Hermaphrodite Dream

Yesterday I had the following dream:

I'm in a class with a man talking about a certain sound of a bird. While he is talking about this sound in actual fact we started to hear the same bird outside of the room we were in. While this is occuring I am seeing something being born from a shell. A bird was being born from a shell. The bird had two heads. The shell was very special, like if it was made of precious stone and trimmed in gold.

I AM Dream

We are teaching a new method to a group of children

I am...the tree
I am the water
I am the food

We can only fully understand something by becoming (part of) it.

What is the difference between the Psychologist and the Psychiatrist?

As a psychologist practicing psychotherapy, I have often been asked the question of what is the difference between psychology and psychiatry or of the psychologist and the psychiatrist.

The answer basically revolves around the difference between the mind and the brain. The psychologist's core training revolves around the mind (psyche) and the psychiatrist around the brain (soma). First, the two are not the same. And whereas the psychiatrist tends, given his core medical training, to retrieve mental phenomena to brain processes, we now -with the advent of a more profound understanding of consciousness- can say brain processes result from the mind.

The following quote of Freud sheds some light on this question:

"...in his medical school a doctor receives a training which is more or less the opposite of what he would need as a preparation for psychoanalysis. His attention has been directed to objectively ascertainable facts of anatomy, physics and chemistry...His interest is not aroused in the mental side of vital phenomena; medicine is not concerned with the study of the higher mental functions, which lies in the sphere of another faculty. Only psychiatry is supposed to deal with the disturbances of mental functions; but we know in what manner and with what aims it does so. It looks for the somatic determinants of mental disorders and treats them like other causes of illness.

Psychiatry is right to do so and medical education is clearly excellent. If it is described as one-sided...In itself every science is one-sided. It must be so since it restrict itself to particular subjects, points of view and methods. It is a piece of nonsense in which I would take no part to play off one science against another. After all, physics does not diminish the value of chemistry; it cannot take its place but on the other hand cannot be replaced by it. Psycho-analysis is certainly quite particularly one-sided as being the science of the mental unconscious."

Freud, "The Question of Lay Analysis', 1926, Standard Edition, Vol. XX, p. 230-231.

Thinking the Same Way and Expecting different Results

Day after day badness is increasing and worsening in the world, and still until now we don't realize that it is our own system of thinking which is the cause of this badness. Our system of thinking has turned us into immoral beings without feeling (the feminine; see video below). And worse yet we think that this very system of thought, which has converted us into these abominable beings, is the one that will hitherto liberate us from all badness. Our minds are so polluted, that the pollution which it contains inhibits us from seeing that we are ourselves creating that false hope in ourselves.

Quo vadis mon ami, Quo vadis?

Papiamento translation:

Dia tras dia maldat ta aumentando i empeorando riba mundo i tog te ainda nos NO ta quere cu ta nos propio sistema di pensa ta causante di e maldat aqui. Nos sistea di pensa a comberti nos den sernan inmoral i sin sentimento. Anto pa colmo nos ta pensa cu e mesun sistema di pensa cu a comberti nos den sernan abominabel, ta esun cu por sierto ta bai libra nos tambe for di tur maldat. Nos mente ta asina sushi cu e sushedad cu tin den dje ta stroba nos di mira cu ta nos mes ta creando e speransa falso einan den nos mes.

Quo vadis mon ami, Quo vadis?

Meditating With Open eyes & The Shadow

Touching the shadow (the practice) is really a meditation with open eyes. When unaware of our projection we are actually caught in the projection and tend to believe it to be real. Yet becoming aware of the projection is basically stepping outside the bubble of that content or thought that is projected versus being engulfed or encapsulated by it when not aware that it is a projection.

When aware of the projection we also thus become aware that the thought or content isn't true. In this way we can remove ourselves from that content. In this way and quite similar to meditation with closed eyes, which is depicted as going in between the thoughts, when practicing touching the shadow we basically sojourn between our thoughts (contents) if you wish -only now it is done and achieved with open eyes-. In a prior blog this space between the thoughts has been referred to as superposition while in other traditions it is also referred to as the "Now" (Eckhart Tolle).

