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A lot of people today’s world are becoming aware of how much violence, anger, and sorrow there is in this world. As we watch and react to the news on television or our newspapers, we get caught up in these emotions, feeling sometimes as if this world of sorrow is altogether too much. Too many people fall beside the wayside in mental illness or psychotic episodes. Huge numbers languish in depression. And these feelings of despair emerge in a shocking number of domestic episodes of child or spousal abuse, suicide, murder, robbery and theft, and other crimes against people or property.

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There are ancient teachings that can help us with these negative emotions and their societal expressions. We can, by ourselves in our daily choices, utilize these teachings to bring some measure of sanity back into our own lives. This brief article endeavors to describe these techniques so that our readers might do so if they wish.

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These teachings come out of native American experience and are given here so that all may find a better way to live on the planet. These teachings are about staying in elemental balance. The elements are water, earth, wind, fire and the void; and each element is linked inextricably to our aspects of being human. Water is linked with our emotional states. Earth provides our physical body and bones. Wind is linked with our mental states. Fire is associated with our spirits. And the Void is associated with our sexuality.

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These teachings are about the ways in which we choreograph our energy in each of these aspects, or the way in which we use our minds, bodies, emotions, spirits and sexuality to stay healthy and growing. There are specific ways in which the proper use of our energy in each of these aspects lead to good health and happiness.

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The teachings are as follows: we use our energy most efficiently when we...

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• Give with the emotions with tenderness
• Hold and transform with the body through intimacy
• Receive with the mind with caring
• Determine with the Spirit with passion and lust
• Catalyze with sexuality through open heart-to-heart communications

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The person who can live by these simple rules can restore himself or herself to wellness in short order, unless they have stayed in an imbalance so long that they have called in an incurable illness. Not living in balance leads to stress and addiction to food, sex, alcohol or drugs. So when we witness unbalanced use of such substances in people’s lives, we are witnessing the effects of elemental imbalance. But it requires understanding of these rules and the self-disciplined use of the Will to live in balance. So lets examine each rule and clarify its meaning.

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Giving with the emotions

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The emotions are a powerful aspect of our lives. When our emotions are calm and positive, we can be happy or contented. We are meant to live in a state of Joy and community, but when we become lost in other negative emotional states, we become separated out, isolated, and are out of balance. And when our emotions are out of balance and in turmoil, we are miserable and we lose energy.

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Most of the time when this happens, our emotional state is subject to experiences in our past that "trigger" us into emotional turmoil. For example, our experiences as children with our parents may have been unhappy, and anytime those experiences are recalled by some present event, we are thrown into those past emotional patterns set up long ago. Those past experiences have taught us a particular view of other’s intentions and worldview which encourage the "projection" of our own interpretations out onto other people. We interpret their comments and actions based upon our past unfortunate experiences, and we react to those interpretations instead of what is actually happening in front of us. So some event in the present causes a painful memory from our past to be recalled. And then we are back reacting emotionally based upon our inner interpretations of what is happening. We are, in effect, caught in past patterns of perceiving life, relationships, and selves. We are caught in pain and a repeating cycle of negative emotional wounding. When this happens, we are said to be "holding" with the emotions. Passive aggressives "hold" with their emotions. Usually, such people cannot expressive their emotions or feelings. They "hold them in." When we "hold with our emotions", we will suffer from repeating cycles of pain from the past and deal with life passively.

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Some people live in a state in which they "receive with their emotions". There are those persons who, for a variety of reasons, want us to take care of them or take responsibility for their problems. They constantly ask for help or favors, and when we see them coming, we want to go the other way. These persons are "energy vampires", and they are constantly pulling on your energy and seeking for you to take care of their needs. These persons need to learn self-reliance and to respect boundaries. In dealing with such persons, it is important to maintain one’s boundaries and not accept responsibility for their needs fulfillment, or else we are encouraging such behavior.

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Still other people, "determine with the emotions". These are kinds of people who react emotionally to everything they experience. They are at the effect of everything and everyone around them, often living in a state of anger and suspicion, paranoid about the world and the intentions of others. They are constantly going on emotional binges. These people are "determining or making choices from their emotions." This too is a painful state to be living from.

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A fifth group of persons do what is called "catalyzing with the emotions." Catalyzing is purging one’s emotions through an explosive release of energy in the body. A husband who periodically falls into the pattern of explosive bouts of anger at his wife may be catalyzing with his emotions. Religioius fanatics tend to catalyze with their emotions, ridding themselves of their surpluses of negativism through violence and rage. We all experience frustrations and stress through our work days, and as those stresses build up, we find ourselves sometimes boiling over and feeling frenetic and overwhelmed. When a person allows this kind of stress and pressure to build up, he may discover himself periodically exploding in anger and frustration as his wife or children. Afterward, he feels more level headed and stress free. Such a person is "catalyzing with his emotions." Fanatics "catalyze" with their emotions. But the consequences of such behavior will come home to haunt him in isolation, psychotic episodes, relationship problems, divorce, and traumatized children.

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Finally, there are those persons who learn to "give with their emotions with tenderness." Giving with the emotions means that we each endeavor to give love, encouragement, nurturing when needed to others, and that we avoid holding, receiving, determining or catalyzing with our emotions. This means that we must learn to live in the present, stop our selves from spinning into either the emotional cycles of negativism from our past experiences, maintain our boundaries from others experiencing emotional turmoil, avoiding making choices from our emotions, and avoiding behaviors in which we are catalyzing with our emotions. Giving with the emotions with tenderness is a form of selfless behavior in which we support others and avoid falling into the negative patterns of emotionalism based upon self-pity in our own lives.

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Holding with the Body in Intimacy

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When we "hold with the body with intimacy", we endeavor to make ourselves physically strong and vigorous through better health and habits of exercise and eating. We each require good health to be able to hold ourselves well in this life. We require the energy and capability to work, play, and do. We want to feel good and maintain wellness in our bodies. Therefore, we treat our bodies with respect and give them what they need to be and feel well. We "hold our bodies in intimacy and respect" and treat it with affection.

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When we do this, we are "holding with the body with intimacy." When we don’t, we are practicing one of the more negative patterns of using energy in the body. Those other negative patterns result in the loss of energy from the body and ill health, and include "giving with the body," "receiving with the body," " determining with the body", and "catalyzing with the body."

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"Giving with the body" is a pattern of dealing with the world through giving away one‘s energy unnecessarily. Many in our society live by a law of "hard work". Workaholics live this way…giving and giving and giving their energy in their stress filled lives, believing this is the way they must survive. They delete and exhaust their bodies, lost in their own worldview of hard work and survival. This behavior system weakens their bodily immune systems and opens them to disease. They do not understand that they must always retain enough energy to meet their own needs first.

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"Receiving with the body" is a pattern of dealing with the world through accepting physical abuse. A wife who keeps peace in her marriage through repeatedly accepting a beating from her husband is receiving with the body.

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"Determining with the body" is the pattern of being a bully, wife-beaters, and obsessive compulsive persons. Such a person uses the strength of their bodies to control their lives.

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"Catalyzing with the body" is a pattern of seeking illness to exit life. Those who catalyze with their bodies attract disease to distract themselves from the painful character of life. Such people are ‘accident prone.‘ This behavior is a cry for attention and help.

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Receiving with the Mind with Caring

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When we "receive with the mind with caring", we open our minds to the world like an empty cup. We keep our minds quiet and receptive, not constantly thinking or planning or worrying about the future or filling our minds with memories of the past. We "receive" whatever is going on right now; simply take it in. In choosing what to take in, we use the criterion of caring for ourselves by deciding what we will take in and what we will not take in. We learn through this process. What do we want to learn? That is the question.

Receiving with the mind with caring is the efficient way to use the human mind; it uses energy efficiently and preserves our balance among the elements.

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One of the more inefficient ways of using our mind is to "hold with the mind", which means that we come to the world of experience with our cup full. We already know what we believe and know and are not open to learning or relearning from present experience. Learning is a process of constantly re-evaluating what is true and what is not. As we age, we realize that we never hold the full truth of any situation, so we are constantly discarding what we learned earlier and replacing it with a whole new set of understandings. When we hold with the mind, we are refusing to grow and move to higher levels of understandings of life and wellness.

