Close Encounters of the Healing Kind
I went to sleep thinking about what I would write about today. As I often do, I asked my inner Self for any help on what to write about. Usually, I wake up with clear guidance and proceed. Today, I woke up to the phone ringing as a dear friend was calling me. We talked for about 45 minutes, and it was like a therapy session. For fifteen years we have taken turns being supportive of each other. We tell each other the uncensored truth of what is occurring in our lives, both positive and negative. If one or the other of us has an emergency, we make time no matter how busy we are in our own lives.
Our conversations revolve around important relationship issues, spiritual insights, shadow work or dreams we have just experienced when we get an AHA moment. Today the conversation crystallized into one of those moments. The entire conversation was centered around the importance of being radically honest with each other and ourselves. We express our love and affection for each other openly and are in constant gratitude for our bond of friendship. We do not take each other for granted and yet, we are not codependent either. I learned from a previous relationship how damaging to our individuation that codependence can be. Individuation as Carl Jung describes:
“In general, it is the process of forming and specializing the individual nature; in particular, it is the development of the psychological individual as a differentiated being from the general, collective psychology. Individuation, therefore, is a process of differentiation, having for its goal the development of the individual personality.”
—Carl Jung, Psychological Types, par 757
We want to know ourselves.
We all want to become the individual we came here to be. Self-knowledge occurs over a long period of time as we accept our many selves which is the arduous work of coming to terms with our ego and what resides in our unconscious. Our Astrological birth chart is helpful to us when seeing a therapist or Jungian analyst is not in our budget, but it is also vitally important to have a friend, a trusted confidant who knows everything about you and loves you anyway! My friend understands what I am called to teach, studies and uses Jungian concepts in her own life. She has been doing shadow work along with me since we met. Consequently, we hold each other to a higher standard of accountability. We both accept there are no accidents and that life is about growth and change even if from time-to-time, we too would like to forget what we now know to be true as it’s not easy work. From direct experience, we can attest that the divine works in all things even if it isn’t always pretty or positive. Life repeatedly gives us technicolor mirrors of people we do not like and incidents with the outer world to reveal what is still unconscious and in need of redemption in our inner world.
When you can allow all of yourself to be there in a relationship with a partner, a friend or a sibling, the love you feel for each other is very strong. Their acceptance acts like a temenos, a sacred container for the difficult work of self-acceptance. Trusting each other enough to acknowledge our own imperfections and the new awareness’s surfacing of patterns that hurt us is descriptive of a process where progressively we accept and can love our many selves. This commitment allows us both to move forward with a stronger ability to subordinate our will to the Self (God within) and make this goal the supreme value of our lives. In Ego & Archetype, Ed Edinger says, “The connection between ego and Self is vitally important to psychic health. It gives foundation, structure and security to the ego and also provides energy, interest, meaning and purpose. When the connection is broken the result is emptiness, despair, meaninglessness and in extreme cases psychosis or suicide.”
We are cheating ourselves if we decide we are always victims. Painful or humiliating events, illness, accident, divorce, job loss, whatever are outer manifestations of an inner unconscious content that is circulating around to bring us to our own wholeness. As human beings, we go through difficult and sometimes shocking experiences that often repeat over a long period of time when we have been stubbornly resisting change. I have an agreement I made long ago with God. If I am not seeing something, show it to me three times and I promise I will pay attention.
Just days before his death, Carl Jung put it this way, “To this day, God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans and intentions and change the course of my life for better or worse.”
—Good Housekeeping Magazine, December, 1961
Depth psychology concepts like shadow work and seeing our complexes are NOT ego enhancing. In fact, they are the exact opposite. It’s akin to a confession with a priest to be that open and revealing to another person, but even better as this person has history with you. They’ve seen you at your best and they’ve seen you at your worst and love the real you. You know without a doubt because they have demonstrated it year after year. When they say anything to you, it is not with the intention to hurt you as they have your back. You are free to reveal what my teacher Rev. Pittman McGehee, D.D. called the four Fs of intimacy. Fears, failures, fantasies and feelings.
Another very important part of this open and honest discourse is that you get to hear yourself speak out loud what has been ruminating inside your heart and mind. Sometimes just in speaking and telling your story, you will hear your inner voice saying things to you that help you process the unvarnished truth. If an individual stays barricaded by a persona of “I already know it all” or “I don’t want anyone to know what I am really feeling or thinking,” the soul itself feels isolated and can go into a state of despair, hopelessness and yes, even thoughts of ending it all as one of my clients said to me recently.
Life is about change.
The only thing I am 100% sure of is that everything changes all the time. Give yourself the chance to love all of yourself, the dark (shadow) and the light (divinity) and share with someone you trust. This authenticity leads us to participate more fully in life and experience what the alchemists called the Gold — which is our open heart.
