Saturday, 5 December 2009
There's a Harmony in my He-e-e-ead
I love harmony. My earliest memories of music were tv themes and ad jingles with voices in harmony. I can see harmony - different coloured strands moving together through the air. If you have a good ear, each part maintains its own integrity, and slots into its own groove in space. Two part harmony is a dance of two energies, each one holding the other in space, but to the listener they can sound as one thing. And if you are inside it, singing, you give yourself to it, you trust the other voice to hold you and the other trusts you to hold them and thereby, both are released. As Franz Kafka said, "When you blend your voice with others, it is like being taken on a hook." Crikey. I never knew. Harmony is love.
Saturday, 3 October 2009
Have A Talk With God
28th April 2009
In the economy of heaven there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
James Joyce, Ulysses
I arrive at our next meeting and sit down on the leather sofa. After hellos Blue invites me to move to the seat where the remaining Part in the psychodrama is. I can’t, because the sofa is back to the wall, and I have the strong sensation that this Part is way behind me somewhere. So we start again, and I sit on a chair in the middle of the room having placed another chair on the back wall. It’s still not quite right because the room isn’t big enough - I can’t go far enough back from my original position. I figure we better get on with it and move to the chair against the wall. This time I walk consciously, the movement is not outside of my control as it was last time, and I’m concerned that I’m not really in the right frame of mind for this exercise today. I guess the unconscious mind is miffed that we don’t have the acres of space we need to do this properly and therefore isn’t joining in.
I needn’t have worried. A strange thing happens immediately I sit down. My eyes close spontaneously and in my mind’s eye I can see a very clear image of Danny (myself) sat on a chair with his back to me. But this Danny is about a mile away from where I am now sitting (in body if not in spirit). And we’re not really in this room anymore. There is a great expanse of floor space. And the atmosphere has changed. Like we’re in a cathedral. There is a quiet ambience, soft white light. And I’m in a trance.
The Part’s name, of course, is God.
“How do you relate to these other Parts?” (Brian, Miranda, the Devil, Danny's consciousness)
“I am them all. They are all in me. However, these Parts are a lot closer to Danny’s awareness than I am.”
God tells Blue that Danny is miles away from where God is sitting. The conversation continues for a minute or two, but I cannot remember what was said. I wasn’t conscious as it happened.
Then the time arrives. Still with my eyes closed, I spontaneously zoom right in to the space where Danny and his parts are (and just as it’s happening, Blue is suggesting the same thing). Now, God is right behind Danny, and God’s aura subsumes the little band of mind-characters. It’s quite a moment, this zooming in: it happens in a fraction of a second and there are zoom lines as everything whizzes past God’s head.
As I come round, I’m in a daze. Something has changed. It’s in the top two most significant events of my life to date – the other being the birth of my daughter.
All this time thinking there was something that needed fixing with me, and all the time spent reading the psychology and self-help books in the effort to fix myself (time where I couldn’t actually get on with living) – all of that, dissolved in a moment.
In the following days I think about it from the perspective of the Jungian model of mind. This ‘God’ part is really what Jung called the Self, the totality of who I am. And this Self zooming in to encompass the parts of my psyche: my conscious awareness, Brian the unimpressive masculinity, Miranda the brooding anima and ‘The Devil’, my shadow. This zooming in represented a final coming into awareness of a Self that had been distantly unconscious – the powers, potentials and peculiarities. All of the things that go to make the enigma that is a human being.
This voice dialoguing exercise may have enabled a major step forward in an accelerated individuation process (according to Wikipedia: Individuation is the process of transforming one’s psyche by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious. Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically.)
Or from a different angle: Self-acceptance. Nothing more, nothing less.
In the economy of heaven there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.
