Diane Hamilton on the Creative Play of Opposites

It was lovely to interview Diane Hamilton for the Jung Society of Utah blog, where this post originally appeared.

Diane Musho Hamilton is a gifted mediator, facilitator, and teacher of Zen and Integral Spirituality. In her late 20s and early 30s, she trained to become a professional mediator. “My professional life was really structured around working with people in conflict. Whenever you are working conflicts, you’re encounter sets of polarities. Resolving conflict has to do with seeing how a polarity or set of opposites, actually contains commonalities and common interests. The mediator’s job is to help find them so that people are no longer in that opposition to each other.”

*Join the Jung Society of Utah on Friday, September 14th for a special evening with Diane Hamilton on “The Creative Play of Opposites.”*

Through regularly experiencing the opposites in people in conflict, she began to look at the oppositions within herself. For example, “I could see a side of myself that was more receptive and a side of myself that was more active and catalytic. Of course, I preferred one side to the other, as we often do. But over time, I began to recognize that opposites have both up and down sides, and I tried to see both.” According to Diane, practicing with polarities creates a flexibility in the mind.

With that kind of flexibility, we can start to being open to the kind of feedback that we get from the world around us. We aren’t so attached to our ideas of good and bad, particularly in ourselves. This leads to much more relaxation in our self-image, and we can, maybe for the first time, hear what works for people and what doesn’t. Diane recalled one of her meditation teachers saying, “Be yourself, the world will give you feedback.” She believes that we are in an enormous feedback loop with reality, and if we want to open our hearts to include more of what is true rather than less of what is true, polarity work can be a practice in compassion.

*Acknowledging and working with our shadow aspects can create more compassion for ourselves and others.*

This compassion begins with ourselves, in making room for the parts of ourselves that we might prefer not to identify with. “There is the Jungian idea that everything that is ‘out there’ is also ‘in here’, Diane said. “To the extent that we really know what is ‘in here,’ we can better work with what’s ‘out there.’” This includes working with our shadow, or “the parts of our identity that we don’t want to bring into the light, as Jung would put it.” These shadow aspects “that we don’t want to see as “I” are very rich and important parts of identity to bring forward,” Diane said. “This way, “We don’t get stuck seeing only ourselves idealized or good or always seeing the upside of ourselves.”

Jung himself engaged in a deep process of inner work. “He got very interested in the operations of the unconscious, and the Red Book was really Jung’s brave investigation into the unsavory parts of his mind.” Diane said. “Once Jung saw the creative capacity of his dark side, he realized it was basically endless, and the mind itself would always be spinning these possibilities.” Jung found that “the mind in its very structure creates opposites–you and me, this and that, here and there—that’s the way our mind works.” At that point, he was introduced to a Taoist book called, The Secret of the Golden Flower, where he relinquished the content of mind into the pure light of his own awareness.

Shadow work involves owning parts of ourselves we’d rather not identify with, and meditation introduces us to the part of ourselves that is beyond identity altogether. Diane said. “So, it’s both a matter of looking into our identity and including more, which creates compassion and creates more flexibility in the mind, and also seeing that all identity, at one level, is just completely fabricated. Identity is something we can always look at, play with, and drop as much as possible.”

To illustrate this point, she shared the following poem by Hafiz:

I
Have
Learned
So much from God
That I can no longer
Call
Myself

A Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself
With me

That I can no longer call myself
A man, a woman, an angel,
Or even a pure
Soul.

Love has
Befriended Hafiz so completely
It has turned to ash
And freed
Me

Of every concept and image
my mind has ever known.

