Bud Harris's Blog, page 11

Today’s World Fears the Transformational Nature of the Feminine

We live in a cultural atmosphere that wants us to think that if we are struggling, then we are failures. But our reality is that if we are not struggling, we are not searching. If we are not struggling, we are not being born into new potentials.

Each struggle can bring us new opportunities for growth, and closer to a state of wholeness. These kinds of struggles put us in the transformative arms of the great feminine principle. Yet, we still fear transformation.

We explain why and what this means in our recent book, Into the Heart of the Feminine in Chapter 5 (p. 74-76) and would like to share these ideas with you:

…We are led into believing, at an unconscious level, that we can or should be able to control life. We also start to develop the illusion that we can be, or it is preferable to be, detached and above life intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally. The results of these patriarchal complexes in our cultural and, therefore, personal unconscious cause us to think we can carry out our goals, translate our ideas and designs into actions, and change our attitudes at will.

When we do not succeed in these endeavors, we then label ourselves as being lazy, weak, undisciplined, or inadequate or simply as failures. Not only is this a one-sided, patriarchal approach to life, but it is also a very damaging approach. Jung says clearly in Man and His Symbols (p. 82) that such an orientation requires us to pay a price based on “a remarkable lack of introspection.” He continues by saying that we are blind to the fact that with all of our rationality and efficiency, we are possessed by “powers” that are beyond our control. And the price we pay for our illusions is that these powers keep us “on the run with restlessness, vague apprehensions, psychological complications, an insatiable need for pills, alcohol, tobacco, food-and above all, a large array of neuroses.”

There is a further element to consider. This one-sided approach to life leads us to the mistaken idea that we can rationally choose our goals, single out and change our attitudes, organize and implement our lives efficiently, trusting that these abilities should guide us to healthy self-esteem, success, and a good life. But following this path actually means we would prefer a good life as defined by our patriarchal/marketing society, including our self-help marketing society, and in compensation to our early wounds and complexes. In this way, we set ourselves up to experience continuous cycles of shame simply because we cannot meet the expectations that we have created, because they are based on these illusions.

As analysts, one of the hardest things that we have to do is help people overcome their hidden contempt for the feminine as they begin their inner work. People in our society are easily swallowed up by busyness, productivity, and their crammed schedules. The modern technology that promised easy free time has brought, instead, tension, anxiety, and a compulsion to get more of the same. To escape this cycle, we have to learn to sacrifice some of the values and activities in this driven approach. This entails giving new appreciation and respect to taking time for silence and reflection as well as being receptive to and nurturing our inner lives.

This necessity is as urgent for men as it is for women, and it lies in the heart of the archetypal feminine: relatedness, receptivity, and valuing the non-rational. Until we make this shift in how we value ourselves and life, our ability to respond with intense interest and love to each other and to ideas will be fettered. Our deepest creativity needs a transformed atmosphere in which to flourish.

We need to pause for a moment in order to see how the effects of these negative projections on the feminine are crippling. They are generated by our patriarchal complexes (e.g., we are not really doing anything, we are wasting time, etc.) onto things that are not oriented toward achievement or “doing what has to be done” and also limit our ability to experience our emotions. To be more “efficient,” we are supposed to be detached from our emotions, above them and in control of them. The truth of the matter is that by adopting this perspective, we are beating down what should be handled with care. When we repress our emotions, we create their counterparts in our unconscious, where, without the light of consciousness, they will become dark, explosive, destructive, and increasingly overwhelming in some way.

Our emotions are the only way we can be personally engaged in life. Having the strength to experience our emotions, without being overwhelmed by them, and being able to learn from them are the keys to a psychologically healthy life. On the other hand, if we avoid knowing our psychological and emotional needs, as the projections from our patriarchal complexes compel us to do, we feel isolated. We can easily see that when we have such a hidden contempt for the feminine and when we live lives of over-rationality, over-control of our emotions, efficiency, and productivity, we are feeding the Death Mother complex. When we deny our engagement in life-the warmth of our emotions and even the heat of them-and see them negatively, the Death Mother takes this rejected energy and uses it to invade our world and our deep inner selves with a cold, fierce, corrosive power that kills hope and drains our vitality.

Before we continue our focus on projections, letʼs examine a further point that is inherent in the patriarchy. The patriarchy, and the internalized patriarchal complex in men and women, lives in fear of having the status quo threatened. This, too, is part of the negative projection on the feminineʼs ability to stir up change and transformation. It is also one of the main reasons we dread our emotions: Because if we really perceive and understand our emotions, we may have to face the daunting task of changing our lives.

Collectively and individually, we fear the transformative nature of the feminine. We view challenges to the institutional status quo of society-and, even more important, challenges to the way we have “institutionalized” our lives, feelings, value systems, and expectations-with dismay. Those of us who shun the transformational aspects of the feminine have projected our fears of our feminine nature (which include our fears of confronting our lives, traditions, attitudes, and history) onto the images of women that range from Eve, to witches, to bitches, to gold diggers, to hysterics.

Facing a Deeper Truth

Imagine that your life is threatened, and in order to escape the threat, you must create another identity, a false cover. In a way, this is what most of us do as we grow up, and seek to fit into the world. All too often, we think this false cover is who we really are. But in reality, there is much more inside of us than we included in our disguise, and these parts are crying out to be recognized. We write about this challenge in our section “Facing A Deeper Truth,” in our book Into the Heart of the Feminine, and we would like to share this with you:

Facing a Deeper Truth

Deep beneath the systems of order in our organized lives, stormy forces are often at work. We see these forces in Margaretʼs story. Margaret came from a life that seemed ideal from an everyday perspective, and yet it became the example I would use of a womanʼs direct encounter with the Death Mother.

