Deeper
Currents
“Each
of us is like a great, untamed sea, obedient to deeper currents that
are seldom visible.”
Mark
Nepo (The Book of Awakening)
Once,
when I was a young woman, my husband tried to teach me to water ski.
I'm a good swimmer and enjoy the water, but I really wasn't keen on
learning to ski. I'm not someone who enjoys being in fast boats, or
even a slow boats, for that matter. But he did, and he decided that I
would surely love it if I just gave it a try. So, we went boating on
a bayou in Florida, where the salty water is murky even at the
surface. I managed after several clumsy attempts, to stand up on the
skis, and to stay up as long as we traveled in a straight line. But
when he brought the boat around in an arc, I hit the wake. I flew
into the air and then down hard, hitting my head on one of the skis
that had fallen off my feet. When I plunged into the water,
disoriented for a minute (that seemed like an hour), I couldn't
tell which way was up. The water around me all looked the
same—greenish-gray, and dull. Then, slowly, in spite of my
thrashing panic, my body drifted upward toward the surface and
sunlight came into view. That was my first—and last—water skiing
lesson. Every part of me felt broken for a couple of weeks (and I'm
still not a boat-lover).
Murky
water is a good metaphor for the deep unconscious. From the outside,
it is hard to see in, and once you're in there, it is sometimes hard
to see the way out. Carl Jung had us made up of layers:
consciousness, the personal unconscious, and the collective
unconscious.
Consciousness
is composed of what we're thinking right now, and what we're aware of
with regard to ourselves, our surroundings and others. The personal
unconscious is that layer that contains the things that have happened
in our lives that we can pull up to consciousness and remember, as
well as things that are just images, feelings and impressions of actual
experiences. And the collective is that which is inherited from our
ancestors and our cultural lineage. We access those deeper levels of
the unconscious by way of dreams, thoughts and stories. Myths,
legends and fairy tales, which are the 'dreams' of the culture from
which they arise, are especially fertile ground for the collective
unconscious.
Suffice
it to say, we are way bigger than we think; deeper and multi-faceted.
Listening to your dreams, writing them down to study the images,
paying attention to your thoughts, and to the way that you speak
yourself, are a good ways of exploring the depths. Reading
the myths, legends and fairy tales of your particular culture is
another. Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue
Ox, all the way up to Spider Man, tell us a lot about the American-male psyche. The book, Women Who Run With the Wolves, by Dr. Clarissa Estes, is a good starting place for the female psyche.
Very
few of us actually listen to our insides, but there's a whole ocean
in there waiting to be discovered, a rich and fascinating world that
you don't have to travel to visit. You can water ski (if you
aren't me) on the surface for your whole life, or you can take the
plunge and see for yourself.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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