Soul Care and a Happy Mind!

Soul care yields a happy mind. After over thirty years of professional practice in depth psychology and over forty years of personal dream tending, I've come to the conclusion that caring for the soul takes us into a strange realm of contentment and well being. Happiness of this sort is not common. Soul care requires patient and tender devotion to the psyche. As we cultivate such devotion through sensitivity to self and others and by consistent dream tending, there comes a gentle but definite knowing that all is well.

I've heard colleagues and acquaintances argue about happiness, some saying it's superficial or irrelevant. Their fierce manner and twisted expression betrayed an underlying frustration. Often, in hushed tones, they'd complain about disturbed sleep, chronic conflicts, and a host of physical ailments.One psychoanalyst recently commented, "Well, after all, Freud did consign us to everyday misery being about the best we can hope for." I knew he had missed out on a vital facet of life experience, evidently unknown to Freud....happiness.  Happiness, when denied and thus never integrated, turns south and morphs into legions of suffering.

Patients who heal and learn to tend soul gradually, sometimes incrementally, experience consistent happiness. The archetype of happiness reveals herself in dreams as a flush of oneness with self and the world. My own Native American influenced cosmogony (my grandmother Pueblo Indian and medicine woman) looks at unnecessary pain and disease, to include unhappiness, as resulting from a disruption in harmonious cosmic patterns involving gods and spirits, people and animals, the archetype of nature herself.

Tending the soul by asking what caused imbalance, what disrupted natural life harmony, may yield corrective insight so that we return to a harmonious cooperation with nature and life that brings soulful well being and happiness.

Drug Cocktails, Brain, and Soul!

New York Times Sunday Dialogue article (May 26, 2013)  about medication and psychotherapy struck a few soul chords. Medication works for as long as its taken. There is no doubt that it can prove necessary and helpful when treating severe and chronic mental pain. However, drug cocktails don't fix soul misery and the need for meaning and wholeness. Seasoned therapists know when to use drugs, when to refrain, and about the need to guide the sufferer along deeper and darker paths of soul to find authentic and long lasting healing.

To go for mere brain change confuses fixing the outside and then thinking this changes the inside. A deep soul  shared her experience: "I needed the medication so I could stabilize, but then my dream said the pills had done what they could do. I had a new hairdo that was sprayed hard with hairspray. Tiny flies and mosquitoes flew around and in and through the pretty looking hairdo. It looked good but was loaded with tiny bugs. I felt good because I wasn't feeling the craziness that was inside me.  Drugs helped me to stabilize. Then, I needed to wean off the drugs and get down to soul work."

Some folks, of course, need to stay on medication due to the severity of their problems. Soul work can be done while on medication as long as the drugs don't deaden human feeling. This happens when a person is over medicated. All in all, we can say that drug cocktails alter the brain, depth therapy alters the brain, but only soul work heals the human psyche.

Good Enough Mothers, Magic Makers, and the Invisible Realm!

On this Mother's Day 2013 I thought up a little post about mother's, will, and the invisible realm. In the womb of the mother life is nourished. In the womb of mother, womb of life, the realm invisible to the eye, life starts, is nourished, and one day departs into the visible world. Psychic potential depends on will. Will takes us to the door of potential, states William James, father of American depth psychology, but forces from the invisible realm are what usher us in. No amount of strain, pushing, forcing, or ego coercing brings results without forces from the invisible realm of the deep unconscious mind, the spiritual world, coming to create what once did not exist.

Mothers, good mothers, those who aren't and don't need to be perfect, can be all right with being good enough, in the words of depth psychologist David Winnicott. Good enough mothers are light bearers of all that is right in the world. They are there not only when they have to be but when they don't, just because they want to and care to. Such a wondrous being told me, "When I look at my children I know they are their own little selves. They are life filled, and my work is to nourish the unique life in each of them and try not to get in the way." That statement made such an impression on me since it came from a deeply spiritual and practical woman. She went on to say that her everyday spirituality very much was about caring for her children, her marriage, and herself---to the best of her ability, not perfectly, simply good enough. That's a magic maker mother!

Now, to get back to William James and the invisible realm, it seems to me that mother's are indeed magic makers. They step forward, by an act of will, whether conscious or not, to the door of motherhood. They are there not only when they have to be but when they don't, just because they want to and care to. I believe that the mother's spiritual energies then come to move forward with that which has been requested. One mother, a dream sensitive soul, said, "I dream about my children. My dreams help me with what's needed when. And, they also help me to know my limits." She knew that being a good mother doesn't require perfection, just the will to be good enough. Invisible forces, spiritual energies, come to aid via instincts, dreams, deep feeling and love in being about the business of good enough motherhood--true makers of magic in the world because they are there not only when they have to be but when they don't, just because they want to and care to.

Good enough mothers are magic makers of everyday life!

Diseased Sense of Self---A Cry for Help!

When psychological symptoms hit hard, like a Mac truck running straight into the center of your gut, then we can be sure that the self is in trouble. The New York Times article,  The Problem With How We Treat Bipolar Disorder,  dramatizes a woman's struggle with bipolar disorder and how she came to see that more than medication intervention, she needed help for her diseased sense of self. A diseased sense of self slams us with symptoms aplenty---depression, anxiety, substance abuse, sexual disorders, unending relational conflict!

After years of hospitalization, drugs, this woman finally confronted the psychological reality of the self. By turning within, acknowledging personal demons and what they have to convey through the antics they spring into our lives, we begin the process of true healing. Hospitals and drugs, not ends in themselves, only help to the degree that they facilitate the process of inner healing.