Mythical kingdoms symbolize the deeper forces in our personalities-such as Inannaʼs tempestuous journey into the underworld or our glimpses into Greek mythologyʼs underworld, with its passionate lord, Hades, and his bride, Persephone, who preside over the kingdom of the past and the ghosts of our ancestors. Fairy tales show us the stories of violent fathers, sick kings, absent queens, stepmothers, dwarfs, heroes, and magical creatures-all carrying on lives in our unconscious that parallel the daily lives of our conscious personalities. These little kingdoms of alternative consciousness, emotions, values, and ideas maintain their existence, often waiting for us to search them out and become aware of the tremendous power they may be wielding in our emotional processes, relationships, and the directions of our lives.

Jung developed an approach that lends clarity and organization to our study of the unconscious and the forces that move us. He described the foundation of these forces in his work on complexes, which we will investigate more deeply in the next chapter. He used myths and fairy tales to help us understand how these complexes are formed, how they act, and how they can be transformed and integrated in our inner work. We will consider the myth of Medusa as a guide to the process of transforming our experience of the Death Mother.

Frequently, we try as hard as we can to live in a “normal” state of maturity as defined by the conventional models of existence we learned from our families and society. Or we try to rebel against these models, seeking a more fulfilling way of life that we are unable to attain because we have not yet faced the reality that shaped us, hurt us, dominated us, and is still blocking our path, like an avalanche on a mountain trail. Let us return to the story of Margaret for a moment. When Margaret tried to live a conventional life or to rebel against the cold propriety and expectations of her mother, she ended up weeping and weeping, and the more she wept, the more furious she became at herself and at life. Something deep inside her was calling out for recognition and healing.

As we recognize our painful inner voices, it will comfort us to remember that the healing purpose of learning to understand ourselves in more profound, heartfelt ways isnʼt just to resolve our conflicts or to deal with our neuroses. Our deeper purpose is to join forces with the well of life and renewal within us. Individuation, as Jung called this process, connects us to the source of our evolving strength, wisdom, love, and other potentials. By embarking on this inner journey, we begin accepting our reality, healing ourselves, and opening the door to our true capacities for living.

Margaret was frightened and ashamed of her tendency to break down in tears in front of other people. She was shocked at the vehemence of the exclamations that poured out of her in my office. Choking back her tears, she said, “I just canʼt do it anymore. I canʼt get my life together. I yell at my children, my marriage stinks, and I donʼt know why my husband stays with me. I donʼt like him and I donʼt like myself. I hate the way I look. I hate looking crazy. I feel stupid, and the harder I try to . . . fix things, the worse it gets.”

When Margaret stopped blaming only herself, she was able to begin explaining her anger with her parents. Previously, she had been directing her anger and fury inward, faulting herself for not being lovable and for not living up to their expectations. Yet Margaret had been unaware of how much she was blaming herself. She had resented her motherʼs relentless expectations, which always seemed to exceed anything Margaret could achieve. Margaretʼs experiences with her mother, her motherʼs coldness and disdain, had left her furious and had sabotaged her capacity to give and receive love. She was also devastated by her fatherʼs absence in general and his complicity with her mother when he was present. Bit by bit, Margaret began to realize that what looked like a childhood supplied with the “right stuff” was actually full of damaging events that had fashioned the plot of her lifeʼs story so far.

As Margaret learned more about herself, she began to grudgingly respect her rage and despair as turning points that forced her to begin the efforts to open up her life, to heal, and to grow, rather than to give up.

Photograph above: Black and White, Man Ray

Asking for Your Help: Restoring the Feminine, Together

We are asking you for your help…

We wrote Into the Heart of the Feminine: An Archetypal Journey to Renew Strength, Love, and Creativity in order to confront the horrible outcome of the wounding to the feminine in our patriarchal, achievement and power-driven world. We called this confrontation – both culturally and individually – as “facing the Death Mother.”

For over three decades, we as psychologists, Jungian analysts, writers, and lecturers have been devoted to healing, renewing, and revitalizing the archetypal feminine in ourselves and in our world. We have focused on restoring our ability to live from our hearts, to know life as a process of transformation, and to remember that each one of us is sacred.

We are passionate about responding to this challenge. Into the Heart of the Feminine is profound, passionate, and needed by every one of us. Why? We need it for our own journey into wholeness and authenticity…We need it because it goes to the heart of the issues, with its solutions going far beyond the usual, surface self-help directives… and…We need it as the foundation for our growth into strong, creative, unique human beings.

If we open our eyes to the reality around us, we see that our society is becoming one of fear, denial, pain, depression, anxiety, and alienation. At the same time, it seems addicted to putting on a positive face – in other words, addicted to denial. Anyone who doesn’t realize how cold, heartless, and alienated our culture is becoming isn’t paying attention.

Facing the Death Mother…facing how we are murdering the feminine in ourselves, in our relationships, and in our society is the first step in meeting this challenge. Coming to understand how to resurrect, heal, and live the authentic, archetypal feminine with strength, creativity, and tenderness within ourselves can then become our true calling.

The world needs the Feminine!

We are asking for your help and participation in communicating the power and necessity of this mission. We are asking that you let your own journey of healing and empowering of the feminine ripple out to reach others:

Tell a friend about this book.
Start your own reading/discussion group to read the book, chapter by chapter.
Write a review…on Amazon…or GoodReads…or elsewhere.
Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
Follow our blog posts and share them with others.

Let us join hands in responding to this challenge to our souls and to the value of our lives.

Thank you and Blessings to you all,

Massimilla and Bud Harris

The Lady of Shalott, John William Waterhouse

Dare to Face the Feminine Principle: The Foundation of Life

As we were writing our recent book Into the Heart of the Feminine, we felt that we needed to begin with a moment in time when we knew what it meant to be whole. We found ourselves tapping into the kabbalistic lore which speaks of a time when the world vessel was whole…before it was shattered and the divine sparks were scattered all over the cosmos. This archetypal moment serves as an important metaphor for our own birth…from being contained warmly in the womb within the Great Mother…and then being sprung forth into our world. We would like to share with you this particular passage, “The Feminine Principle: The Foundation of Life,” from our book where we address this (p. 9 – 11):

The Feminine Principle: The Foundation of Life

When we begin to talk about the feminine principle, it is very hard to separate it from our ideas of gender and from the wounds we have all received in our struggles for recognition, empowerment, respect, and equality. This differentiation is so difficult because the feminine principle, as an archetypal part of all of us, also transcends our identities, and yet many of its characteristics are not only discounted but actually ruthlessly denied in our culture. I will give more details about this in a later chapter. When itʼs all said and done, our concept of the feminine principle as one of the two great archetypal foundations in life-whether you call them masculine and feminine, creative and receptive, or yin and yang-is most often associated with the Great Mother.