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Another inefficient use of our mental gifts is "giving with the mind." Here, people constantly talk without listening or checking what they are saying against reality. When we give with the mind, we are asleep to reality and at the effect of everything. We are in delusion.

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Those who "determine with their minds" are ruled by logic and reason and are blind to the limitations of the assumptions upon which they base their thinking. They relate to the world rigidly. They can’t make intuitive leaps in understanding nor see the values nor frames of reference underlying others’ points of view. They cannot empathize or move into other frames of relating to others than logic.

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Those who "catalyze with their minds" are tyrants, are regimented and rigid in the ways they treat their bodies, and are often dangerous to be around. Bosses who catalyze with their minds are tyranting their employees to be the sources of change in their worlds.

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Determining with Spirit with Passion and Lust

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Spirituality is a factor in all human life, whether we accept it or not. We are in fact Spirits being here as choosing beings. But we can make mistakes in how we steer our lives in this area just as in the other elemental areas of our lives.

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When we "determine with Spirit with lust and passion", we are guiding our lives through wisdom, through caring choices, and by asking Spirit for guidance in living our lives. It is the answers we receive here that we use to decide what to "take in" through our minds. We feel ourselves in Spirit by pursuing Beauty in our lives, by living our lives pursuing our passions and our dreams. Living in such a way "feeds our souls" and energizes our living.

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When we "give with the Spirit", we are giving our dreams away and living our lives meeting others needs. We are going to sleep and living our lives unconsciously, unfulfilled and disappointed.

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When we "hold with the Spirit", we become disillusioned and can’t see the bigger picture. We are stuck in some view of Reality and unable to catalyze our will to move along further.

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When we "receive with the Spirit", we are receiving a vision for life but can’t finish the project. We just keep receiving and receiving and can’t quite catch the picture or the image that is yet unfinished.

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When we "catalyze with the Spirit," we burn ourselves out early because we can’t process or integrate what we’ve experienced. So we go back to sleep.

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Some few live their lives in a state of "controlled folly", living their lives in a way that their personal growth and development is in everything they do or say. We feel that everything that is not the Great Work doesn’t matter. Determining with Spirit with passion and lust guides everything for us few.

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Catalyzing with Sexuality through open heart-to-heart communication

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Sexuality is a very important factor in the efficient use of energy in the human energy body, beyond even the use of life energy for procreation. When we catalyze with our sexual soul force energies, we leap into creative and loving states beyond normal consciousness. We can achieve states of creativity that surpass us and exceed our abilities. We can reach states of loving, selflessness and bliss that catalyze our lives. We reach these states of consciousness and creativity only through loving states of mind, states in which we feel a state of love and intimacy with the Beloved.

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When we do not use our sexual soul force energy in this way, we lose energy and go asleep. When we "give with sexual soul force energy" for example, we use sex to manipulate others and to get what we want from others.

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When we "determine with our sexual soul force energy", we are acting out the role of rapist or child abuser. We are allowing our anger or rage to control us.

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When we "hold with sexual soul force energy", we are punishing ourselves by not being sexual, not having sex. This results in illness and our bodies are not being cleared of excess energies and emotional discord.

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When we "receive with our sexuality", we are usually alone and are living in a fantasy world. We hold out for someone meeting our ideals or fantasies and never find anyone enough for our love or commitment.

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When we feel out of balance sexually, we can make ourselves feel well by having sexual relations with another, giving ourselves in intimacy, and having heart to heart communications.

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When You are Out-of-Balance and Need to Work towards Wellness Again

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When you are out of elemental balance, there are things you can do to move yourself back into balance. Here are several suggestions that were made to me…

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• Having sexual relations and having an orgasm will rebalance our energies
• Get out in nature to align with the elements
• Go where Beauty is
• Make something beautiful by gardening, painting, sculpting, writing or creating

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If you find yourself holding with your emotions, take a bath or go swimming.

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If you are determining with your mind, go stand in the wind.

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If you can’t find your way to determine with Spirit, sit beside a fire or light a candle.

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I acknowledge my debt to the Elders and teachers of the Deer Tribe of Phoenix, Arizona for these wisdom teachings.

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We learned in the preceding journal article how the times of the goddess nature religions came to an end, to be replaced by a patriarchal assortment of religions. The Goddess religions were a belief system based upon cyclical time as symbolized by the Moon and her phases. The Moon has three phases: the new Moon, the time of waxing through the Full Moon, the waning period ending in the Dark Moon. The Goddess showed herself in three aspects as well, corresponding to the three phases of the Moon’s cycles: Artemis (the White Virgin) was the goddess symbolizing the New Moon, Persephone (the Wife and Mother) was the goddess symbolizing the Full Moon, and the Crone, in her aspects as Kali, Hekate, or Erish-kigal, was the goddess symbolizing the Dark Moon phase.

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If it seems strange today to talk about a Supreme Goddess when we are so accustomed to accepting a God, perhaps it was just as strange 10,000 years ago to talk about a Supreme and Single God instead of a Goddess who reigns over many lesser gods. The Goddess was the Earth Mother, a Deity just as real to those who once attuned to the energies of  Nature and the annual cycles of the year, as the God which today we Christians, Moslems or Jews consider the only Source. But “in the Olde Tymes”, it was the Goddess who ruled over the realms of life and death. The Virgin ruled the beginning of life. The Mother ruled the middle of life. And the end of life…death and the period between death and rebirth…was ruled by the Crone.

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The Sky God of today rules and judges by means of ethics and obedience, good and evil, right and wrong. Supposedly, these dualities can be discerned by and pursued by means of our rational facilities, logic, the left brain. We strive to be good, avoid pain, seek pleasure and happiness, serve the Good, act unselfishly, and obey our religious authorities. We speak of serving the Light and opposing the Darkness…for only the Light serves the Good. We’ve been told that the Dark is evil, violent, a terror, death, a tempter to pull us away from the Light, the opposite of the Good, the irrational and insane. But what was it originally? And has the meaning of the Threefold Goddess and the Dark been subverted by being redefined and distorted by the patriarchal religions?

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Modern Christianity, for example, has taken in the first two aspects of the Goddess…that of the Virgin and the Mother…as the Virgin Mary and as the Mother of Jesus. But the dark aspect, that of the Crone, was rejected and demonized. What she represented was frightening to mortal men: disintegration, decay, loss, death, and terror as one faces his own death. These interpretations were projected upon the descendents of those who worshipped the Triform Goddess in earlier times. And so 9 million women were burned at the stake as witches, harlots, and healers. These, it was said, were the followers of the Dark Goddess and in league with the devil.

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The Church of the Middle Ages redefined the Dark Goddess aspect as a seducer into Evil and personified her as Lilith (the first wife of Adam who refused to obey him), as a Destroyer, and a Terror, but the roles she was assigned in the Old Religions are as necessary in Cosmic space as is the Light.

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In the earlier times, both the Light and the Dark were good…each having their role and rightful place…which meant that all three aspects of the Goddess were needed. This was possibly because these ancient goddess religions were right-brained, relied less on rationality and lacked the assumption that good and bad could be "separated" in actual life. They were in fact Mystery religions because, life and its outcomes, seemed mysterious. But today we’ve forgotten the original role of the Dark. And the patriarchal religious training we’ve all had has distorted the meaning of the Goddess and her three aspects. And distorted the meaning of her mysteries and wisdoms. She was not the personification of a evil force, but an aspect of Cosmic Law itself.

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All that is born must die. All that is begun must end. No form is eternal, but must degenerate, putrify and dissolve so that its energy might be free to assume new form. If a man is only a one-lifetime being, then there is no rebirth. In the times of the Goddess, the belief was that death leads into an intermediate phase of a spiritual being’s existence. During that time, the being experiences a transformation in preparation for rebirth and a new life. The cycle repeats again and again. Death was not an end but the dissolution of an old form; not the destruction of the spiritual essence and life force of the person. The personality was no more in life, but it prepared to shape itself anew in the following life from the discoveries and experiences of the person during its previous life cycle. This was a view of reincarnation…a belief today of many people and religious worldwide...but not Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. In the Christian faith, reincarnation was denied by the Catholic Church 500 years following the times of Jesus Christ. But many Christians before and after continued to believe in the concept.

