A Brief Interlude before Ireland
My stimulus for creating a site for these posts was a vague desire to stitch together some sort of autobiography. I can trace that faint impulse back to reading Jung’s, “Memories, Dreams and Reflections,” for a second time, after having read it perhaps 10 years earlier. In retrospect, I see that I actually needed more time for inner growth. James Hillman says that experience is food for the soul, and I am sure that I would not have understood his meaning ten years ago. Reading “Memories, Dreams and Reflections” was the psychic food my soul needed in order to grow on.
I am unable to capture in words how inspired I was to read the stories of Jung’s extraordinary life and to see how he never stopped growing in spirit. His body simply aged as does all materiality in nature. But spirit does not seem to be controlled by the laws of nature. To me, his life confirms something for all of us, something that only the heart seems capable of understanding. Psyche is here to experience and to grow! Jung lived life so fully and so completely, and yet, somehow, he did not burn out his engines or squeeze all the juice out of his life. To me, he embodied a careful balance between the extroverted urge to expend energy and the introverted need to conserve energy. Ta Hui, a Zen master par excellent, frequently talked about the need to conserve power. I think preserving and expending power happens only when one has become sufficiently awake in order to understand that we are, at best, only temporary renters of this incredible storehouse of energy called a human. Rather than mindlessly burning out his life force, perhaps indulging in the fruits of worldly adoration so richly deserved, Jung carefully conserved enough to be able to expend/give the last gifts of his extraordinary energy to anyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see.
But Victor! He had amazing stories to share; his dreams and his reflections were astonishing. His psychological insights will ripple with ahas! into a future as far as the eye can see. So you want to write an autobiography about your little life? Please! Thus spoke Mr. Shadow! His name, by the way, is “Frank.” I saw his strong face while sitting in meditation at Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, thirty years ago, and have never forgotten him since. Fortunately and unfortunately, Frank is alive and well to this day, But that is another story for another blog.
I hate the word “blog” by the way! How does one gussy up that word?
So I contacted Andrew Reitsma, who created amazing light shows to accompany my electronic music when we worked together in Atlantis approximately 10,000 years ago. That would be Atlantis, not Atlanta, Georgia. But that too is another story for another blog. Andrew proposed this blog format, and created a beautiful site for these, ugh, blogs. I call them “patches” of colorful cloth, and hopefully, with Andrew’s skillful help, I will be able to stitch my “little” life into a quilt that will have some meaning for others. You will find reference to that in “Establishing a Beachhead.”
My first thought was to call this project “Memories, Dreams and Rejections.” For sure, there have been many feelings of rejection, usually hidden behind the mask of a wide smile. But rejection accounts for only a few patches in a quilt that now spreads over the span of seventy-seven years. My strongest impulse is to share what I have learned through thirty years of Buddhist meditation (mainly Vipassana from the Theravada tradition) balanced with the constant study of Jung’s teachings, which began with an analysis with Dr. Edward C. Whitmont in New York in 1984. Like Jung, Whitmont never stopped growing.
Initially, I intended the largest colorful patch to be a 30 page letter that I wrote in Crete when I was 36 years old. I have told the story of my journey to Crete, and how I gave up my safe world as a musician and yoga teacher (and my dog Willy) in New York, to countless clients over the course of 25 years, as a way to describe how I learned to tolerate aching loneliness in the first few months of my journey to Crete: loneliness and isolation with tears flowing down every night. I think my story was helpful to some clients, if only to hear and perhaps believe that there is another chapter for those of us who can bear to stay with and open to the psychological pain of loneliness. Eventually the loneliness that had followed me since I was a little boy, faded into what Krishnamurti calls “aloneness,” and what a world of difference between those two psychological states! Then as the months passed by, and as I traveled from Crete to India, and beyond into the following years of my life, the aloneness eventually faded into a soft companionship with a friend called Self. Sylvia Perera calls it, “a constant embodied presence.” What a lovely expression for soul or psyche.
Now as age 78 peeks from around the corner a mere two days hence, I see that we only stop growing when the heart stops opening to new experience. We all say that we are tired (if, as a therapist I had a dollar!), but Gallway Kinnell asks us to wait. When the heart opens once again, evergreen is just around the corner.,
“Wait
Wait for now.
Distrust everything if you have to.
But trust the hours. Haven’t they
carried you everywhere, up to now?
Personal events will become interesting again.
Hair will become interesting.
Pain will become interesting.
Buds that open out of season will become interesting.
Second-hand gloves will become lovely again;
their memories are what gives them
the need for other hands. And the desolation
of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness
carved out of such tiny beings as we are
asks to be filled; the need
for the new love is faithfulness to the old.
Wait.
Don’t go too early.
You’re tired. But everyone’s tired.
But no one is tired enough.
Only wait a little and listen:
music of hair,
music of pain,
music of looms weaving all our loves again.
Be there to hear it, it will be the only time,
most of all to hear
the flute of your whole existence,
rehearsed by the sorrows, play itself into total exhaustion. ”
How I love his words! We each are playing the flute of our own existence and perhaps that is the only reason I will be flying from Los Angeles to Dublin, Ireland this coming Friday, March 29, to attend a week of Jungian seminars in Adare Village, and from there a week of traveling in Scotland. More food for the soul.
Friends ask, “Will you be traveling alone?” and I respond, “No, I will be traveling with my very best friend.” Actually, I should say, “friends.” Frank will be on the trip as well as the Little Prince, my eternal child who took me to Crete. Madame Anima will be sitting on the plane; hopefully she will be nice to strangers, particularly if they are nice to her. Also along for the ride will be Hermes the Trickster, not needing his wings, I presume. He loves to play with people and sometimes not so gently. We are all a bunch! Every one of us, and I hope as I continue with these (ugh) blogs, you will become more interested in getting to know more of your Inner Board of Directors.
To be continued