One of the most common images associated with the archetype of the feminine is the Venus of Willendorf, which is clearly a mother figure. It is a statuette of a female figure with large breasts and a large belly. It was found in the village of Willendorf, Austria, and the statueʼs origins date back to between 28,000 and 25,000 BCE. Over the centuries, of course, many other archetypal figures of the feminine have evolved as various pantheons of goddesses that all represent aspects of human nature. But the Great Mother remains a primary one.

In his book The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype, the Jungian analyst Erich Neumann explains that the Great Mother has two essential positive characteristics. The first he calls elementary, and its positive attributes are to nourish and protect, to give warmth and security. The second characteristic he calls transformative, and the accent here is on the dynamic element of nature, which has an inherent urge toward motion and change, growth and transformation. Of course these two characteristics have their negative counterparts as well, which can become devouring and destructive. Neumann calls these negative characteristics the Terrible Mother.

Most of us are familiar with these patterns. From these images, we have taken the step of considering Mother Nature the source or womb of all life. Nature is bountiful, often seeming to give continually without limits. But nature can also be ruthless, killing and devouring without reservation. Because of this reality, humans throughout history have attempted to live with nature, conquer nature, or influence it through religious rituals. The situation with our own human nature is different. Through conscious awareness and our efforts to get to know our nature more thoroughly and to heal the wounds to it we have experienced, we can cultivate its positive characteristics. When we live in ways that thwart our natureʼs good intentions, we thwart her life-giving qualities, and they bury themselves deep in our unconscious and turn destructive.

Our attitudes toward our own nature begin with the first personification of nature, the first feminine figure, we encounter: our mother. For most of us, the first woman we experience is our mother. Her fundamental purpose in our life is to hold us; give us warmth, food, and nurturance; and to care for our bodies. Her power is extensive, and she can easily fill our tiny hearts with fear, feelings of helplessness, and even rage. But she can also fill our little worlds with comfort and security as she nurses us, rocks us to sleep in her arms, and tends to our emotional and physical needs. The relationship between a mother and a baby is one of natureʼs most beautiful mysteries and is shown in art and sculpture throughout the centuries. But as Neumann points out, just as nature can be cruel, so can mothers. The Terrible Mother can be destructive in many ways. In her devouring form, she may keep her children fixated in a nightmare of infantile dependence and through a smothering psychological attachment, often disguised as love, inhibit their development, using them to fulfill her own selfish desires and neurotic needs.

The devouring mother as an aspect of the Terrible Mother becomes the archetypal foundation of what we call a negative mother complex. As I will explain further in our discussion of complexes, this kind of negativity takes over our personality completely at times and shades its perspective all of the time. The negative mother complex becomes the lens through which we see the world and the way we expect life and other people to treat us, which frequently has nothing to do with the reality we are experiencing but cannot see because of the tinted lens we have. Negative complexes arise from a variety of wounds and experiences. All complexes are combinations of at least three experiences we have. First, they are based on our own personal wounds and experiences of growing up. In addition, our parents and grandparents, through their psychology, pass on to us their wounds, unsolved problems, and unlived lives. Finally, the neuroses-the out-of-balance or one-sided aspects, the conflicts, and the inadequacies-in the social character of our culture affects our experiences as we struggle to form our identity and feel secure in the world.

The Death Mother is the foundation of a destructive complex that is both personal and cultural, and it is a special form of the negative mother. With certain complexes, we cut off some of our particular gifts and are unable to live out some of our potentials. But the Death Mother causes us to cut off the essence of life within us.

Learn more about how important the elemental feminine is to our lives and how it can nourish or destroy us. Follow the path in INTO THE HEART OF THE FEMININE and dare to move into a life of full vitality and creativity.

Queen Mother Pendant Mask: Iyoba, Edo Peoples of Nigeria, 16th Century

Women Turned to Stone

“Moving from paralysis to full vitality and creativity” is a key theme of our recent book Into the Heart of the Feminine. From the responses we’ve received, women, in particular, seem to identify with this issue immediately. No matter how strong and successful we are, we all seem to feel paralyzed in some area of our lives.

Frequently, we become paralyzed when it is in our best interest to act in a way that displeases someone else. The same can be true when we need to confront someone in a close relationship or perhaps, a bombastic boss. Or we may become paralyzed when we need to become vulnerable in love. The same may happen when we have to confront and admit to ourselves the reality of how we actually were parented, without relying on our convenient explanations and excuses that we tell ourselves about how mothers and fathers treated us.

But we weren’t born paralyzed. Our paralysis comes from our experiences growing up. The core of these experiences is shaped by our culture’s wounding and belittling of the basic feminine principle – what we call the archetypal feminine – that is necessary to support the wholeness of life. In our book, Into the Heart of the Feminine, we follow the lead of the Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman as we journey deep into the dimensions of this wound in ourselves and in our society.

We identify this wound as “the Death Mother” because in general it is a negative force that affects all of us. In particular, it affects our capacity to “mother”…it affects our ability to like, nourish, and take loving care of ourselves. As a psychological complex, the Death Mother’s reign is much more around us than we may even realize. When we need to assert ourselves, try something new, advance our creativity, step out of our expected roles, share our vulnerability, or recognize our deep hurt, anger, or even joy – the Death Mother steps in. She is cold, denigrating, disapproving, and repulsed by our needs and desires. She is like Medusa. The instant we hear her voice within us, we freeze, we are turned to stone, and are left haunted by our guilt and shame.

