1. T. S. Eliot, “Little Gidding,” in Four Quartets, copyright 1942 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
2. C. G. Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, trans. R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973), vol. 9, part 2, paras. 43–67. (The Collected Works are hereafter abbreviated CW.)
The higher Self pushes us toward essential life experiences and connection to deeper and greater realms. Identity that is aligned with essential archetypal patterns of the cosmos produces what the ego experiences as meaning. The higher Self is more correctly used as a verb, as in “selfing,” since it is neither static nor really a thing. It is an observable process, and in this book when we refer to the higher Self it should be understood as the propensity of psyche to dynamically seek greater levels of integration, organization, relationship, and creative expression.
Self-organizing qualities of the psyche have been discussed extensively, particularly in complex systems theory. For those readers who are scientifically minded, it is worth noting that homeostasis, one of the fundamental characteristics of living things, is a property of open systems, especially living organisms, to regulate their internal environment to maintain a stable, constant condition by means of multiple dynamic equilibrium adjustments. The term was coined in 1932 by Walter Cannon from the Greek homoios (“same,” “like,” “resembling”) and stasis (“to stand,” “posture”). Your body, when working well, has built-in capacities to balance temperature, salinity, acidity, and the concentrations of nutrients and wastes within tolerable limits. This is self-regulation.
Similarly, the psyche has self-correcting and compensatory qualities. Since psychic processes are dynamic and do not regulate around fixed points (like a thermostat), a better term for describing them is homeorhesis. Homeorhesis, derived from the Greek for “similar flow,” is a concept encompassing dynamic systems that return to a trajectory, as opposed to systems that return to a particular state (homeostasis). First coined by C. H. Waddington in 1940, homeorhesis is the quality of psyche to regulate itself around dynamic processes. In ecology this concept is utilized in the Gaia theory, where the system under consideration is the ecological balance of different forms of life on the planet. See C. H. Waddington, Tools for Thought: How to Understand and Apply the Latest Scientific Techniques of Problem Solving (New York: Basic Books, 1977). “Selfing,” or the propensity of the higher Self to promote unlived potentials for integration and expression, can be understood through a scientific metaphor as well as religious metaphor, i.e., the divine spark or soul moving us closer to wholeness and divine manifestation.
3. Thomas Mann, “Freud and the Future,” in Essays (New York: Vintage Books, 1957), p. 317.
4. The Unlived Life Inventory is modeled on a questionnaire originally developed by Roland Evans, and has been adapted for our uses with his assistance. For other useful therapeutic tools, see Evans’s wonderful book Seeking Wholeness: Insight into the Mystery of Experience (Boulder, CO: Sunshine Press, 2001).
5. As quoted in Kate Hovey, “Castor and Pollux,” www.The-Pantheon.com. My retelling of the myth of Castor and Pollux also draws upon numerous sources, most particularly:
Karl Kerenyi, Gods of the Greeks (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1980).
Jane Ellen Harrison, Epilegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, and Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion (New York: Meridian Books, 1955).
Gilbert Murray, Five Stages of Greek Religion (Mineda, NY: Dover Publications, 2003).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
Arthur Cotterell, The Encyclopedia of Mythology. (New York: Anness Publishing, Ltd., 1996), p. 38.
Mike Dixon-Kennedy, Encyclopedia of Greco-Roman Mythology, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1998), p. 116.
Pierre Grimal, ed., Larousse World Mythology (New York, G. P.
Putnam’s Sons, 1965), pp. 118–119.
Thomas Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 148.
6. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 8, para. 749–795.
7. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 7, para. 112. Jung, following Heraclitus, writes, “The only person who escapes the grim law of enantiodromia is the man (sic) who knows how to separate himself from the unconscious, not by repressing it—for then it simply attacks him from the rear—but by putting it clearly before him as that which he is not.”
8. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 7, para. 114.
9. Antonio Machado, “Last night, as I was sleeping,” from Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado, trans. Robert Bly (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1983). Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.
