… und das in drei Tagen, womit hat man das nur verdient? -Passend dazu* das Video-  Freitag gings schon los. 2,5 Stunden psychischer Kraftakt auf dem Spinningrad im Fitnesstudio. Das war schon fast ein Fall für Amnesty International, hochgradige Kopfsache nicht schon nach einer Stunde die Segel zu streichen. Samstag wurds (erwartungsgemäß) auch nicht besser.  4 Stunden GA1 Straßentraining sollten es werden, sind es schließlich auch geworden, aber die haben dem vorherigen Training nochmal die Krone aufgesetzt. 3 von 4 Stunden durch die dickste Suppe gerollt, irgendwann reichts einem dann auch, wenn zum knietiefen Wasser auf der Straße dann auch noch stürmischer Wind und wenig angenehme 6 °C kommen…

Heute war dann entgültig Schluss mit Lustig. Aus den geplanten erneuten 4 Stunden sind am Ende “nur” 3 1/4 geworden. Die haben mir aber auch voll und ganz gereicht. Wieder mal komplett nass, die Suppe wieder in den Schuhen stehen (trotz 2 paar Überschuhen + Gefrierbeutel!!:-D), durchgefroren und deshalb auch ziemlich platt, war ich mehr als froh, als ich wieder zu Hause war.

Die Tage vor der Quälerei zum Wochenende, wurden standardmäßig abespult, so konnte ich sogar die Einheit am Mittwoch mit einem kurzen Besuch bei meiner alten Zivistelle verbinden.

Morgen soll es angeblich nochmal trocken bleiben, aber wer’s glaubt wird Papst.

In diesem Sinne, ciao. Yannic.

* Bei dem Wetter heißts nur durchkommen und trainieren und das natürlich ohne aktuelle Bilder.

The day after Thanksgiving.  The weather has warmed so that going outside is comforatable again, though the paths and roads are slick.  All day yesterday, we could hear the snow sliding off the roof.   We sat and ate turkey and pie and talked about the sorrows that have come into our community lately—too soon in winter for so much inexplicable pain.

It’s hard to write about, so here’s a poem.

The way “November”

settles in the mouth:

the dark “n” and “v”, the chilly

“b” and “r”, the hum of “m”

at the heart.  The name of the month

rumbles through our days,

dragging the shadowed season

with it.  Snow falls and packs

beneath our feet.   The moon hangs

half-hearted in the dark afternoon

sky; the night a tunnel we

plunge into with hope

that when daylight comes,

we all wake from darkness

to morning, rich with coffee,

the air tart with cut oranges,

with deep umber light

spreading to pink in the sky.

If my dreams were removed from my life’s history, I wouldn’t know who I was.

Dreams started shaping my life starting with the first dream I can remember at age 4 or 5.  This dream influenced me to feel separate enough from my family to go inside and look for meaning in art and music. http://wagele.com/enneagram5.html In adulthood I began taking some dream classes and drawing my dreams. Getting practice drawing sparked an interest in creating cartoons, which led to trying to produce greeting cards with my friend Renee. The greeting cards didn’t succeed, but we realized there was a need for an accessible introductory Enneagram book just then, so we turned to writing one ourselves, using my drawings for non-verbal learning and to spice it up with humor. “The Enneagram Made Easy” http://wagele.com/easy.html  led to several more books and hundreds more cartoons. So in a practical way my dreams created an enjoyable second career for me following the career in music that I started out with.

Here on the left is a part of one of my dream drawings.

There are two other reasons why I love dreams. First, by paying attention to almost every dream I have, and by taking some of them to groups where I can hear what other people have to say about them, I learn  things I need to learn about myself, for example to be stronger, to take certain things more seriously, and to look at parts of myself I might be neglecting. As of today I’ve recorded 1710 dreams. Several themes stand out and certain symbols recur. When their meaning becomes clear, many things tumble into place. My dreams have given me major gifts.

Second, studying my dreams and the dreams of those in the dream groups I belong to is a fascinating activity–an  interesting glimpse into the psyche. I marvel at my teachers’ gifts at interpreting and intuiting dreams’ symbolism and meaning. It’s  interesting to watch the methods my own unconscious mind comes up with “behind my back” to get points across to the me I know myself to be. Dreams trick us into taking them literally, when that’s probably rarely where the real meaning is. So it seems crucial to me to have input from at least 5 or 6 other people to help me get the point.

Would I like to have a career as a dream writer or teacher? If I were as gifted at working with dreams as some of the dream teachers I have worked with I’d consider it. I’m surprised at how many people think dreams are not important, that they’re just the mind’s clutter from the day. I find my dreams to be more intelligent than anything I can come up with in my waking life after I delve into them to figure them out. “The Career Within You” http://www.wagele.com (available December 29, 2009) will probably emphasize dream-related careers in future editions as more people see the importance of our dream life to our psychological health and wholeness.