What Sin is too Big...?

Last night I had the following dream:

I was walking in an unsafe place. I was about to be mugged. As they came toward me from the back and started to corner me, instead of running, I sarted to like try to lift off the floor. Somehow I knew to do this. To my amazement i started to lift off a little off the ground. It was very realistic though, not flying just like I knew the position like to lean and just float a little. And like the more I tried the more I started, however very gradually, to lift off and float upward to a height where they could not get me. However the higher I started to float the more they stood there like wondering and amazed. This shifted the whole setting. Next I'm sitting with a man (Omar is his name). I sat next to him like singing a song when he told me he couldn't do something. Somehow I knew what he just did. I was singing to him: 

What sin is too big for god? The lines of the song went something like:

...is that sin too hard...
...is that sin way to hard...
...is that sin way too hard for God?

I woke up and clearly remembered the melody and the tune of the song.
If I had a recorder at that moment I would have been able to record it.

Purpose of Touching the Shadow

While classical science is based on knowing the object based on consciousness. 

Touching the shadow is based on self-awareness which is technically therapy. 

I basically observe how I am observing the object or other. The result of self-observation, if you wish, is not to know external objects, but eventually know and know via Self. This Self-archetype is according to Jung not anymore a psychological archetype, but what he calls Psychoid, which has been referred to in Jungian circles as a transcendental subject (E.F. Edinger). 

Put differently, one awakens to a deeper expanded experience of self. 

The result here is to get to know and experience deeper levels of self and via this a sense of reality, where self and other are not experienced as separate vis-a-vis the classical scientific approach, where a sense of separateness ensues to the world or object due to getting to know the object.

Early Origins of Touching the Shadow

In Acts chapter 95 & 95 of The Apocryphal New Testament, Jesus told his disciples:

"A mirror am I to thee that perceivest me."

"Behold thyself in me...perceive what I do, for thyne is the passion of the manhood, which I am about to suffer."

Through the Eye of a Needle & Denial

It is not easy to change someones thoughts, because by nature people are egotistical and their egotism guarantees them that their thoughts are 100% correct. Those that think not like us are thinking incorrectly. No one believes that their thoughts are incorrect. This is why it is so hard for us to change our thoughts. The only way to change someones thoughts is by convincing them that their thoughts are incorrect. Yet to convince someone that his/her thoughts are incorrect is very hard. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone to admit that their thoughts are wrong.

Wanting to Know

In order to get to know you need to want to know because
when you want to know your own wanting to get to know
makes you hear the soundless voice of the master (within)
who silently tells you all the things you want to know.

Look Soldier Look Inwards (2)

Mentally people are so confused and exhausted that they have lost their innate capacity they inhere to activate their minds directly themselves without depending on a cause outside of themselves, in order for that external cause to affect their minds and stimulate it to create the dark thoughts which they are thinking and which have them mentally so confused and exhausted.

Woman, Orgasm & The Shadow

The woman is historically the shadow. Until today the feminine subjects (arts etc) live on the fringe of the curiculum. The feminine has been completely banned from the universities, leaving them emotionally dead. Yet deeply enthrenched in medical theory we still find relics testifying to the deep roots of the exclusion of the feminine. The following is a little curiosity which illustrates how the woman has been the subject of great repression historically, scientifically and medically:

In 1870 John Davenpoort would have us believe that women shouldn't have orgasms at all. "As he described it in Curiositatis Eroticae Physiolgiae (1875), the result of orgasm in women was that:

"She burns and as it were, dries up the semen received by her from the male, and if by chance a child is conceived, it is ill-formed and does not remain nine months in the mother's womb."

(In "Taking charge of your fertility" By Tony Weschler, MPH, 2006 p. 246).

Fractured Thought

The moment someone makes a fracture in the thought he is thinking, this fracture opens the door of his life, without him knowing this, to friction. And wherever there is friction automatically there is resistance. Strange is that when someone makes a fracture in the thought that he is thinking, he thinks more about the part of the fraction that makes him turn cold. And the more he thinks now the colder he gets, until at a certain point his own thinking freezes him completely.