In Into the Heart of the Feminine, we say more about this effect in the section”Turned to Stone” (p.102-103):

…Over the years, I have worked with woman after woman who was intelligent, capable, even professionally trained, and yet was still paralyzed when it came to pursuing her life with a sense of authenticity and security, grounded in her own ability. I am even more saddened to see how our ability to love and be loved and to be whole people in relationships has been frozen by the Death Mother’s influence in our families and in our society.

Not only have I seen this in the people I work with, but I have experienced it myself. I have questioned my own ability to believe in myself, in my potentials, and in my own success, not for years, but for decades. And I have wondered if I would ever really know what love is and if I would ever really experience it.

The effect of this paralysis is, therefore, very potent and very frightening. It has the ability to numb our capabilities to be productive, energetic, creative, and independent without our becoming fully aware of it. I have worked with women who were unable to finish college or graduate school because they were “paralyzed,” and with women who had chosen to get married, not out of love, but because they were “paralyzed” and couldn’t figure out what else to do. Moreover, the Death Mother limits our capacities to trust love and friendships as well as life. And all too often we, both men and women, unconsciously try to heal ourselves by seeking a good enough mother in our spouses, lovers, or partners.

I have also worked with a number of women who became professional, supported by the courage of the times, but could not bring their creativity and energy fully into their lives. In many cases, these women were haunted by the images emanating from the Death Mother. Such images spoke of shame, incompetence, and not deserving success. These feelings are especially debilitating when they are unconsciously projected on bosses, colleagues, competitors, and other people with authority.

In a similar vein, I have been very moved when working with women who truly wanted to bring love into their homes but were paralyzed even there by the pressure of negativity that they have inherited, which boils deep within their souls. In many cases, visions of their unhappy mothers and clichés of women’s roles in the 1950s and before cloud their vision of their possibilities today. With our history in this regard, a history I have shared that I was deeply affected by, this clichéd, shallow image of the feminine caused too many of us to see being quiet, receptive, and, at times, passive as capitulation to a destructive patriarchal system. This was an accurate assessment of the surface of our society.

But looking on a more profound level, we can see that the elemental aspects of the feminine are the holding vessel for love, creativity, and the nurturing of a true love life. I think that much of the rage in our souls boils at the way the patriarchal social character fails to value women’s efforts-and those of men as well-to bring love into our homes. The Death Mother has also robbed us of models of whole, mature adults being in love, struggling, and growing together.

We use the myth of Medusa in our book to show us the roots of how the archetypal feminine in our lives has become wounded. The myth also becomes a map for our transformation and informs us how to release our deepest abilities to become fully alive and creative. This journey requires courage – not the “blood and guts” kind of courage from the playing field or battlefield – but the kind of courage that allows us to give ourselves presence and attention. It is the kind of courage which allows us to look in the mirror, to journey into our own dark places, and to inspire a sense of meaning to take root and grow there.

So, I remember that while this journey must be careful,

it will be filled with awe at times, not just fear, rage, and grief.

And the outcome will be one of love, in its largest sense.

 

Painting above: Deep Waters by Rene Magritte

Do You Wonder… If You Can Really Forgive Yourself?

 

How can we begin to think about forgiving ourselves while we are living lives that are stressed, fragmented, and pulled in so many directions that every day seems almost like a losing struggle?

How often are we shutting down parts of ourselves as we try to get everything done in response to that disapproving, denigrating voice of the Death Mother in the back of our heads?

How often does this leave us going through the motions of our day-after-day routine without much dynamism, creativity, or time to love?

I am deeply moved by how hard so many women are trying today – at work, in relationships, as parents, and in pursuing healthy living. But most of the ones I know have trouble forgiving themselves for not getting it all done…or for not valuing what is most important to themselves.

Too often we are tyrannized, without realizing it, by the Death Mother complex in our psyche, in the form of feeling unworthy and trapped in our lives. Then we become driven by the things we think we want, and by whom we think we should be or are expected to be. Yet deep in our hearts, we know something is missing, something that could fulfill us. Self-forgiveness for beating ourselves up, as we strive after admired cultural values, begins with our search for the deep feminine soul within ourselves – the home of quietness, and the face of gentleness and compassion that we can turn towards ourselves. This is where self-forgiveness begins.

But we also face another hurdle. The great patriarchal marketing machine in our society knows how to spot our needs and amplify them in order to sell us never-ending solutions to them. This machine runs most of the self-help market, the new age market, and our religious and spiritual markets. This machine points out our inadequacies, struggles, and failures, and then promises hope through relatively easy solutions. I know many people who have tried path after path, and ended up with more secret guilt and shame. Most of these paths don’t lead us into the inner depths where the heart of our transformation lives. Most of them don’t lead us into our deepest selves where our untamed energy lies, and where our capacity to dream and imagine, beyond what we know, resides.

Forgiving ourselves for failing our own expectations in a world that doesn’t support and nurture us is a good place to start our journey home. We can peel this onion of self-forgiveness down to layers beneath our feelings of “falling short.” I remember a professional woman whom I worked with a few years ago. She had become a well- respected therapist, raised two children virtually alone, and was now in a loving relationship. But she was still haunted by the guilt and shame in her earlier life. When she was twenty-two, she had gone through a drug treatment program, and later had an abortion. In tears, she finally told me, “I don’t even have a clue as to how to start forgiving myself.” She isn’t alone. Most of us don’t have a clue as to how to start forgiving ourselves. Many of us can peel the onion a little deeper, and discover we have trouble forgiving ourselves…as irrational as it may sound…for not being the child who could bring peace into our families…or for not being the child who could earn our parents’ love.

One of the hardest things I have learned is that self-love rests on self-forgiveness. It rests on being able to understand who we were when we failed ourselves…and on being able to understand what needs, hurts, fears, and deprivations were driving us…and may still be driving us. Only then, are we able to meet ourselves with compassion, kindness, and forgiveness.