Ah the inspiration faeries have abandoned me! Or at least sometimes that’s what it feels like. I’ve been having a wicked case of writer’s block the last week and a half and it’s driving me batty. I WANT to write. I do! But I just sit at the computer staring at the screen for hours. Then I write a few lines, maybe a paragraph or two then I stare at it again… and delete most of it. Or, you know, all of it. Tis frustration abounds.

Now I know I’ve had a lot on my plate for the last six months, and this month is no exception–what with my regular family life and job being askew as usual. I’m hoping for some good news on those fronts, which may help in my writing dilemma.

Maybe it’s a classic case of TV sitcom plot. I am writing episode 5 as we speak–okay at present which I’m stuck on. While I don’t want to give too much away and spoil anything it deals with family. Maybe the story hits a bit close to home at the moment which is why my brain is stalling. Maybe it’s stalling on purpose? Ah, the psyche is the craziest thing…

In any case, tonight I try again. Maybe a nice dinner of TJ’s (Trader Joe’s in this case not TJ as in TJ Wolfe) Garlic Chicken & Pasta stir fry and a glass of white wine will grease the creative wheels. We can only hope.

Wish me luck.

Fecundity?

I was contemplating devils (see my entry Direct Sunlight) and I reached the conclusion that they are alluring (I had a strong urge to write fucking cool but some inner forces of self-preservation stopped the uncombed desire). The good ones are weak, naive, simple-hearted, gullible, unless they have something bad, mischievous about themselves. (insert your personal doubt to this argumentum ad hominem here). The good ones make you wonder. Where do they hide their anger?

Did I have too much unreality or are we really attracted to the evil/to the Evil? Do we want to be bad. Or good. Or Good.

(We?! Bwaha-ha.)

My scientific mind will check the inner side of your scalp or wherever you keep your intellect.

You have three options (actually two but no matter):

Yes. You can probably feel good at the end of the day whilst giving a moral fuck.

No. You can probably feel good at the end of the day whilst not giving a moral fuck.

Yes or No. You can interpret the question yourself keeping some air of universal morality around your brains.

It’s been bothering me for quite a while.

And don’t tell me that you don’t know what good is. Don’t even mention subjectivism. Take all the religious crap aside. I’m not keeping a ToK journal.

Be simple about it. Not biting people might be good for me. It might be a good universal law – the 11th commandment – Do not bite your neighbour!

Nie gryź bliźniego swego!

Amen

The details are ever increasing. And bewitchingly accurate. It becomes rather difficult to think about anything much else at the moment. Indeed, he is seldom apart from his books and his software, my lovely astrologer.

He has a Cazimi Daedalus, conjunct Psyche, all in Libra. As he has mentioned before, the Cazimi placement purifies that with which it is so closely configured. Psyche brings, amongst other things, raw psychological wounds and vulnerabilities.

So he investigates Daedalus. I’m sure you are familiar with the story of Daedalus and Icarus. Daedalus constructed wings, held together with wax, with which he and his boy Icarus could escape. Icarus, the daredevil, flew too close to the Sun. The wax melted and Icarus fell to his death. So, Daedalus built wings to escape. And, indeed, he did escape but lost his son in the process.

Daedalus and Icarus

What has this to do with my lovely astrologer? In Libra? It was in escaping from his marriage that he lost his son.

And with Psyche configured there? It is not a wound that has healed.

Gratitude and greed occupy the same space in the psychic apparatus.  If the container is filled with greed or envy there is no room for gratitude.  If the container is filled with gratitude there is no room for greed or envy…It is that simple.  It is a law of physics.  Two piece of matter can not occupy the same space and by extension it appears that two pieces of information can not occupy the same psychic space.  The Greek word  ”Psyche” is our word “Soul”.   Contrary to what many think, Freud dedicated his life to the study of Man’s soul.  In this later part of my life, as I begin to have time to open my self to newer 21st century models of mental conditions, I find that the earlier wisdom acquired in the study & practice of modern psychoanalysis have bearing, if not direct implications on these principles.

Our souls are the most important part of us while we are alive and living in form. The soul of man gives us our humanity at the only place where it touches our divinity.  Through religion we have learned to associate the term soul with that part of us that will transcend life and perhaps attains a life everlasting.  But for my purpose in this essay I will use the more generic aspect of the word.  I mean by the soul of man, the very essence of man.  I mean to refer to the totality of the experience of man. My soul is my experience of me at exactly the psychic location where it touches my connection with the cosmic.

Our experience known as the soul is often not experienced directly.  Rather it points to as a location or a phenomenon that is concerned with as Bruno Bettelheim say, ” not just man’s body — but most of all with the dark world of the unconscious which forms such a large part of living man — or, to put it in classical terms, with the unknown netherworld in which, according to ancient myths the souls of men [and women] dwell.”