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The role of the Dark Goddess was not to punish. She was not concerned with ethical standards, being “good” versus “bad”, or “obedience” to Her word. Her role was to compassionately ease the death process, to heal, to comfort the ill and dying, to purify the soul, and to hurry it on to its next life. This role was reflected in the harvesting of crops in the autumn and the period of rest for the land during the winter; it was reflected in the cycles of the Moon in the sky above; and it was reflected in the life of each person, who must be born, live to maturity, and then age…growing weak, ill, and finally dying. She was not a judge nor a savior, but a compassionate healer and psychopomp.

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The Dark Goddess also carried the laws of life associated with the role of sexuality and its catalytic and healing power. Sex is the link between regeneration and rebirth. Sexual energy purifies and moves the psyche along, clears out old crystallized thought forms and emotional trauma. The priestesses of the Goddess acted out this mythic energy through ritual sex with those who needed healing, but this was not perceived as evil until the nomadic tribes declared it so. Sexuality was sacred and an honoring of the Goddess herself. Sexual healing is a form of this need, as any woman who has healed a man of his psychological wounds through loving tenderness and sexuality knows.

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Human instincts and animal nature are also embodied in the Goddess. This issue identifies the Goddess theologies with the human right brain, our intuitive, feeling and artistic mind. This instinctual nature was a characteristic of the White Virgin Goddess aspect, for it was Artemis who was mistress of the Beasts. But when the Virgin was made a part of the Christian mythos, she carried along with her only her obedient qualities. The instinctual nature of man…his link to and dependence upon Nature…those qualities were left behind and were projected upon the rejected Dark Goddess. Therefore, sexuality--the very life force itself!--became a potential crime against God’s will and became identified with bad behavior, as have all our other natural needs and the negative expressions of our emotions.

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The role of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, realm of the dead, also was given to the Dark Goddess. Persephone was the innocent daughter of Demeter (the Earth) who was raped and taken into the Underworld by the Lord Hades (in Greek myth). She became Queen of the Dead and brought compassion into the domain of Lord Hades. But the Underworld was not a “hellish place”; the Land of the Dead was not a place of punishment. In fact, heroes went to the Elesian Fields, an idyllic place within the Underworld. But when the role of Persephone became Mary, Mother of Jesus in the Christian faith, she became the compassionate intermediary to God for Man, in order to convince God to have mercy on man and woman as they came before the judgment seat. And the Underworld became Hell.

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Faced with the argument among Christians that man is inescapably sinful, carries original sin, and must be judged for eternity for our “sins of the flesh“ and sins against one another, Christians had nothing but death, fear of judgment, and guilt to look forward to. Only God’s Grace can save a human from an eternity in hell, for nothing can change what we were made for or into by Creation and evolutionary forces. Those who are without sin, who can live chaste, sexless lives, married to the Divine, become saints and win to heaven on their own merits. The rest of us cannot save ourselves, and we cannot rest in what we are here on Earth. We cannot escape suffering and pain in life or our own nature. We cannot rest in what we are as innately Good in God’s Universe.

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Trying to be good and endlessly seeking self-improvement and worthiness, however, is the result of holding unrealistic ideals and values, and leads into a split between mind and body, psychological pathologies and suffering. And rejection of our natural instinctual needs and sinful feelings leads into insanity and self destruction, for a person who rejects his basic needs will sicken psychologically and physically.

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Some are today seeking to retrieve the lost qualities of the Divine Feminine, and to combine it with the Divine Masculine, to marry again the Light with the Dark, and to reframe psychology and spirituality for modern mankind. They recognize that the Divine represents the marriage of both the masculine and the feminine powers. The Feminine is the creative, receptive force. The masculine is the active, conceptive force. Then God and Goddess would be one in the Christ energy. But then Christians would have to have reverence for Nature as well as its ethical commandments and rules,  degeneration as well as regeneration, instincts as well as mind, imperfection as well as perfection, bad as well as good, suffering as well as bliss, unhappiness as well as happiness, fear as well as courage, and death, decay, and loss as well as birth, growth and winning. Then, our theologies would teach the Law of Nature as well as its Law of Love. Life is what it is, and endlessly trying to categorize it into good and evil is only a perspective on the natural processes of life. If there is a purpose to life, it is to gain experiences which temper us and make us more resilient, more patient, more enduring, then life itself must be the way it is. Sanity comes with accepting life as it is as Reality and learning from it. And Christianity would be more like Buddhism.

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This marriage can bring back the acceptance of our natural selves, our psychological and spiritual health, and our ability to rest in time as all must learn to be. Man must relearn, for his very survival a species on Earth, to come back into balance, to live from his Nature, from his instincts, and from his Heart to be well psychologically or physically.

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Love is the Law: Love under Law.

Nature IS the Law.

Love is the Law: Love under Nature.

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It is said that the nature of the Divine "mind" is paradox, and so here we also see a paradox. The choice man has may not be between Nature (and instinct) verus Love, but discovering that both are necessary elements to life and choice. Finding the solution to this paradox is the work of every person who works to reconcile his animal nature with that of his need to live by the Law of Love.

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Sources: Demetria George, Mysteries of the Dark Moon

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The Unconscious Spaces Where Madness Resides 

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In his book The Mystery of Human Relationships, Nathan Swartz-Salant--a psychotherapist--discusses the split between mind and body so many people today exhibit. His work is helping his patients bring to consciousness the issues they've blocked and forced into their unconscious mind. But many people have disconnected from their bodily needs from overadherance to such factors as ethical beliefs, cultural taboos, or repressed needs. And these factors can lead to a separation of the unconscious, between those issues affecting mind versus those affecting the bodily needs.  The "psyche" itself has both these domains within it.

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There is, he maintains, a psychic unconscious and a somatic unconscious, and where there is a split between mind and body, study of the thoughts of the mind will not discern the neurotic or psychotic issues of the somatic unconscious. The psychic unconscious is experienced in dreams, day dreams, memories and daily life as images, patterns, causality, meanings, and histories. The somatic unconscious is experienced as pains, discomforts, tensions, constrictions, energy, arousal, and other feelings of embodiment.

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Schwartz-Salent discusses in his book ways of discerning psychotic spaces, held within the somatic unconscious that are not evident in the mind of his patients, as a “feeling of deadness” in the energy field between himself and his patients; or as an inability to maintain his attention on what his patients are saying or doing. He then knows that there is a psychotic issue that cannot be reached through “talking therapy”. In order to engage the issue, the imagination and intuition of his patient must be stimulated so that the patient can become aware of his own madness.

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For those of us pursuing self-knowledge through spiritual work, dreamwork or through introspection or meditation, this is a relevant issue as well. For by working with our minds, we need to be aware of this issue and pursue issues that are embodied as well as in memory. These issues, however, are “felt” as opposed to “thought or emoted”. Schwartz-Salant insists that this ability to feel is because of the presence of the “subtle body” or “astral body” which enables us to “feel” our bodies. Our attention to our own subtle bodies enable us to reconnect psychic to somatic unconscious. One might encounter such “dead zones” in ones psychic senses or in one's ability to feel one's own body or emotions; or an inability to maintain attention or focus in one’s own body-mind as one explores their body; ; or as feelings of intense anxiety, chaotic energy or confusion; or one might experience these psychotic spaces in others company as one senses/feels these psychotic energies in their bodies.

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Spaces of Madness

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Nathan Swartz-Salant argues that two of the forces which influence our unconscious processes are spirit and soul. He suggests that the psychic unconscious is more concerned with spirit, while the somatic unconscious is more concerned with soul. Soul seeks to descend into matter for experiences and learning in the body, while spirit seeks to return to its Source. The soul experiences these irreconcilable needs as an unwellness and seeks healing by descending into physical life and seeking sensation, experience, and meaning. In the process, the personality becomes lost in matter" so that the spirit's need to leave one's body is unconscious. When there is a mind-body split it is the spirit which dominates, so the soul suffers and the body reacts by manifesting these somatic spaces of madness. In time, those spaces manifest physical illnesses as a physical symptom of one's soul sickness.

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The person who is seeking him or herself must eventually turn inward to attend to these psychic and somatic issues. If she is attending to the needs of her spirit, she will idealize issues or seek beliefs that might enable her to resolve these spaces of madness in favor of ethics or idealistic values. This is sickening to her soul. This can only worsen the issue of embodied psychotic material. Here, she is "falling into the sky."

