Re-Connection vs Re-Collection

Re-Connection vs Re-Collection

by
Maureen B. Roberts, PhD

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

{T.S. Eliot}


Individuation & Soul Retrieval as Remembered Wholeness

Individuation, or becoming a whole individual through self-realization, as an ongoing journey involves a natural "re-collection", re-gathering, or Platonic anamnesis (remembrance) of an innate wholeness and centre, the Self. The aim of personal individuation is the reproduction of this unity, the Original Being, who in Platonic thought was a sphere. This concept of the androgynous Original Being, then, represents both the origin and goal of psychic wholeness, a wholeness which is lost, or forgotten when through the emergence of the ego we fall from an original state of innocence into a state of conflict. This division, or "dis-ease" is in turn resolved through the restoration of psychic harmony in a reclaimed "higher innocence" of conscious centredness in the Self.


Individuation as Re-Collected Unity

At the heart of Neoplatonism, a forerunner of Jungian 'gnosis', is the assumption of an a priori knowledge grounded in archetypal forms and aimed toward a unification of the ultimate principle of "the One", or "The Simple" with the diverse phenomena of "the Many". In the same way as in Neoplatonic thought the Many are resolved through self-reflective synthesis into the One, so psychic opposites become individuated into and through the Self. Since the Platonic Ideas are also the basis of an innate self-knowledge, through anamnesis acquired knowledge is the recovery of what was once possessed in a precarnate existence in the realm of transcendent Forms, an assumption which underlies the Romantic poet Wordsworth's claim that:

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar...

As a natural centring and unfolding of the personality, individuation is an alchemical cycle of separation and synthesis which involves the dethroning, or relative abolition of the ego. This mythic process takes place through the gradual distillation of the Self - the ambivalent archetypal core of the personality - out from a latent condition of unconsciousness into its rightful place at the centre of consciousness. Individuation is a lengthy process, indeed one which once begun, never ends, for becoming centred in the Self is merely the starting point of a new journey which, like the Medicine Wheel, moves outward in an ever-widening spiral to embrace the fate and soul of World and Cosmos.



Re-Connecting to World Soul

What, then, is the nature of this 'soul' that needs to be retrieved, not only for the individual but ultimately for the world as the anima mundi whose children we all are? Is the 're-connection' with soul the same as the 're-collection' of Self that underscores the individuation process?

If, as Jung made clear, individuation does not shut one out from the world but gathers the world to oneself, so soul-making gathers the individual to all-pervasive soul, anima mundi expanding into the even more inclusive sphere of unus mundus. In this interweaving waltz, through the Dionysian explosion of the isolated ego, soul's diffusive movement outward meets soul's infusive movement from outer to inner, and the two merge in an imaginal Cosmos, whose Centre, as all shamans know (through imaginal 'gnosis'), is everywhere

If "soul" refers also to an anima mundi, a world soul, then as alchemists such as Paracelsus stated, the soul in one sense lies beyond the individual and belongs to a mode of reality beyond our control. In the Neoplatonic Fourth Ennead, Plotinus discusses whether all individuals are one soul, while the merging of individual and universal Tao is, as the alchemist Gerhard Dorn noted, the third degree of the alchemical coniunctio, the most mature phase of individuation as the realization of one's communion with an original unitary reality, what Jung describes as 'the eternal Ground of all empirical being.' As a mode of consciousness, such re-collection is grounded in the intuition of a centred sphere of soul, a microcosm which through the alchemical dictum "As Above, so Below", mirrors the outer macrocosm of Cosmos.


Therapy as Soul Mythos & Pathos

An appreciation of the complementarity of individuation as 're-collection', and Soul-making as 're-connection' to World Soul, has vital repercussions in the arena of psychopathology. James Hillman has undoubtedly contributed more than anyone in the post-Jungian camp to stressing our need to honour the Dionysian, or 'dis-integrating' dimension of therapy. Conversely, positive thinking - as a psychological theory - assumes that anything that's broken, or off-centre (eccentric!), or suffering, or in darkness, depression, neurosis, or symbolic death needs to be immediately fixed up, centred, unified, or brought into the light of health.

As Hillman notes, there is a soul-world of difference here between 'spiritual discipline' and therapy. As he puts it: 'Anyone who tends to dismiss pathology for growth, or anima confusions for ego strength and illumination, or who neglects the differentiation of multiplicity and variety for the sake of unity is engaged in spiritual discipline.' Therapy, on the other hand, concerns itself with 'soul' which, as Hillman stresses, is inherently pathological, multiple, prone to wandering, death, depth and depression.