Through decades of my personal work with myself and with others in my professional work, I have learned to face the reality that love is difficult. Learning to love is always an odyssey that challenges the boundaries of how we have fenced ourselves…into practicality, into what we think we want, and into other people’s opinions.

But we face even another problem in this journey that we explain in depth in our book Into the Heart of the Feminine. In this success-oriented, as well as identity-oriented, society, we are taught to see every problem we have as a failure and a flaw in ourselves. So instead of forgiveness, we end up blaming ourselves, and are either trying to repress and deny our guilt and shame, or are looking for new ways to discipline ourselves with new programs of “self-improvement.” When these efforts flounder, we risk creating a growing pool of inner shame, and we never seem to be able to reach our goals.

Behind these struggles with ourselves, are the influences of the Death Mother complex in ourselves. (We comprehensively explain this influence and how to deal with it in our book Into the Heart of the Feminine.) Qualities of mercy, kindness, and forgiveness are traits that the Death Mother stops cold, in our identity-based world, especially when these qualities need to be directed towards ourselves.

Like love, forgiveness is not a simple process. As with learning to love, forgiveness, too, is a journey…a deep, psychological process, and we have to learn how significant and meaningful the complexity of it is. The key to this forgiveness process is for the offending person to take responsibility for the wrongdoing, to express sorrow and regret, and to promise his or her best efforts not to repeat such actions. Unless there is an acceptance of responsibility, forgiveness is an illusion to protect us from the strength of our own feelings. So how can we forgive, reconcile, or make amends with ourselves?

To begin with, we must free ourselves from the Death Mother’s effects and our cultural attitudes, and learn how to greet our wounds and failures with compassion and tenderness. We also need to honor how many challenges we have already faced, how hard we have tried in our efforts to do better, and what we have actually accomplished. Then we need to create our own ritual of reconciliation with ourselves. It is important to remember that these rituals of coming home to ourselves deserve sacred time, and that they are to be loved and desired – not inflicted upon ourselves. We may choose to make amends with the scared, wounded, failing parts of ourselves by writing a dialogue with them.

For example, the professional woman, that I mentioned earlier, may need to listen to the story of – the confessions of – her younger self who used drugs and had an abortion, similar to the way a good priest would listen to a confession. Or, this woman may need to approach her younger self as someone who is wanting to make amends, and then may need to listen to her speak of her sadness and regret. This ritual of reconciliation needs to be done in a written form, a dialogue with her younger self.

As we develop our personal ritual, we may use sacred symbols that move us, we may listen to special music, draw, or paint our feelings, and even dance them. Symbols have the effect or the power to transform the energy of our locked up feelings. Forgiving ourselves is the first step in coming to love ourselves. It is the first step in learning to not consider ourselves flawed, weak, or failures. It is acknowledging that we are filled with possibilities…and understanding that we must find self-forgiveness and love in order to give birth to these possibilities. Through self-forgiveness and love, true healing can take place. This is the healing that reconciles us with our essential Self.

Painting above: The Slav Epic, Alphonse Mucha

Armani, Chinese Food, and the Deep Strength of the True Feminine

 

From my experience, personal and professional, and the responses I have had from readers of our book Into the Heart of the Feminine, I have no doubt that our book can and will empower women. It will do so because empowerment must have an inner foundation that it can take root in and grow. Without such a foundation within us, our empowerment is like a house built upon sand and, in reality, will fail the person who thinks they have it.

The most successful women I know protect themselves with either a persona of having a positive attitude or one of toughness. But, more often than not, beneath these outer facades, lies a deep sadness whose influence is often felt and whose reality is just as often ignored. In many women, beneath this sadness is a deep anger like the writhing snakes on Medusa’s head.

As I wrote in my last blog, we fear these feelings that are so threatening to our identity or who we think we are or want to be. They are threatening because they put us in conflict with the ideals of our “positive thinking” identity and achievement-oriented society where to have deep anger and sadness makes us appear out of control, and this appearance is seen as a failure.

It would be nice if we could put on a new attitude like a new Armani dress or a new sweater from Chico’s…and change our lives. It would be nice if being cheerful and positive would open the door to love and joy. It would be nice if simply getting in touch with our inner warrior would empower us. It would be nice if it were this easy to change the structure of our personality and the patterns in our brains.

But, true empowerment, true liberation begins with facing the sources of sadness and anger within us that we have denied and repressed for so long. Several years ago, an old friend of mine, who is a successful woman, had an earthshaking experience. While she was reading Alice Walker’s book that told about the female castration of women in Africa, she was literally struck dumb. She was so outraged at the helplessness of the women, and the ignorance and brutality of the society, she lost her voice. It required a lot of inner work and surgery for her to regain her voice.

I understand exactly what happened to her. I too am furious at such events happening in various forms to women all over the world. I identify with them because deep down I know – I know something similar has happened to me, some precious tender part of my essence has been treated with ignorance and brutality. My husband and co-author Bud says the same thing has happened to men, the same pain and anger lies deep in their anima, the feminine soul in every man.

Real empowerment, real liberation, and a foundation that can foster love, creativity, and joy in our lives come from focusing on and healing…transforming those deep parts in ourselves. As important as social equality is – a fact I know because I live and practice as a professional woman, having the kind of empowerment recognized in a patriarchal world, which is an identity based on personal achievement, doesn’t ultimately satisfy the needs of my soul, which is the soul of a woman.

There are no easy answers. I am both sick of and sorrowful about the way our culture has learned to market to our needs with quick fixes and magical thinking in countless books, videos, seminars, and workshops that are like the proverbial Chinese meal that tastes really good and leaves us hungry again in a short time. The road to our authentic selves and to feeling at home in life is through our wounds, our deeply repressed desires, and our longings. In short, it is through what we Jungians call our shadows and our complexes.