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If she instead turns her attention to her somatic issues and works on feeling her own body to ascertain her soul’s will, she will encounter at some point her inner madness through the sensations of inner confusion, lethargy, a feeling of “deadness” in life, pain, energy movements, tensions etc. Comprehension begins once one begins to put their attention on these “feelings.” Eventually, that attention to these somatic feelings will link mind with body and the mind will begin to pick up images or dreams that help to bring the somatic material into consciousness. In this case, she will discover that the only way she can resolve any of these spaces of madness is to drop all her idealistic beliefs or ideals that are creating her disembodiment. Here, she must allow herself to "fall to earth."

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However, even when these madnesses can be brought to consciousness, Swartz-Salant maintains that they cannot always be integrated. Nor will embracing them invariably lead to an integrated self. They may remain as open wounds that create delusion in life. But if the ego can accept them as a space of irreconcilable conflict and unavoidable, the wound can be contained. In a sense, the wound expands consciousness because it reveals one's immovable limitation in dealing with Reality. Seeing this, the individual can let go of her struggle to control reality and just let herself Be. Also, acceptance of one's madnesses helps one to accept one's imperfection and basic nature.  It tempers us to accept how limited our own consciousness and power really is in the world, and how little control our ego or mental abilities really give us over life itself. And this is a great step forward in finding a place of sanity to stand in the world.

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Potential sources of these places of “madness” lie in the presence of double-binds and unseparated dualities. A double-bind is a place where every choice is unsatisfactory or dangerous., where no needs get met no matter what is chosen. The person then is unable to make choice into a duality, where one choice is preferable to the other. Many people accept what they are taught or told by authority figures in their lives, parents, church leaders, etc. When people create belief systems that discriminate between what is good and bad, right and wrong, productive and non-productive, what works in life and what doesn't work, they feel some sense of control in their lives. They have some confidence that when they act, and they act in accord with what they understand is correct versus incorrect, they can expect aan outcome in accord with their action. When they can not associate a logical outcome to their concepts of correct versus incorrect, they lose the sense that anything they do produces an logical outcome. Then, there is a feeling of powerlessness and incomprehension in dealing with the reality they perceive. These places of powerlessness and incomprehension are places of madness.

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Swartz-Salant points out that we all have our places of madness within.

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Not only can man’s being not be understood without madness, it would not be man’s being if it did not bear madness within itself as the limit of his freedom.

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There is, in short, no way for us to escape our own madness, for it limits our ability to manage Reality and to be free in this world, to understand ourselves, to make sense of life, to find meaning in life, to make relationships, or to establish intimacy with others.

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The psychotic and chaotic parts must always be found out, contained, and allowed to stabilize if possible. The double -binds resolved, the unseparated dualities helped to separate in order to function.

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The major source of these spaces of madness within us might be the double binds created by the conflicts between our natural bodily needs, our instinctual needs, and the ethics or ideals we adopt from parents, society and religion. For here, in order to be well in our manifested selves, we must meet the needs our body gives us. But our ethical beliefs and taboos deny us the ability to satisfy those needs without sacrificing our immortal soul and/or spirit.

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For example, suppose that because of our religious training, we can neither accept our “instinctive nature” nor reject our instinctive nature without entering madness. Our needs lead us into lust, violence, rage, hate, rape or cruelty as well as platonic love, peace, generosity, and affection. Meeting our instinctive needs require we accept all our emotions. But if we are taught that expressing our feelings as they are is unacceptable, we repress them and deny them any kind of expression. Our ideals or beliefs forbid it. There is no solution in reconciling these conflicting demands of our realities, and so we enter a space of ambiguity and no-solution. The result is the creation of somatic spaces of madness, pain, suffering, loss, and despair.

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What is right and what is wrong? becomes "there is no identifyable right or wrong choice." There is only what other people say is right or wrong, but no matter what others insist is right, the outcomes of choices are sometime good and sometimes bad. What we ourselves believe to be right often turns out to be wrong. What we ourselves believe to be wrong turns out to be right for others. The mind is infinitely creative in rationalizing our points of view. No one sees reality the same. So there is no criterion of rightness or wrongness that anyone can depend upon. If this is the case, then life cannot be controlled through choice. The only solution becomes to surrender one's choice and accept whatever happens.

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What is true and what is false? What others say is true often turn out to be false. What we think is true often turns out to be false. There are very few instances in which something is totally true; most issues are partially true and partially false. Or something is true only from one point of view, but not from other points of view. When this is recognized, the duality of true and false breaks down in practice. And what is left is a space of ambiguity, a place that knows that a person cannot place his or her belief in dualities of true and false. The mind can justify anything with reason or belief or filtered memories. So again, one enters this space of madness where one cannot choose or discern what is true and what is false. The only thing one can do is to discard the duality of truth and falsehood. And again lLife cannot be controlled through choice.

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What is good and what is evil? What one person perceives as good turns out to be seen by someone else as evil. It depends on how one looks at things. People kill because of these issues, babies die, women are violated, all for the pursuit of the Good by violent persons convinced they are Right. This too is a space of madness. How can one live with this? By denying the instinctual nature of man. By replacing the recognition of instinct with devotion to some ethical principle that justifies killing, rape or infanticide. By repressing the instincts. By not entering the body fully so that one can’t perceive one’s own instinctual nature, by lying to ones self, by not allow one’s conscious mind to find or be conscious of one’s own mad places. But one knows that one cannot resolve this issue by external ethical criterion because good cannot be separated from evil outcomes, and outcomes cannot be anticipated. If mankind "truly" has free will, how can he choose between what is not distinguishable? Where then is free will?

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Consider, if you will, how language itself is dependent upon the above concepts. If we cannot think about concepts such as right and wrong, true and false, good and evil, then how can we address through conversation or argumentation any issue that depends upon these dualities? So we find that discussion loses its magnetism for us, and we become silent in the face of societal debates in politics, religion, or ethics. We discover we are no longer able to take a position on so many issues. In fact, it becomes more attractive just to rest in unknowing, allowing life to take its own course, and accepting whatever comes, as did perhaps the Taoist Sages of old China.

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One might attempt to live by the personal rule “Do no harm to anyone.! But no one controls outcomes, only intention. Sometimes when one intends good, people are hurt; other times, they are helped or not harmed. The only way to protect others in ones relationships is to Do Nothing with or to others. Only care for and about them. This again pushes one into a stance in life that is receptive rather than assertive, egoless rather than egotistical, passive rather than willful and active.

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(Now, if I have talked you into these arguments, then you are now as deluded as I already was when this whole article conceived itself!)

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Unable to resolve ones places of inner madness, an individual begins to allow life to come to her and begins to accept life as it is without attempting to control it or judge it. Her inner madnesses may be projected upon this world, seeing society and people's lives as mad, but madness is a part of human nature...not Nature...and one soon catches that there is much that is absurd about Man and the way he perceives life.

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Living with our Spaces of Madness

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Once aware of one’s own spaces of madness within, the ego/conscious mind can do two things to help itself: (1.) respect and have an affection for one’s own madness. One cannot live in this world without experiencing madness. Allow it its place. This is humankind’s Dionysian nature. Madness is a part of man’s life experience. (2.) Care for the dilemma of one’s own soul, for it is the soul who seeks its instinctual nature through the body in order to feel alive, to experience life, to retrieve lessons--but it cannot experience life without also experiencing madness or confusion. The spirit seeks its Source and to lose the sense of self, to leave the body here and go outward. And so the human being is caught between two irreconcilable forces: the spirit which wishes to expand outward and lose the sense of solidity, to surrender life to experience the wellness of Oneness in Spirit; and the soul, which wishes to incarnate in form in order to experience the sense of self and life in the physical.

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It is said that the ability to accept the ambiguity of life, these spaces of madness, is a mind that knows his own Divine nature, for the mind of the divine is a mind that can hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, can tolerate the double binds encountered in life, and tolerate the absence of dualities that enable one to make clear choices. Life is then filled with paradox. And the solutions to these paradoxes are difficult to identify. Most must be surmounted through intuition rather than through logic or analysis. And this seems to ask a lot from most people.

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One alternative in the above cases of double binds and broken dualities is to operate from intuition or "feeling" instead of logic or analysis. In these cases, a person might make choices for one thing over another because they feel the right choice. Or feel the choice that feels right to them. The choice process is irrational and indescribable. Choice is not scientific or rational. But choice is possible.