James Joyce, Ulysses
I arrive at our next meeting and sit down on the leather sofa. After hellos Blue invites me to move to the seat where the remaining Part in the psychodrama is. I can’t, because the sofa is back to the wall, and I have the strong sensation that this Part is way behind me somewhere. So we start again, and I sit on a chair in the middle of the room having placed another chair on the back wall. It’s still not quite right because the room isn’t big enough - I can’t go far enough back from my original position. I figure we better get on with it and move to the chair against the wall. This time I walk consciously, the movement is not outside of my control as it was last time, and I’m concerned that I’m not really in the right frame of mind for this exercise today. I guess the unconscious mind is miffed that we don’t have the acres of space we need to do this properly and therefore isn’t joining in.
I needn’t have worried. A strange thing happens immediately I sit down. My eyes close spontaneously and in my mind’s eye I can see a very clear image of Danny (myself) sat on a chair with his back to me. But this Danny is about a mile away from where I am now sitting (in body if not in spirit). And we’re not really in this room anymore. There is a great expanse of floor space. And the atmosphere has changed. Like we’re in a cathedral. There is a quiet ambience, soft white light. And I’m in a trance.
The Part’s name, of course, is God.
“How do you relate to these other Parts?” (Brian, Miranda, the Devil, Danny's consciousness)
“I am them all. They are all in me. However, these Parts are a lot closer to Danny’s awareness than I am.”
God tells Blue that Danny is miles away from where God is sitting. The conversation continues for a minute or two, but I cannot remember what was said. I wasn’t conscious as it happened.
Then the time arrives. Still with my eyes closed, I spontaneously zoom right in to the space where Danny and his parts are (and just as it’s happening, Blue is suggesting the same thing). Now, God is right behind Danny, and God’s aura subsumes the little band of mind-characters. It’s quite a moment, this zooming in: it happens in a fraction of a second and there are zoom lines as everything whizzes past God’s head.
As I come round, I’m in a daze. Something has changed. It’s in the top two most significant events of my life to date – the other being the birth of my daughter.
All this time thinking there was something that needed fixing with me, and all the time spent reading the psychology and self-help books in the effort to fix myself (time where I couldn’t actually get on with living) – all of that, dissolved in a moment.
In the following days I think about it from the perspective of the Jungian model of mind. This ‘God’ part is really what Jung called the Self, the totality of who I am. And this Self zooming in to encompass the parts of my psyche: my conscious awareness, Brian the unimpressive masculinity, Miranda the brooding anima and ‘The Devil’, my shadow. This zooming in represented a final coming into awareness of a Self that had been distantly unconscious – the powers, potentials and peculiarities. All of the things that go to make the enigma that is a human being.
This voice dialoguing exercise may have enabled a major step forward in an accelerated individuation process (according to Wikipedia: Individuation is the process of transforming one’s psyche by bringing the personal and collective unconscious into conscious. Individuation has a holistic healing effect on the person, both mentally and physically.)
Or from a different angle: Self-acceptance. Nothing more, nothing less.
Friday, 2 October 2009
Devil in Disguise
I remember when I lost my mind
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
Crazy (Burton/Callaway/Reverberi/Reverberi)
24th April 2009
A few days later, in a self-induced trance, I have a conversation with this Devil. What does he mean when he says he wants to kill me? Because if he really wanted to kill me, surely he would have succeeded by now.
It turns out that he is the repressed desire for an end to suffering. He wanted an end to the pain of rejection or separation I felt earlier in life. And what did he want by wanting that? Just peace. So this devil is not so bad after all. Like any misbehaving child, like any dysfunctional adult he just wanted to feel good – but he went about it by the wrong means. He indulged in self-destructive behaviours because they bring about an end to suffering temporarily. And that was the most he could hope for.
But also, this Devil is at the core of that total disintegration of self which I have experienced several times – the giving up, the letting it all go to shit. The closing down of the connection or the engagement with life. A living death. Weeks or months where I didn’t go to work – I just sat in the garden or the park drinking tea and chain-smoking. My life just stopped. I ceased to exist. The death wish. The frozen kingdom. The wasteland. La la la.
There was something so pleasant about that place
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space
Crazy (Burton/Callaway/Reverberi/Reverberi)
24th April 2009
A few days later, in a self-induced trance, I have a conversation with this Devil. What does he mean when he says he wants to kill me? Because if he really wanted to kill me, surely he would have succeeded by now.
