Listen to your body and heal your soul

Healing is a natural process. We have all noticed this. Wounds heal given the right kind of care. Cuts hurt at first. There is a period of sensitivity and if allowed to heal slowly, new tissue and skin form just as Mother Nature planned for us. We develop emotionally and spiritually in a similar way. If allowed to develop naturally we grow more mature as we experience life.

Culture and family have a way of interfering with Nature’s simple plans for humans. We are social beings and have developed complex ways of living with one another. Some natural characteristics which we express in childhood are not valued by our family or social group. We learn to repress these characteristics and perhaps find socially appropriate outlets for them. Sometimes we have to “forget” events and experiences we have had, the ones which could bring shame, guilt, or rejection upon us. These memories are locked into our bodies. They are muscle memories and can demand attention over time.

The inner child is the person who experienced these repressed events and when there is no other way of getting the ordinary consciousness to pay attention to “forgotten wounds”, the inner child uses the only means at his/her disposal, the body. The body has always been a part of us, albeit ever changing. We had this body during childhood and it has evolved over time. We look different as adults. Our bodies have changed, but the memories are still there. We say these memories are unconscious because the ordinary consciousness, which psychologists call “the ego”, is not aware of things which happened long ago, especially things which were supposed to be “forgotten”. When the inner child part of us is in need of attention from our adult self, the body is always the first avenue of communication. We call these messages “symptoms”. They get our attention, but often we just find them annoying as they make our smooth, goal oriented daily flow less efficient. When the headache requires attention, we reach for the pain killing medicines in the cabinet. Often this works for a while. We can go back to what we were doing. But sometimes this doesn’t work, and things can get interesting.

One man who consults me has had a string of accidents over the past 25 years. Looking back over his history, he noticed there had been a level of suicidal thinking coupled with several serious accidents and resultant brain concussions. He has been treated by the medical profession yet his symptoms have persisted and in some cases have grown more intense. This man had been involved in a dream group a few years ago and found my blog on the Internet. He had a couple of other interests in the medicine paths which I have written about. We also share experiences with the Santo Daime tradition. After about four months of telephone consultations, during which we have built up a lot of trust, he called me with a practical question about applying to Graduate School. A few minutes into the conversation, and after telling me his migraine headache was intense, he suddenly switched gears. He had a perplexing dream which he wanted to share.

In the dream he was descending stairs into the basement when he discovered the toilet had backed up and shit was floating all over. He said the block was “way back” in the sewer line and as he attempted to clean it up, his in-laws came into the room. I assumed this was an embarrassment to him. Why else would his wife’s parents be aware of the shit? Asking him more questions I discovered the house wasn’t the one he now lives in with his wife and family, but the one he lived in as a child. So then I was curious about the “way back” description of the trouble, the blockage, not to mention the shit. Asking more about this setting and what might have happened to him way back in his childhood, the story slowly emerged. He was molested by a foster child who had been adopted. This took place for three years, from ages 5 through 8. The foster child was three years older and abused his younger brother, as well as my client, down in the basement. That’s where the blockage took place. We talked about his inner child finally getting the story out and having a witness, an advocate, as Alice Miller discussed in The Body Never Lies (2005). And then he suddenly went back to the initial practical question we had started discussing at the beginning of the call.

But here’s where it got interesting. About two minutes into this switched focus, be complained that his migraine had suddenly returned and he felt too fatigued to continue. My comment? “Well that’s not surprising. Your inner child was finally getting the recognition he deserved from both of us and you abandoned him again. You closed the door to the discussion and through your behavior disregarded him, neglected him, and denied him the attention he wanted. The only way he could communicate is through your body’s symptoms, so he sent you an immediate message. This hurts! Here’s the headache back and you’re too tired to continue talking about this academic shit with Michael.” He acknowledged the pattern. He had been taught to ignore his unpleasant memories. He never told his parents about the abuse which happened over 25 years ago. No wonder he kept taking risks in competitive sports, almost killing himself on several occasions. But no one was listening to the body’s language. The inner child had no words, or if he did, they were locked away by his shame and guilt. But his Dream Maker knew what was wrong and found a way to tell the story in such a way that we could work with the symbols and discover the underlying story. So then I asked him, “how’s the headache now? still fatigued?” No he wasn’t anymore. There’s the body talking back, being listened to and, in being honored by both of us adults, feeling safe in reducing the intensity of the symptoms. We’ll see if he can keep the line of communication open as he lives his life. Hopefully he will and the symptoms might completely disappear. I wouldn’t be surprised. I have noticed this happen over and over again.