It is difficult for someone that is frozen, to escape by himself from that side of the fraction because in order for him to escape he has to change his perspective toward the other side of the fraction, which is the side that automatically lights a fire in him, and keeps heating him up from within until he aids the fire to accomplish its mission. The mission for which the fire was lit.

Thoughts & Probabilities

The Stars in the sky are
thoughts and probabilities.

EDUCATION AND WOMAN & MAN

Because of the ignorant education we have received (and are receiving), from the time religion enterred our life, today we are experiencing a plethora of sexual problems. We have always been educated to view ourself as either man or woman. The consequence of this is that men started to believe that they are different from women. Today this has gone so far that men believe women have different feelings than men, and different thoughts, and different reactions, preferences, likes, etc etc.

EDUCASION I HOMBER & MUHER

Pa motibo di e educasion ignorante cu nos a (ta) hanya, for di tempo cu religion a drenta den nos bida, awendia nos ta experienciando masha hopi problema sexual. Semper nos a worde educa pa mira nos mes como homber of muher, pero consecuencia di esaqui ta cu e hombernan a cuminsa quere cu nan ta diferente for di e muhernan. Awendia e hombernan ta asina leuw cu nan ta queriendo cu e muhernan tin diferente sentimentonan cu e hombernan, i diferente pensamentonan, i diferente reacsionnan, gusto, gana etc. etc.

WOMAN & CHURCH

The greatest problem has been the
exclusion of the woman by the church.

OPPRESSION OF THE WOMAN

For many years men
have kept women down,
by pretending that woman
was created from
the rib of a man.

OPRECION DI E MUHER

Pa hopi anja hombernan a wanta e muhernan abou, door di pretende cu muher a worde crea for di e reebchi di un hober.

WOMAN & MAN QUO VADIS?

That man and woman have to accept their opposite (within), in order for the human being to recover it's central position in life, is a fact. A position that today is wrongfully disputed (in a barbaric form) between man and woman; because man at all costs wants woman to accept that man is superior to woman, and woman wants to humiliate man, in order to show men that women are superior to men. The acts they commit to proove their superiority to each other are barbaric. Among others men invent wars in order to fight and kill eachother without compassion; and women react with the same viciousness that they don't need men for nothing in their lives. They can satisfy themselves sexually; and not even to get babies do they need men anymore. In this fashion slowly but surely the distance between man and woman is becoming ever greater. The time has arrived to admit, that between woman and man there can be no inequality. We are all human beings.

HOMBER I MUHER QUO VADIS?

Cu e homber i e muher mester aksepta nan banda opuesto pa e ser humano recobra e puesto number un bek den bida ta un facto. Un puesto cu awe equibocadamente ta wordo disputa (na un forma barbaro) entre homber i muher; pasobra e homber kier cueste loque cueste e muher aksepta cu homber ta superior na e muher; y e muher kier humilia e homber pa e mustra e homber cu muher ta superior na e homber. E actonan cu nan ta comete pa mustra nan superioridad na otro ta barbaro. Entre otro e hombernan ta inventa guera pa na bringa i mata otro sin compasion, i e muhernan ta contesta cu e mesun visiosidad cu nan no tin mester di homber pa nada den nan bida. Nan mes por satisface otro sexualmente, i ni pa nan hanya jui nan no tin mester di homber mas. I asina poco poco e distancia entre nan ta birando mas hancho. E momento a jega pa admiti cu entre homber i muher no por tin disigualdad. Nos tur ta ser humano.

EGO

Ego: maybe on micro cosmic/small terms
it’s the essence of all badness on planet,
yet on big scale, it’s what we are truly about.