It turns out that he is the repressed desire for an end to suffering. He wanted an end to the pain of rejection or separation I felt earlier in life. And what did he want by wanting that? Just peace. So this devil is not so bad after all. Like any misbehaving child, like any dysfunctional adult he just wanted to feel good – but he went about it by the wrong means. He indulged in self-destructive behaviours because they bring about an end to suffering temporarily. And that was the most he could hope for.
But also, this Devil is at the core of that total disintegration of self which I have experienced several times – the giving up, the letting it all go to shit. The closing down of the connection or the engagement with life. A living death. Weeks or months where I didn’t go to work – I just sat in the garden or the park drinking tea and chain-smoking. My life just stopped. I ceased to exist. The death wish. The frozen kingdom. The wasteland. La la la.
Up Jumped The Devil
April 2009
With the crouching gait of a theatrical Jew, I labour through treacle to take my seat in the fourth chair. I feel a great weight pressing on my body from every direction. Reminiscent of a punishment in one of Dante’s Circles of Hell.
“What can I call you?” says Blue.
“The Devil,” I deadpan.
“At what age did you come into Danny’s life?”
My head jerks to the side seven times.
“Age seven.”
“What was your purpose then?”
“To kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he wasn’t good enough.” This Devil seems wholly malevolent. It’s a little disturbing that he has apparently been living in me all these years.
“What needs to change with Danny? What would make him good enough?”
“He is good enough. That was all from other people. I don’t believe that anymore.”
“But you still want to kill him?”
“Well, we all get into these habits.” Laughter.
“What do you think of Brian?”
“He doesn’t come into it.”
“Are you in charge?”
“No. But I’m pretty powerful.”
“You’re more interested in Miranda than Brian?”
“She is to do with the senses. She can be subverted. Brian is only dealing with structure, with logic.”
“How does it feel to be heard?”
“It makes a change. We did that dancing around with Robert Dilts last year [a course where participants attempted to defeat personal demons through NLP exploration and meditative centring in the body]. They identified the symptom of my influence: the wibbling, the ineffectuality. But they didn’t go deep enough – they didn’t get to me.”
“Are you responsible for Danny’s spontaneous movement?”
“No.”
I return to the first chair.
“Where is the part responsible for the music, where is the creative genius in relation to you now?” asks Blue.
“I feel like I don’t want to move, like it’s right here in my conscious awareness.”
“That’s good, then. You have this drive to enlightenment: more than most men, more than most people. Who’s responsible for that?”
“Brian is the organiser, the goal-setter. But it’s not him.”
“I get the sense there’s another part involved in this?”
“Yes. It’s way out behind me. It’s the Self. It’s god.”
We’re out of time for today. Blue says that the NLP approach would seek to integrate these parts. Get them working together. But he suggests we allow them just to be in my awareness until next we meet. So I leave the Vestry Hall and wander around Wandsworth for a bit. For several days I feel a bit like I’ve been blown apart. It’s not altogether unpleasant.
With the crouching gait of a theatrical Jew, I labour through treacle to take my seat in the fourth chair. I feel a great weight pressing on my body from every direction. Reminiscent of a punishment in one of Dante’s Circles of Hell.
“What can I call you?” says Blue.
“The Devil,” I deadpan.
“At what age did you come into Danny’s life?”
My head jerks to the side seven times.
“Age seven.”
“What was your purpose then?”
“To kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he wasn’t good enough.” This Devil seems wholly malevolent. It’s a little disturbing that he has apparently been living in me all these years.
“What needs to change with Danny? What would make him good enough?”
“He is good enough. That was all from other people. I don’t believe that anymore.”
“But you still want to kill him?”
“Well, we all get into these habits.” Laughter.
“What do you think of Brian?”
“He doesn’t come into it.”
“Are you in charge?”
“No. But I’m pretty powerful.”
“You’re more interested in Miranda than Brian?”
“She is to do with the senses. She can be subverted. Brian is only dealing with structure, with logic.”