As human beings we experience ourselves first and foremost by identifying with the part of the psychic apparatus know as the “ego.”  The ego of the human mind  is not directly connected to the soul.  The ego is detached from the field of consciousness that is our more profound existence or experience of being.  The ego, although not discoverable in time and space as a physical entity is a construct that we use to explain a host of primary  and secondary functions of the brain.  We can not open the brain and locate the ego.  The ego, like the soul does not exist in form.

The ego ought not have a bad wrap.  It is a cluster of functions which contribute to our essential humanness.  For example, language is thought to be the highest function of the ego.  The ego is responsible for our being able to develop language. The ego is also responsible for other functions such as perception and motility.  It is a cluster of brain functions rather than a specific location.  And as such remains an important aspect of our ability to function in civilization and society.  Some say it is actually the aspect of man directly responsible for his ability to build civilization and culture.  But again, it is important that we see it for what it is, not a location in the brain as much as the name given to a cluster of functions.

In my ramblings about psychoanalysis and man’s soul, i seem to find myself always contending with a duality.  As much as I acknowledge the oneness of the mind/body matrix, it seems that in experience I am always struggling with a concept that can only be explained by forming comparisons of by juxtaposing one experience against another.

Even in the concept of greed vs gratitude it seems that the experience of one is felt to be one thing and the experience of the other quite another thing.  However, if I were only concerned about the comparisons of two things it would seem logical, (they are different because they are different).  But, what  I am trying to understand  is if the experience of one comes from a different place than the experience of the other.

I have rambled or, if you wish, free associated, to this notion of duality in our experience of ourselves in many of my writings through the years.  I keep doing so because i have experience in me what I would like to call, an exit from narcissism. In my years of practicing my own brand of dynamic psychoanalysis, I have run up against classical conditions in this science that seem to take over the definition and attempt to make it fit the science rather than pursue what appears to me the more logical approach which is to follow the experience into a phenomena that is no longer science, but is nevertheless a direct outgrowth of the science and may point to a newer model or theory of human existence.  And although not science, nonetheless an important dimension of humanness that can only be arrived at with subjective conclusions. The scientific “objective” can only go so far in helping us to understand our humanity.  Poetry, music, & our relation to nature and to animals, for example,  point to a subjective awareness that provides a profound acquaintance with the subjective that can not be quantified objectively.

As I ponder gratitude, I am aware that the very experience of gratitude fills my consciousness with a sense of expansion, with a feeling that is both grand and humbling at the same time.  Gratitude is connected not only with me experiencing myself but with me experiencing a wider sense of connectedness that includes a feeling of well-being and a feeling of inter being with all of creation.  To put it more simply gratitude is a sensation that consequenses a feeling of totality and oneness and well being all laced with that kind of giddiness that one feels as a joyful child.  By comparison greed feels very intra- psychic. I shrink to greed, not expand to it.  Greed is small minded.  Greed worms it way through me and settles into a corner of my life and i experience it as an undigested piece of toxic lead.  I think about it and i can experience the thought as mental, as a calculation, perhaps even as a manipulation of truth.

But, the profound difference is not in the verbal attributes that i can ascribe to the difference between gratitude and greed, but rather in the felt location from which each experience comes.  I want to give one more example of the experience of the objective vs the experience of the subjective:

Charlotte, my youngest granddaughter,  is falling asleep in my arms… That is an objective statement of a experience I might be having in a given moment.

However, the experience of having my beautiful, angelic, sweet and loving granddaughter in my arms being so comfortable that she is soothing herself to sleep, is a subjective experience that comes from an entirely different location in my experience.  And no amount of objective verbal data or description can convey the experience.  In other words my human experience in that moment can not be objectified.  It is as if my soul, the aspect of me that is closest to the divine is activated and a flood of emotions and sensations converge on me and provide me with a feeling not representable through the ego.

As I write my free associations, I am conscious of my intention.  I am hopeful to find a verbal way of describing the long, slow and at times painful way for an adult to emerge from the condition of narcissism.  Having spent the bulk of my career specializing in the treatment of narcissistic disorders, I am interested in the specific manner in which one can successfully emerge from this human condition.

As I begin to write more seriously about this topic, I keep on returning to Freud’s works and specifically to his treatment of the psyche in his writings.  Of great concern is the notion that Freud meant for the entire backdrop of his science to be understood as an ego growing in a field of consciousness that he understood to be the soul of man.  But when his translations to english took on a more generic term than “soul” Freud did little to challenge this mistranslation.

As a result we have been seeing the ego as a mental construct that was to have some kind of physical, brain-like antecedent. When we attempt to locate the ego in the brain, of course, there is no such organ.  But if instead we were to consider the ego as an outgrowth of the soul, then the entire apparatus of the ego could be worked with as a metaphor for a seed found in a large, wild, field of cosmic consciousness that every human being has access to.  This line of thinking has many possible ramifications including its intersection with eastern philosophy.

I remind myself daily that we’re extraordinarily lucky to be in lives we have. Developed country — the United States! Nice apartment in major metropolis — Boston! Loving relationship, supportive family, decent incomes, health insurance, etc.

