Well-being in Women

For women in a state of well-being, a balance exists between the feminine and masculine aspects of our psyche that is not dictated by gender. Our feminine nature allows us to experience our creativity and intuition, and gives us our ability to nurture. Our masculine side enables us to manifest this inner creativity out in the world. In a place of psychological connectedness, we are able to accept all of who we are and function as wholly integrated beings.

Many of our mothers understood themselves solely within the context of their marriages and families. The birth of feminist movement gave us the opportunity to reclaim the masculine side of our nature. We learned to expand our awareness of ourselves beyond the context of marriage and family, and to rely more on our newly established professional identities. In struggling to break free of traditional gender roles in our effort for independence, many women become trapped. Our culture today has taught us to make different kinds of sacrifices in order to become successful. For many of us, this develops into a masculine one-sidedness causing us to view the gentle, nurturing qualities of our womanhood as weak and something to disown. Our “success” becomes determined by our professional achievements and may develop into the crux of our identity. When we allow either the masculine or feminine aspect of our nature to dominate us, our potential for inner growth and development becomes limited. Women learn to give up a part of their inner beings to prove themselves out in the world. Over time many women come to realize that something important in their life is missing. That which was once thought to bring meaning is no longer there.

If we allow ourselves to operate outside these established parameters, we may begin to explore our inner world at a deeper level. In the process of our own evolution and inner healing, the different components of our psyche become integrated. We learn to accept the masculine part of our nature as an aspect that complements and empowers our feminine essence. We come to know who we are in relationship to “being” as well as “doing.”

Domestic Violence and Traumatic Brain Injury

In the last two decades, family violence has become one of the country’s largest health problems (Warnken & Rosenbaum, 1994). Former or current partners commit 30% of the murders of women in this country. Aggression affects one out of three marriages, accounts for approximately 12% of all homicides, and has been identified as the most common cause of injury in women (Stark & Flitcraft, 1988; Rosenbaum et al., 1994). Offspring of families who experience or witness family violence in the home growing up, have a much greater likelihood of becoming offenders themselves (Kalmuss, 1984). There are a variety of factors that have been linked to domestic violence, and the factors that contribute to determining aggression may not be the same for all individuals (Miller, 1999). Factors associated with domestic violence are sociocultural, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and biological in nature. Miller (1999) has hypothesized that head injuries may be one of the contributory factors for high number of individuals who engage in aggression towards family members have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI); (Warnken et al., 1994). Trauma to the brain can lead to repeated incidents of violent behavior in individuals without a previous history of aggression prior to the injury (Elliott, 1982).

Dreams: A Therapeutic Method of Healing and Creativity

Dreams are a source of inspiration and creativity that can lead us to a deeper understanding of who we are. They are a way for us to connect with hidden parts of ourselves that may not be easily accessible to us in our conscious awakened states. Dreams may be explored on many levels, usually with more than one interpretation or meaning. The interplay of symbols within dream images, are often metaphors reflecting the dynamic that exists between the various aspects of our psyche. Dream narratives can also provide us with a unique perspective on the dynamics of our interpersonal relationships that we may not have considered, and show us where we have become stuck or one-sided. Dreams can be foretelling, giving us information about future events that have yet to occur. Sometimes dreams show us parts of ourselves that we have attempted to hide that we must learn to understand and integrate for us to become whole.

In psychotherapy, an opening dream which occurs in the beginning stage of treatment can be used as a map that outlines the course of our healing process. Working with dreams can offer an opportunity to heal deep wounds that have been carried for years as they provide a means to work through past traumas. Sometimes we will have the same dream repeatedly about an ongoing dilemma in our life that we have ignored and have yet to understand. Frequently these dreams will not disappear until we look at the underlying issue being presented and move towards resolving it. Staying open and receptive to the content of our dreams can engage us in a process that allows us to heal if we are willing.