“How does it feel to be heard?”
“It makes a change. We did that dancing around with Robert Dilts last year [a course where participants attempted to defeat personal demons through NLP exploration and meditative centring in the body]. They identified the symptom of my influence: the wibbling, the ineffectuality. But they didn’t go deep enough – they didn’t get to me.”
“Are you responsible for Danny’s spontaneous movement?”
“No.”
I return to the first chair.
“Where is the part responsible for the music, where is the creative genius in relation to you now?” asks Blue.
“I feel like I don’t want to move, like it’s right here in my conscious awareness.”
“That’s good, then. You have this drive to enlightenment: more than most men, more than most people. Who’s responsible for that?”
“Brian is the organiser, the goal-setter. But it’s not him.”
“I get the sense there’s another part involved in this?”
“Yes. It’s way out behind me. It’s the Self. It’s god.”
We’re out of time for today. Blue says that the NLP approach would seek to integrate these parts. Get them working together. But he suggests we allow them just to be in my awareness until next we meet. So I leave the Vestry Hall and wander around Wandsworth for a bit. For several days I feel a bit like I’ve been blown apart. It’s not altogether unpleasant.
Everybody's Talkin' At Me
April 2009
So I book another session with Blue Marsden. I’ve complained of feeling split, of having parts of myself that seem out of balance. Blue suggests an exercise whereby the split-off parts can communicate with one another. He sets out four chairs. One is for my present awareness. One is for the unconscious male aspect. One is for the unconscious female aspect. One is for...???
I start out in the chair for present awareness. Blue invites me to move to the chair where the male aspect is. I do this, but there is no volition in it. My body feels like it’s being pulled the few steps to the other chair, and I sit heavily, slumping.
Blue asks the guy what is his name?
“Brian,” I reply. I chuckle. Where did that come from? I think of Bryan S. Lane a profile name I used on a social networking website some years ago. There is a street in my hometown called Bryans Lane. And Richard Briers, the actor who has played a number of ineffectual men in British sitcoms. And Brian Wilson – a musical genius with his own tale to tell of psychic dismemberment (I’ve loved the Beach Boys music for many years).
From the conversation (between Blue and Brian) which follows, we learn the following: Brian deals with order and discipline, the structure of my life out in the world – money, work, responsibility, polite society. And these are things which have always been in disarray with me, totally mismanaged throughout my life. Why? What has Brian got to say for himself?
“I get overlooked. It would make a big difference to our progress if I was given a little more respect. My role is an important one. All this transcendental experience and feeling good is all well and good, but without balance and good housekeeping...it doesn’t convert into anything concrete in the real world. The search for happiness is always undermined, because the practicalities aren’t in place.”
Brian is ineffectual, he has no masculine power. He never matured. I later find out (via the head nod) that Brian ceased to develop at the age of seven. This explains a lot. My dealings in the world have been governed by a seven year old boy. I wonder if any of my readers can relate to the constistent feeling I’ve had of being a child amongst grown-ups? No mortgage, no car, and bouncing between the dole and one awful job after another.
Give me the boy until he is seven and I will give you the man, indeed.
Blue invites me to shake off Brian and move to the place where I feel the female aspect is sitting. Again, the body moves spontaneously, past Blue to the other side of the room. My hand automatically slides the seat further out.
“What would you like me to call you?” says Blue.
“Miranda,” I reply. And I laugh. I find out later that the name Miranda is derived from Latin "Mirare". Miranda is (according to www.thecapras.org/mcapra/miranda/derivation.html ) "worthy of admiration", "something to admire", "a woman who must be admired".
“When did you come into Danny’s life, Miranda?”
“I’ve always been there. I’m his soul. He has a feminine soul.”
“How do you feel about Brian?”
“I wish he would do more...you know, around the house (laughter). I feel a vague sort of animosity towards him.”
“How do you feel about the way things are with Danny?”
“It’s a bit messy. I generate all these behaviours [the addictive patterns that have been causing Danny distress] to connect with feeling, with connection, with love. But there is no discipline, because Brian doesn’t show up. He’s supposed to direct this energy toward the right things.”
