While working with my dreams, which I do on a daily basis, I noticed that a certain geometrical shape was often showing up. It could be in a hat or a western chandelier or in any variety of objects. I didn’t notice the reoccurrence of this shape until one day as I was writing out the description of an object I was inwardly prompted to draw it out----seems silly—but I couldn’t dodge the feeling---so ok—I’ll draw it:
Oh!!—instant epiphany---circular, oval like forms were surfacing from my inner realms and manifesting themselves in my dream images. The emotional charge of these dreams was always one of wholeness or completeness—perhaps my son’s flippant, adolescent friend was correct when he labeled me a “master of the obvious”—but, hey isn’t that why revelations are so cool?
Carl Jung discovered that when folks produced sketches of their inner worlds they were drawn to use the circular form of the mandala.
He found this to be a world wide phenomenon, independent of a person’s ethnic, cultural or religious heritage. From all walks of life, people drew the famous circle and sketched within its confines various pairs of opposites to depict the dynamics of their interior experience.
Why?
Here’s my answer or at least the beginning of one. All life has a powerful impulse towards growth and development. The seed must pop out of the soil, the sperm has to haul ass to find the egg. I haven’t seen any footage of a lazy sperm dawdling about or drifting around in directionless loop de loops, just mucking around with nothing better to do. No, it must unite, it must grow, and it must become everything that it can become. Some are not as fast or as strong as others but they all try. Continual development is a force of life from the tiniest microbe to the swirl of the galaxies. The human organism and the rampaging forces of our own psyches are not an exception to this axiom of nature.
Yet, for all the charge that empowers this lust for expansive life, all is wasted unless it is channelled for a specific purpose. These forces must be contained within certain perimeters for the magic to happen. For this reason, it is a common practice for shamans to draw a circle around the person they intend to heal. The torrent of nature’s creativity is soon dissipated unless we encircle these energies through the consciousness of specific intention.
Whatcha want to do
With all that
Which is flowing through you?
Dad, I like when I can read what you've written and, knowing that we have very different theoretical approaches, find what's true for me in what you're discovering. I can agree with the idea of the impetus towards growth being inside each person -- I think you and I have talked about this together before and Maslow's ideas about this. I also like the idea of the drawing a circle around the person who's being healed. I wonder how the work that I want to do coincides with this. I've talked with you about how I see counseling as being more like a traditional healing than medical healing, and as the counselor, I'm responsible for creating that safe space -- the circle to hold the healing. As you mentioned, I tend to see the healing as being held within the person rather than me. So often, I think I'm just the witness, the coach, the midwife. Or at least I will be when I figure out how. :) Rachel
ReplyDelete