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Psychologically, these places of madness are referred to as neurotic or psychotic issues. They are parts of us that remain convinced that we cannot gain what we need, that we are confronted with impossible obstacles, that life is hostile, that the world is dangerous, that we can’t have what we wish. Containment of the despair or madness these beliefs create is possible only when an individual is able to find a meaning in their suffering; that they feel that there is purpose in the suffering; that, perhaps, the soul requires these experiences. As C.G. Jung said:

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 “neurosis is the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.”

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Some choose the route of embracing the receptive way of living (archetypally the "feminine") to return the seeker to living from her instincts and the lesser consciousness of the Great Round:

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 In the shamanic tradition of healing, what psychologists would call neurosis was perceived as alienation of the individual from his instinctive nature, from his or her mythic roots. Therefore, the shaman would frequently chant the creation stories and the foundation myths of the tribe to reconnect the lost soul to its roots, to restructure the patient’s perceptions towards the tribe’s worldview of meaning.(James Hollis, Tracking the Gods, p. 64)

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The Buddha, Gautama, also argued that this way of life was well. “All life is suffering, and the cause of suffering is the desire of the ego to control life…most of all to control one’s mortality. The secret to living well, according to the Buddha and all the great mythic systems, is to live in accord with the will of the gods, in harmony with the Tao.” Wellness is encountered when one can let go of the struggle to win or control life, to identify with the Great Coming and Going, to replace acquisition with the capacity to relinquish. This is the secret wisdom of the Great Mother in the timelessness of the Great Round.” (James Hollis, Tracking the Gods, p. 65).

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This choice, the cycle of sacrifice, terrifies the ego but supports and heals the soul.

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Modern society rejects this thesis. It is the patriarchal need to push our boundaries out; to advance; to evolve; to rebel against the unconsciousness of instinct; to accumulate wealth, power or status; to win over Nature; to achieve immortality in some way; to do or be something significant; to take what might belong to others. This is the archetype of the Quest…sometimes called the Hero’s Journey. The call to take this journey represents the need to overthrow some older value…personal or tribal. On this journey, the hero is wounded, and his wounds quicken his consciousness. He returns changed and changes his tribe by being different. He has a new sense of what is possible for his tribe. It is his difference that transforms his tribe. It is through his relationships that the changes are made.

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But even the hero must rest at some point. For as he seeks, he suffers. Although he receives the aid of the Universe on his journeys, he must leave those magical helpers behind upon his return. He must then rule his kingdom. The hero is the archetype of the ego as well as his need to be different, to be an individuality, to feel centered in his own “sense of self.” For the hero is seeking himself and the way to live life in a good way.

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Finding Meaning, Self and Connection to One's Gods

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Although each archetypal approach…masculinity and femininity, egoic and egolessness…has its advantages, each also possesses negative qualities. Great Mother brings peace and soulful life, but she also regresses us, takes us down into living less conscious lives. People who take this route are descending into that Abyss psychologists call the Realm of the Mothers, caught in lethargies, stasis, caught in the Borderland of the Underworld, caught in their tribal or family identities, and have little initiative to change. Here, the individual has little individuality or individual sense of self, but sees herself as a member of her tribe. Fear or tribal belief systems often holds the tribe in stasis, unwilling to take a risk or depart on transformative journeys that might define a new individuality or a new tribal consciousness. Although tribe members experience a sense of connection to their gods and a sense of meaning in life, myth and religion govern the life of the tribe and the individual.

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The Quest or masculine archetypal journey-- the Way of constant Seeking, self improvement, seeking advantages over others, and the accumulation of wealth or power--in the end brings suffering, for…as the Buddha noted…nothing is permanent. One cannot remain on a Quest for one's whole life, for in the end, there is nothing to be found except a new perceptive of one's self and life. Nothing one struggles to obtain can be retained or held onto...even one's new sense of self. Time takes it all away in the end. Death is the only ending. And one’s good works and achievements in the end are like rain in the desert. But it won't last forever, there is a sense of meaning from the adventures and discoveries on the Quest.

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Yet part of what makes Mankind unique is the fact that we have been granted free will, and free will enables us to make choices. Those choices may leave us disappointed in our lives or feeling successful. But we are plainly allowed to be willing beings, to try to achieve something, to be something new. Will is required to resist the lethargy of life under Great Mother’s rule. Will is required to combat our fear of taking risks, of striking out to discover something new. Will is required, even as we know we must eventually fall.

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As our environments change, we must adapt to new circumstances or we will not survive. And as we in the West are more and more isolated, more separated from our tribes and family members, more insecure, and less emotionally supported by community in our lives, we are in need individually as well as community-wide of adapting quickly to change in our external circumstances. And so we must “work our Wills” in order to stay strong, to resist the devolution and death wishes each of us carry in our unconscious minds, to survive individually and to grow into our potentials.

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And so we must balance these masculine and feminine archetypal impulses. In a sense, we are attempting what Zen Buddhists call “Not Doing”. Not Doing is a state of no-stress and resting in our instinctual nature. This is the state of wellness and soul’s rest. But the practice is to Do while Not Doing; to lose ones self in what one is doing so there is no past, no future, and no thought. Then what needs to get done gets done. This is a paradoxical state of mind in which two states of consciousness are maintained simultaneously.

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The only way to live in this way is to live in the moment. As Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron says, “The path is the moment by moment evolution of our experience, the moment-by-moment evolution of the world of phenomena, the moment-by moment evolution of our thoughts and emotions. The Path ahead isn’t laid out…its made up moment by moment as we engage here with our thoughts and emotions.

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The moment is all the Path we have. We must be patient, and this means allowing things to unfold at their own speed rather than jumping in with our habitual responses to either pain or pleasure. We must be willing to experience whatever comes, pain or pleasure, sanity or madness, clarity or confusion and to value and appreciate life as it is."

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There is a lot of emphasis these days, due to Carl Jung’s early work, on becoming Whole. But there is a lot of misunderstanding about what “wholeness” is. Wholeness is not being good, being better, becoming perfect, being "saved" by Jesus, becoming powerful, becoming wiser, being "of the light", or even becoming more spiritual. In fact, taking the journey to Wholeness is actually the process by which one becomes psychically well.

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Wholeness requires recognition of our instinctual, animal-nature as well as our higher will to be something more than earthbound beings.

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Wholeness, in fact, encompasses both man’s darkest Dark and his lightest Light. Being Whole requires that we each investigate all that we are, and what mankind is is Everything That Is.

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Many choose a spiritual approach to becoming Whole, but find that in spiritualizing their needs to be “of the Light” they increase psychological suffering in their lives. The problem is that spiritualization often drives us away from our natural needs, our instinctual nature, and our bodies. And that Path leads to illness…not Wholeness and not psychological wellness. When we are focusing upon spirituality or soul, we tend to be influenced by cultural values or religious teachings that are concerned about ethical decisions. We turn towards behaviors we have been taught are "good." And in so doing we increase the pressure to become another kind of being than we, in fact, are! And that turn becomes an invitation to psychological or spiritual illness, and if we don’t discover the way inward to listen to our state of mind within, our path directs us into physical illness as well. But it is precisely these earthy, instinctual and taboo needs that we reject and repress, refuse to accept as aspects of our true selves. 

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Our inability to embrace what is basic and base in ourselves leads to a false sort of spirituality.

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If our nature is to instead turn away from societal programming--abandoning ethical belief systems or dogma-- spiritualization can provide an impetus to turn inward, investigating dreams and images that arise from one’s subconscious or Collective Unconscious realms. But that spirituality is different than our modern day ethics-based religious training. It is a spirituality that asks "what am I?  And "Who am I?" And then opens and listens within.

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And it is inside that we uncover our own mercurial nature…we discover that we dance in both darkness as well as in light. As our dreams contain the numinous energies of the archetypes, we find ourselves playing all kinds of roles in life, guided by these archetypal patterns of light and dark. The images point the way to wellness be directing us into our instincts and our bodily needs and challenges us to discover our paradoxical nature is mercurian..