Behavioral Problems

Training: Managing Behavioral Problems

Next week 25/26 June 08 I will be giving a training to the teachers of a school sector (EPB) on Aruba on: "Managing Behavioral Problems". In general at schools of Aruba we have been witnessing increasing behavior problems, like violent behavior etc in schools. This school sector, which the majority of the young people on Aruba attent after elementary school, and to which the training will be delivered, stands out by far as having the most serious behavioral problems on the island. It has been experiencing increasingly more serious behavioral problems under students and between students and teachers.

Look Soldier Look...Inwards

Look teacher look...
Inwards
and thy battle shall be resolved

Look soldier look...
Inwards
And thy battle shall be resolved

Every Step Forward was a Step Backward Encountering Themselves

Every step they took,

thinking that they were approaching the(ir) truth,

was a step backward encountering themselves.

Chain Reaction

Feelings (sentiments) are really an illusion. If there is no thought there is no feeling. What we think has consequences for what we feel. And what we feel is inevitably translated to actions and behavior. If we change what we think automatically feeling also changes.

Choice and Thinking

We find ourselves constantly doing what we don’t want to do. 

I say something which I regret later. We are driven and controlled by external and alien forces. 

But we have a choice. For instance to not let one silly traffic incident spoil the rest of our day. 

We even have a choice as to what we think. 

We can change what we think. 

We can become aware that what we are thinking about someone (which is classically a projection) is not true. And hence we can choose to think something else. 

We can choose to not think. 

(Free) Choice and will predate and fore-go thinking. 

They operate thinking and thus feeling. The work of touching the shadow and re-taking projections is actually not thinking anymore. 

It is consciousness.

Illusions & Projections

Illusions are basically referring to experience within the matrix of the relative. Like time, it cannot be measured without space and vice versa. Yet as the definition of relative clearly states; the relative is the contrary of the absolute. Absolute means perfect, complete or pure; hence the relative is polluted and dirty. It is something or some value or experience which is only considered or exists in comparison to something else. In this sense it has no inner or intrinsic value. It is done for external reasons versus for its own sake, en esse. In this sense it is a cloned reality or an image, not the real thing. The relative is always dependent on something else for its own value. The synonym of relative is dependent and in this sense it is the opposite of the real individual. It is conditioned and thus like a chameleon changes given the conditions it is in and thus it is not unconditional. In this sense it is always subject to fear or bribery; compromised. In terms of a personality we refer to it as false for it is one face in front of this person and the opposite in front of the other. It contradicts itself. In this sense of its definition as being proportionate; it is what we refer to as the shadow or the resonance of the bright side.

I always perceive the other relative to the state I am in. In this sense when not at-one with my shadow I am the proportion. I am caught in a matrix of relativity which is referred to below as the world or desert of illusions. If I am too hot I will experience the other as too cold. If I am full I will experience the glass as half empty while if am down I will see everything as too big for me (the glass is half full). I have no way of ever knowing what the glass is if I’m caught in resistance and thus in relativity. That is as long as I generate a shadow (resist). Only when I’m free of resistance and thus between too much and too little, when I contain the shadow, can I experience the glass beyond relativity.

Here what I experience is that I am the glass. The matrix of relativity veils me from a deeper reality where I am one with the glass. Space and time is here traded for non-locality which is referred to as the concept of eternal and spiritual. In this sense when we touch the shadow we connect to absolute silence and truth and unconditional love. We see the pain in the other for we have also seen it in us. This approach vis-à-vis the relative materialistic approach to medicine was depicted in a dream as: “At the end of the dream started to feel incredible love for this/these sick/blind people: agape love.” The proxy reality of the illusion veils us from this deeper reality which we can only know first handedly.

There's always 2

Everything has two sides; a positive and a negative side. If you decide to pursue the positive soon you will have to confront the negative, which you have always avoided. If the positive is there, the negative is also there. If you ignore this your eyes are shut.