The body-mind is a self regulating, self healing system. When we allow it to heal itself, it does. Sometimes we need a little help and our dreams supply it. And sometimes fantasies will too. A young man was heart sick when his love left town. He couldn’t eat. Nothing tasted good. I suggested he write down the feelings he was experiencing. He said “I haven’t felt this way in a long time.” I told him to look at the list of feelings and ask himself, when, in the past, did I feel these feelings? It might be a long time ago. They might be things which your inner child is trying to bring to your awareness. They might even be things he wants you to experience. Maybe you have been projecting out onto others the love your inner child needs from you. A few hours later I got a text message from him saying. “I took my inner child to the gym and afterwards I fed him a buffalo burger. He loved it!” Interesting how that lack of appetite disappeared isn’t it? And to think it was that simple, hum.

Both of these men are experienced dreamers who keep journals and enjoy writing. They have been engaged in counseling over the years. They have the proper foundation for the fast track in psychological healing and they do the work. And the benefits abound in freeing up energy for more creative projects. Mother Nature designed us in a really beautiful way. When we cooperate with her genius, being human can be fabulous.

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My Father, the Coyote

Twice during ceremony, while we were singing Native American songs in the Tipi, the coyotes circled us and added their voices under the light of the moon. We were joined by the animal natives of our upper mountain valley, the ones who have been here longer than the humans, and no doubt will out last us as well. I was telling this story to a young father, who was three hundred miles north of me, when I felt the impulse to open my cabin door. Directly in my field of vision, about two hundred yards away was our friend the coyote walking down the ridge line. He was looking directly at me as he walked and then disappeared into the underbrush. I felt an incredible connection to my brother the coyote at that moment, sort of telepathic, given the story the young father was telling me.

The son’s attempted reconciliation with his father ended when his dad pulled a knife and threatened to kill his son. The young man had a foreshadowing dream of this happening and the stool from the dream was conveniently sitting where he could pick it up to defend himself. He acted according to the dream’s action and stopped the fight, refusing to continue. This all had come up because the father refused to process the son’s feelings. Dad didn’t want to talk about his abusive behavior, but the son refused to travel across country with his estranged father unless they could talk about their relationship. Nothing had changed for the father in twenty years. He was still solving confrontations with violent threats and action. The son walked away from the fight and drove across the continent. He would call and give me an update of his travels. But today he was recounting last night’s dream in which his father was listening to him. He was arguing verbally with his father, telling him how he felt, without a violent reaction from the father.

I was impressed with his inner world’s transformation. He had flown across the USA to repair his relationship with his father and when the “real” father refused to cooperate, the “imaginal” father said yes. The internalized image of the biological father is called an “introject” in my lineage. We “shoot or throw” our experiences with our parent inside ourselves as we grow up. When the parent dies or refuses to enter dialogue with us, we can still engage the inner image. We can educate the father “imago” who dwells within us. If we record his words like a movie script and write our response, we honor the father/son relationship within us. His voice may remain silent for a while. Perhaps he’s sulky and withdraws to his inner sanctuary, his den, or gets on his motorcycle and drives away like he always used to do. But if we remain steadfast and wait patiently, he shows up and tells us how terrible we are, judging and blaming us again. We have to write down all that abuse, honoring our father’s words and feelings, and then respond. In that way we get the dialogue to continue. Perhaps it continues in the imaginal world of dreams like it did for my young friend. What is amazing about this process is that we can witness our own process by reading and re-reading our journal. We can see how we have changed and how “Dad” has changed.

Sometimes there is a change in the outer world when we do the inner work. I remember a story told by a therapist about a mother who finally let go energetically/emotionally of her son after a long analysis. The therapist didn’t expect to hear from her client again as it was the final session. But the client showed up a couple of weeks later just to tell her friend and therapist that the son had felt a great weight drop off of him half way across the planet. He sent a telegram time-dated in Denmark (right after the mother’s therapy session) that he felt safe to return to the USA and wanted to see his mother. Working on the inner son imago had a psychic effect on the outer world, just as working on the inner father imago can have. If we do the work for ourselves, our attitude changes and the “psychic” dynamic does also.