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Living close to one's instinctual nature is the key to psychic health. But instincts are not to be spiritualized. They are not to be classified as “good” or “evil”. But they do take us down into our bodies and link us to Nature. They force us to obey the Law of Survival, and thus they are the basis of wellness in Matter. Survival is insured by taking care of our own needs. But instincts can be expressed destructively or constructively. Our instincts may drive us into violence, rape, murder, manipulation or abusive relationships, greed, and lust. They are basic and enormously powerful energies. So in working with these powerful needs, we must be prepared to think through and will ourselves into positive directions.

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As we surrender the Heights and Fall to Earth, we discover we must surrender the battle to be Good. We must stop spiritualizing the Path. Our journey is the exploration of the Self…not becoming Perfect or Good or Better. We confront and accept our beastial nature, our Serpentine side. We stop trying to make Soul at the conscious level.

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The gods (archetypal needs) are mercurial---not easily classified into human concepts of “good” and “evil.” As we become guided by these archetypal energies, we encounter the way in which our instinctual nature interacts with human cultures. We feel the compulsions that accompany this experience and abide in their painful yearnings for awhile, as we learn that we are playing out Great Stories of Myth and legend. The gods play here through us.

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Since the earliest times, the symbols of Love were of a mixed nature in human culture. Zeus was the god of Thunder and Lightning, a Killer sometimes and a Lover sometimes. Aphrodite, the goddess of Love, was a seducer and a possessive wife needing love too. Love was a thing higher than the gods that ruled human behavior. Human love was different. To the gods, Good and Evil were of little concern, for the gods were mercurial, containing both. Good and Evil behavior did not restrain or contain them.

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When Mankind plays the parts of those energies, we too cannot be contained by categories of behavior. Both good and evil emerge from our life stories.

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To find wellness in these times, mankind must learn to perceive life at a metaphorical level that accepts both Good and Evil as events in grander plan. In the meantime, we must choose wellness, and that means accepting and becoming familiar with our mercurial nature. To accept ourselves here as creatures of this Earth, playing out the themes of Love and Hate, manifesting the gods here. Those who fight their own nature to act out ideals of pure love, pure goodness will find that their behavior generates psychic dysfunction, suffering or illusion.

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But as we turn away from "normal" society to follow our own path inward, we disobey the rules of society; we ignore society’s ethical rules; we act out our pain and our need to heal ourselves. To find a new way to live in psychic wellness, love what we are, and find meaning in life, we journey into strange places. We become eccentric or strange.  We investigate unpopular wisdoms an occult teachings. We discover that what is natural in the psyche has in our culture become rejected, outcast, occult, and mysterious. We become “seers, visionaries, prophets, and psychics...all behaviors that society defines as pathological. Our friends draw back and abandon us. Our families grow angry and pressure us to abandon our search, our behavior and our new independence of thought.

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As our archetypal stories unfold, we can catch the meaning of what is happening to us. We can step out of the archetypal roles, see the great stories we are living, and become more conscious of who we are and what we are doing here on Earth. Our insights then release our lives from their archetypal, spiritual or conceptual containers. Dropping the spiritualization and dropping the intellectualization of our Path frees us to live in Freedom here. Life is “As It Is”. Nothing more be said here.

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When this is done, we can stop repressing our instinctual nature and live. We can enjoy the miraculous sensations of being alive and meeting powerful needs. We can let go of our need for power, stop living in our egos, and stop trying to control things. We can stop trying to get “Lighter” or better, stop dividing up the Cosmos into Light and Dark, or stop associating ourselves with the Light alone.

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We lose the battle to change ourselves and fall back into our natural selves.

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We discover that our Great Work has been to understand and accept our own dark mercurial nature.

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In discovering our own nature, we discover the nature of the Universe. We no longer are imprisoned by the endless passage from one imagined reality to another. We recognize the realities that we represent above us. We no longer abide in fantasies or illusion about ourselves.

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Plainly, no one else can do this work for us. This is our own task.

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Seniors have as many mental health issues as any other population group, but in some senses, we have issues in adjusting to changes in our lives and changes in our health status that other groups do not have. Many seniors are experiencing career loss and are finding that getting back into the work force presents us with barriers never before experienced. Age discrimination becomes a serious issue politicians just do not seem to understand or care about.

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The loss of a career or end of the "working stage" of life carries with it severe adjustment challenges for anyone. In our culture, our sense of self worth is usually tied to our achievements in business or the workforce. When those associations, friendships and activities no longer are there, too many are left without a basis for valuing themselves or self esteem. People feel "left behind", isolated, rejected, devalued, ignored and uninvolved. They lose their sense of purpose and meaning to life. They lose the emotional support that the routine of working with friends and colleagues had provided. And they lose the focus that working on issues and activities of interest had provided.

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Add to this the loss of spouses through divorce or death, the onset of health problems, children drifting away from parents, the loneliness these events bring, and the sudden financial problems from job loss, and mental health issues become a major factor.

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As our numbers swell with the retirement of the "Baby Boom" generation, our needs for mental health services will soon swamp the entire health care system in America. We need to educate ourselves on the coming mental health storm and prepare to work through our own transition to a new life ourselves. We are not victims in this transition. There is life after work, but we must learn how to live and value ourselves in a new way.

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The result of career loss or retirement is too often depression, loneliness, boredom, anxiety, restlessness, the feeling of failure or loss, or withdrawal from society. These are mental health issues that each of us must learn to deal with in a positive way, yet individuals entering this age group or situation seldom know anything about what to expect, how to work through these mental health issues, or where to find resources to help them cope and redefine themselves.

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AARP has resources to support its members as they confront these problems, but there are other resources, government programs, and community organizations which can help. Contact AARP for information about its programs.

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HealthyPlace.com is the largest consumer mental health site, providing comprehensive, trusted information on psychological disorders and psychiatric medications from both a consumer and expert point of view. HealthPlace has an active mental health social network for support, online psychological tests, breaking mental health news, mental health videos, documentary films, a live mental health tv show, unique tools like our "mediminder" and more.  This is one of the on-line resources that we might look to for guidance and resources.
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For resources on mental health assistance, abuse, and alternative mental health treatments, click on this link:

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http://community.icontact.com/p/healthyplace2/newsletters/2-11-2008/posts/healthyplace-newsletter6

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To become a member of HealthyPlace, go to:  http://www.HealthyPlace.com/ and register as a new member. Its free!

The Jaguar is a member of the panther species of Great Cats including the leopard. Like the tiger and the lion, these large cats symbolize aggressiveness and power, but jaguar and leopards tend to be more fierce and primal than the other cats in the family. Members of the panther family tend to be associated with lunar energies, but in South America the jaguar and its pattern of spots on gold or black are associated with the "Midnight Sun"--the Sun as it passes into the Underworld of the Dead. Those tropical areas where the jaguar is still found are mostly "South of the Border", and so it is in the human underworld of the unconscious--south of the border of the conscious mind--where jaguar hunts in the dreamtimes of Man.

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Those for whom jaguar is a teacher will find themselves preferring and acting in much the same way as this magnificent animal. They for the most part are loners, and they prefer the company of other loners. They spend a lot of time in silence, and it is in silence that they will find their greatest gifts. They hunt at night, and so it is at night when these individuals may come into their greatest powers...hunting through dreamscapes and lunar dimensions of time and space for mysteries, power or knowledge. They run in short bursts of speed, lacking the endurance of some of their prey who might run long distances to avoid being caught. Likewise, those for whom jaguar is a teacher like to work in bursts rather than for long periods of time. They must avoid long uninterrupted periods of work or else they can become unbalanced and uncentered. Taking time to play, visit with friends or simply roam about in nature helps them to remain psychologically and spiritually well.

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Male jaguars spend only short periods with their mates, ranging from place to place restlessly. Female jaguars mate and raise their cubs alone, preferring to do things their way. Males can be aggressive or even predatory around young ones, and the females drive them away fiercely. Those with jaguar as a teacher likewise prefer to spend most of their time alone, raising and defending their children themselves, hunting and restlessly wandering. Many live alone or choose to live alone rather than in pairs. Their instinct is to guard the young, and many have an instinctive tendency to serve as Guardians in this world. Jaguar people may be found in careers of guardianship, like lawyers, police, soldiers, security guards, etc.

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Ted Andrews reports that those with jaguar among their inner teachers are usually born with their eyes already open to the metaphysical realms. They need to learn to trust their inner visions or dreams as guides to life's ways. Many are clairaudient--hearing the voices in the darkness of their minds and soul that teach or intrude into human lives.

