Forgiveness
I want to forgive something
Someone
In fact a group
Something that hurt a lot
I've tried logic
I tell myself
"It was an expression of concern"
My heart doesn't agree
It is sullen
Immobile and grumpy
It whispers
"They have not apologized"
It whispers
"When people say you're crazy
It could be a joke
An expression of concern
It wasn't
It was a palm held out
At arm's length
To distance me."
My head argues
"That's what it felt like to you.
You don't know their intentions."
I want to write
A poem of forgiveness
Hoping my heart will follow
My conscious doesn't write my poems
My conscious wrestles with an idea
The poem comes out of this struggle
I look at the poem I've written
I think,
"That is what I would like
my conscious heart to feel."
My poem is often more generous
Than my conscious feel
My poems are not mine
They are a gift
From the unconscious
It is much larger
Than the small conscious me
I dream of feeling envy
I climb into a bathtub
And transform myself
To battle a trickster
We are transported
To the bottom of the ocean
In the ocean
The trickster and I are one
It is unlimited
It is not my unconscious
There is no separation
It is all unconscious
I did not think
A poem would give forgiveness
But pain drove me
Into the sea
I am connected
You gave me these pearls
Thank you
5/27/07
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Poem: Advice to Micheal
Advice to Micheal
Neverland
Is such an ironic name
Can't they hear?
Can't they think?
The land where boys never grew up
The Lost Boys
And you
Are not molesting
Boys
You are
Searching
When I heard
About your childhood
I knew
They were wrong
They've missed the boat
You sang
Like an angel
And the world
Stole your childhood
Hotel rooms
With older brothers
Sex
Drugs
Alcohol
Money
Chaos
And you must have been
So frightened
Lost
Pressure to sing
As the star
Locked your core self away
To keep it safe
My childhood
Was scarey too
I started my search
With a dream
Of a dark hole
From which came the sound
Of monsters
Howling
I was scared
I went to the hole
anyway
scared
of the howling
The hole was dark
And roots stuck out of the side
Like reaching fingers
I got a flashlight
And looked
It wasn't as deep
As I thought
And the roots worked as
A ladder
I climbed down
Into the hole
I found three monsters
Howling
Baby monsters
I put them in my pack
And carried them up
Into the light
They howled
I bathed them
And diapered them
And fed them
And rocked them
They howled
They didn't know what to do
When taken care of
I named them
Fear
Grief
Shame
At last they stopped howling
And sat
Warm
Wrapped in blankets
Ugly
Sullen
Lower lips thrust out
And I found a shrink
To talk about my dream
And to help heal the monsters
That I had rescued
We always have more
Work to do
But now I have a little girl
Inside me
Who came to greet me
When I had healed the monsters
Enough
She is beautiful
You won't find
The Lost Boy
That you are looking for
Outside you
He is inside
He is innocent
And beautiful
You may have to face
The monsters
Of your childhood
To reach him
Yours was worse than mine
I'm sorry
You may have to face
How much people you loved
Hurt you
Even though they loved you
I'm sorry
Find help
And rescue
The Lost Boy
And joy
Good luck.
8/10/05
Neverland
Is such an ironic name
Can't they hear?
Can't they think?