Opening the door to the magic sometimes discloses amazing synchronicity. That’s when the coyote appears!

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Embracing Aquarius

After a year and a half of silence, I didn’t expect to hear from him again. I met the young father at a ceremony. We talked about his recent separation from his wife and child. Then he surprised me with a request, “Would you hold me?” “Sure, come here,” I said. He sunk into my embrace and began to cry, disclosing a history of abuse by his father. That kind of intensity can bring up a lot of feelings for both people. It did for me. I remembered being held by my dad when I was a kid. His warm embrace was a delight. I guess that’s something I learned from my dad, not to hold back spontaneous affection. I embrace those whom I know. People love my hugs. Some people love the warmth, yet it reminds them of being abandoned, so they run away from their feelings. It is confusing to feel good being held and then have to confront other (scary, anxious, or sexual) feelings. I guess my friend couldn’t handle the stream of feelings evoked by that hug. His father left him after divorcing the boy’s mom. So the boy (young father) left me just like his old man had left him. We do to others what we are afraid they will do to us.  He abandoned the “good” new father before he could be abandoned. I understand this pattern. It is a common one with men wounded by the men in their lives.

So I was surprised to get an email with his phone number and a request to call him. We talked for a couple hours and then met personally for several more. The catalyst was a set of dreams. They were very simple, too simple for a brilliant intellect to unpack. He needed help and knew I had the ability to help him. So he risked another repeat of his pattern and reached out. This time had a different outcome. Not only could he understand his dreams and process them, he was able to ask his child about his dreams and use the techniques I had taught him to help his son.

The little boy disclosed his feelings of guilt over his mom and dad’s separation and his confusion about his mom’s hospitalization. His daddy was able to listen, reflect and act out the situation in a playful way. He called to tell me his son had said, “how did you get to be such a great dad?” With that positive experience the young father was able to contact his dad, experience his dad’s inability to be there for him in the way he wanted and take care of his inner child by ending the conversation. What surprised me was what a quick study this young father had made of the dreams and getting the kind of support from an elder man he needed. Of course his dreams informed me of his extraordinary abilities and I trust the Author of Dreams knows better than anyone what is going on. I just followed the process and facilitated the young man’s rapid growth.

Now I know why people talk about the “indigo children”. My friend is one of them, very quick, intelligent, and authentic. My generation was called “violet ray”, this one “indigo ray”. I guess the age of Aquarius for which we have been waiting has finally arrived.

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Ancient Greece was different

She was my first experience of a Jewish American Princess.  We met in graduate school studying depth psychology.  She had been an actress in New York City, engaged to a famous Irish film star.  She didn’t like him getting all of the attention, so she left him for another Irish Catholic.  The second one married her and took her traveling around the world.  He was an investment banker.  They had children and then his Irish alcoholic patterning kicked in.  When I met them, he was a client at the Betty Ford Clinic, she was training there and had free counseling services.  When I got to know her husband better, I understood how karma had brought us together.  His dad was Royal Air Force, and an Anglican Protestant.  His mom was Irish Catholic and raised her children that way.  My grandfather McFadden was Irish, an Orangeman, but in America wore the green.  He married a German immigrant, whose mother was a Jew from Berlin.  Since they were converted Lutherans, I was baptized a Christian and raised a Presbyterian, but the Jewish genes were just beneath the surface.

In the Native American tradition I adopted my friend as my daughter.  Another graduate student, the youngest person in our group was a Russian Jew.  He also was an actor.  We shared a room during monthly visits to graduate school.  He talked in his sleep when he was dreaming.  This reminded me of my sons and it didn’t bother me.  Often we would talk about our dreams in the morning.  I adopted him as my nephew.  During the next five years we witnessed my daughter’s marriage falling apart in spite of all the counseling attempts.  She divorced and moved into the town where I was living.  Then her biological dad’s heart failure and diabetes brought him into a nursing home here and eventually his death.  My daughter called me her “Angel of Death” as I used my hospice skills to accompany her father’s letting go of life.  She used her sizable inheritance to finance her children’s very expensive private prep-school here in town.  All of this was with an eye toward the future.  Her son would perhaps be the next president of the United States.  That’s what she hoped anyway.  And the plan was to get him an appointment to the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

My grandson was incredibly handsome, brilliant, a fabulous athlete and actor, charming and also politically liberal.  He could have been a Kennedy.  When he was 15 he showed me his favorite video game.  It was an ancient Greek combat game which involved building cities, making alliances, deploying troops, having battles, all the things Athenians would have loved.  At dinner with his uncle (the beautiful 27 year old blond Russian Jew), my daughter and my granddaughter, the conversation turned to ancient Greece.  When I explained how the military was built upon the foundation of slavery and male bonding, my grandson asked how that worked.