“Identity itself has a zero point,” Diane said. “However, we tend to be enculturated into our egocentric identity, our ethnocentric identity, our world-centric identity, but those identities are actually creative and shifting all the time. They are not solid, but we tend to relate to them that way. The zero point, beyond opposites and identity, can be reached through spiritual practices such as sitting meditation. As long as there are opposites in the mind, there is tension in the body. Without those opposites, there’s peace,” Diane said. “Stillness and silence open up a domain in which the mind is empty, and as the Tibetans like to say, luminous and blissful. It’s simply about discovering the peacefulness beyond opposites, which sitting meditation supports. That’s why Zen has been so important to me.”

*Spiritual practices, such as meditation, can help us find an inner stillness beyond polarities.*

As part of her program, Diane plans to include a group exercise in exploring opposites. “I’m hoping both to share some information, to provide an experience of the opposites, and help people touch into that zero point, so they can have an embodied experience of what I’m talking about. So, a little bit of theory, a little bit of experience, a little bit of reflection.”

Experiencing that zero point of stillness and peace allows for a more heart-centered life. “Part of Zen practice and Jung’s work is about creating a heart and a mind that can include the opposites of this existence,” Diane said. “What’s is so important about spiritual practice and psychological work is that they create an opening to include more of our experience. But we begin to see that the mind doesn’t seem to handle those opposites very well, but the heart does. The heart’s job is to be able to include the things in life that we don’t want to include. That is what we mean by being whole-hearted.”

Don’t miss this illuminating evening with Diane Hamilton!

Date: Friday, September 14th
Time: 7:00-8:30pm (mingle time before and after, doors open at 6:15)
Location: Saltair Room, University of Utah
Cost: free (please become a member)
Includes 1 free CE

Theresa Holleran on The Shadow Dance of the Feminine and Masculine

It was lovely to interview Theresa Holleran about this topic for the Jung Society of Utah blog.

When Theresa Holleran was in her early thirties, she read the Pregnant Virgin: A Process of Psychological Transformation, and discovered the work of Jungian Analyst, Marion Woodman. Her dream world and creativity was profoundly enlivened with new images and inspirations. In her twenties she had been an activist in the Women’s Movement, and had awakened to the possibility of living her own free life, despite the gender conditioning she received from the nuns during her Catholic education. But she knew intuitively there was something more to this path of authenticity. Marion’s work illuminated the “Sacred Inner Marriage”- the realization that every man and woman, regardless of gender identity or sexual preference, could discover and fully live the Conscious Feminine and Masculine energies. This is a revelation that has framed her inner work and her clinical practice and teaching for over 30 years.

Theresa Holleran, LCSW is a depth psychotherapist with over 40 years of experience. She will share her insights on the Shadow Dance of the Feminine and Masculine with the Jung Society of Utah on March 9, 2017.

“Carl Jung believed there are opposites in the psyche that must to be integrated in order for us to fully individuate: feminine/masculine, human/divine, conscious/unconscious,” Holleran said. “They are integrated by realizing that we must “hold” this tension of opposites, resisting our tendency to deny or push away one part of the polarity. The well-lived life is going to be filled with paradoxes and contradictions,” she said. Essentially, the Conscious Feminine is our “Being-ness”, our ability to stand for and live our deepest values. The Masculine is the consort of the Feminine, our ability to “Do” and allows us to take action based on what is authentic and true for each of us. Hopefully, this dance of the Feminine and Masculine will guide us as we make the most difficult and complex decisions for ourselves and the well being of all on this planet.

Learning from our projections

“There is an innate longing in every human being to connect with “Other,” Holleran said. “Sometimes we’re longing for a lover relationship, sometimes the “Other” is that connection with the Divine, or our own creativity. Often we project god or goddess onto our romantic relationships.” She gave the example of being a young woman who often fell in love with men who were adventurous world-travelers, noting that this was an invitation to develop those adventurous qualities within herself. “These projections, whether they are positive or negative on the “Other” can be really useful if we work with them. Projections point the way to what wants to be developed or integrated within us, including those shadow aspects that we disdain.”

