Courses & Lectures

“But what if I should discover that the least among them all, the poorest of all the beggars, the most impudent of all the offenders, the very fiend himself — that these are within me, and that I myself stand in need of the alms of my own kindness — that I myself am the enemy who must be loved — what then?” -C. G. Jung, Psychology and Religion: East and West

Narcissism is reflected in the process of all human relationship. It is linked to an inability to see the other as separate and to a lack of self realization. Narcissism is also an essential component of mirroring in early childhood that occurs within the symbiotic relationship between mother and child that is vital to the development of healthy grandiosity and self esteem. Ideally, this mirrored alternation of inner and outer psychic process allows the mother to metabolize a sufficient amount of anxiety to enable the child to tolerate the growing pains of emerging consciousness and independence.  Narcissism in infancy is the very beginning of an evolution of mirroring that develops the axial relationship between the archetypal depths and ego consciousness leading to unconditional Self love and Self realization.

If however, the parents own intergenerational narcissistic wound is so great and the mirroring process is so disrupted that the child’s anxiety related to emerging consciousness is not metabolized, the child will experience primal trauma provoked by this expulsion from paradise. The toxic self “love” of the parent cannot allow for the individual otherness of the child who is expected to grow up to mirror the parents own image. The child is unable to develop and experience their own emotions adequately, leading to emotional incest and abuse, codependency and pathological defenses that are re-patterned into adulthood. In today’s culture these narcissistic dynamics are mirrored collectively in the Facebook zeitgeist, in “selfies,” in our devastating disregard for the earth’s environment, and in wars.

Narcissus was on the edge of differentiating his reflection in the pool when he succumbed to his own bait, fell in and drowned. We can use the myth’s images as a caution. In the course of human events, we will fall in, but we need to learn to swim and drag ourselves out of the pool, having perhaps survived a near death experience of the ego. Using different versions of Narcissus and Echo, related myths, case material, and examples from contemporary culture, we will reexamine the dynamics and archetypal patterns of narcissism with the goal to see to a greater depth in order to reclaim our primordial wholeness from our reflection in the mirror of today’s world.

Too many still look outward, some believing in the illusion of victory and of victorious power, others in treaties and laws, and others again in the overthrow of the existing order.  But still too few look inward, to their own selves, and still fewer ask themselves whether the ends of human society might not be best served if each man tried to abolish the old order in himself. -C.G. Jung (c.1918)

Alchemy provided a symbolic blueprint for the foundation of Jung’s psychology, the individuation process. The goal of alchemy is the sacred marriage, the coniunctio. The greatest catalyst for this transformative process comes through self-awareness within the interactive field of human relationships, both personal and public.  In the alchemical text, Rosarium Philosophorum, the experience of this mystery of union, death, and resurrection is depicted by the king and queen in the bath. This 16^th-century image represents the potential to transmute chaos into synergy in relationships: in couples,  families, with yourself, therapeutic  partners, with the boss, and even electoral candidates. Jung states, “The factors that come together in the coniunctio are conceived as opposites, either confronting one another in enmity or attracting one another in love.”

In the present frustrating political climate of Capitol Hill, it is said that 80 percent of “man” hours go to election and 20 percent go to legislation, a process mired in partisan politics. These partisan emotional states are the result of the same wounding, incestuous, and codependent experiences of childhood that undermine connections in adult relationships.  In an attempt to get needs met, find approval, and bolster self worth from external sources, these wounds get projected into the container of the relationship, create chaos and alienation, and seduce us away from self-reflection and self-care.

In order to attain the highest degree of conjunction, the prima materia —what Jung calls “the unknown substance that carries the projection of the autonomous psychic content”— must be extracted from the sacred bath. Jung says of this procedure: “in the unconscious are hidden those ‘sparks of light’ (scintillae), the archetypes, from which a higher meaning can be extracted. The magnet that attracts the hidden thing is the Self.”  In this course we will explore the dynamics of human relationships and how they relate to the alchemical marriage. Through this process we can discover a revelatory model for transmuting the chemistry of divisive relationships into a lifelong sacred marriage with the ‘inner’ Self. This in turn, can create vital and mutually productive relationships in our ‘outer’ world.

