The unconscious will never pass up an opportunity to tell the truth. Just give it an unfinished sentence to complete and see what happens. I stumbled into such a situation when I asked my young Seminarian to imagine himself in my childhood and tell me what his mom would do. I was shocked. She wasn’t anything like my mom or my dad. She took out her rage on her son, unconsciously and with good intentions, to make him a good Christian and to be different from the man who abused her.
Posts Tagged ‘Feeling’
For Your Own Good: Child Abuse and Repressed Feelings
Posted in Child/Parent Relationship, Liberal Catholic Church, Mental Health, Mentoring, Psychology, tagged Alice Miller, Feeling, Healing, Old Catholic Church, Wisdom on July 5, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Independence Day
Posted in Burning Man, Carl Jung, Dreams, I Ching: Book of Changes, men's issues, Mental Health, Montessori education, Psychology, tagged Feeling, Indigenous, Men's Movement, Shadow on February 20, 2011 | 1 Comment »
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 [...]
Dissociation is a survival technique
Posted in Mentoring, Psychology, tagged Feeling, Healing, Men's Movement on May 11, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Richard Gartner (1999) in his book Betrayed as Boys: Psychodynamic Treatment of Sexually Abused Men talks about a “therapeutic window” which can develop during counseling abused men. He says this window is a space in which, “anxiety-arousing feelings are experienced, but the individual does not feel he is drowning in them and so does not [...]
Embracing Repressed Instincts and Feelings
Posted in Carl Jung, Initiation, men's issues, Mentoring, Spirituality, tagged Feeling, Men's Movement, Shadow on March 5, 2010 | 1 Comment »
The Silence of our Fathers, who weren’t able to initiate us into manhood, is discussed in Absent Fathers, Lost Sons (1991) by Guy Corneau, a French Canadian psychotherapist. After discussing the effects of repressing our instincts and feelings (pushing them into unconsciousness or the Shadow) and graphically illustrating the process with case studies, Corneau summarizes [...]
Masquerade with the Vampire
Posted in Erotic love, men's issues, Mentoring, sexual conduct, tagged Erotic love, Feeling, Men's Movement, Myths, Psychology, Shadow, Spirituality, Vampire on February 18, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
The Mardi Gras Masquerade has a function which goes deep into the Source. It provides the possibility of seeing clearly the roles we play and how, by changing the Mask, we we can break patterns and become free at last!
Enduring Love
Posted in Erotic love, Psychology, sexual conduct, tagged Balancing the Opposites, Erotic love, Feeling, Shadow, Thinking on December 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Ian McEwan’s novel gets a fabulously acted screenplay in Enduring Love. The trip into the underworld of Hades is remarkably illustrated in the life of the thinker/professor and the feeler/artist and the unbalanced shadow function of the psyche. Much to meditate upon and hopefully avoid in the journey from the head to the heart.
The Search for the Grail
Posted in Initiation, Joseph Campbell, Marie-Louise von Franz, men's issues, Psychology, Spirituality, Theosophical Society, tagged Feeling, Men's Movement, Mystery, Myths, Old Catholic Church, Spirituality, Wisdom on December 9, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Grail, symbol of the archetypal feminine, occurs in tales of Parzifal and other Knights of the Round Table. Marie-Louise von Franz, Jungian psychotherapist, is quoted on the archetype of the Great Mother, regression, and rebirth motifs. The ego struggles to maintain consciousness like the hero battling a monster. Personal events mirror these mythic images.
Traveling from the head to the heart:
Posted in gnostic wisdom, psyche, Spirituality, Uncategorized, tagged Alchemy, Feeling, Growth, Psychology, Spirituality, Thinking on October 6, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Although we have hard work to do, we must undertake the journey from the head to the heart. Fortunately some of us have had good teachers and companions on the journey and can help others arrive safely at their destination. My quest took over 30 years. Here’s how my road unfolded before me.