Day-to-day, though, it feels hard to keep things “fair.” That is, things are already more than fair by our being so fortunate. But balancing the incidentals is where things never feel clear.

For example: Today, the cat must go to the vet. The cat (#2 of 2) has been having a progressively less pleasant kitty litter experience, and my role as the designated litter-man has become entirely solidified by the threat of cat poop to pregnant women. No problem, reasonable.

But, the last few trips to the vet across town have been hellish, especially with the pair of Cat #1 and Cat #2 together. Though this is an individual cat event, I need back-up. Is it fair of me to urge the Missus to come along?

Rather, it is fair when she’s feeling ill, highly reactive to cat smells, and not doing super in the car. Still fair to ask for her help?

“Fair” probably isn’t the issue. We do respect each other, and we do care about being there for each other. Mental resources are thin right now, and replenishments from family and doctors are still weeks away. We’re on psychological rations for the next few weeks as matters — both happy and sad, worrisome and exciting — eat at our respective brains.

Nom, nom, nom.

Und ich brauch die von Zeit zu Zeit auch *g*. Man wäre jedoch nicht auf diesen Gedanken gekommen, wenn man sich mein Zimmer vorhin angesehen hätte *graus*. Schlimm sah es aus. Und ich meine damit: Wirklich schlimm. Wie viele Wochen habe ich mir nun schon gesagt, dass ich bald mal mein Zimmer aufräumen müsste? Jedenfalls mache ich grade eine Pause. Man kann hier bereits wieder durch den Raum gehen, ohne über irgendwelchen Krempel steigen zu müssen. Der Müll ist zusammengerafft und alles liegt an seinem Ort. Fast alles. Ich muss hier noch fegen und Staubwischen. Dann könnte man das hier auch wieder bewohnen ^^

Gestern war ich beim Frisör. Hab’ mir die Haarspitzen schneiden lassen, jetzt geht das wieder für’n paar Monate xD. Ich gehe wirklich nicht gerne zum Frisör. Außerdem möchte ich meine Haare lang wachsen lassen. Und ich hab’s im Ur.. äh, im Gefühl: Diesmal klappt’s! Ich hab’ dieses Kurze bis Halblange satt. Ständig muss ich mir die Haare schneiden lassen, damit’s auch nach was aussieht. Jetzt ist fast Übergangsphase, aber noch liegen die Haare nicht auf den Schultern. Wenn es soweit ist, laufe ich nur noch mit Pferdeschwanz rum. Es sieht sonst so grauenhaft aus -.-

Mir geht es sehr gut momentan. Körperlich könnt’s wohl etwas besser sein. Mir ist in letzter Zeit häufig etwas übel und Kopfschmerzen hab’ ich auch relativ viel. Deswegen wollte ich ja mal zum Augenarzt, weil ich den Verdacht habe, dass das mit dem Lesen und der Anstrengung in der Schule zusammenhängt. Mein Freund meint, das könne auch mit der Wirbelsäule zusammenhängen. Gibt ja vieles, was auf die Wirbelsäule zurückzuführen ist und meine ist – sagt er und so habe ich schon seit Jahren das Gefühl – nicht so, wie sie sein sollte.

Psychisch ist alles im grünen Bereich. Es gibt Tage, an denen ich alleine bin und mich frage, wofür es mich überhaupt gibt. Aber nach wenigen Stunden habe ich mich aus dieser situation gezogen und lebe wieder in der Realität. Es kommt immer mal wieder vor, dass ich von einer Minute auf die andere in meiner Welt gefangen bin. Aber eigentlich ist der Begriff “meine Welt” nicht der richtige dafür. Es ist, als wäre ich von der ganzen Welt abgeschottet, von allem Leben, den Zielen und Wünschen. Dann sitze ich da und fühle mich unglaublich leblos. Doch diese Momente kann ich zählen und sie sind weniger als die positiven . Früher hätte ich das nicht zählen können. Das war mein Standardzustand. Doch nun habe ich Vorstellungen von mir, von dem was ich bin und was ich noch tun möchte. Ich bin Teil dieser Welt und habe genauso viel Einfluss auf das Geschehen wie jeder andere Mensch.

Zufrieden

Teatr.Psyche i spektakl w Internecie – Wieści – MM Moje Miasto.

Thanks to Neatorama for pointing me to this video.  In my dreams this is how my life would be choreographed and my heart would soar.

Saturn devouring his son, P. P. Rubens

This entry is difficult to write. I have dragged my feet. I am struggling with how to make the subject more palatable. How does one write about Jung’s night sea journey in search of the soul in an appealing way? It just wasn’t a pretty and sweet story. But maybe that is the wrong approach. Maybe some things just need to be said as they are. Jung’s School of Analytical Psychology grew out of an intense personal and maddening process that brought Jung to the brink of his sanity. No pain, no gain? Is it that simple? I think that some things come to us as grace, serendipity, as gifts from the gods, if you will. But, unfortunately for the most part, the creative process is a painful, arduous and confusing path,whether creativity is expressed in writing a novel or in carving out a life for oneself that is truthful to one’s soul calling. The deeper one digs, the greater the treasure, if one can withstand the pressure of the deep.