An awareness of the potential value of pathology is accordingly essential in psychotherapeutic practice. If we understand therapy as (literally) 'a service to the gods' who inform soul, then we need, firstly, to avoid the trap of assuming that reintegration is tantamount to elevating psychic unity over plurality, or that an absence of 'dis-ease' is in all instances helpful, necessary, or appropriate to the mythic context of the pathological state. Reintegration, at least in my understanding of it, amounts to re-establishing a conscious relationship between fragmented soul-parts, or splinter personalities. It does not necessarily mean annihilating these splinter psyches, or otherwise merging them into one at the expense of the many. Hence to denigrate dis-integration as in all instances undesirable is to privilege the still centre of the mandala over the tension of opposites at the circumference; it is to promote monotheism above the soul's need for a plurality of gods, to elevate the pristine heights of spirit, as an archetype of unity, over the soul's need for immersion and dispersion in the human sufferings of the vale. And it is to set god against god, Apollonian simplicity against Dionysian multiplicity, reason over divine madness, order over chaos, focus over radiation, coagulation over dissolution. Individually, the gods, after all, are just as likely to be found in one camp as in the other.

The re-connection with soul, then, is not equivalent to the re-enthroning of the monotheistic myth of psychic unity, but is rather on one level the reinstatement of soul in all its imaginal complexity and fragmentation, its meanings and meanderings; for if the psyche protects against splintering, it is also prone to splintering its protection. Perhaps, in other words, we need to 're-vision' soul retrieval by viewing it not only as a reintegration of the personality, but also as an affirmation of polytheistic soul that is at the heart of the "I-Thou" of human and Cosmic life. If soul is both one and many, then the centripetal re-connection to multiple soul compensates the centrifugal re-collection of an original unity of soul.

Just as shamans, through initiation death-rebirth must heal themselves, so the effective depth therapist is one who through individuation as the ongoing "re-collection" of wholeness, has transcended the "dis-ease" of imbalance and conflict by becoming consciously centred in the Self rather than in the one-sided ego. This re-centring does not obliterate conflict, multiplicity of soul, or pathology, but rather allows for the coexistence of a more central and detached vantage point from where an untouchable core of the personality serenely views the conflict, while the pathologizing soul is unavoidably immersed in it. Our wounds, after all, parent our destinies and keep us in the body - and in the world. They stop us from the temptation to escape upward along the vertical axis of "spirit" and keep us anchored instead in the World, hence along the horizontal human axis of Keatsian "Soul-making", with all its attendant yet necessary limitation and suffering. (The Puer complex, for example, as the limping wound through which Otherworldly vision is earthed and can flow, is accordingly common among artists and shamans alike).



Integration vs Pathological Dis-Integration

Hillman is accordingly, I suggest, setting up a straw Jung when he attempts to pit his ideology of multiple soul against Jung's focus on wholeness, particularly as it is symbolized in the mandala. The mandala, after all, is not an image of undivided unity but rather one of totality, in which opposing forces at the circumference are reconciled in the still centre. As such, neither circumferential multiplicity nor core unity are privileged; instead they both thrive through creative tension in a compensatory relationship. Such wholism as 'unity-in-diversity' is not - as Hillman at times seems to suggest it is - Jung's pet philosophy, since as Jung (based on his immense experience) takes great pains to stress, mandalas arise in nature and are dreamed, drawn, danced, or enacted spontaneously, particularly by individuals in crisis or conflict situations. (A notable example is mandalas drawn by chronic sufferers of schizophrenia, in which a fragmented central area is counterbalanced by an ordered circumference).

A more feasible opposition, I suggest, is that between integration (i.e. 'individuation') as the conscious cooperation, mediated by the central Self, between multiple or opposing soul-parts, and the kind of pathological dissociation which occurs, for example, in Multiple Personality Disorder [MPD], debilitating schizophrenia, and destructive psychoses, all conditions in which splinter personalities are unaware of or hostile to one another. And it is precisely here that the shaman's power to retrieve lost or wandered soul must meld with the therapist's ability to discern whether reunification is helping or stifling the death-in-life of the elusive butterfly of soul.

