In many ways I see Carl Jung as a harbinger.. I find and have drawn great comfort from his concept of the soul in us, in many ways he put the soul back in the word psychology which broken down means the logos (or logic) of soul. But sadly soul got removed from psychology when it progressively moved away from seeing the inherent wisdom in so called ‘pathology’ or symptoms of soul loss.
Today I was interested to read some quotes from his writing about his awareness of how he carried the fate of his ancestors in terms of this being like a sense of purpose, in complete mission or unanswered questions that he then had to live out or seek meaning and answers for in his own lifetime. That made sense to me but I see it in a bit of a different way, I see us as carrying on the life force of human creation of a family’s evolution while trying to find our individual relationship to it and work to become more conscious. We need the understanding of how this work of creation is trying to evolve and emerge out of all kinds of restrictive and at times limiting influences and of the inherent creative possibilities that exist for us to find new forms of expression, wisdom, understanding of ourselves and other humans as well as beauty and healing within the evolution of it all. In this way each single human life becomes a piece of art work or meaning making in process, something I am sure would please energy intuitive Lee Harris’s guides the Zees a great deal.
Sadly when we venerate technology and industry or productivity alone along a linear ascending pathway, we often devalue the grounding, simplifying and humbling aspects of both nature and soul. We need both but I think nature and soul should be honored as our fundamental bedrock for if we move too far away from nature then we fall out of harmony with it on both inner and outer levels. We cut off potentials that my want to evolve past certain limits too.
When Jung decided to retire to the earth and nature at midlife (it was not a true retirement as he went on working on an inner soul level in that place) what he sought to do was come back in harmony with a slower, more grounded and holisitic way of living that also honored both darkness and the soul while appreciating too the great transformative life that lives within us and is seeking to evolve.
I cried a fair bit in therapy yesterday reading the previous few days posts. When I shared about the light inside the dark that each of us can find I started crying a lot for my Mum at the same time as I began to feel just so much pressure and tightening across my chest. Those tears were also for both sisters who struggled or struggle to emerge and got buried under the hidden weight of ancestral traumas. The fact is with my living sister I kept being there as much as I could even when she was given shock treatment instead of massages, holding and cuddles.. I had to admit at a point a couple of months back after screaming out about it all in an email to her son and my brother and not having my cry received well that what was happening to my living sister was so far outside of my control to be almost driving me crazy each time I went near her suffering.
Yesterday a lot of guilt and sadness came up about this while at the same time a healthier part of me witnessing all of that knew that pulling back was an act of humility and was also about recognizing my fallible human limits.. It was also an attempt to be kinder to myself, something that does not always come easy to me at all.
Anyway, back to Jung, he intuited then (during the 1940s) something that epigenetic research undertaken by people like Bruce Lipton and Rachel Yehuda and others have shown to be true, we carry cellularly the experiences and stress or emotions and anxiety of our ancestors. My body had a big attack after reading Jung’s quotes on his own carried history an hour before therapy, as my body knowing of this began to rise up again on the back of yet more trauma being triggered around my head due to that last lot of dental treatment.
Being realistic about my own realistic and manageable ‘windows of tolerance’ for re-traumatizing events (such as dental surgery) I now know when I have any kind of dental work its going to take me back to a very suicidal and traumatized place for a day or so. There is no way now I can deny the horrendous and terrifying impact of what my body endured that came to such a critical head in both 1979 and 2005 and I noticed as I read everything to Katina yesterday I was slower far more in my body and feelings of grief and acknowledgement that I ever have been before.
As the same time I know despite all of the pain and sometimes wishing it could end, I am bloody lucky to be alive. Without a good therapist and this blog, God’s honest truth, I do not know if I would have made it this far to the other side of all of those traumatizing events of my past. The very painful thing is that so.often people just do not understand the power of trauma we carry. It is not just something we can ‘get over’ with an effort of willpower alone and it does continue to affect us until we die. It is our capacity to bear and acknowledge that which is MOST, MOST IMPORTANT
Emerging From The Dark Night 