*We can deepen our own inner marriage by working on our internal polarities and noticing what we project onto others.*

Then we are free to see the reality of “Who” the other really is and make a conscious choice to stay or go. Integrating projections is hard, rigorous work, but the benefits are enormous. We not only become more empathetic toward others, we also regain the energy to live our own life. For a woman this might mean she has a right to go after and claim the life she wants, even though she may be scared out of her mind; and for a man it might mean that he has the right to be tender towards himself, to feel his own grief, to feel his own longing. We become comfortable in our own skin, and our capacity to listen deepens. One becomes so grounded in their own body and authentic truth, that they can fully take in the truth of the Other, and then discover if there is a shift in perspective. Often we try to tyrannize each other into agreement because we are afraid of loosing our own stance. The Inner Marriage provides a whole new way of listening to and receiving one another.

The Inner Marriage is represented by the caduceus, which is “the Tree of Life with the two snakes, representing the Masculine and Feminine energies moving back and forth in their own unique way,” until that final union at the end of life.

The same integration of masculine and feminine energies that supports our personal relationships can also assist us in creative work. “Artists usually create from the feminine principle of letting things emerge, being present, being in the flow,” Holleran said. “But to bring your work into the world, you have to have masculine strength.”

Curiosity and compassion

How then, can we facilitate this type of integration within ourselves? “Notice the men and women you really admire and study what it is about these people that you’re drawn to,” Holleran suggested. “Sense who they are, their being-ness, their authenticity, what they value, and their capacity to take action without polarizing.” She also noted active imagination with dream figures, mirroring oneself in a journal, and looking for information within relationship disturbances and communication difficulties as opportunities for greater integration. “Curiosity and compassion towards self and other are necessary meta-skills,” she said. “Being curious and compassionate about what you’re drawn to, and what you’re repulsed by. These observations can all be the compost for discovering more about yourself and your own inner marriage.”

The integration between such opposites as the Feminine and Masculine is necessary in order to appreciate both ends of the polarity and bring greater balance and wholeness into our lives. If we don’t bring these polarities into consciousness, they will be projected out and can become distorted, or even demonic. Look at the polarization and demonizing of “other” that is happening in our own country right now!

Her upcoming presentation will offer an opportunity for this type of inner work and creative community exploration. “Through sharing stories, laughter, wisdom, creative images and our wild and wonderful longings and disturbances, we will all discover something about how this dance of feminine and masculine lives in each of us.”

Don’t miss this soulful evening with Theresa Holleran!

Date: Thursday, March 9, 2017
Time: 7:00 – 9:00pm, with mingling before and after
Location: Salt Air Room at the U of U
200 S Central Campus Drive, Salt Lake City, Utah 84112
Cost: Donation appreciated, everyone welcome

Please become a member to support Jung Society of Utah events.

Capturing the Wind: Aligning with the Archetypal Through Dreams

It was a pleasure to interview Dr. Michael Conforti of the Assisi Institute about his approach to dreamwork for the Jung Platform blog.

How can we best understand what our dreams are communicating to us?

According to Dr. Michael Conforti, dream images have an existence autonomous of how we think or feel about them. However, most of modern dreamwork has become very subjective. “People confuse the reaction that the dreamer is having with the message of the dream,” he said. “Psyche is telling a story in a certain way. Let’s get beyond what we think and feel.”

To illustrate, he provided the hypothetical example of two therapy clients who dreamed of sailboats. The first client associated sailboats with a romantic vacation in the Greek islands. The second associated sailboats with the loss of multiple family members in a boating accident.“The first interpretation is about passion and sexuality,” Conforti said, explaining that a therapist who is working with this dream might ask the client where they need more eros in their life. In working with the second client, the therapist might ask what is happening in their life related to tragedy.

However, “a sailboat is something unto itself,” Conforti said. “It travels by virtue of the sails, which capture the wind. The wind is the numinous. All that gets lost when you cover it up by the tragedy or the love and the passion. The powerful message of the dream gets lost under those conditions. Subjectivity is often diametrically opposed to the objective and archetypal.”