There is no road around them, over them, or under them. And there is no road or path from another culture that saves us from this journey. The road is not by will power, or by putting on new attitudes, or by making better choices. The simple fact is that true strength, authentic attitudes towards life, and meaningful choices only evolve from the integrity of our souls, and the entrance into soul territory is through our shadows. The only better choice we can make is the choice to make the inner journey of individuation, the timeless choice of the mystics. It is the choice to face ourselves and find our authenticity and our divine nature in the center of who we are. In Jungian psychology, we call this center the Self. In Chapter 2,”Where Love Begins,” in our book Into the Heart of the Feminine, we say on page 31:

As we look further into how we can call on this part of ourselves for help, we will discover, as Jung did, that strong forces exist within us. Ultimately, the strongest one, the Self, is at the center of our soul. The seat of our inborn urge to heal and grow, the Self enables our personality, our life, and our story to become complete if we give our inner life the attentive, loving, supportive environment that it needs.

In other words, it is our deep feminine nature, whether we are women or men, that fosters and supports our connectedness to our Self. The book that Bud and I have written is important for women and for men. It speaks to the soul of our culture. It speaks to the unheard weeping souls of women.

The journey begins with facing ourselves, our reality, and accepting it with gentleness and understanding. Empowerment begins with healing at the center of our own truth and experience. Liberation begins with facing and freeing ourselves from the bonds of our history. This is the very big, first part of our journey. Then the next steps follow – as we explain in our book – finding our own voice and changing our fate.

Painting above: Woman, Gerard Sekoto

Women’s Anger and the Roots of Empowerment

by Massimilla Harris, Ph.D.

Like so many women, I have known my inner rage was built in small ways and large ways, over time. Some of it flowed into me through the previous generations of women that also struggled against tides of sorrow and disappointment. I began to feel confused very early in my life when I saw my brothers were treated differently in my family and Italian culture.

As I share my story in our book Into the Heart of the Feminine, I tell how my sisters and I were sent out to work to help pay for my brothers to go the university. I didn’t go to the university. I was sent to business school so I could earn more to help with my brothers’ university expenses and the family. Then in the business world, I had first hand experience of seeing men less intelligent and competent than me being paid more and promoted faster.

Once I left home and became independent, I sent myself to the university to get my doctor’s degree in psychology. The university experience began to empower me as it forced me out of my introversion and challenged me to formulate my thoughts and feelings. I began to realize that my life was changing because I was actively transforming it.

But something else happened that was a life-changing moment. I was nearing the end of my studies, heavily exhausted, and facing my comprehensive exams. One day as I was in the hall, a very attractive attorney approached me. He was well dressed, and from the quality of his clothes, he appeared to have been quite successful. On the surface, he was kind and polished. He invited me for a coffee in a café in one of Padova University’s elegant historic buildings. I also quickly noticed that, for the occasion, he had taken off his wedding band and the mark was still visible on his finger.

He fit the cliché of the Italian man who was full of himself and married. Something in me snapped, and I blasted him with a great deal of style myself. I was surprised because in that moment, I realized that my rage came out to protect me and give me power. In that instant, I realized that I had value in a way I had never recognized before, and that I had stood up for my worth. However, it took me a lot longer to step out of my Cinderella role in my family, and to stand up for my authenticity against my mother, brothers, and sisters (my father had passed away by that time.)

When I later reflected on this expression of my deep anger, I realized that I hadn’t been prepared to meet the anger within myself. Unconsciously, I had been afraid of my anger and the depth of it. To begin with, I had been taught to deny and disconnect from these kinds of feelings all my life. Moreover, I had never seen a woman being angry in a way that she wasn’t overwhelmed, hysterical, paralyzed or biting, cold, and withdrawn.

Of course, I had seen women and men who were brutal, but in my general experience, if women got angry, they were considered overly sensitive and hysterical. They were to be pitied and ridiculed. Whereas, if men got angry, they were considered powerful or, at least, to be feared.

I realized that I had no model for being angry in a way that empowered me. It took a lot of work for me to clearly understand that my anger needed, not only to be forceful, but formed and focused, as well. As my awareness of this long-bridled emotional energy grew, and my understanding of how I wanted to use it, I realized that it was blessed energy that kept me from making the false adaptation to my world and its critical voices that would have kept me helpless.

It took me many years of inner work to understand that my determination to develop my own identity and personhood was a two-edged sword. In the patriarchal culture I lived in, identity and personhood were based on achievement and things that enhanced that orientation. To become a successful and respected person in this context, to find a place in the world, I had to deny the feminine values in me that also wanted to grow and develop. These were the values of warmth, connectedness, a grounded sense of self-confidence, and joy. Like so many women I know, I feared my anger, and was threatened by my rage, terrified of it, actually, because I thought it could wreck the identity and life I had worked so hard to construct.

In our book,Into the Heart of the Feminine, I share that I learned the importance of my anger and rage – but also how to accept it carefully and thoughtfully as part of my inner work and my life’s journey into wholeness. In our book, Bud and I deliberately explain this process of accepting anger and rage, and approaching it carefully, by using the myth of Medusa as a map. In the book, we will guide you into how to fully understand where these feelings came from, how to accept them, and how to approach them in a way that transforms them into personal empowerment and creativity.

It also took me a long time to learn how to recognize and stand up to that critical, diminishing, paralyzing Death Mother that I had internalized from the world around me. She had taken root in my psyche beginning in my earliest years.

But I have also realized that the inner strength to go to the university and the moment of empowerment I experienced there when my anger exploded was beginning to indicate that my anger had turned into determination. It later gave me the courage to go to Zurich to train to become a Jungian analyst and begin a whole new life.

I am convinced that our transformed anger and rage become the roots to our empowerment. I believe my deep inner anger and rage, and even my despair at times, represented the life force within me that had been abused, denied, and repressed. The transformed anger and rage are the roots from which our natural passions can grow, our passions to be fully connected to our creativity and to life.

Painting above: Medusa, Franz Stuck

When Dreams Die: Becoming Strong at My Broken Places

 

We all have dreams that die. We dream how we want our lives to be and who we want to become. Many of us dream of creating a family better than our original one. And we dream of being able to share our love in better ways than our early models showed us.

