Becoming conscious

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” — Carl Gustav Jung

“Like the sun’s rays that cause the seed to stir within its husk, love’s radiant energy penetrates the facade of the false self, calling forth resources hidden deep within us. Its warmth wakes up the life inside us, making us want to uncurl, to give birth, to grow and reach for the light. It calls on us to break out of our shell, the personality-husk surrounding the seed potential of all that we could be. The purpose of a seed husk is to protect the tender life within until the time and conditions are right for it to burst forth. Our personality structure serves a similar function. It provides a semblance of security, as a kind of compensation for the loss of our larger being. But when love’s warming rays start to wake us up, our ego-shell becomes a barrier restricting our expansion. As the germ of life swells within us, we feel our imprisonment more acutely…..The brighter love’s radiance, the darker the shadows we encounter; the more we feel life stirring within us, the more we also feel our dead spots; the more conscious we become, the more clearly we see where we remain unconscious. None of this need dishearten us. For in facing our darkness, we bring to light forgotten parts of our being. In recognizing exactly where we have been unconscious, we become more conscious. And in seeing and feeling the ways we’ve gone dead, we start to revive and kindle our desire to live more expansively.”

— John Welwood Love and Awakening : Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationship

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” — Carl Gustav Jung

“The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.” — Carl Gustav Jung

OK, my dreams are starting to bug me, so I guess it is time to turn to Jung. Don’t know if there are any Jungians among my readers, but feel free to play along if you like.

My shrink is not a Jungian type, so it’s difficult to discuss these things with him. Anyway, this dream is from a few months back, but I find it interesting and I’ve put off posting it here for a while now:

I dreamed one morning of a dark haired, bearded man with a wolf. He gave me a map, which was actually a puzzle of some sort. I felt in the dream as if he were a man of great power. The wolf growled and chased away almost everyone else from the scene, except for three of us who were left to listen and who were given the maps. We seemed to be starting a quest to search for something, although it was not clear what we were supposed to find.

So here’s one interpretation of wolf dreams that I found:

The second category of wolf dream is quite different. In these dreams the wolf is the symbol of noble wildness, freedom from societal restraints, and elemental reliance on instincts and nature. This is the women-who-run-with-the-wolves image, and it appears in the dreams of anyone who is beginning to acknowledge the powerful and natural side of themselves. This wolf often recalls a sense of power, wisdom and life-in-the-moment. There is an almost elemental freedom that temporarily is lost to us during the socialization process; but our vivid aliveness is never truly gone. Typically when an individual begins to feel stirrings of their natural self, or a power based on aliveness rather than external achievement they may dream of a wolf that is both awesomely powerful yet strangely welcoming to them.

So, in my searching around for some meaning to this dream, I then happened across “Women Who Run with the Wolves“, which I’m currently reading. I’m finding this book an interesting introduction to a lot of what I’ve never really understood about women’s, and my own, psyche. I don’t know if this is “the map” of the dream, but it seems to be at least a piece of the puzzle.

I found this quote from the book interesting today:

Classical psychological theory tends to, by absolute omission, split the human psyche away from relationship to the land on which humans live, away from knowledge of the cultural etiologies of maliase and unrest, and also to sever psyche from the politics and policies which shape the inner and outer lives of humans — as though that outer world were not just as surreal, not just as symbol-laden, not just as impacting and imposing upon one’s soul-life as the inner din. The land, the culture, and the politics in which one lives contribute every bit as much to the individual’s psychic landscape and are as valuable to consider in these lights as one’s subjective milieu.” — Clarissa Pinkopla Estes, Women Who Run With the Wolves

I’m talking politics more and more with my shrink these days, who seems to think I ought to be working in some sort of political think tank. He seems amazed again and again that I see things at the “big picture” level that I do, and am able to piece so many things into that picture.

Perhaps the puzzle is what I do with all these things I observe and know, if there is any place for that beyond my musings here and on my political mailing list. Or perhaps it is meant to spur my creativity, to take me back to doing artwork again and being active in that area. or to push me further in my therapy work with Darwin and eventually raising and training service dogs. I really don’t know yet.

But doors are beginning to appear, and the keys seem to be close at hand.