Blue invites me to shake off Miranda, and to take my place in the last chair. Who’s sitting there?
So I book another session with Blue Marsden. I’ve complained of feeling split, of having parts of myself that seem out of balance. Blue suggests an exercise whereby the split-off parts can communicate with one another. He sets out four chairs. One is for my present awareness. One is for the unconscious male aspect. One is for the unconscious female aspect. One is for...???
I start out in the chair for present awareness. Blue invites me to move to the chair where the male aspect is. I do this, but there is no volition in it. My body feels like it’s being pulled the few steps to the other chair, and I sit heavily, slumping.
Blue asks the guy what is his name?
“Brian,” I reply. I chuckle. Where did that come from? I think of Bryan S. Lane a profile name I used on a social networking website some years ago. There is a street in my hometown called Bryans Lane. And Richard Briers, the actor who has played a number of ineffectual men in British sitcoms. And Brian Wilson – a musical genius with his own tale to tell of psychic dismemberment (I’ve loved the Beach Boys music for many years).
From the conversation (between Blue and Brian) which follows, we learn the following: Brian deals with order and discipline, the structure of my life out in the world – money, work, responsibility, polite society. And these are things which have always been in disarray with me, totally mismanaged throughout my life. Why? What has Brian got to say for himself?
“I get overlooked. It would make a big difference to our progress if I was given a little more respect. My role is an important one. All this transcendental experience and feeling good is all well and good, but without balance and good housekeeping...it doesn’t convert into anything concrete in the real world. The search for happiness is always undermined, because the practicalities aren’t in place.”
Brian is ineffectual, he has no masculine power. He never matured. I later find out (via the head nod) that Brian ceased to develop at the age of seven. This explains a lot. My dealings in the world have been governed by a seven year old boy. I wonder if any of my readers can relate to the constistent feeling I’ve had of being a child amongst grown-ups? No mortgage, no car, and bouncing between the dole and one awful job after another.
Give me the boy until he is seven and I will give you the man, indeed.
Blue invites me to shake off Brian and move to the place where I feel the female aspect is sitting. Again, the body moves spontaneously, past Blue to the other side of the room. My hand automatically slides the seat further out.
“What would you like me to call you?” says Blue.
“Miranda,” I reply. And I laugh. I find out later that the name Miranda is derived from Latin "Mirare". Miranda is (according to www.thecapras.org/mcapra/miranda/derivation.html ) "worthy of admiration", "something to admire", "a woman who must be admired".
“When did you come into Danny’s life, Miranda?”
“I’ve always been there. I’m his soul. He has a feminine soul.”
“How do you feel about Brian?”
“I wish he would do more...you know, around the house (laughter). I feel a vague sort of animosity towards him.”
“How do you feel about the way things are with Danny?”
“It’s a bit messy. I generate all these behaviours [the addictive patterns that have been causing Danny distress] to connect with feeling, with connection, with love. But there is no discipline, because Brian doesn’t show up. He’s supposed to direct this energy toward the right things.”
Blue invites me to shake off Miranda, and to take my place in the last chair. Who’s sitting there?
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Finish What Ya Started
As I haven't posted for some months, I imagine no-one will be reading this anymore. And that's quite apt, really, as we shall see.
'Finishing' the blog has been on the back of my mind since I last posted. However, I've been really busy, and haven't found the time. A lot has happened. And in reading back through some of the previous posts, I'm struggling to recognise myself there. Things have changed.
So what have I been up to? Well, I now have two jobs; I've played numerous gigs including a couple of community type festivals (in Northumberland and Birmingham), performed with my friend Nathan on French Horn; and I'm rehearsing a band which currently has five or six members.
Now, I will endeavour to tell the rest of 'the story' - to bring this tale to its conclusion. The remaining posts will be about the past, but I'll write them in present tense. And I'll be working as quickly as is humanly possible - so no-one, please forgive me if the standard of prose drops a little.
I want to move on to the next project (beyond the music). I'll write a novel during the month of November.