“Jung really built on the shoulders of giants before him—the spiritual teachers, the mystics, the sages and the dreamers from the beginning of time—and they knew there was something sacred about the dream,” Conforti said. “They knew the dream was coming from someplace that was beyond what we think about in ordinary consciousness, that supersedes it. They took the images and said, ‘This image is powerful. The dream is trying to awaken us to something we don’t know about.’”

Jung and the early Jungians studied the symbols and images that are often seen in dreams, myths, and fairytales, and found within them “themes of humanity and journeys through life,” Conforti said. “All these stories talk about the portals we cross in different stages of life. These are archetypal situations that have been with humanity from the beginning and are not to be muted by individual bias. But when we take an image and we say, ‘Well, what does it mean to you?’ the absolute autonomy of the image is lost.”

From the subjective to the archetypal

“The response evoked by a dream is often more about our own complexes than about the dream image itself,” Conforti said.“Ninety percent of what we typically do is filtering a dream through a complex and we miss the beautiful meaning of it.” So when working with dream images, Conforti starts with the subjective level, assessing the dreamer’s reaction to the dream.“You have to work through the emotion,” he said. “You’ve dealt with the complex but not the dream.”

However, once the emotions and complexes surrounding the dream have been addressed, it may allow the dreamer access to something deeper that is helping to direct their individuation. “The beauty of this work is to help people see their complexes and then to align with the archetypal,” Conforti said. “When one is able to push aside their own rendering or feeling for a moment and approach the dream, it is the beginning of ushering in their spirituality; of being affected by something bigger than them. But it is a difficult journey from the subjective to the universal.”

*“Dreams are like letters from God. Isn’t it time you opened your mail?”* – Marie-Louise von Franz

Going back to the image of the sailboat, Conforti spoke of how the wind moves it across the water. “The wind since Biblical times is the Spirit, which moves us through life. When you work with the wind, you have to learn how to capture the wind, to move with the shifting winds, and how to steer, but the wind is guiding you,” he said.“The sailboat is a vessel to cross the collective unconscious. But when you put it into the sausage grinder of ‘what this means to me,’ you lose all of that.”

So in understanding and aligning with the archetypal meaning of dream images, we align with the natural order of life. In doing so, we begin to capture and work with the wind, allowing the Self to guide us toward our destiny.

Dr. Michael Conforti will present a four week course on these ideas beginning January 26th. Get your 10% discount by signing up before Jan 8th Enroll here.

Jung Platform is also pleased to present a free webinar on dreams with Michael Conforti on January 12th. Free sign up here.

Interview: Thomas Moore on Soul Mates

It was wonderful to interview Thomas Moore for the Jung Society of Utah blog. He is a truly kind, intelligent, and soulful person.

“I found [my soul] again only through the soul of the woman.”
– C.G. Jung

Carl Jung wrote in The Red Book about coming to know his own soul through relationship with an other. According to author Thomas Moore, our deepest connections with others often teach us the most about ourselves and lead to our greatest development as individuals.

What is a soul mate?

“All of our relationships may be soulful to various degrees,” Moore said. “So you may have a friend that is very close to you, and you could call them a soul mate, even though they’re not a lover.” In his extensive study on the history of the soul, including what it is and how it’s been written about, Moore found that “when you look at Western history, in almost all the books, every spokesperson for soul has written about friendship as being the best model for a soulful relationship. So even if you’re lovers or spouses, the friendship dimension is probably the most soulful aspect.”