The land where boys never grew up
The Lost Boys
And you
Are not molesting
Boys
You are
Searching
When I heard
About your childhood
I knew
They were wrong
They've missed the boat
You sang
Like an angel
And the world
Stole your childhood
Hotel rooms
With older brothers
Sex
Drugs
Alcohol
Money
Chaos
And you must have been
So frightened
Lost
Pressure to sing
As the star
Locked your core self away
To keep it safe
My childhood
Was scarey too
I started my search
With a dream
Of a dark hole
From which came the sound
Of monsters
Howling
I was scared
I went to the hole
anyway
scared
of the howling
The hole was dark
And roots stuck out of the side
Like reaching fingers
I got a flashlight
And looked
It wasn't as deep
As I thought
And the roots worked as
A ladder
I climbed down
Into the hole
I found three monsters
Howling
Baby monsters
I put them in my pack
And carried them up
Into the light
They howled
I bathed them
And diapered them
And fed them
And rocked them
They howled
They didn't know what to do
When taken care of
I named them
Fear
Grief
Shame
At last they stopped howling
And sat
Warm
Wrapped in blankets
Ugly
Sullen
Lower lips thrust out
And I found a shrink
To talk about my dream
And to help heal the monsters
That I had rescued
We always have more
Work to do
But now I have a little girl
Inside me
Who came to greet me
When I had healed the monsters
Enough
She is beautiful
You won't find
The Lost Boy
That you are looking for
Outside you
He is inside
He is innocent
And beautiful
You may have to face
The monsters
Of your childhood
To reach him
Yours was worse than mine
I'm sorry
You may have to face
How much people you loved
Hurt you
Even though they loved you
I'm sorry
Find help
And rescue
The Lost Boy
And joy
Good luck.
8/10/05
threes and fours
Lets talk about numbers. Early in this individuation mid-life crisis I had a dream which contained three monsters. More recently I dreamt about fours: four women, four bells, four monks and four fires. The fires were sanctity, purity, washing up and cooking. I emailed a psychiatrist friend and asked about threes and fours and he said, basically, that fours were good. Another friend lent me a book by Robert Johnson, MD which talks about threes and fours. The book is Transformation.
Irritatingly enough, the book had another number: seven. He writes that sections of the process can take 7 weeks, months, years, or a multiple of 7. I thought, well, thank goodness it's taken seven years instead of 21. Then I remembered that I did one year in counseling, how long ago? Well, exactly 21 years.
I'm going to post both poems.
Yours,
Red Paw
Irritatingly enough, the book had another number: seven. He writes that sections of the process can take 7 weeks, months, years, or a multiple of 7. I thought, well, thank goodness it's taken seven years instead of 21. Then I remembered that I did one year in counseling, how long ago? Well, exactly 21 years.
I'm going to post both poems.
Yours,
Red Paw
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Jung Made Easy
First the disclaimer: I'm not a shrink, nor a psychologist, nor have I read all of Jung and particularly not in the original language. However, I keep tripping over Jung's ideas in all sorts of settings. I've also been reading about the brain and memory and we seem to be able to remember large hunks of information by filing them under simple words. Our brains can keep about 7 ideas in present memory at any one time, but some of those ideas can be really large: a piece of music, for example. I keep adding to the memory file I have labeled "Jung" and revising it, and I tend to try to simplify things down to where they feel coherent to me.
One idea that Jung had, nicely explained in Robert Johnson, MD's book Transformation, is that we have three stages of development. Two are well publicized and the third is not. The first is the savage. Anyone who has had a child and pictured a perfect sweet loving obedient little angel knows what I am talking about. We are born uncivilized and our parents and culture try to civilize us. That is stage two: being civilized. Growing up, learning how to be polite in one's culture, getting through school, getting a career or job, keeping from starving or being killed in lots of parts of the world and then having some savages of one's own and discovering that civilizing them is harder than it looks. Stage three is the mysterious one. I don't understand why. The public name is a midlife crisis and the therapist name is individuation or differentiation. My impression is that therapists think that most people don't do it, or rather, they don't do it Right. Stage three is when the ego is all built up to satisfy family and culture and as functional as it can be (which may not actually be very functional or may look extremely functional) and all of a sudden the self says, is this all there is? Then the self starts making trouble and starts deconstructing the ego. This can come in all sorts of forms: trotting off to therapy (me), having an affair, buying a convertible, quitting one's job and running off to some other land, acting out, changing careers. By doing it wrong, so far as I can tell, the therapists mean that some people do it unconsciously: their lives look like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are fighting it out for control. Sometimes people are caught doing exactly the thing that they have publicly said is terrible, evil, they've spent their lives campaigning against it (yes, certain politicians come to mind). I'm not sure there really is a wrong way to differentiate, but I am hopeful that consciously doing the deconstruction might cause a little less collateral damage, though I may be wrong. I am told that individuation doesn't end, either, one doesn't wake up one day and suddenly think, wow, that was intense, but it's over.