'Finishing' the blog has been on the back of my mind since I last posted. However, I've been really busy, and haven't found the time. A lot has happened. And in reading back through some of the previous posts, I'm struggling to recognise myself there. Things have changed.
So what have I been up to? Well, I now have two jobs; I've played numerous gigs including a couple of community type festivals (in Northumberland and Birmingham), performed with my friend Nathan on French Horn; and I'm rehearsing a band which currently has five or six members.
Now, I will endeavour to tell the rest of 'the story' - to bring this tale to its conclusion. The remaining posts will be about the past, but I'll write them in present tense. And I'll be working as quickly as is humanly possible - so no-one, please forgive me if the standard of prose drops a little.
I want to move on to the next project (beyond the music). I'll write a novel during the month of November.
Monday, 20 July 2009
Pour Some Sugar On Me
I’ve found something of a dichotomy between the croon and falsetto aspects of my voice. As I find more power in the ‘chest’ voice, the ‘head’ voice by contrast seems a little weak, and so the crossing from the lower notes to the higher is not as convincing as I’d like. I’ve been thinking of this as some kind of a physical metaphor for where I am psychically right now. A few posts ago I was talking about feeling an imbalance between my masculine and feminine ‘sides’. And I still need to deal with this.
There are a few reasons why I think there is some kind of imbalance.
First, I have a feeling of estrangement from ‘something’, some part of myself. I think this estrangement is the cause of some escalating shadowy behaviours (sex, drugs, shopping and biscuits). Attempts to salve that feeling of lack or loss?
Second, I dreamed that a young woman whom I wasn't sexually attracted to was trying to call me, but my phone has no signal (15 missed calls), and then when it finally rings I 'reject the call', because I haven't got used to the controls of my new phone yet. Couple of nights later, this highly satirical dream: as I kissed a woman (without authentic feeling), a shadowy fellow in the rafters poured icing sugar over us. I then shouted at her just to see what the shadow guy would do this time. He poured lemon juice on us. Interpretation: that I need to make contact with this woman, but I’m going about it in the wrong ways. I’m schmoozing her (pouring sugar on her), and if I don’t get what I want, I’ll give her sour lemon. I need to find the middle way.
According to Carl Jung, this ‘she’ is really a representation of my ‘soul’. Jung called this dream woman the ‘anima’. She is the unconscious female personality (‘woman within’) that influences a man’s relationships (through projection) and appears personified in his dreams.
So the dream appears to suggest that I am behaving in an unbalanced way with regards to my relationship with my Self. On a basic level, I do not love myself. It’s that typical emotional rollercoaster of people with suspect self-esteem: in one breath they think they are amazing genius songwriters (sugar) and in the next, they cannot even look at themselves in the mirror (lemon).
Looking for more clarity on this I remembered Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Seven Basic Plots’: a dry and sometimes chauvinistic treatise on the true purpose of storytelling. Or an arduous (709 page) retelling of the Hero with A Thousand Faces. But there is an interesting section where Booker delineates the various possible imbalances between the archetypes in an individual psyche, and how these might manifest in the story (in life). It seems that I am ‘in thrall to the dark feminine, who
works through a superificial show of feminine qualities, by appearing to feel and to care. She gets her way by guile, seduction, placation, deception. She disguises her true predatory intent beneath a pretence that she is serving the hero’s best interests, like Circe or the Witch in Hansel and Gretel who offers the children gingerbread as a lure. It is only later that her real nature and purpose emerges, that she really wishes to imprison or devour her victims. The Dark Mother/Temptress promises the hero ease and self-gratification, that he does not have to make any effort or show firmness, that there is a short cut to becoming a man. She seeks to flatter his vanity or to gratify his physical appetites – for food, sex, comfort, relaxation...And here, in order to resist her wiles, the hero’s task is to show himself as fully masculine. He has to show strength, judgement, the ability to discriminate...The purpose of the ‘dark feminine’ is to unman him, to make him weak and dependent, to turn him into ‘the boy who cannot grow up’...it requires his to summon up all his masculine strength, will-power and self reliance, as Odysseus does when he finally manages to break free from the enchantments of Calypso.
Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots (pages 280-1)
So, it seems that I need to connect with some male energy: in order to free the damsel imprisoned within the tower, I’ve got to build a ladder, and in order to build a ladder, I’ve got to learn woodwork. To corroborate this I ask for a 'life-centring communication' from the Self. I get an erupting volcano and then a huge square trench with equal diameter to the volcano. Interestingly, the phallus image came first (excuse pun). I ask if these images are meant to suggest that my work now is balancing this male and female stuff and get a definite yes.
There are a few reasons why I think there is some kind of imbalance.
First, I have a feeling of estrangement from ‘something’, some part of myself. I think this estrangement is the cause of some escalating shadowy behaviours (sex, drugs, shopping and biscuits). Attempts to salve that feeling of lack or loss?
Second, I dreamed that a young woman whom I wasn't sexually attracted to was trying to call me, but my phone has no signal (15 missed calls), and then when it finally rings I 'reject the call', because I haven't got used to the controls of my new phone yet. Couple of nights later, this highly satirical dream: as I kissed a woman (without authentic feeling), a shadowy fellow in the rafters poured icing sugar over us. I then shouted at her just to see what the shadow guy would do this time. He poured lemon juice on us. Interpretation: that I need to make contact with this woman, but I’m going about it in the wrong ways. I’m schmoozing her (pouring sugar on her), and if I don’t get what I want, I’ll give her sour lemon. I need to find the middle way.
According to Carl Jung, this ‘she’ is really a representation of my ‘soul’. Jung called this dream woman the ‘anima’. She is the unconscious female personality (‘woman within’) that influences a man’s relationships (through projection) and appears personified in his dreams.
So the dream appears to suggest that I am behaving in an unbalanced way with regards to my relationship with my Self. On a basic level, I do not love myself. It’s that typical emotional rollercoaster of people with suspect self-esteem: in one breath they think they are amazing genius songwriters (sugar) and in the next, they cannot even look at themselves in the mirror (lemon).
Looking for more clarity on this I remembered Christopher Booker’s book ‘The Seven Basic Plots’: a dry and sometimes chauvinistic treatise on the true purpose of storytelling. Or an arduous (709 page) retelling of the Hero with A Thousand Faces. But there is an interesting section where Booker delineates the various possible imbalances between the archetypes in an individual psyche, and how these might manifest in the story (in life). It seems that I am ‘in thrall to the dark feminine, who
works through a superificial show of feminine qualities, by appearing to feel and to care. She gets her way by guile, seduction, placation, deception. She disguises her true predatory intent beneath a pretence that she is serving the hero’s best interests, like Circe or the Witch in Hansel and Gretel who offers the children gingerbread as a lure. It is only later that her real nature and purpose emerges, that she really wishes to imprison or devour her victims. The Dark Mother/Temptress promises the hero ease and self-gratification, that he does not have to make any effort or show firmness, that there is a short cut to becoming a man. She seeks to flatter his vanity or to gratify his physical appetites – for food, sex, comfort, relaxation...And here, in order to resist her wiles, the hero’s task is to show himself as fully masculine. He has to show strength, judgement, the ability to discriminate...The purpose of the ‘dark feminine’ is to unman him, to make him weak and dependent, to turn him into ‘the boy who cannot grow up’...it requires his to summon up all his masculine strength, will-power and self reliance, as Odysseus does when he finally manages to break free from the enchantments of Calypso.
Christopher Booker, The Seven Basic Plots (pages 280-1)
So, it seems that I need to connect with some male energy: in order to free the damsel imprisoned within the tower, I’ve got to build a ladder, and in order to build a ladder, I’ve got to learn woodwork. To corroborate this I ask for a 'life-centring communication' from the Self. I get an erupting volcano and then a huge square trench with equal diameter to the volcano. Interestingly, the phallus image came first (excuse pun). I ask if these images are meant to suggest that my work now is balancing this male and female stuff and get a definite yes.
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