ThomasMoore — “A soulmate is someone to whom we feel profoundly connected, as though the communicating and communing that take place between us were not the product of intentional efforts, but rather a divine grace.” – Thomas Moore

“I understand that when people use the term “soul mate” they mean something very special and specific,” Moore said. “I like the idea that people begin to think in more mystical ways about relationship when they think of soul mates. So when you think of a relationship as being destined from eternity, I think it’s really good to shroud your relationship with that.” However, Moore also noted the importance of looking beyond the mystical to face aspects of relationship which can be difficult. “That doesn’t mean that it’s not a human relationship too. If the time comes that you need to end the relationship, you have to be able to do it; you can’t stay with the romantic mysticism of the soul mate idea. So there’s a side to soul that’s very challenging and has a lot of shadow. It takes a lot of work and courage to stick with it.”

One reason for this, Moore said, is because “a soul mate is not the same as compatibility. I don’t think those two things necessarily go together. There may be all kinds of things in ordinary life where you’re not compatible at all.” Some reasons one may feel incompatible a soul mate include poor timing, or an inability to reconcile the relationship with the details of life, such as career and children. “Sometimes the conditions just aren’t right,” Moore said. However, it is often possible to work out the demands of life so that “the deeper values carry over and are stronger, so there is something in common.”

shutterstock_121083355 — *Our soul mate relationships can help us become our most authentic selves.*

This process of “maturing the relationship and getting beyond the initial attraction” is important to the experience because it contributes to the growth of the people involved. “I think we expect relationships to be easy, but the fact is that we are bringing two individuals with unique lives together and it takes a very special vision, a special way of being together where you’re not expecting the other person to be a carbon copy of you,” Moore said. “We tend to think that the other person will have the same psychological makeup we have. They don’t. They also don’t have the same destiny or the same values. And yet we can share the process. We can enjoy watching and being with the other person as they emerge into their own individual nature. And we can hope that they become more of an individual because of our relationship.”

Daimonic invitations

“When we talk about soul mates we have to understand that part of that sense of destiny is also daimonic,” Moore said. “We haven’t just rationally said, ‘There’s someone who looks like my type or looks like we could probably share a life together pretty well.’ You just get struck and you want to get to know that person. You may know nothing about them, yet still you’re drawn and you don’t know why.”

shutterstock_323723186 — *Each person is said to have a daimon that guides their destiny, possibly drawing them into soul mate connections.*

While it is necessary to sort out the details and “see if that passion can create a life or not,” Moore said “the daimonic aspect is there to bring people together and to keep a person in that place where you’re not living too rationally all the time. It’s a different way of living. You respond to the passions you feel that pass through you. You are not responsible so much as you are responsive. You respond to the invitations that are daimonic.”

Why does the daimon invite us into these soul mate connections? “The material of our psyche or soul is raw at first,” Moore said, describing the prima materia of passions and desires we might not know what to do with. “One of the purposes of relationship is to create an alchemical vessel in which that raw stuff can be cooked and sorted out. So you sort out the raw material that is in you, and in a way you’re also helping your partner sort out his or her material,” Moore said, and pointed out the difficulties this can cause. “When you have a deep soul connection like that, it’s not easy to be the partner of someone who is pursuing their own deep life, which is always changing.”

shutterstock_412416157 — *We can be transformed through the alchemy of relationship.*

However, having such a connection is “a deep, profound, dynamic, mysterious source of identity that is wonderful because it traditionally is what makes you feel alive,” Moore said. “It makes you feel an individual. Those are wonderful gifts to have. But at the same time it means that the challenges are very strong and very deep.”

The eternal in the temporal

Even though dealing with such constant change can be difficult, the process provides “a possibility of great depth and joy because if it’s really a relationship that is full of soul then, it’s very deep and there’s a lot of mystery in it,” Moore said. “If you have a relationship where you feel that you are soul mates, it is a very deep, ritualistic way of honoring the fact that there’s some connection there that is mysterious and mystical, which I think is the essence of what the soul mate idea is. Having that can give everything you do a dimension that is very profound, and gives you the sense that the eternal is part of the temporality of your relationship. That can hold you together more effectively than the temporal side.”

Alembic Publications

by Amanda Butler

Tag: interview