In Liber Primus of the Red Book Jung writes “My soul leads me into the desert, into the desert of my own self. I did not think that my soul is a desert, a barren hot desert, dusty and without drink”. Who does!? That is not what we imagine when we think of soul.  Jung’s search for an authentic experience of his soul lead him into solitude,  away from “men and events” and he continues to say that he even had to detach himself from his thoughts so he could open up to his soul’s life. This strikes me as significant because thinking was Jung’s primary function. This was how he perceived the world and made sense of it. I think what Jung describes here is the necessity to let go of  attachments, distractions and identifications.

Imagine of how you make sense of the world. It could be through rational thinking or it could be through emotional feeling values, or more through scientific data and facts,or it could be through a sense of intuitive knowing. And then imagine that you deliberately let go of this mode of perception, which has become so much part of your identity. Jung seems to suggest that it is from this state of emptiness (or discomfort or confusion more likely) that one makes contact with the otherness of the soul/psyche.

“The soul has its own peculiar world”, Jung writes. Jung expresses his confusion and disappointment, I assume, that having given up most of ego’s distractions, the soul is experienced as an arid, barren land. No comfort, no inspiration, nothing to hold on to. What Jung describes is not the soft, nurturing quality so often associated with soul.

The image of Saturn devouring his son expresses what Jung initially found on his soul searching journey. Astrology  understands Saturn as a stern task master who teaches about limitations, restrictions and duty. Duty to what or whom one may wonder? I suggest that the often maligned Saturn teaches us to be in the service of the soul. The image of devouring his son reflects the idea of being robbed of what is the dearest to one’s heart. The barren land of despair, hopelessness, confusion,when no future seems possible. “But my soul spoke to me and said”"Wait”", and Jung continues,”Nobody can spare themselves the waiting and most will be unable to bear this torment”.

To patiently wait and tolerate one’s feelings is not a popular notion in mainstream psychology. Yet it is a hallmark of Jungian  work.  It is devastating and disorientating to be robbed of the idea of a predictable future and to be robbed of a solid sense of self that can make sense of the world. But these feelings may be unavoidable when venturing into the unknown.  The conscious experience of soul life was the unknown, new territory for Jung. For those of us who wish to live a soulful life we may wonder, what is our desert? Where is our barrenness? Where is that place within us that is so restricted that no life or light can ripple through. Jung suggests that our journey towards wholeness must go through this inner desert.  When we are stripped to the bare bones , then we may meet the soul in the form of the other yet also part of who we are and a dialogue may begin. In  a Jungian sense, only then are we truly alive.

Es kursieren viele unterschiedliche Auffassungen darüber, was eigentlich Meditation ist.  So denken zum Beispiel viele, dass man sich in der Meditation vorrangig von der Realität abschließe oder ausklinke, um in andere Welten zu gehen oder Kontakt mit anderen Wesen herzustellen oder um himmlische Botschaften zu empfangen. Das ist jedoch ganz und gar nicht meine Art der Meditation.

Wenn ich meditiere, dann nicht aus dem Wunsch heraus, dem schnöden Alltag zu entfliehen. Auch wenn ich in der Herz-Meditation mit meinem geistigen Herzen in Kontakt trete, tue ich das nicht als Ersatz für einen guten Roman oder einen spannenden Film. Oft genug geht es nicht einmal um Inspiration. Ganz im Gegenteil: Meditation ist für mich eine Form der Selbstreflexion und Selbstorganisation. Sie ermöglicht mir, bewusst und eigenverantwortlich zu leben.

Meditation ist für mich etwas Bodenständiges. Sie erdet mich aus der Flut von Gedanken, die oft genug gar nichts mit mir persönlich zu tun haben, die ich jedoch aufgrund meiner Wahrnehmung, meines Alltages aufschnappe, durch Bücher, Medien, Gespräche, Erledigungen, Arbeit oder was auch immer.

Setze ich mich also hin, dann aus dem Wunsch heraus, mit mir selbst Kontakt aufzunehmen und nach mir zu schauen. Ich stelle Verknüpfungen her, zwischen mir und den Ereignissen und lasse außen vor, was sich als nicht relevant erweist.

So viele Dinge beanspruchen unseren Kopf und das logische Denken. Sie haben nichts mit unseren Gefühlen oder Bedürfnissen zu tun. Und können uns so in Beschlag nehmen, dass wir uns selbst beinahe vergessen, im Alltag. Gehe ich im ersten Schritt meiner Meditation nun vom Kopf zum Herzen und versuche mich zu fühlen, erde ich mich in meiner körperlichen Präsenz und im Hier und Jetzt. Von dort ausgehend, verarbeite ich die Ereignisse des Tages oder der Nacht.