We dream of success, good health, safety, security, love, and warmth…of knowing and being known, of being heard, recognized, and appreciated. We often have dreams for our children, our future, and our creativity. We have little dreams and big dreams, and sometimes we just dream of life being kind, gentle, and just. But what happens to us when our dreams fail? Of course the failure of our bigger dreams that we have invested our hearts in, is more challenging than the failure of our smaller dreams.

For me, Iʼve always found it helpful, especially when Iʼm facing failure, to have a map in mind for the journey that I am facing. So let us look at the failure of bigger dreams. What does it do to us when the marriage or relationship, we had so much hope for, fails? What does it do to us if a child or loved one dies? Or what does it do to us if a business is shipwrecked? Or we are diagnosed with a serious illness? How does it affect us when we finally realize the mother or father we spent our lives trying to please never loved us and never will, or their love was broken and destructive to our souls?

These thoughts remind me of Ernest Hemingwayʼs hauntingly beautiful passage inA Farewell to Arms, where he writes, “If people bring so much courage to this world, the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward, many are strong at the broken places. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these, you can be sure it will kill you too, but there will be no special hurry.” To dream of a better life engages us in being fully alive and shows our deepest longing for a more desirable life. It takes the courage Hemingway is talking about to really be engaged in our lives, to hope, to risk, and to try with all of our hearts. Being fully engaged requires that we dream, and if our dream dies, due to our unrealistic expectations or a cruel twist of fate, how can we become stronger at our broken places?

We should also ask ourselves, “What does broken really mean?” Allowing ourselves to be broken is the hardest part of this journey because of our cultureʼs emphasis on positive thinking, achievement, and happiness. We live in a world where admitting our pain and weaknesses is seen as an admission of failure.

Long before I dreamed of becoming a Jungian analyst, Dr. Jungʼs writings helped guide me through some of my darkest periods and into a new life. Dr. Jung explains (C.W. Vol. 7, par. 254) that when our life collapses, it “…feels like the end of the world, as though everything has tumbled back into the original chaos.” He then gives us three alternatives as to how to face these situations – situations where dreams have died.

To begin with, we may become overwhelmed by our circumstances and events. Then, we may just give up, literally die or figuratively die, and sleepwalk through the balance of our lives, never risking to become truly who we have the potential to be. Secondly, we may cling to the images of our old lives, trying our best to reclaim the vestiges and attitudes of our former lives. We may prop up the facade of our former “normalcy.” I have seen too many people insist on keeping up the appearances of a positive attitude no matter what the loss or illness was. I believe people in this group become in Hemingwayʼs words, a person who is killed with “no special hurry.”

Our third, and best, alternative is to begin the journey that will open us to hearing and understanding the inner voice that can help us become “stronger at the broken places.” With a commitment to this third choice, we enter the classic hero or heroine ʼs quest, the night-sea journey, the dark night of the soul, the voyage that has been called by so many names. We must all take this voyage if we are going to find our capacity to dream again, find a deeper purpose in our lives, and a new myth (a new structure of values and meaning) to live by. We must be prepared to walk through the hell of suffering and passion, through our subjection to the emotional and spiritual crucible in which transformation takes place, in order for us to become stronger at the broken places.

This journey begins with the receptive qualities we find by embracing the natural features of the archetypal feminine. And, as always, this embrace includes accepting our life, which doesnʼ t mean surrendering to it. We must become still, and go down into ourselves, our unconscious, as Inanna went into the underworld. We must honor the muted consciousness of the night, the moonlight, and ponder our lives and situations in our hearts.

For me, this means I must quiet my strong, active personality, my ego, and put it in the position that T. S. Eliot shares with us when he writes that we must let the darkness come upon us, as if we are in a theater waiting for a scene to be changed. In his poem, East Coker, he continues:

 

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love.
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

 

As I sit in the embrace of the archetypal feminine, I am there for transformation, and not for mothering, as we explain in our book, Into the Heart of the Feminine. I am trying to become more open to my inner voice through an attitude of spiritual waiting, tending to lifeʼs essentials, and [cultivating] a readiness for listening for that voice. I am also carefully paying attention to my nightly visits from my unconscious. As my old dreams die, so does my old identity, and during this process I become reacquainted with my deeper hungers and longings to be loved, to experience the Divine, and to know my life has meaning, is valuable, and that I can find a measure of peace and satisfaction. It is while I am in this state that I can begin to experience my deeper Self, the Greater Personality within me that supports me and creates new life.

Through these difficult ordeals, I begin discovering the true meaning of “religio” which is relating back to a power greater than my everyday personality. Enduring the journey and the suffering that opens us to our depths joins us to the greater story of humanity and our Greater Self. We become connected to this Divine Center that will help us be born anew, and will accompany us through the flames of our pain, disappointments, and grief. This journey becomes the foundation for helping us find a new purpose and direction in our lives that is a true expression of the essence of who we are becoming.

But I want to note, that when some dreams die, when some things are lost, we will need to find a special chamber or chapel for them in our hearts. This will be a very special place where we honor our loss and grief, and carry them in our hearts for as long as we live.

As I have lived, loved, and worked, this has been the essence of the process where I discovered the true meaning in Jungʼs words (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 354): ” For we are in the deepest sense, the victims and the instruments of cosmogonic love.” It is also how I have become stronger at the broken places.

Painting above: Night, Jean-Leon Gerome

Keeping a Darkness Journal: What to do with the Parts of us we Fear

 

I learned to never tell anyone what I truly felt, almost as soon as I could talk. This lesson left me constantly worried about what people would think of me and how much I could be hurt by them. It only took me a few years to internalize this process so thoroughly that I was no longer even telling myself what I really felt. Of course I am not alone in this process. There are many of us who have learned the same thing, in this culture that is hostile to any so-called weakness.