10. James Hollis, The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife (Toronto: Inner City Books, 1993). This, like all of Hollis’s books, is rich and thought-provoking.
11. There is a similarity between the “strange attractors” of chaos theory and Jung’s notion of psychological complexes. You may operate on the edge of certain states, and then comes a “tipping point.” Attractors exhibit their self-iterating capacity in the psyche by demonstrating their attractive or seductive power as phenomena, ideas, theories, moods, and behaviors. These psychic nexus points are instrumental in the foundation of belief systems, emotional response, and behavior. A relevant article by J. May and M. Groder is “Jungian Thought and Dynamical Systems: A New Science of Archetypal Psychology,” in Psychological Perspectives, Spring–Summer 1989, vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 142–155.
12. For a useful summary of recent research in the science of human emotions, see Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage Books, 2001).
13. From the egoic perspective so much of life seems to involve opposition and contradiction, while from the more encompassing view of greater consciousness the same world becomes filled with paradox, mystery, and awe. The optimal identities (in people and organizations) are capable of critiquing themselves and seeing through partial views of reality as just that—partial and limited. As Owen Barfield has observed, literalism is idolatry.
14. For a broader discussion of this point, please see Robert Johnson’s book Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993).
15. To unravel the knot of one’s complexes is a long-term and ongoing project. In analysis I often ask clients to purchase a journal notebook and three pens, each with a different color ink. Assign a color to each of the different ways we orient ourselves to the world: black ink to record your thoughts, red for feelings, blue for physical sensations. Take time at least once a week to write in your journal. This is a great way to let go of your day before sleeping, so if you need to justify the effort in your busy schedule, think of it as a sleep aid.
Check in with each of these different aspects of your experience.
Noticing your thoughts will be the easiest. Use your journal as a container to hold the ideas that frequently run through your mind. Then check in with your feelings and write them down in red ink. Next, focus your attention on your physical body: Start with your toes and slowly scan up to your ankles, calves, thighs, and so on until you get to your head. Notice any tight places where you hold tension. Observe where you are numb or where there is little awareness at all and write this down. Record what you observe in blue ink.
The colors of ink will reflect different aspects of your selfhood. If you keep up with this a journal for a month or more you will assemble a record of how you process experience. Just becoming conscious of how much ink of a particular color appears is highly instructive. Many people will have mostly black ink, indicating how much they live in their thoughts.
With this journal you will become familiar with the repetitive patterns of your complexes in action. Are there certain thoughts that come to you repeatedly? What is the relationship of thoughts to feelings? For example, do you become depressed when you tell yourself certain things? Are there old tapes that you play in your head upon waking each morning? What happens repeatedly when you are in a stressful situation? What messages infiltrate and shape your evaluations of reality and your decisions? Are you aware of your physical state when there is a conflict? Where do you hold tension in your body? What do you do with subtle intuitions: Do you notice them at all? Override them with your ego’s agenda? Remember that bringing awareness to your inner patterns is enough to initiate change. As you read later chapters of this book you will learn how to dialogue with the complexes and thereby slow them down and alter their effects.
16. In the Zen Buddhist tradition it is customary for a master to ask a newcomer questions to probe his or her spiritual depth. A standard question, most commonly used for this purpose, is “Who are you?” This simple, seemingly innocent question is one that Zen disciples fear. It demands of us that we reveal immediately the reality of the “I” underlying the common usage of the first person pronoun—that is, the whole person. To consider such a question at depth demands of the disciple an immediate realization of the “I” as pure and unconditioned subjectivity. At the moment he turns his attention to his own self, the self becomes objectified. The pure self can be realized only through a total transformation of the ego into something different, functioning in a different dimension of human awareness. Please see Toshihiko Izutsu’s insightful book, Toward a Philosophy of Zen Buddhism (Boulder, CO: Prajna Press, 1982).