Sprache stellt vieles linear dar, was eigentlich synchron läuft: Das Hineinfühlen in mein Herz läuft in Wahrheit parallel zur Verarbeitung. Indem ich mich meinem Herzen zuwende, verkleinere ich den Radius meines Denkens: Dinge, die mit anderen, dem Geschäftlichen und Erledigungen zu tun haben, lasse ich durch die Verarbeitung los und schaue nach, wie es mir ganz persönlich geht. Währenddessen stellt sich für mich automatisch ein, was am Tag meinen Bedürfnissen entsprechend gelaufen ist und was nicht. Denn je deutlicher ich in meinem Körper präsent bin und das Herzgefühl habe, desto klarer signalisiert die Einheit von Körper und Psyche mir auch, was sie braucht bzw. über den Tag entbehrt hat.

Je öfter ich in der Meditation übe, auch im Körpergefühl oder Herzgefühl präsent zu sein, desto deutlicher begleitet mich dieses Gefühl auch im Alltag. Daher ist es für mich wohltuend und wichtig, vor allem an stressigen Tagen, wo nicht viel Zeit zum Kontakt mit eigenen Bedürfnissen geblieben ist, Herz-Meditation zu üben.

Wofür ist es gut, seine Gefühle präsent zu haben, selbst im stressigen Alltag? Ganz klar: Als Menschen sind wir keine rein geistigen Wesen, sondern in unserem Wohlbefinden und Leistungsfähigkeit davon abhängig, dass auch unser Körper sich wohl fühlt. Habe ich das Herzgefühl präsent, spüre ich, was ich brauche und kann darauf achten, dass ich ausreichend Pausen habe, genug trinke, genug frische Luft habe, etc. Das Herzgefühl bildet einerseits also eine starke Brücke zum körperlichen Wohlsein.

Andererseits bildet das Herzgefühl auch eine starke Brücke zur Psyche. Vielleicht würden es die meisten Menschen Bauchgefühl oder Intuition nennen, jedenfalls signalisiert das geistige Herz auch, wenn wir mental überstimuliert, ausgelaugt und Ruhe bedürftig sind oder schickt uns Impulse und Signale, wie wir spontan aus einer Situation das Beste machen können. Es vermag flexibel auf eine Situation einzugehen, während der reine Verstand immer nach seiner vorgefertigten “To-Do-Liste” geht.

Außerdem dient die Präsenz des Herzgefühls auch dazu, im guten Kontakt zu den Menschen zu treten, denen wir begegnen. Kommunizieren wir aus dem Herzgefühl heraus, können wir auch zwischen den Zeilen lesen und darauf entsprechend eingehen. Das stärkt unser soziales Miteinander und wird von Mitmenschen auch geschätzt. Mit offenen Herzen denken, sprechen und Dinge tun, regt im Gegenüber sehr oft das Öffnen des eigenen Herzens an. Somit kann eine warme, herzliche und freundliche Atmosphäre entstehen.

Doch ich wollte in diesem Beitrag zuerst schreiben, was ich in meiner Meditation mache: Ich übe das Herzgefühl, indem ich den Tag aufarbeite und überprüfe, wo ich mit offenen Herzen gehandelt, gedacht und gesprochen habe. Ich gehe schwierige Situationen noch einmal durch und versuche nachzuspüren, was hätte anders laufen können oder besser. Ich schaue, wie ich mich entwickelt habe und was mir der Tag an wichtigen Lektionen gebracht hat. An diesem Punkt gewinne ich automatisch Distanz dazu und kann den Tag leicht loslassen und die Ereignisse etwas beiseite legen.  Nun kann ich mich dem Privaten zuwenden.

Und wo sind in dieser Meditation nun die höheren Welten und höheren Wesen? Und wo ist das Ausklinken aus der Realität? Sie sind nicht Gegenstand der Meditation. Denn Meditation dient mir in erster Linie dazu, in meine Mitte zu kommen. Dazu ist es notwendig, den Tag zu verarbeiten und zu schauen, was er mir gebracht hat. Und habe ich das angeschaut, habe ich ein richtig gutes Gefühl und die Gewissheit, mit mir und dem Leben, was ich führe, in Kontakt zu stehen. Ich fühle mich nicht fern gesteuert oder den Ereignissen ausgeliefert. Ich fühle mich nicht entfremdet. Und ich habe durch diese Selbstreflexion die Möglichkeit, mir für den nächsten Tag oder später vorzunehmen, das anders zu machen, was meinen Herzen nicht entsprochen hat oder wo ich von dem abgewichen bin, was ich mir vorgenommen habe.