“Well, if we lived in ancient Athens and your uncle here wanted to introduce you to the manly arts of combat, to initiate you into the culture as a man, he would ask your father, who would ask you how you felt about your suitor.  If you agreed, and that was necessary, because the aristocracy was built upon treating one another with respect, (what Kant called treating another as a subject of consciousness), your dad would give you away to your uncle.  It couldn’t be based on treating the lover as an object.  For that Greek men used women and prostitutes (male and/or female).   Your suitor would introduce you to sexual expression, use of a sword and shield, how to drink wine and carry on social conversations.  After a couple months of camping out with him, you could then look for a wife if you desired.  The military piece was important, because the older man would protect you on the battle field and could even be punished if you behaved as a coward.  It was common for the older man to finance his young lover’s household and remain his friend for life.”  My grandson was intrigued.  His mom was furious, although her acting skill covered it perfectly.

She told me privately that I was no longer welcome in her home.  My comment was totally inappropriate.  She was the great-granddaughter of a Russian Rabbi and that wasn’t part of her culture.  “But you married an Irish Catholic who had been incested by his mother during one of the drunken episodes when he was your son’s age.  Don’t you think that event colored your marriage?  Isn’t it in the psychic field right now? “  I wanted to show her how her denial was a reflection of her mother-in-law’s denial, but that was pre-empted.  Besides the ancient Greeks didn’t even know about the Law of Moses.  Now her son is in the Academy excelling in Military History.  He used to call me grandfather, but now he’s a good soldier and follows orders.  Maybe in the next incarnation we’ll meet again.  My spirit daughter’s fear of disclosure shut the door on me and my Patron Saint, Michael, the Archangel of Death and Patron Saint of Soldiers.  When are we going to be honest about our lives and our cultural history?  What is there to fear from disclosing our truths?

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Independence Day

After teaching ethics, logic, and the history of philosophy, being a Montessori teacher and school director, and becoming a spiritual counselor, I find myself in 2011 wondering what has happened to Western Civilization. It is crumbling all around us. The old ways of the American Heartland Religion and Puritan hard work have been abandoned like our churches and synagogues, which are now in disuse and for sale by the thousands. Ecstatic dance and Burning Man have more and more adherents. The old morality is discarded. This might seem strange to many, but in my reading of Alice Miller recently I stumbled upon this passage:

“Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can–depending on the decree of government or party–be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa. But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves.  Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.
This is the case with people who had the good fortune of being sure of their parents’ love even if they had to disappoint certain parental expectations. Or with people who, although they did not have this good fortune to begin with, learned later–for example, in analysis–to risk the loss of love in order to regain their lost self. They will not be willing to relinquish it again for any price in the world.” (p. 85)*

These words, written 30 years ago seem totally on point. Our US Constitutional Rights have been abrogated by fear of terrorism. We now have a modified Constitution; our Patriot Act inched us closer to martial law. This is exactly what Miller was saying and what George Orwell was suggesting in his novel 1984. Those of us who were trained to be obedient by the old ways of our European ancestors, which Miller calls “poisonous pedagogy”, are willing followers of the authority figures who make us feel at home. I remember visiting a Parole Officer in his home at Easter time in the late 1980s. As soon as the Pope appeared on television everything stopped. He said, “come everyone the Holy Father is going to speak now” and dutifully his wife and children gathered around him to hear the Father’s words. This was the same man who earlier told me the reason he allowed me into the Juvenile Justice jail to see a Native American client, was because he was listening to the radio before his bus arrived that day, when an Asian man’s voice interrupted the broadcast and addressed him by name and then told him, “give the package to Michael Melville.” When I later arrived at the jail, he felt the Holy Spirit was at work and cooperated with me completely. This man had been raised with the “spare the rod and spoil the child” type of child rearing Miller refers to as poisonous. He followed his inner voices completely. If he hadn’t been a jailer, one might have doubted his sanity. He knew that and didn’t tell me the story until I visited him at his home, when I was looking to purchase it for our private school.