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The skin of the jaguar is very sensitive to touch. Those who jaguar selects to teach will also be very sensitive to touch and superconscious of boundary issues. This sensitivity to touch makes its human avatar very sensual and sexually potent.

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The jaguar has an extraordinarily powerful bite. When hunting, they are known to bite and crush the skull of their prey. And the strike of their clawed paws have been known to cut the head right off an unwary animal. Those who confront a jaguar person had better watch out, for they can "take the head off" an unwary opponent with the power of their angry tongue. Jaguar's primal instincts can erupt as unchecked rage and aggression if not carefully guarded.

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Jaguars are found in colors of dark gold with black spots as well as black. Those whose color is black have greater mysticism; they symbolize the feminine, the dark mother, or the dark of the moon. Such great cats symbolize darkness, death or rebirth. To the indigenous peoples of Latin America, these dark cats were symbols of immeasureable power and mastery over all dimensions. The black jaguar was the god/goddess of darkness and could cause eclipses by swallowing the sun. The Dark Moon is the time of the Dark Goddess, the sorcerer and the shaman...the time of life from death to rebirth into the world. In Greek mythology, this was the time of the goddess Hecate...the time of the witch and dark magick. Winter is the season of power for this totem animal. .

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Jaguar is associated with the Greek god Dionysos. Dionysos had to endure many years of persecution by the Queen of the Gods, Hera, and was torn to pieces by Titans. He was put back together by Zeus, but his mind was forever changed by that experience. Those to whom jaguar comes may experience psychic trauma and fragmented personalities. They are very oriented to their spirituality and Quest, and occasionally they must confront their Dweller at the Threshold. In these battles of the self, they are likely to lose, and like Dionysos, be torn to pieces...to fall into the Abyss/Unconscious. Their rebirth requires that the Powers of the Upper Realms intervene to "put them back together". As a result, they may have psyche's with multiple centers from violent encounters with the powers of the Moon, complex personalities, dark aspects, and be driven into martrying themselves over religion. As the jaguar hunts at night, they are drawn towards the occult, the Unknown, the Ecstatic, and the Irrational. They are intimately familiar with chaos, loss and terror. They learn to know their own inner darkness well. They learn to walk these paths with honor.

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The Underworld intrudes into their conscious minds and they are moody and occasionally depressed. Feminine and masculine dance together in the body and minds of these persons. Jaguar people tend towards their feminine side which gives them access to intuition, instinct, and feeling as a mode of operating in the world. They can be logical or knowledgeable, but tend not to be very interested in that part of their natures.

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To the shamans of the Amazon, the jaguar was the ultimate power animal. For a shaman to shapeshift into the Man-Jaguar was the sign of one who has shorn off all civilization and returned to his animal natural state. .

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The coming of jaguar into the lives of those who call her brings the Quest and the beginning of soul work that can empower one's real self and the owning of one's own power. It marks the reclaiming of that which was lost and the connection to those whose need is here inside to be you. It brings an ability to go beyond what has been imagined if the discipline and control can be garnered. It is the spirit of imminent rebirth.

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 Reference: Ted Andrews, Animal-Speak: TheSpiritual & Magical Powers of Creatures Great and Small  (Llewellyn Publications: St. Paul, Minnesota: 1998) .

 In the imagery of the schizophrenic's experience, Joseph Campbell recognized a synthesis of mythological motifs similar to Jung's archetypes. In his work, he recounts Dr. John Weir Perry's analysis of an individual's descent into madness: the break away or departure from everyday reality, a retreat inward with dark encounters of a symbolic kind, and finally--in the most fortunate cases--a return journey of rebirth and renewal. He then follows the uncanny parallels between these stages and the "universal formula" of the hero's journey gathered from mythologies of cultures around the world, and reveals how the phases of the schizophrenic's crisis correspond to the separation, initiation, and the return of the shaman's experience during his voyage into other worlds. In later years, Campbell would learn that filmmakers George Lucas and Stanley Kubrick modeled their own work on his monomyth, which reflects the ancient three-act structure of drama itself.

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After recounting the four basic responses to a schizophrenic crisis, Campbell moves on to discuss the insights of psychologist R. D. Laing, and poses the question, Can you say "yea" to the final crisis or not? Rather than deny the need to make such dramatic descents, Campbell felt it is imperative both for the individual and for the culture at large.

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When one responds with a Yea! in the middle of a crisis, the journey changes marvelously, as Odysseus discovered on his twenty-year voyage.

Confrontation of East and West in Religion...

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In 1970, when Joseph Campbell delivered this talk, the collision of the East and West was one of Campbell's favorite topics. He saw that the West was deeply mired in disenchantment with traditional religious thinking, and the time was ripe for the cross-fertilization of Eastern and Western cultures. In his introduction, he presents an illuminating analogy to our present situation in the strange plight of the Plains Indian tribes near the end of the nineteenth century, when they realized the old ways were disappearing with the buffalo, and that their old wisdom was no longer effective. For Campbell, the Indian's response was a vivid metaphor for what the modern people must do. Their adoption of the peyote religion encouraged inward visionary experiences and was an example of how a people can find the sacred in themselves even when it has been lost in their society.

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Campbell points out that the religious symbols Western societies were built on have lost their authority, and with it their sacred powers. He saw that the reason why people in the West were turning to the East to fill the gap was partly because they realized that in the East people are experiencing God directly. The Eastern philosophy that teaches "the ultimate divine mystery is within you," was for Campbell a "fantastic difference." It is just this distinction that forms the heart of his philosophy, that "life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be experienced."

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Why not become a Joseph Campbell Foundation Associate? Join the Joseph Campbell Foundation and sign up for its free newsletter.

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http://www.jcf.org/

I was doing some reading in astrology this afternoon, and ran across some discussion of "death." You might wonder why such a topic was discussed in an astrology book, but in fact one's destiny or fate is in one's chart, as is the search for meaning...and where meaning is likely to be found for each of us. Life, we all discover, is filled with suffering. And one of the most frightening prospects for us in the physical is the prospect of dying. So we don't think about it for almost all of our lives. Then, when it is time, we go into shock, denial, avoidance, fear, depression, and finally acceptance...that is, if we have time to go through those steps. Death comes suddenly for many through accident, heart attack or stroke, or cruelty from others.  But those who have studied the issue of dying teach that it is very helpful to contemplate and prepare for our death, for in preparing for it we have an opportunity to use our death as a teacher and mentor. And we have the chance to accept our death as OUR death...something that is not an ending but a transition...and perhaps even an adventure for the curious. (Not to say morbid!)

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I'm a Sagitttarian Sun, a Taurus Moon (Intercepted), and a Gemini Ascendant. Basically, that means that for most of my life, I was not able to reach a state of consciousness where I could FEEL alive. I am mentally adroit (Gemini) and even intuitive/imaginative (Sagittarian Sun with Neptune in Libra/5th House), but have never been particular attentive to this physical body walking around under my head. Well, that's where the trouble was, because it is very difficult to find a meaning in one's suffering--and we all suffer--when we don't feel alive and feel the sensation of pleasure in our bodies.

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So many of us go through life racing to get ahead, striving to be safe, struggling to keep a marriage afloat, the children in school and out of jail or the hospital, hold on to a job, maintain the standard of living. I remember distinctly a teaching exercise I had some years back to work through a maze blindfolded.  The maze represented my life. I was told that, somewhere in this incomprehensible passage, there was a treasure. But no one would tell me what the treasure was nor where I might find it. So I struggled, climbed, went under, wiggled through that maze, uncomprehending anything except that it was a very unpleasant experience. I had one thing on my mind: getting to the end of that maze as quickly as possible.

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Well, I did finally get through that d**d experience after two hours. I was weary, bored and battered when I got to the end. That is when I remembered the Treasure. So to make a long story shorter, I had to go back through that maze backward, blindfolded, looking again for the Treasure. I would have never found it. In the end, I cheated, peaking out and seeing where others were grouped. The Treasure was above everyone's head, in the ductwork running across the ceiling. Now, how was anyone to every find that Treasure blindfolded. Stumbling around the way we were, we were all LOOKING DOWN to keep our feet under us and not trip.