All dies geschieht, während ich zum Herzen hinab tauche. Und das sichere Zeichen, im Herzen angekommen zu sein, ist folgendes: Ein warmes, klares, entspanntes und freundliches Gefühl. Manchmal bin ich sicherlich auch müde und erschöpft, so dass ich versucht bin, gleich noch ein kleines Schläfchen zu machen Aber das ist zugleich auch Anzeichen dafür, dass ich alles verarbeitet habe, was der Tag mir gebracht hat.

Und manchmal, wenn es meine körperliche und mentale Verfassung erlaubt, lasse ich mich dann von meinem Herzen noch woanders hin tragen oder lausche ihm und dem, was es mir noch so mitteilen möchte… Aber das kommt eben erst viel, viel später und ist das Sahnehäubchen obenauf. Der wirkliche Nutzen meiner Meditation liegt in erster Linie in Selbstreflexion und Selbstorganisation. Beides sind Voraussetzungen dafür, für mich selbst Verantwortung zu übernehmen und zu tragen. Und ein dementsprechendes Leben zu führen. Je geübter ich in dieser Meditation bin, desto mehr verwirkliche ich sie im Alltag.

© Josephine Lehnert

He had me in tears today, my lovely astrologer.

They bubbled up, out of nowhere, and flowed down my cheeks to splash on the notes on my desk.

His latest passion is Asteroids and Trans-Neptunians and his reasearch exhaustive. Greedily, he devours books, pores over charts, identifies personality traits, deep-rooted problems, potential pitfalls.

Jupiter, right now, is at 19° 18′ Aquarius and is transiting my Odysseus. So he looks up Odysseus. Odysseus is the asteroid for one who is sent into exile. “This sense of exile is to be seen as poignant because there is a longing for home; one has been banished and yet yearns to go home, to have a home, to find a place that offers what they idealise as home.” The tears, by now, are streaming unbidden down my face. “There is the perception that one doesn’t have a place to call his own.”

Then, of course, having punched this asteroid into the software, we discover that it is conjunct my Mars in the 9th – the lure of the open road, eh? And Odysseus conjunct Mars, to quote the pertinent paragraph: “Angry scenes in connection with being sent away” from ‘Go to your room’ as a child to “later in life, anger, independence or criticism carry the potential for echoes of banishment – being driven out.”

He is, inadvertently, enormously good at summoning my pain, dredging it up from its hiding place deep within my soul, standing it in front of me and saying: “Here it is. Confront it. It will make it better.” Or put another way, as he often says: “With awareness comes relief.” I suppose it is some small relief to know that it is there, in black and white, in my Nativity.

I am exiled from my family.

More than that, whenever I have dared speak out, rock the boat, step out of line, I have been royally punished for it. And (conjunct Mars in the 9th, remember?) hauled my cookies abroad and lived there for a good long time. Since I can remember I have longed to live far away from the family home. I have left and found it bittersweet because from a distance I can pretend that home is perfect. I can miss it. And if I stay away too long, I run the risk of forgetting that it isn’t what I believe it should be.

My whole life I have been mystified by the discrepancies between my understanding of home and family and the reality. Don’t misunderstand me, I have had a privileged and comfortable life, upbringing. On the surface of it, you would consider me the luckiest in the world. But it is about appearances, doing and saying the right thing. The substance of it, the meat of it, the depths of it… they have been conspicuous by their absence. Behaviours have been so utterly not what I expect of a family.

And, with what my lovely astrologer calls “The Jupiter Effect”, Jupiter is magnifying this conjunction. No wonder it hurts, huh?

-0-

His research is not exactly painless for him either, you know.

Inevitably, he uses his own Nativity as a test or control case (and mine follows on as the live-in guinea pig), and turns up aspects and placements that have him drawing in his own breath in recognition, wonder or pain.

The latest example of such was his discovery, yesterday, of how Psyche plays out in his own chart. Apart from Daedalus, the Sun’s conjunction with Psyche is the closest aspect it makes. It is a massively sensitive point, arising mostly from one’s own pain “the excessively present trauma of the past”, which creates a hypersensitivity. It can be nigh on crippling “as one identifies oneself in terms of one’s ‘pain’ and the emotional complexes of the childhood. One may feel that what they are, at root, is the sum total of their pain and damage”.

As the tears rolled off his cheeks and into his beard, I began at last to understand from where his unsettling, extreme sensitivity and deep anxiety stem.

Surely only one with such levels of insight into pain and damage is qualified to help others overcome theirs?

Forty-three- Have you ever been suspended from school?
no

Forty-four – What are you doing Friday night?
going to Nene’s PartyLite party.. yay.

Forty-five- Have you ever had your heart broken?
yes

Forty-six- Have you ever broken someone’s heart?
I think so

Forty-seven- Is there anybody that has disappointed you?
not that i can remember

Forty-Eight- What are you looking forward to?
my first Christmas with my hubby!

Forty nine- How late did you stay up last night and why?
22:30 i think? but i woke up at 3:30..

Fifty- Does anyone like you right now?
i don’t think so!!