My wife and I were trying to raise and educate our children, and others in the community, in a different way, trying to follow Maria Montessori’s intuition in education and Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud’s insights in psychology. When we added the ancient Chinese voice of the I Ching or Book of Changes, we accessed the Tao, “spontaneous affection is the all-inclusive principle of union, [of holding together].” If we start from the center of the self, whether we have it from truly feeling loved in childhood, or by discovering it in counseling, we have arrived at the core of our being. Acting from that place brings the synchronous support to us from the Universe. The voice on the radio for instance, opened the jail so I could talk with a Native American boy, whose dreams predicted the only way out of his situation was to face his repressed feelings, his Shadow. His estranged father and mother could not support his artistic abilities. They would not let him live with either of them, only his aging grandmother would accept the boy. I did my best to reconcile the family, even offered to mediate with his father, who rejected and abandoned his only son. For the 4th of July the boy put a gun to his head and committed suicide. It was his Independence Day. A profound lesson for me as his counselor. His friends followed suit, three more suicides on the reservation within weeks of one another. Without hope of a better tomorrow, it is, as the Lakotas say, “a good day to die.” Those of us left behind now know what it means to have Death as an Advisor. We have to find a way to access and integrate our feelings and this means art, some form of creativity. Ironically the boy’s father is a famous artist, who could not love the artist in his son. Crumbling? Yes, everything is crumbling around us.

* Alice Miller, (1984)  For Your Own Good: Hidden cruelty in child-rearing and the roots of violence

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Crane Dance

I met a man my age. He said his name was, Ken Self. He had white hair like me. He greeted me by coming close enough to touch. Then we both stood on one leg, and leaning at the waist, he backwards, me forward, he lifted my right leg with his left. Up and down we swayed in greeting. Touching at the waist when he stood on two legs, I reached around his back and pressed my thumbs and forefingers into this hips and massaged them. We embraced. He was newly arrived and needed a place to stay. I was going to invite him to stay with me when I awoke. It was a dream.

I thought of Robert Bly and stories I had heard about his Stork/Crane Dance as part of the men’s movement. Later in the day a young friend, a graduate student at the University came over to discuss dreams and how to interact with images. I met him through another friend and graduate student, one who had a dream about me as a human-size wild turkey, which drove off his mom and later morphed into a human. Ever since he had that dream, he affectionately and humorously calls me “Turkey Master”. It used to be “Dream Master” before the turkey appeared in his dream. So I was going to see the new Harry Potter movie with the racoon, but he opened the door and said I must come in and meet his new house mate. That’s how we started talking about dreams. We shared our dreams the night he came to visit me and I asked him if he would act out my dream with Ken Self the Crane Man and his dance. He was willing and I showed him how to do the dance. Actually doing the dance brought the animal into the feeling realm. I could easily imagine myself as a crane.

So the next step in unpacking the dream would be to explore the name of the Dream Visitor, “Ken Self.” The Self is a very prominent feature within my esoteric lineage, God Within and the Source of all being. Jung called this Self the image of God. The ego slowly grows up and realizes that it isn’t the center of the universe, the Self is. The capitalization of the word is used to signify the divine nature of this matrix. Jung also called the Self an archetype, an ancient form or patterning of energy around which everything revolves. So dancing with oneself is the first and most obvious thing. The man is a projection of my inner world. He looks very similar with the white hair and all. But he’s more than that, he’s also an image of God. Why Ken Self? Turns out “Ken” is the ancient Scots word meaning “to see” or “recognize” and when used with an object, “ken” means “to teach, direct or guide”. Without the object “ken” means “to understand, to be knowing”.  The expression “ken self” could then mean “Knowledge of the Self”.  “Knowing the Self as One”, that’s an expression in the liturgy of the Liberal Catholic Mass, the benediction I think.

