My Heartsongs

It seems to me as I age that spiritual practice can be an antidote to suffering, for those times when I am feeling lost. When striving, struggle, searching, and the seductive scramble for more and more overpower – at least temporarily – the gentler inner forces of satisfaction, serenity and spaciousness.

I’m aware that I sometimes still anxiously seek external rules and regulations to guide me through complexities, because I do not always see my own potential for intuitive intentionality. Clearly our species capacity for ratiocination and inspiration have only brought us so far.

Feeling lost? Reach out and connect! First to self, as Jung reminds us: “The self is the principle and archetype of orientation and meaning. Therein lies its healing function.” Then to Nature to find a place & space of spiritual concentration. Then to others who support us on the path.

As Nietzsche proclaims: “He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”There is the reality that what can’t be cured must be endured, and we have collectively done that across the globe. The nagging question for me remains: how has the pandemic changed me, and is it for the better?

Worldwide CoVid Deaths stand at 5.73 million as of today. Of course, the actual number is higher due to limited testing and reporting challenges in terms of attribution of the cause of death. Mumford and Sons sing beautifully: But you are not alone in this. And you are not alone in this. As brothers we will stand and we’ll hold your hand, hold your hand.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSPy59xNtTU

Has the pandemic taught me to live a more balanced life, to alter my priorities?

As we hopefully morph from pandemic to endemic over the spring, from looming cosmic dread to tulips once again poking up their little heads in the garden, with all the hope of renewal and new beginnings, the morbidity & mortality risk equation will shift, but certainly far from zero.

Rather than leave dream inquiry to the individual, the Senoi people have made it an established social discourse, specifically for this purpose. Each morning, community members gather to talk about their dreams of the previous night. The community’s dream guide, called a halak, encourages people to share the messages, warnings, and gifts discovered in their night wanderings.

Today I’d like to explore the borderlands of falling asleep and waking up. Hypnagogic hallucinations occur while falling asleep, while hypnopompic events unfold while awakening. Both states offer fertile ground for discovery.

All of the celebratory events of this time offer well wishes to be merry or happy. Happy Channukah, Merry Christmas! If we seek the true path of happiness, Carl Jung and other wise ones tell us, it lies within, in working on ourselves to achieve wholeness, and the personal sense of connection to the Self (capital S) that individuation implies.

What is the point to spending hours each night in a swirl of strange fantastic stories and virtual simulations that we barely remember the next day? Often after a bad night’s sleep I feel more dream deprived than sleep deprived. If dreams can be a tool for healing and mind body spirit integration, what might I do to promote and nurture that process?