The fire and ice in peopleʼs lives slowly gets shared in my consulting room as they, like I myself had to do, begin to peel this onion to get down to true feelings. Gradually, I am told how they hate their addictions, their illnesses, their weight, and their loneliness. Some of us hate it that the slightest confrontation paralyzes us. We might also hate it that we beat ourselves up over the smallest mistakes, or we are ashamed that we burst into tears under pressure, or we simply want to give up. Others of us are afraid of our anger, our rage, and of being out of control, or of being swallowed up by our sadness.

For better or worse, I know all of these feelings well enough, and I doubt if there are many negative or self-critical voices that I havenʼt met. In my memoir, Cracking Open, I share with you a glimpse of the pain I was afraid to open up to and look at anew, or even allow myself to remember, until the Self, the Greater Personality deep within me, took over and drove me toward it, until I couldnʼt escape.

The questions I have always had to struggle with are: “What do I do about these emotions, these parts of myself and my life?” and “What do I do with them?” These questions demand a choice from me. Am I going to try to cope with the negative thoughts, feelings, and moods that come from the dark corners within me, within my shadow – or am I going to face them, try to heal and transform them, and in that process transform myself and re-kindle my spirit?

When I choose only to cope, I have come to understand that I am actually giving in to that old Calvinistic voice that I grew up with assuring me that I am flawed. In that atmosphere, I was afraid to expose or admit to my shadow, my fears, my failures, my anger and resentment, or, strangely enough, even my successes. I was also taught that pain was to be avoided and denied, because its presence signified my failures. I have come to realize that the choice to cope means that deep inside I will be continuing to see myself as a failure, and see myself as inadequate or bad. I must add that there were times when coping was the best I could do.

Over the years, as you see in Cracking Open and Into the Heart of the Feminine, Massimilla and I have learned to take the choice of facing ourselves instead of just coping – and we profoundly value the journey this choice initiates. So how do we approach our feelings of fear, rage, and despair…and things about ourselves that we hate, fear, and are ashamed of? What we do is to write everything we think and feel in these areas and about them in our Darkness Journals. The approach is “no holds barred,” without restrictions or rules. My rage, fear, and despair come out in whatever way I am moved to articulate it – in whatever language I experience it. If I am mad at…someone…you…part of myself…God…or fate, there is no shortage of four-letter words. The direct expression of my shadow is, in the long run, the beginning of acceptance and transformation.

To have a protected place and a container for the expression of my underworld is essential to the process of acceptance and transformation. Jung was clear that nothing can be transformed until it is accepted. And I want to be clear that I donʼt think acceptance means embracing, surrendering to, or even befriending; nor does it imply forgiveness. These are other questions to consider. But expressing these things in the concrete form of journaling does give me both the freedom and the ability to relate to my inner darkness in a more objective way.

Actually, I keep three journals. One is for my daily reflections and dreams. The second one is for thoughts and feelings about the topics of my writings. The third is my Darkness Journal. I got the idea for this journal from Dr. Jung when he advised a woman in analysis with him, as to how she should process what went on in the deeper, and sometimes, frightening parts of her mind. He said, “I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can – in some beautifully bound book…It will seem as if you were making the visions banal – but then you need to do that – then you are freed from the power of them…Then when these things are in some precious book, you can go to the book and turn over the pages, and for you it will be your church – your cathedral – the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal. If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them – then you will lose your soul – for in that book is your soul.”

This is the way Massimilla and I value our shadows and the wounds and potentials hidden in it. We also make it a point to remember that nothing in our shadows frightens us more than our own denied and impoverished potentials. Of course I often wonder what door I am opening here. We think we know our likes and dislikes, our pet peeves, and our sources of pleasure. But are we intimate with the complicated terrain of our hearts, the landscape supporting our journey into who we are and the living world beneath who we have been conditioned to think we are? And all too often, we practically feel duty-bound not to truly face ourselves.

There was a time when I feared that facing the real desires of my heart would wreck my life. This fear is also one worthy of exploring in my Darkness Journal. So, too, was the dream I had many years ago, when a huge raging bear was chasing the terrified young man that I was, through the collapsing ruins of a burning castle. Moreover, I have learned that when pain, resentment, anger, and other emotions are denied and repressed, their infection builds up beneath the surface of our awareness until, in some way, it makes us sick.

As I thought about Jungʼs advice, I wondered, “Just what did he mean when he said this book, my Darkness Journal, could become my cathedral, the seat of spiritual power in my life?” My reveries reminded me of another one of my favorite quotes from Jung that supports my equilibrium: “The great principle of transformation begins through the things that are lowest. Things…that hide from the light of day and from manʼs enlightened thinking hold also the secret of life that renews itself again and again. In the past when a transformation of this kind was sought, the mystery religions prescribed a ritual of initiation.”

In this cathedral, my Darkness Journal, I forget all the stories and explanations about why I feel the way I do. I put aside all the ways I’ve been taught to smother these feelings and let myself risk knowing what is drowning, smoldering, or burning within me. Then when I find my ground again, it is as if the force of my experience has been a desperate prayer or call to the Power that is greater than I am and to accept that my life is valuable. My Darkness Journal may begin the ritual by which I will be transformed and as a container for transformation becomes my cathedral. In many cases, the things I am journaling about turn out to be indications of where I have betrayed myself or where my life force has been abused, denied, or repressed. My fear of the deep emotions I have to face have turned out to be like the fierce-looking gate guardians to temples or gargoyles on real cathedrals. They scared me, but once inside where I face myself and my transformations, I may also find centers of strength, wisdom, and love. I have learned I have to go through the gates of my deep emotions, wounds, and denied potentials to enter the sacred space of my passion, love, and purpose. More than once, I had to call on the help of a good therapist, and later a good Jungian analyst, to get by these guardians. But my Darkness Journal has become the sacred space where I can meet “the life force,” the Self, and the Divine within me.

It seems odd to me that the longer I face and write into the dark areas in my shadow, the more I am able to experience self-compassion and learn to accept the causes of my pain with understanding and gentleness. As I write, I am creating more room within me to accept life, and more strength and the kind of courage that can prepare the ground within me to let love and meaning grow.