Sure enough I found the passage in a copy of the Holy Eucharist, from 1966 on the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels. The final benediction blesses the congregation with: “There is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who live in the eternal; there is a power that maketh all things new; it lives and moves in those who know the Self as one.” And in the Dream World the Self appeared as a white haired man, a very warm, friendly and peaceful man, who greeted me and danced with me. Is this the power which makes all things new again? If so, then that power must live and move in those of us who know the Self as one. And that is what we discover in the study of Jungian psychology, that there is a unitive, ordering principle in the psyche of each and every one of us humans.  Our job is to come into relationship with that Source Within, so that we can be of service.

In the early years of childhood that powerful force surrounded us and gave us visions, voices, teachings, peopled our world with imaginary talking animals and plants. I remember watching my granddaughter when she was two years old talking to people we couldn’t see. Often she brought her father messages from the other side. He called it the Spirit World. I would agree, although in my training we called it the Unconscious, that which we cannot know through ordinary ways of apprehension. It is the many faceted Self, the ten thousand things of this world, the magic faeries, the gods and goddesses, the Voice of the Beloved, so many ways to address it. And when we Ken the Self, we dance in a sacred way with the most amazingly mysterious thing in the universe.

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Thank you Susanne

Dear Susanne,

When my blue eyed Hermes knocked on the window tonight, I let him in and shared your site.   Showed him your Postcard to Hermes  http://susanneiles.com blog   and he said, “he’s even got his head on his hand”, which is a common gesture for my young friend. At thirty and the father of a four-year-old daughter, most people would be surprised he snuggled into me, put his head on my shoulder, and listened while I read your dream story to him. It was a great moment for his inner child to be with his dad again, curled up on the couch, with one leg up over the back of an adjoining chair. He had just come from the sauna. (I wrote about my experience in the sauna with him in March as Just Say Yes.) Dressed in a robin’s egg blue sweat jacket, which he promptly unzipped, he wanted to share his great good fortune with me, he was in love again. And he had read all of my blogs and wanted me to know how much he respected me for sharing my history so transparently, “love your honesty” he said.

As I grabbed my laptop to read him your dream and show him your postcard, he moved from the chair to the couch just like one of my children would have at 4 or 8. I remembered the first time I met him after a South American Ayuaska ceremony, how affectionate he was. In fact I noticed how almost all the men at the ceremony were very affectionate with everyone after drinking the medicine. It was very impressive. Love really does make a difference and these heart chakra medicines are great!

Tonight, when he got up to leave, he hugged me and told me he loved me. Then he went off to be with his new woman. He just wanted to check-in with dad to be reassured he was loved and appreciated before risking a new love affair. My words of advice in such matters? “Follow your heart, wherever it leads you. You won’t regret it.”

Thanks Susanne for making this moment possible. I want a copy of your Postcard to Hermes! for my environment. I am going to make that happen soon.

Love and blessings,
Michael

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Pitfalls in Mentoring

Having learned valuable lessons in life, we open up to teaching others. The children must experience life and learn to survive in the environment. Elders model and instruct. The young ones learn through relationship with elders. Seems easy enough.

The Legendary Mentor just told the young man to find his father. Granted the hero was MIA for 19 years. But having an impossible situation at home (all the available men, who were trying to marry mom, had to be fed and tolerated), Telemachos followed Mentor’s instruction. He went looking and was secretly aided by the goddess Athena, who often took the form of Mentor. She wanted Odyssos, her hero of the Trojan Horse deception, to find his way home and become the father he wanted to be. With divine help the boy and his father find the truth of who they are, who can be relied upon, and who to slaughter in the process. In the end mom and dad are back together again. And the boy has become a man. Initiation complete!

If we look at the ancient story, all the pitfalls are suggested in the tapestry. Feeling a need to separate from childhood’s roles, the young man seeks advice from an elder. He thinks about it and decides to follow Mentor’s suggestions. He acts. He goes out in search of his missing father. He interacts with people. He follows his hunches, his intuition. This is where the magic enters, in the form of Divine aid. The realm of the Spirit has forces we cannot control. They interact in the human drama. The ancient Greeks referred to this magic, synchronous and spontaneous, as “the gods and goddesses” intervening. Often these divine beings took the form of simple people in the old legends. Their divine nature was sometimes experienced as profoundly awe inspiring, especially when they “revealed themselves”. OK, so what?

