when dreams reoccur with increasing ferocity and smash our respective nutshells.

For example, I used to have a dream that a terrifying man was chasing me, usually through the upper floors of a house or building. I would try to hide in a room and shut the door against him, but something would always be wrong with the door: the lock would be broken or non-existent or the door would suddenly become flimsy as tissue. Once the door shriveled to swinging-saloon-door size, and my assailant easily banged through.

This we took to indicate a psychological porousness on my part -- especially to judgmental "animus" energies. Sometimes, this could literally mean vulnerability to men -- in particular the criticism of men (which has played out in many relationships), but more often it indicated my intellectual, unyielding criticism towards myself -- which gave the harsh words of the various boyfriends undue power.

About five years ago in a dream, I successfully shut the door on the attacker, only to find myself curious about him. I opened it again and began a conversation with him in the dream. And, as is often the case in life when we see those whom we had feared in a different light, he was not terrifying at all.

I never had that dream again.

Of course, my "animus" issue is by no means fully resolved, but this was good progress.

The night before last, I had another dream where both an animus (inner male) and an animus-driven anima (hyper intellectual inner female) figure appeared.

It occurred at a time when I was struggling with what I felt was very hurtful behavior from a puer-type man whom I had cared for (I'll call him Evan), and who had treated me shabbily the last time we met -- and it gave me some very useful insight and guidance.

So here is the dream in its entirety, followed by a brief analysis:

My friend Yolanda tells me that she has bought some “out there” real estate as an investment, having put $20,000 down on $3 million. She shows me an aerial picture of the investment property, which is of some structures in the Navy Yard near where I live, which is now now ("now" as in "the now of the dream") paved over with nice asphalt paths, similar to those of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. Two of the structures are round, and one is kind of box shaped, all are shaped strangely, with unusual borders and cuts on the roofs. It all feels very Area 51 to me, and I am suspicious for Yolanda who -- in spite of being one of the most intelligent people I know -- can also be very naive in some common-sense ways because she is quick to rationalize and justify others’ very f*cked up behavior. (Such is the double-edged sword of intellect.)


So I decide to check out this property for myself. I go to the site, walking along the pristine asphalt paths that allegedly lead to her property, but do not see the structures -- or much of anything, for that matter, except for a largish coffee shop run by an Asian family. I go inside for a cup and while I'm waiting, look at a display arrangement on one of the counters. There are two paper cups with sip lids and a small rectangular gift box -- like the kind you'd put chocolates in. I stand directly over it and look down. THIS was the "aerial photo"!! I run off to tell Yolanda but she doesn't believe me, so I take her to the shop and show her the display. “Who got the $20,000?!?” I demand. The owner of the shop -- a middle-aged Mandarin comes out to see what the fuss is about. Yolanda points to him. “I gave it to him!” she says.


I freak out on the guy. I mean I go completely crazy, furiously bellowing at him about fraud and criminal charges, and demand he give the money back to Yolanda immediately, or I will return "with help". With a relenting shrug, he gives us a check for $20,000. I further warn him that the check had better not bounce, and urge Yolanda to deposit it quickly.

Of course, when I told this dream to another male friend, he immediately thought: two cups and a box = female genitalia. And maybe it does -- as much of this dream illustrates an internal war between my masculine (animus) and feminine (anima) aspects. But it is so much more than that....

With the understanding that all figures in a dream represent an aspect of oneself, I must first conclude that Yolanda and the Mandarin man represent, respectively, the hyper-rational part of my feminine self, and the trickster part of my masculine self -- which often collude to cause me lots of trouble -- and can cost me lots of money, time and energy -- as I make "rational" excuses to justify obvious trickster behavior, and make outsized investments in people/relationships that are ultimately not worth it.

Archetypally, the non-animus-driven feminine can see right through the animus-trickster -- in the same way a mother can tell when her kid is full of crap. In many ways, the trickster in one's psyche plays games partly to show you creative ways of looking at the world, and sometimes he just wants to screw with you to make sure you are paying attention!!

So the trick that I often fall for is in believing a desired thing is worth more than it actually is. This has been particularly true of certain men in my life -- especially if they are achieving in an area where I have aspiration, as was the case where Evan was concerned.

And my psyche beautifully illustrated this with the enlarged (i.e. overvalued) photograph of ordinary paperware.

It is also worth noting that the animus figure is Chinese, and the fake real estate reminds me of "Area 51" -- which indicates that I still tend to see these dynamics as alien and not originating in my personal world. For example, in the current case, I believed that I was hurt more because Evan had been cold to me, and not because I had inappropriately overvalued him -- which I had.

Another important piece of information was the $20,000 on $3 million. Granted, $3 million is a lot of money -- but $20,000 is a miniscule .67% of that -- laughable even by savings account standards.

The lesson from this? That even though I am capable of investing HUGELY in relationships, my actual emotional investment in this particular person was minimal -- so I realized that much of my pain was only from wounded pride.

Why the coffee shop? That probably indicated I needed to freaking wake up about this!!!

And the final lesson? When I got mad -- really mad -- the guy took me seriously and, with a shrug, returned the invested money. Why the blasé shrug? Probably to indicate that the trickster plays tricks because that's just what he does, and so when he's caught, he makes good without regret or apology. But it takes a storm of fury to convince him that he is caught.

Now, I did not take this to mean that freaking out on Evan was the way to go -- but rather it would not be productive -- to him or to me -- to hide my feelings.

And with that in mind, I set out the next day to resolve the situation with Evan.

More later on what happened....

The Tango of Ego and Soul

Dear Judith,

Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply! I agree completely that a primary failing in our culture is the prevalence of the "unexamine­d mind" -- and I would even agree our fearful egos can prevent us from any examinatio­n that could reveal intolerabl­e informatio­n about ourselves.

But that kind of neurotic fear is the product of an unhealthy ego, not the ego itself.

Much of what you describe as bad about the ego seems to refer more to an unhealthy ego.

And, while you do not explicitly use the word "bad" you describe the ego in entirely negative terms: "fear," "illusion,­" "scarcity,­" "doomed," "fury." Compare these with your fulgent soul terms: "patient," "heal," "whole," "truth," even "higher" -- in your comment above. Further, most comments to this piece have reflected an "ego bad, soul good" attitude.

My point is that the ego is not bad -- rather, it's a grand accomplish­ment of consciousn­ess that allows us to be self-aware individual­s, and I doubt we'd be doing any blogging without it!

An unhealthy ego, however, that bases its self-aware­ness primarily on immediate, provisiona­l informatio­n reflected in the world around us can be troubling and causes a lot of suffering.

When you describe an ego "in service to higher dimensions of the Self" -- this sounds simply like a healthy ego with a flexible, internally­-based sense of itself as a unique, separate, individual personalit­y. Is that consistent with what you mean?

Regards -- and thanks for continuing the conversati­on!
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