Therapy & Mythic Contextualization

Soul has an insatiable hunger to imbibe the full spectrum of life in all its tragedy and glory. Ideally, as Jung stressed, the therapist in this sense needs an in-depth knowledge of comparative religion and mythology to do justice not only to the mythic potential of soul's wounded condition, but also to soul's infinite complexity. Similarly, by recognizing and respecting the mythic context of the patient's suffering, the therapist, instead of intervening prematurely or unnecessarily, honours the necessity of the patient's presence in a wounded, dismembered, or deathlike phase of the myth.

The goal of therapy is in this light to guide the person through the myth, that they may thereby achieve a sense of empathy with the wider sphere of the collective soul, with life's unending cycle of death and rebirth, hence with the overall purpose of the Cosmos as it mirrors that sphere and cycle in a synchronicity of soul and embodiment. In this sense, the therapist as the servant of soul is not primarily a saviour from suffering, but rather a soul-guide through it. The 'patient' is reconciled with life and participates in the mythic drama of the gods. This realization that one is not alone and that one's struggles, darkness and suffering, when embraced in a mythic context have an innate purpose and direction - the forging of soul amidst the vales of suffering - in itself constitutes a healing restoration of the individual to his/her place in the overall mythic scheme and boundless mysterium of the Cosmos.

Pathological dissociation and its attendant soul loss, on the other hand, in cases of MPD is often found among victims of childhood sexual abuse, and among others that have been severely traumatised, for example through war experiences, abandonment, or through shocking or violent loss of a parent, or close personal relationship, and increasingly nowadays, through UFO abduction trauma. As a survival strategy, dissociation can help the sufferer cope and escape pain through, for example, mentally leaving the body. In the longterm, however, if the trauma remains buried and unrecalled, hence unresolved, these self-protective maneuvres can amount to a debilitating loss of soul, which often resurfaces later on in the form of promiscuity, claustrophobia, kleptomania, fear of sex, chronic depression, poor self-esteem, eating disorders or addictions.

In my own work (as both shaman and psychotherapist) with chronic sufferers of schizophrenia, I have on the other hand at times watched the unfolding of dream and hallucination dramas which are sometimes desperately struggling toward a reintegration of the personality. The decision I am then faced with is whether to nurture and allow the process to unfold psychotherapeutically, whether to intervene shamanically, or whether to combine both.

The shamanic retrieval of lost soul, however, is not always the same as a reunification of the personality. Indeed, there are kairos times when, in the context of mythic 'dis-integration', soul as inherently multiple and pathological thrives on fragmentation, which in chronic cases of schizophrenia, for example, is indistinguishable from shamanic initiation. The key question here is whether the wounded condition or dissociated state, or loss of soul is overridingly, or ultimately debilitating. Given the close correlation between schizophrenic breakdown and shamanic initiation, the shaman in dealing with schizophrenia is faced with a possible dilemma. As she knows from her own experience, it is the schizophrenic who can self-heal and reintegrate who has the makings of an authoritive shaman. If she intervenes prematurely, or unnecessarily, she may be robbing the schizophrenic of an authentic initiation experience. Here her ability as psychotherapist comes into play when she is called upon to discern the significance of key developments in the schizophrenic's dreams, visions, voices, and degrees of adaptation to outer reality.




At-one-ment as Remembered Singularity

Whatever the therapeutic situation, though, I am constantly aware of the need to distinguish healing through integration, or through reconciliation to anima mundi, from healing as the elimination of pathology and plurality of soul. In the broader context, whether we are dealing with soul pathology, soul loss, or with the natural spontaneity of individuation, the reawakening of our sense of the sacred and of the transcendental, unitary Ground of all phenomena (Tao), goes hand-in-hand with our re-connection to anima mundi as World Soul. In this quest for transpersonal 'at-one-ment' as the religare which links us back - through re-connection and re-collection - to the all-pervasive Centre of the boundless Sphere of soul, our challenge, finally, is to marry fragmentation with synthesis, imaginal unity with incarnate pathology, Saturn's hobbling peg-leg with Puer's Icarean wing, the dizzy peaks of spirit with the clammy depths of the vale of Soul-making. For only by cross-connecting the vertical axis of unifying spirit with the horizontal axis of pathologizing soul can we consciously embrace the core singularity of remembered Self, the central Point, which as the God archetype both transcends and unites them both.



Soul-making & Soul Retrieval:
Creative Bridges Between Shamanism and Depth Psychology
by
Maureen B. Roberts


art by Brigid Marlin
programming by DPC

Quelling Demons

People who undertake spiritual exercises with a sense of acquisitiveness, even with regard to "spiritual states," are really doing the work of demons, even if they feel they are being spiritual. Those who seek knowledge and extraordinary powers for the sake of personal gain and fame are also doing the work of demons.