My trip started right when I felt like things were a bit under control. Home had settled a bit after much fighting about moving, kids were doing well, work had settled down after a business crash, I had friends, I was more or less healthy and I'd just been made chief of staff. I thought, cool! Within 2 months everything crashed and I could feel it starting with something called disassociation: I felt stupid and terrible every time I tried to do one part of my job and I became slow as molasses. I knew it wasn't real, so to speak. When I would go back and look at what I'd done, it was fine, but it was like pulling teeth to do it. My main thought was "uh-oh" and I promptly scheduled with a counselor. Dreams and poetry helped me through this. They may not help other people, each person has to find their own path. More on that later, but there are all sorts of helpers out there and not always who or what you would expect.
I think that one signal that a person is entering this stage is that practically everyone who knows them will tell them they are acting crazy. Jung thought the first half of life was to build up the ego: and the second half is to deconstruct it and let the self take over. The self is our whole self, not just the parts that were allowed to stay conscious while we became civilized. The other half was stored in the unconscious and it will out! There are some dark things there and stuff we are ashamed of but the unconscious is also a rich swamp with beautiful growth hidden in the muck.
That's enough for today!
Yours,
Red Paw
One idea that Jung had, nicely explained in Robert Johnson, MD's book Transformation, is that we have three stages of development. Two are well publicized and the third is not. The first is the savage. Anyone who has had a child and pictured a perfect sweet loving obedient little angel knows what I am talking about. We are born uncivilized and our parents and culture try to civilize us. That is stage two: being civilized. Growing up, learning how to be polite in one's culture, getting through school, getting a career or job, keeping from starving or being killed in lots of parts of the world and then having some savages of one's own and discovering that civilizing them is harder than it looks. Stage three is the mysterious one. I don't understand why. The public name is a midlife crisis and the therapist name is individuation or differentiation. My impression is that therapists think that most people don't do it, or rather, they don't do it Right. Stage three is when the ego is all built up to satisfy family and culture and as functional as it can be (which may not actually be very functional or may look extremely functional) and all of a sudden the self says, is this all there is? Then the self starts making trouble and starts deconstructing the ego. This can come in all sorts of forms: trotting off to therapy (me), having an affair, buying a convertible, quitting one's job and running off to some other land, acting out, changing careers. By doing it wrong, so far as I can tell, the therapists mean that some people do it unconsciously: their lives look like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are fighting it out for control. Sometimes people are caught doing exactly the thing that they have publicly said is terrible, evil, they've spent their lives campaigning against it (yes, certain politicians come to mind). I'm not sure there really is a wrong way to differentiate, but I am hopeful that consciously doing the deconstruction might cause a little less collateral damage, though I may be wrong. I am told that individuation doesn't end, either, one doesn't wake up one day and suddenly think, wow, that was intense, but it's over.
My trip started right when I felt like things were a bit under control. Home had settled a bit after much fighting about moving, kids were doing well, work had settled down after a business crash, I had friends, I was more or less healthy and I'd just been made chief of staff. I thought, cool! Within 2 months everything crashed and I could feel it starting with something called disassociation: I felt stupid and terrible every time I tried to do one part of my job and I became slow as molasses. I knew it wasn't real, so to speak. When I would go back and look at what I'd done, it was fine, but it was like pulling teeth to do it. My main thought was "uh-oh" and I promptly scheduled with a counselor. Dreams and poetry helped me through this. They may not help other people, each person has to find their own path. More on that later, but there are all sorts of helpers out there and not always who or what you would expect.