Glued in Contradiction

The real problem is not keeping the other honest, but self deception. We are unaware of the contradiction we are glued in. As long as we remain split in below mentioned two poles/persons, we tend to be caught in contradictions yet remain unaware of this. In terms of above mentioned message one side of us thinks he is curious and inquisitive while he hides the side and opposite that is terribly closed minded. What makes it difficult to recognize the contradiction we are caught in is that the side we least want to be (the shadow), which we yet also are, is projected on the other. In other words the inner contradiction or conflict is played out and experienced via the other. A woman tells her daughter: “you can’t think that I’m the kind of mother which looks on and enjoys the daughter’s pain…” Another older woman who feels terribly insecure and afraid to be at home alone (when her husband is abroad) tells her son upon suggesting that her grandson sleep over by her: “I don’t want him to think he has to babysit me.” This is a projection and basically a side of her is saying this to herself. Her rejected more secure and self-confident side is basically telling herself this and in somewhat sarcastic terms. The first woman is basically accusing herself she is looking on and doing nothing to help her daughter.

Another man goes on and on about his businesses and money and how important it is for him to have his financial affairs in place etc, and at that point says: “I hope you’re not thinking I am materialistic”. In both cases this is the shadow basically replying and responding to the dominant opposite side or self which has gone into somewhat extreme degrees. Here what is really happening is that one side is basically calling/accusing the other of being a materialist, a sadist and a ‘baby’. Yet this inner contradiction or debate is not caught within but another is blamed for “seeing” or thinking he is a materialist…

In this sense the way we feel the other is thinking about us is basically the way we are thinking of our self. For instance when someone projects anger onto the other it can be construed as a part of us which is looking onto the deceiver in us, so to speak, is angry at our self or the deceiver. There’s always a part of us looking onto ourselves. We get this often for instance when we feel others envy us or are jealous of us; or also when we feel others hate us because we are so great, successful etc. This is also a side of us which is at odds with ‘the monster’ (the inflated side) and is bent on bringing him down. This is of course the dynamic underlying conflicts and fights. I will fight the projection in the other. Yet we cannot kill the shadow. Full excising of the shadow leads to our own demise.

If we could become aware of the projection and thus re-take it we would be able to enter into an inner debate and dialog which could eventually lead to a compromise of sorts. The materialistic side would be cross fertilized by the more idealistic or social side and in that form the materialistic penchant could be countered and a form of balance or synergy could ensue. The same goes for the woman suffering from great insecurity. Yet when the other is blamed for feeling (actually us feeling) materialistic: 1. we can remain in denial of the extent of our one sidedness and 2. We don’t own and accept the side that the dominant person/pole in us is rejecting and fighting in the other.

The big problem is that this part of us that is at odds with the dominant side returns in different forms to terrorize and boycott the plans of the deceiver in us. This becomes the root of self-sabotage, disease and accidents in our life. In the life of the great physicist Wolfgang Pauli, the “demon” or shadow would return in his dreams as a figure strongly at odds with Pauli’s physics and which would be setting places afire which would be associated with this physics. But also outside of his dreams a term was coined for the weird accidents which would occur when Pauli would come around physics labs and such sort places. The term was the Pauli-effect. It is necessary to unite in one sole existence.

From Within

Today in a workshop I gave to a group of teachers, a teacher/psychologist asked me how can you get to change a student if the student totally denies that she needs any change or that she has to work on anything. The more they tried to convince the student of her error and problem the more the student started to say that they were trying to talk a problem onto her while there was none.

I more or less told her that my method works among others with dreams. In general it is based on tapping the inner potential (feedback) of the person. In dreams we find the natural feedback of the person toward themselves. Our best chance for change is to tap this natural source of feedback of a person toward themselves. In order to do this as a change agent or therapist we have to be in the now to tap what is going on here and now, and thus out of any preconceived notions or expectations. We are simply the translator of the feedback of the person toward themselves, which can come from a dream or other sources. The unconscious is simply the flow from which we tap. Real teaching is unleashing inner guidance. This is the most plausible form of working with change. It is the person, or a part of the person him/her self, which is telling him/her self what needs change. In this sense we must be attuned to the natural flow going on in and around us. Our role is to translate and mediate the messages. Not to tell the person what to do. Therefore there's a very thin line between facilitating and enslaving. Ours is not the role of judging and telling the other what to do. Change imposed from without is manipulation.