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Once I was out of that room, I realized something. I had lived my life exactly as I had passaged that maze. All I had in my mind was getting to the end safely. All I understood about life was that I had to survive my working years so I could reach retirement. And retirement was the "reward" of inactivity for all those years of slaving away. I was controlled by my fear of insecurity and poverty. Never once had I every "looked up" to find a higher purpose to living or to find any thing that would motivate me to live my life in a better way for me, specifically.  In fact, I had never thought of myself as an individual at all, or a person who might choose to live his life in a unique way compared to all those others working dads. The Maze was a hard lesson for me, but an important lesson. Life is too precious to live unconsciously. And yet we nearly all do live our lives in this way.

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The other thing about the Maze experience was that the "treasure" was located very near the beginning of the maze. You might think, as I did, that the reward would come near the end, because that is the way we all live our lives. We live our lives "putting off" the rewards we associate with careers and marriage and wealth until late in life because we are busy earning the rewards when we are younger. We live those early years stressed out of our minds, putting in the hours at work, fighting our kids and our spouses, trying to pay the bills for things we or our family purchased that everyone else had or wanted.

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One of the big shocks I had in my forties was the unexpected deaths of close associates and famous people in the news. Those people, I knew, had like me, put off the rewards of their lives until later, working themselves into exhaustion. But their time had run out. They got no reward. And it occurred to me after this Maze Experience that I had made a mistake. I had misunderstood what life was all about. I had chosen the wrong goals for my life early on and had struggled to hold onto those inappropriate goals all my life. I thought "All those years wasted!"

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So in short, I spent a number of years going back to find my own unique "treasure"...a dream I'd had as a child that had been dropped and repressed and forgotten many years before. I needed to find out what that was that was so clear then and so cloudy now. I realized that in my rush through life, I had forgotten the magical feeling of living that I'd had so clearly as a child. Then, I FELT alive and experienced such pleasure in play and imagination. Now, I felt deadened, numb, weary and my life was so existential. I realized I experienced no sense of meaning in my life. Why had I gone through all that suffering and struggle? For others? Because my parents taught me this was the way to live? Because I naively believed my school teachers? Because I thought a career was supposed to supply me with a meaning for life?

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I realized that this is MY life, and these years are the only chance I'll ever have to experience this world. I couldn't put off beginning to live one more moment. NOW is the time to start living.

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But as you know, there are so many distractions and insecurities in this society. We have to keep a job, pay the bills, pick up the groceries, go to the doctor, get the car fixed, attend PTA, plan our next vacation etc etc etc. We'll deal with this issue of life and meaning later. But death is no respector of our plans. Later is too late.

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When one begins to accept the finality of death, he realizes that there is no later we can count on. Death walks behind our left shoulder, waiting to reach out and tap us on the shoulder. This moment is all we have, all we can count on. If we accept our death and live each moment, we are never unaware that THIS IS IT. This moment, this precious moment, is the moment we have to collect our reward: experiencing being alive, ecstasy, pleasure, Beauty. That reward is being alive in this moment. It is all we had when we were born. We will leave it behind when we die. We experience this moment as a pleasureable experience or as suffering and boredom. How can we make it into a pleasurable experience?

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Act on our feelings rather than our logic. That is the key to pleasure and happiness. Happiness comes from doing what we FEEL like doing rather than what logic tells us we should do. Pleasure is experienced through the body and through the emotions. The mind feels nothing. The mind, in fact, has no idea what it wants. The body knows what it wants. It wants pleasurable sensation. It wants delicious food. It wants to see beautiful sights. It wants sexual experiences and the intimacy of friendships with both men and women. It wants to smell the wonders of this earth. It wants to feel awe and spiritual ecstasy. It wants to love and be loved. It wants to touch and be touched. It wants to hear lovely music, the soft voice of a lover, the wind in the mountains and the trees. It wants sensation, emotion and to explore this world. The mind wants....ideas, concepts, goals, budgets, timelines, beginning and end points, and other practical things society demands.

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But when the mind turns to supporting the body and its needs, wonderful things start to happen. The mind becomes aware of how it can act to support the body's needs and pleasures and wishes. The mind notices that it experiences feeling, emotion, sensation through the body. And this idea changes a person's whole idea about how life should be lived to FEEL alive and ENJOY being alive. Every moment can be pleasure. Every second can be a pleasurable experience when the mind comes present and pays attention to the sensations of being alive in the world. But to live this way, the mind must grow silent. Mind must not be permitted to go off into daydreaming or planning or remembering the past or into wishing we were someone else going somewhere else. There is no time for woolgathering any more.

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This moment is our reward and the sensation and experience of being alive is the reward we get for being born. All the work we feel we have to do, all the responsibilities we feel encumbered with, all the expectations others have for us draw us away from this moment and the pleasure awaiting us right here, right now. We all to easily surrender our reward in exchange for suffering and dullness. And this is madness.

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Society is Mad...Insane. Everyone is making this choice without realizing that their reward for being born is being given away thoughtlessly.  Those who wake up, realize that death walks behind our left shoulder, and ask "What the heck am I doing?" There has got to be a way to live in which I feel a sense of meaning to my life, in which I feel alive and happy to be here, in which I feel well and sane and content. And this is not it."

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Let death be our teacher and mentor. Each moment we let pass unconsciously living in an insane world is a terrible loss. Wake up now. Come to your Self. Take your power and your treasure back.

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Kathleen A. Brehony, Awakening at Midlife (Riverhead Books: New York)

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (Gothem Books)

__________. The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning (Inner City Books)

__________, Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places (Inner City Books)

__________, Mythologems (Inner City Books)

__________, Tracking the Gods: The Place of Myth in Modern Life (Inner City Books: New York)

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One of my favorite Jungian authors, Hollis has many other books he's written on the transformation at mid-life. He's a great, readable author and I love everything he's written. Here is a link to his page on Amazon:

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http://www.amazon.com/James-Hollis/e/B000AP7GGQ/ref=ntt_aut_sim_1_1

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Robert A. Johnson, The Fisher King and the Handless Maiden (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, He (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, She (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, Balancing Heaven and Earth (Harper SanFrancisco)

_______________, Living Your Unlived Life ( Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin)

_______________, Ecstasy (Harper SanFrancisco)

Robert A. Johnson and Jerry Ruhl Contentment ((Harper SanFrancisco)

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Robert A. Johnson has written many other short books on the inner journey.They are all great. Rather than list them all here, I'll just give you a link to his page on Amazon.com:

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http://www.amazon.com/Robert-A.-Johnson/e/B000APIDYA/ref=sr_tc_tag_2

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*Charles Ponce, Working the Soul (North Atlantic Books)

Robert Graves, The Greek Myths: The Complete Edition

Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

Robert Avens, Imagination is Reality

C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

Charles Ponce, The Archetype of the Unconscious and the Transfiguration of Therapy

C.G. Jung, Answer to Job

Frank Pittman, M.D., Man Enough

Bud Harris, Sacred Selfishness

Michael Washburn, Embodied Spirituality in a Sacred World

Richard Lind, The Seeking Self

Thich Nhat Hanh, The Art of Power

Thich Nhat Hanh, Nothing to Do, Nowhere to Go

Hugh Prather, The Little Book of Letting Go

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

Patricia Reis, Daughters of Saturn

Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Ultimate Meaning

Viktor E. Frankl , Mans' Search for Meaning

Pema Chodron, Start Where You Are

___________, TheWisdom of No Escape and Path of Loving Kindness

___________, When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

___________, The Places That Scare You

___________, Comfortable with Uncertainty

___________, Perfect Just as You Are (audiobook)

Karyl McBride, Ph.D., Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers

Peg Streep, Mean Mothers: Overcoming the Legacy of Hurt

Susan Forward, Ph.D., Toxic Parents: Overcoming their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

Linda Schierse Leonard, Meeting the Madwoman: Empowering the Feminine Spirit & Breaking through Fear and Destructive Patterns to a Balanced and Creative Life (Bantam Books)

Sakyong Mipham, Ruling Your World (Morgan Road Books: New York)

Christina Baldwin, Life's Companion: Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest (Bantom Books: New Yorki)

 Ken McLeod, Wake Up to Your Life (Harper SanFrancisco)

Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman, The Mythic Journey: The Meaning of Myth as a Guide for Life (Simon & Schuster Publishers)