I think that one signal that a person is entering this stage is that practically everyone who knows them will tell them they are acting crazy. Jung thought the first half of life was to build up the ego: and the second half is to deconstruct it and let the self take over. The self is our whole self, not just the parts that were allowed to stay conscious while we became civilized. The other half was stored in the unconscious and it will out! There are some dark things there and stuff we are ashamed of but the unconscious is also a rich swamp with beautiful growth hidden in the muck.
That's enough for today!
Yours,
Red Paw
Sunday, June 3, 2007
A map for the journey: Prayer to a Rock
I'm back. This is fun.
I've been writing poems since I was about nine. I love words and rhymes and nonsense poems. The trigger for my differentiation was moving close to my mom, who was dying of ovarian cancer. I moved, I hoped we'd have a year, I watched her walk and knew we wouldn't and she died 5 1/2 months later. It has made a mess of May: her birthday is the 31st, she died on the 15th and there we have Mother's Day and Memorial Day, how nice.
Anyhow, I wrote this poem two years after she died. It was one of those poems that just pops up for me, like my unconscious is some sort of whacko toaster. Put enough stuff in and eventually something pops out. In retrospect it is rather a map for my individuation, but certainly my conscious brain didn't know that. I really did do the run, though, and sang to the eagle and had the confusion about the footprints. That still seems peculiar but perhaps when the Self is battling the Ego it uses whatever is at hand.
Here it is:
Prayer to a Rock
I went running
along the sunny beach
and ran into shadow
I kept running even though
there was beach with sun
because the shadow felt right
I ran towards a dead snag
Huge rocks were scattered on the beach
I stopped and placed my palms on one
And asked the rock to take away my grief
And then thought, no, that wasn’t right
I asked the rock to lend me its strength during grief
I ran on
I took some comfort that there were
footprints in the sand
Someone had preceded me
I ran to the snag
an eagle sat on top
I sang America the Beautiful
to the eagle
and bowed
when I looked again
the eagle soared, wings spread, out of sight
I turned to run back
and now there were only my footprints
I thought I’d imagined the other set
in my grief
Then I passed the woman and her dog
who now were tracing my footsteps
I had passed them
I ran within my grief
I let it rise
and dissipate
I stopped twice more at rocks
One to change my prayer again
ask the rock to inspire me with its strength
Once to thank the rocks
I passed from the shadow
again into the light
3/3/02
Yours,
Red Paw
I've been writing poems since I was about nine. I love words and rhymes and nonsense poems. The trigger for my differentiation was moving close to my mom, who was dying of ovarian cancer. I moved, I hoped we'd have a year, I watched her walk and knew we wouldn't and she died 5 1/2 months later. It has made a mess of May: her birthday is the 31st, she died on the 15th and there we have Mother's Day and Memorial Day, how nice.
Anyhow, I wrote this poem two years after she died. It was one of those poems that just pops up for me, like my unconscious is some sort of whacko toaster. Put enough stuff in and eventually something pops out. In retrospect it is rather a map for my individuation, but certainly my conscious brain didn't know that. I really did do the run, though, and sang to the eagle and had the confusion about the footprints. That still seems peculiar but perhaps when the Self is battling the Ego it uses whatever is at hand.