17. Walt Whitman, Song of Myself.
18. Coleman Barks, “Rumi and the Celts: The Soul as Conversation and Friendship,” Parabola, Winter 2004, p. 26.
19. What is more, though we all have a sense of what “I” means, on closer inspection it is very difficult to grasp, for the self is not a place or a thing. No “self” has ever been found on a CT-scan, in the dissection of a human brain, or in our genetic code. The self is an ever-flowing, ever-changing process, so it would be more correct to refer to it as a verb rather than a noun. We are constantly in the process of “selfing,” and though we possess a sense of continuity, at bottom there is no enduring “I” to be found.
20. Mary Watkins, Invisible Guests: The Development of Imaginal Dialogues (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000). This work contains an eloquent critique of developmental psychologies and their insistence on listening to only one voice per person. I have drawn upon her application of the term imaginal. Watkins is one of the original group who, with James Hillman, developed archetypal psychology in the 1970s.
21. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York: Anchor Books, 1959).
22. C. G. Jung, “The Aims of Psychotherapy,” CW, vol. 16, paras 97, 98.
23. For more discussion of this point, see Robert Johnson’s book Inner Work: Using Dreams and Creative Imagination for Personal Growth and Integration (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1989).
24. C. G. Jung, “On the Secret of the Golden Flower.” CW, vol. 13, para. 20.
25. Piero Ferrucci, What We May Be (New York: Tarcher/Penguin, 2004). This book provides a good introduction to psychosynthesis and exercises for development of one’s imaginal capabilities.
26. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 8, para. 532.
27. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 16, para. 86.
28. Federico García Lorca, “Casida de la Rosa,” trans. Jeremy Iversen. Reprinted with permission. Lorca was a Spanish poet and dramatist, also remembered as a painter, pianist, and composer. He was killed by Nationalist partisans at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.
29. Russell Lockhart, “The Dream Wants a Dream,” in Psyche Speaks: A Jungian Approach to Self and World (Wilmette, IL: Chiron Publications, 1987), p. 19.
30. Several of these techniques for phenomenological dream amplification are based upon the work of Stephen Aizenstadt, Ph.D., president of Pacifica Graduate Institute, Carpinteria, CA. Our thanks to Stephen for sharing his wisdom in seminars and conversations over the years. See Stephen Aizenstadt, Dream Tending: Techniques for Uncovering the Hidden Intelligence of Your Dreams (audiotape, Sounds True Audio, 2002). For a practical application of the analytical insights of James Hillman for working with dream images, see Benjamin Sells, ed., Working with Images: The Theoretical Base of Archetypal Psychology (New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2000). See also James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld. (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1979).
31. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 7, p. 155, footnote.
32. There are now a number of dream incubation exercises posted on the Web. See also A. Bernard, “Dream Incubation” (Sherman Oaks, CA: California Family Conference, 1989).
33. For a wonderful exploration of play and its role in the arts and life, see Stephen Nachmanovitch, Free Play (New York: Tarcher, 1991).
34. C. G. Jung, CW, vol. 6, para. 197.
35. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1963), p. 174.
36. See Jung’s introduction to Erich Neumann’s Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (Shambhala, 1990).
37. For this insight and a useful discussion of contradictory versus contrary opposites I owe thanks to Jungian analyst Richard Sweeney and his unpublished paper “The Shadow Archetype and the Search for a New Ethic,” presented March 17, 2007, and available from the Jung Association of Central Ohio, 59 W. 3rd Ave., Columbus, OH 43201.
38. William Blake, Auguries of Innocence
39. T. S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton,” in Four Quartets, copyright 1940 by T. S. Eliot and renewed 1970 by Esme Valerie Eliot, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.
40. C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.
41. Zenkei Shibayama, A Flower Does Not Talk: Zen Essays (Rutland, VT, and Tokyo, Japan: Tuttle Publishing, 1970). Reprinted by permission of Tuttle Publishing.