When people are possessed by such inner demons, they may become receptors of external forces that artificially boost their intellectual or psychic powers for a time. Not realizing that it is a false and deceptive condition, such people attribute this to themselves and become all the more conceited and possessed by their demons.

A simple method of quelling demons is to refrain from clinging to anything mentally. This is illustrated by an ancient story, in which a strange person used to roam around the grounds of a hermitage of a certain meditation master. Sometimes he would appear as a Buddhist saint, sometimes as a celestial king, sometimes radiating extraordinary light, sometimes uttering strange sayings. This continued for ten years, and then it stopped.

The meditation master told his disciples, "A celestial demon had been coming here to bother me, but no matter what appearance it created, I dealt with it by not looking or listening. The demon's manifestations had an end, but my not looking and not listening have no end."

~Dream Conversations, Thomas Cleary


{Image linked/Programming by DPC}

Clearing space for truth.

Lin Chi said, "If you can put to rest the mind that frantically seeks from moment to moment, you will be no different from old Shakyamuni Buddha." He wasn't fooling people. Even bodhisattvas of the seventh stage seek Buddha-knowledge without their minds being satisfied:* therefore it is called "affliction." Really there's no way to manage: it's impossible to apply the slightest external measure.

Several years ago there was a certain Layman Hsu who was able to find an opening; he sent me a letter expressing his understanding that said, "Empty and open in my daily activities, there's not a single thing opposing me; finally I realize that all things in the three worlds are fundamentally nonexistent. Truly this is peaqce and happiness, joyful liveliness, having cast it all away." Accordingly, I instructed him with a verse:


Don't be fond of purity:
Purity makes people weary.
Don't be fond of joyful liveliness:
Joyful liveliness makes people crazy.
As water conforms to the vessel,
It accordingly becomes square or round, short or long.
As for casting away or not casting away,
Please think it over more carefully.
The three worlds and myriad things
Are no refuge---where is there any home?
If you are just thus,
This is a great contradiction.
This is to inform Layman Hsu
That his own kin are creating disaster---
Open wide the Eye of the Thousand Sages,
And do not keep praying for relief.



*The Hua Yen Scripture propounds ten stages of bodhisattvahood.
Only with the seventh "Far-Going" stage is the discriminating knowledge
that clings to existence and nonexistence cut off. But at the seventh stage
there's still agent and object, wisdom apart from the truth, and hence accomplishment.
"Though entering the gate of knowledge of contemplating emptiness,
they scrupulously cultivate merit. Though detached from the three worlds,
they adorn the three worlds."

With the eight stage, outward seeking ceases,
and accomplishment is abandoned, even as the Dharma is actualized in this
"Immovable" stage. All the great deeds of benefiting self and others is likened
to what happens when a person dreams of drowning, and generates a
great burst of energy and acts with expedient means to save himself,
and thus by his efforts wakes up. After he awakens, his doings cease.

Swampland Flowers: The Letters and Lectures of Zen Master Ta Hui





Q: How does one deal with the practical life situations
while trying to be simple and experience space?

A: You see, in order to experience open space one also must experience the solidity
of earth, of form. They are interdependent. Often we romanticize open space
and then we fall into traps. As long as we do not romanticize open space as a
wondrous place but rather relate that space to earth, then we will avoid these traps.
Space cannot be experienced without the outline of earth to define it. If we are going
to paint a picture of open space, we must express it in terms of the earth's horizon.
So it is necessary to bring oneself back to the problems of everyday life,
the kitchen-sink problems. That is why the simplicity and precision of everyday
activities is very important. If you perceive open space, you should bring yourself
back to your old, familiar, claustrophobic life-situations and look into them more
closely, examine them, absorb yourself into them, until the absurdity of their solidity
strikes you and you can see their spaciousness as well.



Q: How does one relate to the impatience that accompanies the waiting period?

A: Impatience means that you do not have a complete understanding of the process.
If you see completeness of each action, then you will not be impatient any more.



Q: I experience calm thoughts as well as neurotic thoughts.
Are these calm thoughts something I should cultivate?