Marie Louise Von Franz on Touching the Shadow - video transcript

"If not more people try to reflect and take back their projections,
and take the opposite within themselves, there will be a total destruction.
There are a lot of people who go through life and the unconscious is not a reality to them.
They say at breakfast 'I had a funny dream', and in the afternoon they know nothing about it.
But if we paint them and interpret them and think about them, the dream becomes real.
And that's why you need to be lonely so the unconscious becomes stronger.
It's like loading up the unconscious and than it manifests.

Hermes Trismegistus

Hermes Trismegistus said in one active imagination to an alchemist: "I am the friend to whoever is lonely".

We have now preceding the man who pours water into the fish.
Now the fish is the Unconcious; so we have to support the unconscious.
It's not enough to just have it.
We have to actively turn toward it and support it, so that it then helps us.

Jung once said: "The toads and the frogs are god's first attempt to make man on a cold-blooded level. And then he didn't quite succeed, so he kept the idea in mind." 

There are many people are not in analysis but they are naturally gifted, which I would call:
They are honest.And they find these things without analysis.
I have lived in this tower for 8 weeks alone without speaking one word to anybody.
And I sometimes thought I was going off my head.
But the unconscious became alive. It was my path.

Jung: "There are no other similar beings like man. That thus are articulate and conscious; can give account for their functioning".

Listening To Me Talking To Myself

We are constantly talking to ourselves via others. When talking to the other we tacitly see a part of us we prefer not to see within. A woman tells me: "You will tell me I'm a materialist...but ...and she continues to tell me how for her material security etc is of great importance." This is a part of her that she is experiencing in me; or thus projecting on me. This is the part of herself which feels she hangs too much to the materialistic side. Yet she prefers to not see this side in herself, and hence ends up experiencing it via me. Her less materialistic side she is projecting on me and hence subsequently blames me for her feeling materialistic. This leads to not owning the too materialistic bent and to rejecting the less materialistic side within.

This inner talk or (here) conflict is constantly raging in us; yet there's no way to solve the conflict if the person remains unaware of the fact that it is in them. The point is that there's one side of us that is at odds with our dominant side. When listening yet more closely to ourselves and others we find the conflict before it is projected. A woman wearing much higher high heals than accustomed to, says she is afraid of having heard a voice in her tell her, while she was walking down a stairway, that she will fall and break her neck. This side could also be played out in terms of projecting on the husband that he doesn't want her to wear high heals.

Yet here we catch it before it is projected. This shadow side or demon can toward extreme conflict in the person literally attack itself. A woman once reported that in front of a stop light she had all intention to step on the breaks and that her leg out of its own stepped on the gas ramming into the car in front of her. But it can also react to us in our body as for instance a man who is overly active in wanting and demanding too much sex from his wife turns impotent. A man wanted to give a hand in a funeral ended up kissing the family member of the deceased person.

If we listen fast enough to the shadow (unconscious), it can make us extremely proactive in using the shadow to create great balance in us. For what this voice of opposition in us is actually trying to achieve is to curb our one-sidedness. Only, toward extreme one-sidedness it reacts in an equally extreme form. But when we truly listen to it and give real consequence to it; that is act upon it; it becomes an incredible tool and compass in creating balance in our own behavior and decisions. Yet more pro-actively we catch it in our dreams, which is where it first emerges only to subsequently play itself out during the day. When this is done it leads to a shift in outlook where we stop being reactive and realize we are creating the patterns we keep stuck in.

So the way we feel the other is looking at us is a part of the way we are looking at ourselves.

Purpose of Blog

This first entry is to briefly state what the blog is about. 

First of all this blog is a log book which records thoughts regarding the practice of catching projections or touching the shadow.  

The shadow is a concept which emerged with Carl G. Jung representing a part of us which tends to stay under the radar. It emerges in the way we perceive others in terms of projections, but also as an active force (and part of us) which keeps us honest. The nature of these entries will be personal short musings and ruminations regarding the nature of the shadow.