Today I’m teaching class on the nature of scientific inquiry and hosting a panel discussion entitled “The Death of the University?” All exciting and enough to think about, but other things pop into my psyche:

• I’m being sued. Sure, it’s along with some other people, not so bad. Mostly just not much of a ‘thank you’ for volunteering to work on a school board.
• I got asked to be a co-PI on a giant federal grant that’s essentially already been written.
• Someone’s coming to talk to me tomorrow to see if I could potentially teach in England this summer.
• We could reformulate our lab program next semester and I could get a chance to study it.
• There are tacos for lunch from Rita’s.
• And something else . . . just give it 5 minutes, I’m sure.

But I really need to think about class and the panel. Tough work when your stomach is growling and there’s the prospect of carnitas (and law suits and giant grants and England studies and . . . ) very soon.

A co mi tam! Wypowiedziałem się. Dla tych co nie wiedzą.

http://forum.pcformat.pl/thread-189640-post-1418399.html#pid1418399

Jak wam się wydaje? Psycholodzy muszą się przyłączyć. Przeciętny pirat myśli że nikt go nie nakryje. Bzdura. Szykuje się dla nich najgorszy okres.

A plane is coming in for a landing at the small airport just outside of the Fond du Lac reserve community.  There are no roads that are maintained allowing the outside world to penetrate too deeply into this northern settlement.  At times during the year, a trail can be navigated by those unconcerned about the torture on their vehicle, a journey of hundreds of kilometres through an empty landscape, empty of human presence.  And, during the summer, boats serve as the predominate form of transportation between communities along the stretch of the lake and river.  This place exists in relative isolation and because of that, has a measure of insulation from the larger southern society.

Images such as this one seem to work a magic within me.  Whether I have taken a photo of such a scene or simply allowed a scene to be witnessed, the images are powerful as they work often unspoken within my psyche.  James Hillman, a post-Jungian speaks and works from his understandings of Jungian psychology, from a viewpoint he calls Archetypal Psychology.  As withing Jungian psychology, Archetypal psychology understands images as psyche (“image is psyche” – Jung, CW 13).   Hillman states:

… the soul is constituted of images, that the soul is primarily an imagining activity … (Hillman, Archetypal Psychology,1983, p. 6)

With this in mind, the photos I take have ceased being a recording of time, people, place or event; the photos are more than factual pieces of evidence that indicate my presence on the opposite side of the camera lens; the photos are also about imagining, about connecting with a larger, archetypal world, an alchemical inner world.  In discovering these scenes, I continue the journey of self discovery in relation to the larger whole.

[23:10]

For the last Twilight movie, “Breaking Dawn”, yours truly will be portraying Bella Cullen.  That’s right.  I’ll be starring in “Breaking Dawn” as Edward Cullen’s new wife post-honeymoon/post-partum.

I’m VERY excited. 

Der Bundesverband der BKK macht mit der Initiative Mensch und Arbeit. Im Einklang. Move Europe. auf die Problematiken psychischer Störungen am Arbeitsplatz aufmerksam. Die Iniative zeigt anhand von Praxisbeispielen Wege zu einer gesunden Unternehmenskultur und bietet zusammen mit dem Europäischen Netzwerk für betriebliche Gesundheitsförderung (ENWHP)  Maßnahmenpakete für präventiven Gesundheitsschutz auch im Bereich der psychischen Belastungen für interessierte Unternehmen an.

Am 8. und 9. Oktober 2009 fiel der offizielle Startschuss für die neue ENWHP-Kampagne durch die Europäische Kommission auf der ProMenPol/ENWHP-Konferenz in Berlin. Unter dem europäischen Slogan „work. in tune with life. move europe“ will das ENWHP auf das wachsende Problem der psychischen Erkrankungen hinweisen.

Insgesamt 18 europäische Länder beteiligen sich an der Kampagne. In Deutschland läuft sie unter dem Titel „Mensch und Arbeit im Einklang - Move Europe“. Über die Kampagne sollen Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmer auf vorhandene Strategien und Programme zur Förderung der Psychischen Gesundheit am Arbeitsplatz aufmerksam gemacht werden [move-europe.de].

For those of you who have followed me over my short time as a blogger, you may have noticed that I enjoy blogging about the personality traits of a product manager.  There are several blogs that cover the science of product management in great depth, and with superb expertise.  But I firmly believe that if a product manager doesn’t possess (or gain) the right personality traits, it won’t matter “how” they do a task, it won’t be as effective.

This week I attended a Product Management TAG event (Technology Association of Georgia) in Atlanta where a group of four panelists discussed the differences between Product Management and Product Marketing.  It was a good event, and I thought the panelists did a fine job.  However, one comment from an audience member gave me pause.

I asked the panel “What are the different personality traits held by a product marketer vs. a product manager.”  After a brief discussion, an audience member said (and I’m paraphrasing) “they basically posses the same personality traits, but they chose a different direction based on what they like.”

What do you think?

What are the personality types of a Product Manager vs. a Product Marketer?