A: In the practice of meditation all thoughts are the same: pious thoughts,
very beautiful thoughts, religious thoughts, calm thoughts---they are all still thoughts.
You do not try to cultivate calm thoughts and suppress so-called neurotic thoughts.
This is an interesting point. When we speak of treading the path of dharma,
which is the Fourth Noble Truth, it does not mean that we become religious, calm, good.
Trying to be calm, trying to be good, is also an aspect of striving, of neuroticism.
Religiously inclined thoughts are the watcher, the judge, and confused, worldly
thoughts are the actor, the doer. For instance if you meditate, you might experience
ordinary domestic thoughts and at the same time there is a watcher saying,
"You shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, but you should come back to meditation."
These pious thoughts are still thoughts and should not be cultivated.


Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chögyam Trungpa


{Images linked/Programming by DPC}

What is the subject that hears?

The method to be practiced is as follows: you are to doubt regarding the subject in you that hears all sounds. All sounds are heard at a given moment because there is certainly a subject that hears. Although you may hear the sounds with your ears, the holes in your ears are not the subject that hears. If they were, dead men would also hear sounds.... You must doubt deeply, again and again, asking yourself what the subject of hearing could be.

Pay no attention to the illusory thoughts and ideas that may occur to you. Only doubt more and more deeply, gathering together in yourself all the strength that is in you, without aiming at anything or expecting anything in advance, without intending to be enlightened and without even intending not to intend to be enlightened; become like a child within your own breast... But however you go on doubting, you will find it impossible to locate the subject that hears.

You must explore still further just there, where nothing is to be found. Doubt deeply in a state of single-mindedness, looking neither ahead nor behind, neither right nor left, becoming completely like a dead man, unaware even of the presence of your own person. When this method is practiced more and more deeply, you will arrive at a state of being completely self-oblivious and empty. But even then you must bring up the Great Doubt, "What is the subject that hears?" and doubt still further, all the time being like a dead man.

And after that, when you are no longer aware of your being completely like a dead man, and are no more conscious of the procedure of the Great Doubt but become yourself, through and through, a great mass of doubt, there will come a moment, all of a sudden, at which you emerge into a transcendence called the Great Enlightenment, as if you had awoken from a great dream, or as if, having been completely dead, you had suddenly revived.

{Sermons of Takusui}







"awareness is prerequisite to all acceptable changes of theory"

Thomas Kuhn

A Kind Heart

Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation, can that which is indestructible arise within him. In this lies the dignity of daring... Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The more a man learns wholeheartedly to confront the world which threatens him with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and the possibilities of new life and Becoming opened.

The Way of Transformation by Karlfried Graf Von Dürkheim





How do we make the teachings real? In the midst of our over-scheduled lives, how do we discover our inherent clarity and compassion? How do we develop trust that openness and maitri are available even in the most frantic moments? When we feel left out, inadequate, or lonely, can we take a warrior's perspective and contact bodhichitta?

Sharing the heart is a simple practice that can be used at any time and in every situation. It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection. A version of tonglen on the spot, it is also a method for enhancing our ability to rejoice.

The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this. It's a way of acknowledging when we are closing down and of training to open up. When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we make the wish that others can also experience this delight or this relief. In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others. If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well. It's a way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening bodhichitta.

Even the simplest of things can be the basis of this practice---a beautiful morning, a good meal, a shower. Although there are many such fleeting ordinary moments in our days, we usually speed right past them. We forget what joy they can bring. So the first step is to stop, notice, and appreciate what is happening. Even if this is all we do, it's revolutinary. Then we think of someone who is suffering and wish that person could have this pleasure to sweeten up his or her life.

When we practice giving in this way, we don't bypass our own pleasure. Say we're eating a delicious strawberry. We don't think, "Oh, I shouldn't be enjoying this so much. Other people don't even have a crust of bread." We just fully appreciate the luscious fruit. Then we wish that Pete or Rita could have such pleasure. We wish that anyone who is suffering could experience such delight.

Discomfort of any kind also becomes the basis for practice. We breathe in knowing that our pain is shared; there are people all over the earth feeling just as we do right now. This simple gesture is a seed of compassion for self and other. If we want, we can go further. We can wish that a specific person or all beings could be free of suffering and its causes. In this way our toothaches, our insomnia, our divorces, and our terror become our link with humanity.

This simple way of training with pleasure and pain allows us to use what we have, wherever we are, to connect with other people. It engenders on-the-spot bravery, which is what it will take to heal ourselves and our brothers and sisters on the planet.


The Places That Scare You, by Pema Chödrön



(Images linked/Art by Jason Thielke/Programming by DPC)



To make things as easy as possible to understand,
we can summarize the four boundless qualities in
this single phrase "a kind heart." Just train yourself
to have a kind heart always and in all situations.

Patrul Rinpoche