“If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be. If you follow your bliss, doors will open for you that wouldn’t have opened for anyone else.”
– Joseph Campbell

Considering Joseph Campbell’s intriguing quote, how might we even begin to discover our bliss? How can we support such a nourishing, ecstatic, and Selfish quest? Our world is so often a busy, mechanistic, fear addicted, survival oriented one. How can we gain access to that ‘field’ of bliss energy in such an environment?

The word ecstasy comes from the Latin ex-stasis, meaning to stand outside oneself. This definition can give us a hint at how we might connect to this field of bliss. Jung’s concepts of synchronicity and the subtle body in alchemy suggest that the mind is field like and that it extends out beyond our brains in a similar way that magnetic fields spread out beyond magnets. If we can become lucidly conscious within this field, we can discern the energy field of bliss and open the doors that will help us build the capacity to experience bliss.

In order to differentiate ourselves from, what Jung calls, “the arsenical malignity of collective thinking,” we need to push through the great natural resistance of the psyche, linked to our identity conditioned by the collective. We can then open the door of self knowledge through inner work, shadow integration and the process of individuation. In being called to approach these tasks of awareness, traumas and the dark shadows generally get our attention first. It is just as important to own the often neglected golden shadows that also lead directly to ecstatic experiences.

There are many ways to build the capacity for bliss including art, meditation, Kundalini yoga, dreams, active imagination, and lucid dreaming. These powerful practices can help us develop the lucidity and fearlessness necessary to be able to unconditionally embrace our shadows both dark and golden. In this way we can achieve “amor fati,” love of our fate. With this self love we can reclaim the energy that would otherwise have gone into repression of our shadows and re-purpose it to build our capacity for primordial infinite energy. Through the doorway of inner work we can incubate an intention to experience ecstasy, joy and bliss. In this way we may meet our inner embodied bliss through the doors that have opened in the outer world.

 “If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while waiting for you and the life you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the  doors to you.  I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”              

“People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life…I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” 

Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

 

The goals of experiencing “the rapture of being alive” and entering “the field of your bliss” are often not consciously pursued in life. Following your bliss can be an intimidating process and its paradoxical aspects can bring liberation or enslavement. The field of enslavement, at its worst, is littered with the bodies of opioid addicts on skid row or celebrities that seemed to have everything and yet feel worthless and destroy themselves.  Yet the rewards of seeking the liberating and nourishing energy field of bliss are great. Jung says that to attain this “paradisal state of blissfulness” is, “to possess a treasury of accumulated libido which can constantly stream forth.” –“We must now ask ourselves, whence comes this blissful feeling, this ecstasy of love?”

Ironically the call to follow your bliss often comes when the needs of the body and soul may no longer be met by our career, society, our relationships, or our pleasures.  When the best laid plans go awry or we may be faced with ill health. It may be here, as Campbell says “You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.”

This course will offer us a chance to examine paths to discover our own unique field of bliss. We will consider how to take on this quest consciously and intentionally. In this way we can discover the energy in our “innermost being” that will illuminate our bliss and avoid enslavement. This may be done by reclaiming and integrating the energy invested in repressing our shadows both dark and golden that have guarded the treasure of bliss.  Once our bliss begins to be revealed “our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality” and the doors to support our path to bliss in the outer world can open.

“But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child: This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it.  But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.” -Carl Jung, The Red Book, Liber Novus

Before birth the child lies sleeping, then later, dreaming in the womb; the divine journey of the evolution of consciousness begins. Upon awakening in the chaos at birth, a drama unfolds: the psyche begins to develop the capacity to try to organize these events into dynamic, meaningful patterns. This begins a mobilization of feelings that become focused on the dramatic split between the omnipotent child, who is at once the center of the world, and the vulnerable dependent child, frustrated by chaos, abandonment, and deprivation. This split causes an interruption in the flow of libidinal energy between  inner and outer relationships and induces the first experiences of shame. The wounded child and the divine child exist in each cell of our body and in all psychic movement from birth to death. In this birthing of the alternation of these primal opposites, the life cycle of individuation is generated.

But just as the suffering and shame is present in every cell of our body, so are the seeds of conscious understanding and liberation that link us to our paradisal origins. Jung wrote, “If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.” In tonight’s program, we will examine how the onset of individuation motivates the resolution of this tug of war between omnipotence and vulnerability so that we can become the willing “servant” of our own divine child. Shame can then become a guiding light on the path to release us from captivity.