Here it is:
Prayer to a Rock
I went running
along the sunny beach
and ran into shadow
I kept running even though
there was beach with sun
because the shadow felt right
I ran towards a dead snag
Huge rocks were scattered on the beach
I stopped and placed my palms on one
And asked the rock to take away my grief
And then thought, no, that wasn’t right
I asked the rock to lend me its strength during grief
I ran on
I took some comfort that there were
footprints in the sand
Someone had preceded me
I ran to the snag
an eagle sat on top
I sang America the Beautiful
to the eagle
and bowed
when I looked again
the eagle soared, wings spread, out of sight
I turned to run back
and now there were only my footprints
I thought I’d imagined the other set
in my grief
Then I passed the woman and her dog
who now were tracing my footsteps
I had passed them
I ran within my grief
I let it rise
and dissipate
I stopped twice more at rocks
One to change my prayer again
ask the rock to inspire me with its strength
Once to thank the rocks
I passed from the shadow
again into the light
3/3/02
Yours,
Red Paw
What is this site about? Individuation and midlife
What is this site about? Bad poetry? Yes, but it's really about individuation and differentiation, for which one popular name is "midlife crisis." I've been having mine, thanks, and a very messy process it has been and no doubt will be. However, instead of buying a sports car and having an affair I went into counseling, did dream therapy and wrote poetry. The poems are an ongoing record of the places I've been on this journey. I'm not done with individuation, according to the shrinks and counselors one never is, but I've just done a big piece.
I'm also writing this because I'm pissed. The shrinks and counselors say that differentiation is terribly hard and painful and that our culture doesn't support it (I agree on the latter) and they act like it's some special thing that the ordinary person won't and can't do. I think their egos are too big. I think that it can be supported and it doesn't have to be that hard: but no one is really writing a good map. So, another name for this site might be "Jung made easy" or "Differentiation for Dummies," me being one of them.
Why am I pissed? When I first went to counseling I saw three different counselors in the space of a short time, mostly because the one I really wanted was out of town for 6 weeks. All three mentioned individuation. The third one, the one I wanted, actually laughed and said, "My, aren't you right on schedule!" That comment has stuck like glue. I hate to be predictable AND I had never heard of individuation. Why would that make me so mad? Because I'm a family practice doctor, for goodness sake, and supposedly had been trained in a reasonable amount of psychiatry. Currently that would mostly consist of "how to give out pills", but that is another topic. So here I was, early 40s, apparently entering an ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE stage of my mental processes and I had never even heard of it. So, I think the word needs to get out. I used to get in trouble all the time in medical school for simplifying jargon -- I got scolded by a resident 4th year for describing a prostate exam as "squishy" instead of "boggy". I didn't care, because that resident had not earned my respect. I feel very good about trying to simplify Jung's ideas.
What it comes down to is deciding whether to have a conscious midlife crisis or an unconscious one. Both choices suck, but I think that you will come out the other end in better shape if you choose a conscious one.
Yours,
Red Paw
I'm also writing this because I'm pissed. The shrinks and counselors say that differentiation is terribly hard and painful and that our culture doesn't support it (I agree on the latter) and they act like it's some special thing that the ordinary person won't and can't do. I think their egos are too big. I think that it can be supported and it doesn't have to be that hard: but no one is really writing a good map. So, another name for this site might be "Jung made easy" or "Differentiation for Dummies," me being one of them.
Why am I pissed? When I first went to counseling I saw three different counselors in the space of a short time, mostly because the one I really wanted was out of town for 6 weeks. All three mentioned individuation. The third one, the one I wanted, actually laughed and said, "My, aren't you right on schedule!" That comment has stuck like glue. I hate to be predictable AND I had never heard of individuation. Why would that make me so mad? Because I'm a family practice doctor, for goodness sake, and supposedly had been trained in a reasonable amount of psychiatry. Currently that would mostly consist of "how to give out pills", but that is another topic. So here I was, early 40s, apparently entering an ENTIRELY PREDICTABLE stage of my mental processes and I had never even heard of it. So, I think the word needs to get out. I used to get in trouble all the time in medical school for simplifying jargon -- I got scolded by a resident 4th year for describing a prostate exam as "squishy" instead of "boggy". I didn't care, because that resident had not earned my respect. I feel very good about trying to simplify Jung's ideas.
What it comes down to is deciding whether to have a conscious midlife crisis or an unconscious one. Both choices suck, but I think that you will come out the other end in better shape if you choose a conscious one.
Yours,
Red Paw
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