Plumb
the Depths
“Even
the clearest water seems opaque at great depth.”
Joel
Agee
In The
Book of Awakening (p.199), Mark Nepo writes, “Each of us is like a great,
untamed sea, obedient to deeper currents that are seldom visible.” I see
this most clearly in myself when I am gripped by a mood. Depth psychology calls
it “constellating a complex.” It happens when I am suddenly emotional, either
angry, or melancholy, and have no idea why. It may happen when someone says or
does something that triggers an overly emotional response. Or sometimes when I
meet someone and instantly like or dislike them. I wonder if you have such experiences
too.
Because
so much of our life experience remains in our unconscious mind, we sometimes
are baffled by our own behavior. It may feel as though someone else has stepped
into your body and is in control of what you say or do. We will even say, “Something grabbed hold of me. I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t help myself.”
When a complex is deeply buried in the unconscious, like a shipwreck on the
bottom of the ocean, we may find it inexplicable because we can’t see it from
the surface, and we have no memories associated with it. We feel mystified.
But sometimes, the origins are in the personal unconscious, which is closer to
the surface of awareness, and we can get to them with a little bit of
digging.
Here’s an example: When I
was a child, from the age of nine until I graduated high school, I lived in a
mill town in western North Carolina. In that town, the gradations in society were
marked with clear boundaries. There were the mill owners and the people who
worked for them. Wedged in between was a small middle class made up mostly of businesses
that served the common needs of both ends of the spectrum. My dad was a land surveyor,
so we were part of that middle ground. It seemed to me that everything in the
town was controlled by the elite wealthy; the mill owners, the lawyers and
doctors, and the political figures, all of whom came from that strata of
society. Even the schools were under their dominating influence—who was invited
to join clubs, who was elected to offices, who became cheerleaders, etc. At
least, that is how it felt to me, and to my sister, Jerrie, who, because of it,
ended up leaving home and going to live with our grandparents for
the last two years of high school. To be sure, we were schooled at home about “those
rich folks” and told how we should behave in their presence—not offend them
since my dad’s business might suffer because of it. To say I resented it is a
great understatement.
So, the complex for me is
triggered by people who have extreme wealth; people who, in my perception, don’t
have to earn their money, but have it handed to them. (One of the mill owners
in that little town gave each of his children and grandchildren one-million
dollars for their 21st birthday.) When I encounter someone, who behaves
similarly to the well-heeled in that little town, I react in the same way I did
back then—I resent them. It’s a response that does not take into account that
they are not those people, that they have never “wronged” me, that, in fact, I don’t
even know them or what challenges they have faced in their lives. It has
nothing to do with them. It’s simply the constellation of a complex within me.
It’s good to know where
your triggers are, and what complex grabs hold of you, so that you can mediate your
response. Otherwise, you will lash out and cause harm to relationships that you
care about. Sometimes the origin is pretty clear, like my experience in little
mill town. But often it takes some work to uncover what’s going on inside you
to produce these potent feelings that simply don’t belong to the current
situation. It helps to consider yourself a mystery worthy of investigation. You
are a deep ocean filled with such mysteries. All you need is the courage to plumb
the depths.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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