Mentors are sometimes experienced as gods or goddesses. In 21st century psychological language, projection of inner psychic contents is taking place. In order to learn about the inner world, we must first project it out onto the environment. In order to find my inner father, I must project it out onto my dad or other father figures. Mentors experience this and must remember that it is a given. We are screens, albeit human ones, for others to see themselves. If we know who we are, we often feel our student’s projected feelings don’t really fit us. We become uncomfortable. We must struggle with the student in maintaining our identity.  All the pitfalls relate to potential and actual evolution of relationship.

Pitfall number 1: believing the projected adoration or hatred is correct perception, and hence accurate information reflected back to the mentor. Granted we do learn a lot from our students, they are good mirrors, and we need to take in their words so we can examine ourselves, but be careful!

Pitfall number 2: acting on one’s feelings for/toward the student. Caution here is always best. What is really going on? You’ll have to live with the consequences, so be willing to be responsible for the unexpected results. Otherwise you can easily become (or be perceived as) the victim, the abuser, or the rescuing one.

Pitfall number 3: forgetting you are (might be) projecting onto your student. OOPS. This is big, but very human. Check it out by wondering, does this feeling really reflect the relationship? Is he “just a spoiled, self-centered brat” or could some of that judgment be me seeing myself reflected in his actions and beliefs? Or the flip side of that, falling in love with the student’s qualities, which are probably your own (unconscious) abilities asking to be acknowledged, to be embraced.

Pitfall number 4: neglecting to have a process established for working through projections. You might not have to disclose this until you can “do it in the moment”, but you need to practice sorting out what is yours and what is his/hers. The emotional development of each person varies a lot, so you have to use your wisdom here.

Pitfall number 5: forgetting you are the elder. Our needs for acceptance and approval, especially when we haven’t worked on this area very much, can blur the boundary between mentor and student. The student came to you because of your expertise in negotiating life. Be wise. If you believe in yourself, if you know who you are, show it. We don’t need our student’s approval, just their cooperation. That’s the key to respect. And this is why it is so important to wait for the student to approach you. If they know they need help, and ask for yours, they have the self-motivation necessary to endure the discipline you impose.

Pitfall number 6: forgetting how the story ends. Mentor goes his own way. Telemachos finds his dad and together they change their environment. Wizards get rejected and discarded. That’s our role. Don’t get attached to the outcome. Be there, be real, be honest, vulnerable, transparent, and loving. Let go with open hands. If you want more than that, change the relationship.

Adopt your student as your niece, nephew, daughter, son, sister, or brother, if they agree. We are all related, so spirit sons are sons. And with that comes all the projections onto the mother/father.

Pitfall number 7: ignorance of the nature of humans. Archetypes are ancient patterns, which dwell within us humans. The Greeks called them the gods and goddesses. They interact, get projected, and can possess us. We have a dark side to our personality, which needs to be seen and embraced. Otherwise it does things we cannot believe we did. And there is the opposite sex within too. She can really screw up a marriage or a love affair, if we don’t know she’s there. The inner child, the wizard, all those archetypes are within us. Christ called it the Kingdom Within. It is extensive and complicated, easily projected out, and very fun. Learn all you can about it. Life is beautiful and ugly.

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Why are there jewels in that man’s left ear, Dad?

Why do California men wear only one earring? Where did the custom originate? About forty years ago I was teaching in Huntington Beach, when young male college students began to pierce their ears. Some of us thought it might be a regression to the Wild Man of Robert Bly’s book Iron John. But why would wild men choose just the left ear to wear diamonds and jewels? It seemed there had to be a deeper source, an unconscious one, which was bubbling up from the psychic depths. The first person I met with this new fashion statement was a cannabis dealer. He was from a French family whose ancestors settled New Orleans. They evidently had an eye for the natives and the wild side of life, as the Native American genes were woven into this beautiful man’s body. He invited me to visit his suburban home one day. It was a typical rolling California ranch style home in the midst of a tract of houses cloned to resemble each other. This would be a good cover for dealing illegal substances.

