I was still neurotic and my left brain was a little slow learning the ropes, the language (of Depth Psychology), the theory and the history of the evolution of Jung's contribution to the restoration of Soul to Western so-called civilization, but I was on a fast track and I would allow nothing to slow me down or get in my way. (Hard to imagine, but at 22, I felt there was already a lot of water over the dam, and that I had wasted years of my life!)
Jung taught me about the psychic- or dream-body; now I want to talk about the energy body. But to understand the energy body I need to go into the other bodies and say a little more about the Self.
XXIV
I have long been curious about the diagnostic potential of dreams, and also how they are helpful in dealing with chronic conditions. These are almost opposite interests. Dreams warn us when we are in danger of getting sick and they also give us invaluable information about any illness or condition that we already have.
To approach health holistically and openly, it is essential that we realize that physical health is only one aspect of the nature of wellness. We have a physical body but we also have an energy (or subtle) body, a karmic body, a dream body, and an emotional body. The physical body includes our genetic body. The physical body is surrounded by and supported, if not protected, by those other bodies, which are all more subtle than the physical. The karmic body, that is a given, but the more we know about that body the better because it largely determines our dharma, the nature and character of our conduct and business on Earth.
In living with chronic conditions we have to try to keep the condition from compromising our core self, our karmic analog of what Jung identified as the Self, the archetype of individuated human wholeness. Jungian Psychology has also been referred to as Archetypal Psychology. But understanding archetypes as the patterning agents or engines of our dreams is not enough to grasp what is going on in any single dream because no archetype accounts for the dream reality as a whole. For that we need a way of grasping the whole flow or whole field of our individual psyche and what makes my psyche unique from yours relative to the whole gestalt of my life versus yours. The archetypes emerge out of an underlying and over-arching background, or totality, which is the Self. The Self is a unifying archetypal field around which our life assumes a form, but it is more helpful to see the Self as the archetype (or whole pattern) of our individuality. It encompasses the whole movement that synchronizes our individuality with the divine without forfeiting what makes our individuality tick.
Borrowing from the potter's art, if the Self is the wheel, the divine is the hands that shape the clay and we, in all our individuality, are the pot that takes shape.
When we work with dreams we are focusing on our dream body, but no matter which body we are focusing on, that work will engage and benefit the other bodies (by the ripple effect), but for best results, in dealing with a chronic health condition, it helps to work with all our bodies directly using different healing modalities because that increases the probability of a global shift and that the healing will cascade. But the goal of any kind of depth-healing therapy is that our core-self will synchronize with the Self.
I have learned a lot about the energy body working with students, but especially four young men. Dream work has kept my relationship with all of them fluid. I am partly mentor, partly guide, partly shamanic practitioner, partly instructor, partly friend, partly uncle. Only a few times was I actually in one of their dreams. Mostly I am the honest mirror. My fluidity breaks down the usual father-son, teacher-student dynamic and the space is sacred and safe, so tears are frequent and welcome. I like to think that my own work with yin and yang and my awareness of the transference [1] has prepared me to work with young men (and women) who are ripe for exploring their shadows, their emotional bodies and chakras.
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[1] Transference describes the process in analysis whereby the analyst becomes the hook for powerful projections of personalities, shadow attributes or archetypal content that constellate out of the dream work, that seem to belong to the analyst because they are unconscious. The transference places the analysant in a unique position to interact with these psychic projections in the hermetically safe space of analysis through the agency of the analytic relationship.
To be continued . ..
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