Patient soul searching in the company of a depth psychotherapist sheds light into dark realms of mind. A sincere woman expressed it wisely, "During hypomanic states I thought I was seeing so clearly and doing so much. Then, I'd crash and my mind would break into a million pieces. Once I stopped the running, and found someone to take the journey with me, I discovered things about myself and my life I didn't like and had to change. I'd been running for years. I'd run and crash and run and crash---that's bipolar disorder. Now, I watch myself. I start gearing up and I know it's time to go slow and turn inside, listen to what I need to hear and learn about myself."

Dark states of mind are loaded with healing potential. Depression, substance abuse, sexual disorders, relational conflicts really are gifts. They come to say, "You're unhappy for a reason. Take some time, look inside, discover what you need to so as to make the changes you need to." C.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, William James, the great fathers of depth psychology, would bid us onward into deep realms of psyche and there come to terms with the fact that running from self ends in "breaking into a million pieces"; whereas, coming face to face with self offers the chance to unwrap the gift life has presented us.

Painful Relationships...Transformation in the Offing!

Painful relationships scream for attention. They challenge us to figure out the meaning. Do we work things through? Is that possible? Do we let them go even though there's been weeks, months, years of familiarity? Peering into darkness, into what isn't known and what isn't guaranteed, carries a certain dread of being wrong. But, we need to consider that doing nothing, purposelessly lingering in misery, definitely counts as one of the worst and most assured ways of going down a psychic dead end and waking up with a blistering emotional headache.

Old mystics purported that we only love God to the degree that we love the person we love least. Translated out of old religious speak, we might consider that truth to self urges us to take stock of what makes sense and what does not regarding the people in our life. A capacity to reach understanding hallmarks keeper relationships. If we can't, over time, reach a meeting of mind and hearts, then maybe it's time to move on.

Moving on from relationships that don't work open up potentials for new avenues of relational growth. "I was scared to death to admit that I'd been stuck for a long time. My dreams showed me as a teenager in high school, going from one emotional drama with this man to another. I knew this was happening because the relationship couldn't be unstuck. Psychologically, it was a high school crush relationship. My psyche screamed with pain." This highly conscious woman had been blindsided by emotional need, but eventually said good-bye to a go-nowhere relationship and drew a deep emotional breath, opened her mind, and trusted that just as her psyche screamed in pain it would also guide her into relational meaning.

Painful relationships indeed scream for attention; however, the good news also rings through loud and clear that where there has been darkness there is also potential transformation in the offing! In the words of William James, the father of American depth psychology, "There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision." So, the message of the day has to do with listening to life's whispers so that it needn't scream.

Eternal Flow!

Life is about itself and we are part of that eternal flow! That is enough reason to live today with gusto and yielding to what the moment brings. People so often say that they don't know why they are alive or what life is all about. Life is about itself and we are part of that eternal flow!

"Art borrows nothing and has no other source than the soul in the midst of the world surrounding it. Its essence is unknown and its goal is art itself." These words of French twentieth century artist, Odilon Redon, in his manuscript, To Myself: Notes on Life, Art, and Artists, inspire us to consider that life and soul are one reality. The goal of now, this moment in which we abide, is none other than knowing the pure art of soulful living in the now, the eternal flow of whatever comes our way in the moment. It is part of what is and that is life, the eternal flow of soul.

When we flop ourselves onto dry land, get out the eternal flow of soul, we lose contact with our source. Energy loss, unhappiness, a sense of moving through the day grudgingly, happen when we've flopped ourselves out of that eternal flow that is soul. Up to half of our population suffers from regular depression. Making our way back into the waters of soul bodes well for healing from depression. We know we're getting close or are there when the symptoms begin to clear and we experience ourselves back in our own depths, once again content and well.

There is no merit in suffering for sufferings sake. Misery in this life won't get us to bliss in the sweet bye and bye, as is promised in some religions. However, unhappiness, if heeded as a message of longing for return to one's source, to soul, can motivate us to look within, discover how it is that we need to set our lives right. Thus, the purpose of life is not some religiously bent suffering for sufferings sake, but is about living soulfully, participating in the eternal flow of soul, moving into the pure art of soulful living. Again, in the words of Redon, to include the art of life, "Art borrows nothing and has no other source than the soul in the midst of the world surrounding it."

Prison of Belief!

Healthily, the way it's supposed to go is that belief is to supposed to set us free. When it doesn't then it makes sense that reconsidering things is in order. Guilt, fear, force, shame can't be the way to make lives better and people more loving, creative, and conscious.

Religion, psychology, art, all manner of spiritual practice, and sexuality are charged with numinous energy that can compel people to either find themselves, or else (horror of horrors!), lose themselves. Loss of self takes place when we no longer think for ourselves. We can end up thinking like everyone else, whether they are artistic geniuses, Jungian or Freudian therapists, yogic gurus, or passionate lovers unless we rather fastidiously take into account the guarding of our own mind.

New York Times article,  Going Clear (12.20.13) , explores the power of belief within an organized religion and how it literally corrupts human nature. Rather than engaging in spiritual encounter that heals and transforms, individuals find themselves succumbing to group think, a terrible loss of self and mind. A professional colleague on hearing of my upcoming novel, The Unholy (release date Spring 2013), said ".....the dark side of religion?.....Paul.....it's all dark." I went on to say, "Even saying that is too much. People need to have their own experience of what works for them and what does not. That leaves us free, or else we run the risk of dictating that all manner of one thing or another is bad." We want to encourage exploration, experience, psychic freedom.

Prisons of belief are built when all manner of this thing or that are judged all good or all bad. Excluding obviously destructive ideologies and actions, ideas and practices are in large part neither good or bad. It depends on what we do with what we have and what life has dealt us to deal with. Healthily, it is the nurturance of inner truth, what sets you and me as individuals on the path of a free mind lived without knuckling under to threat from external forces that demand compliance, that ultimately unbinds the human psyche and lets loose consciousness!