Like a Greek Orthodox Basilica, whose exterior is rather plain and in contrast to the beauty of the interior (symbolizing the hidden inner world of spirit), I found his home surprising. The living room ceiling and walls were draped with vines. I felt I was entering the modern home of Dionysos, the Greek god of wine and ecstacy. After he lit up a “joint” of marijuana and poured us a glass of red wine, he told us he was going to swim in the pool and would we care to join him? It sounded fun. But I didn’t bring my swim trucks. I was from Utah and Victorian modesty was folded into my social presence. So you can imagine my surprise when he stood up facing us, pulled down his shorts, and showed us his swimmer’s lean body. He walked through the patio and dove into the pool. And after swimming, he sat nude in his sumptuous earthy environment. This was my first year teaching ancient Greek philosophy at Golden West College and who was my student? An incarnation of a Greek god! Like Socrates I was surrounded by beautiful young men, drinking wine and talking about the meaning of life. When I went home, my wife looked at me in a suspicious way. She could smell my breath. “Drinking wine with your students? Who do you think you are, Socrates?” she questioned. Well they were rhetorical questions and I hadn’t started answering rhetorical questions like I do now that I have embraced Hermes and the Coyote.

But why the jewelry in the ear? I remembered an illustration in a book of symbols and pulled it off the shelf. It was an East Indian drawing of the androgynous split in men. The left side of the body was female. The right side of the body male. This brings to the surface the inner reality that we may be male on the outside, but we have an inner feminine which we inherited from our mothers. The concept is ancient among the Hindus. Jung would say it is part of the collective psyche, the World Spirit’s soul, or what he later called the Collective Unconscious. It is the repository of all humanity’s psychic experiences, myths, and legends. Since we don’t “know” these things, they must be awakened in consciousness or acted out. What must be expressed without words was the hermaphroditic nature of California men, of men in general, but especially those whose gates of perception (Aldus Huxley) were prematurely opened by psychedelic medicines. My young Frenchman, surfer, incarnation of Dionysos, was giving expression to ancient history. He wore a diamond in the left ear, quite unconscious of the ancient Hindu illustration. And the fad spread across the USA. When my Aunt died in the late eighties, I could spot the Californians by the ear rings and the casual clothes in the Chicago Airport. Now, in 2010, I doubt it would be that easy. There are so many men across the USA with jewels in their ears. How would a gay man express his sexual orientation in such a culture? Wear his jewels in the right ear, the masculine side of the neurological network. That’s what my spirit son asked me as we walked up the street in San Luis Obispo. He went to school in Virginia and grew up in Alaska. “What does that mean dad?” The two Hispanic college men wore single diamonds in their right ear. They were slim, lithe, and beautiful men wearing tee shirts and jeans which showed off their bodies. My son was dressed the same way. His page boy length hair and tight body muscular physique must be confusing, but without the ear rings, he leaves the beauty in the eye of the beholder. And he isn’t advertising his heterosexual orientation either. Sometimes men like to be mysterious too.

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Lost and Found

Twenty years ago my friend lost his three-year-old son. He had been the primary parent from the boy’s birth and the mother became jealous of their relationship, so she left with the child. That Christmas all of the father’s gifts to his son were returned. Although he tried for years to find his little boy, he could not. He married and now has a twelve-year-old son, and a very conflictual divorced wife, sort of the same pattern as with the first mom. We seem to replicate patterns. We marry the kind of person our caregiver was and oddly enough select for primarily the negative qualities. It is as though we knew we were loveable and have to prove it to the parental energy which rejected or abandoned or abused us. We unconsciously imprint on the caregivers in the first four years of life. They are the ones who keep us alive. Our job is to get them to fall in love with us. So we keep trying. If the parents are abusive, we are attracted to the same kind of energy in a mate.

My friend’s mom was abusive. The first woman who carried his baby was twelve years older than him. She was cruel and abusive and ran away with his child. Last week he got a telephone call from his son. The little boy saw his mother murdered when he was six. He was raised by his grandparents, who never looked for his father. When he was seventeen he started searching for his dad. He found a list of all of the people with his dad’s name and started calling each one. I guess there were thousands and when he got to the last name on the list, he heard his father’s voice and recognized it. When he finished his call, the dad said “I love you son” and the young man replied “I love you too dad” and then said “wow, that’s the first time I have ever said that!”

Now my friend has two sons and two grandchildren and is adjusting to the exciting news. We are planning a trip to visit relatives in the desert where the lost young man lives with his wife and children. I didn’t ask if my friend wanted to go. I just told him “we are going to that community meeting down south and while we are there you are going to meet your son.” He didn’t say anything, he just accepted it. It was another prayer answered and I am glad I get to facilitate the reunion. Someday I will get to reconcile with my son, when he wants to find me. Distance makes all the difference, you get to appreciate what you miss.

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