For many of us dreams are an essential way for us to connect to our spirituality and discover our personal myths or life-meaning. The feelings we experience associated with our dream symbols illuminate and help us to identify inner sources of strengths that we may have become cut off from and didn’t know existed. For many artists, dreams can be a vision of future work they have yet to create before they have begun the outward expression of their idea in the physical world.

The Relationship of the Archetype and Synchronicity in Jungian Psychology

There is a story that Jung placed his fingertips on the flat surface of a tabletop and commented that if we were only conscious of the points where the fingers touch the surface we would assume that each of the points were independent and unrelated to each other because that is all we would see. However, if we could see the whole picture beyond where the table and the fingertips meet, we would see that the tips are only small parts of the fingers, joined to the hand, and we would know that they are interconnected through their relationship with the hand. This metaphor illustrates the psychoidal nature of the archetype in relation to synchronicity.

Jung defined archetypes as inherited, universal psychic behavior patterns, or templates of human experience. These specific configurations determine the laws of consciousness, and form the connection between the inner psyche and outer physical world. They cannot be experienced directly, only through images and motifs. Using the example of the fingers touching the table, the hand might represent a specific archetype with absolute knowledge such as the Self, the inner god image of the psyche. In the metaphor as an archetype, the hand has a specific form that dictates how it functions that is not perceived directly in conscious awareness. Because of the hand’s anatomy, and the way the sensory receptors process information, the table will be experienced in a particular fashion. It would be impossible to experience contact with the table without the actual structure of the hand to contain the life energy and touch the table. The hand’s shape influences the contact with the table, similar to how archetypal pattern determines human experience.

The physical framework of the hand, like the psychic structure of the archetype, has a genetically inherited collective character. This DNA structure is a principle, or potential, rather than a concrete manifestation of what may be experienced. Similar to the DNA blueprint that determines the structure of the hand, the archetype maps the latent potential of the psyche originating from the culmination of ancestral knowledge in the collective unconscious. A snake with its own unique genetic makeup making physical contact with the same tabletop would have a different experience from the human. The snake’s method of physical contact, capacity for perception, and conscious awareness is determined by its own particular DNA code. These genetic patterns exist in both the physical and psychic archetypal realms and are the templates of human experience and behavior.

Synchronicity is the result of the inherent order or innate knowledge of the archetype, which transcends human experience. Jung defined synchronicity as a “coincidence in time of two or more casually unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning (CW 8, par 849).” If the tabletop symbolizes the field of conscious awareness experienced by the ego, the contact points of the fingertips touching the table would be what is actually experienced in space and time. Five fingertips touching the surface at exactly the same time might appear to be unusual coincidence if observed only from the vantage point of the tabletop. Such an occurrence would be synchronistic because the existing relationship between them outside physical reality is unknown. All five of the events might appear to be random but meaningful because they happen together.

Like archetypes, an essential characteristic of synchronistic events is that they have an emotional or psychic charge that makes them meaningful, producing a numinous effect on the person experiencing them. The meaning of a synchronistic event requires that it be understood symbolically, not just intellectually. This often occurs during important phases of individuation when an archetype has been activated in the unconscious. Synchronistic events are frequently experienced in dreams and active imagination when the lines between the conscious and unconscious become blurred. They originate in the archetypal realm, which is eternal, existing outside time and space, and seem to have a pre-established order before crossing the threshold of consciousness. Hunches or visions may appear linked to external events occurring in the past, present, or future. If it were possible to reach beyond the veil of conscious awareness or the table’s surface, the image of the fingers extending into the hand and touching the table would be visible and it would be apparent that they were linked through an acausal connecting principle.

Jung said that archetypes have a dual nature that is transgressive, existing in the realm of both psyche and matter. Archetypes are the link between the physical and the psychic world. They are the fingers that connect the tips touching the table of human consciousness to the hand. The center of the hand existing in the archetypal realm is essentially unknown. Its existence is only experienced indirectly when the fingertips and the tabletop meet, and psyche and matter connect. This is unrepresentable and unknowable in conscious awareness in and of itself. In the hand and table metaphor, the archetype is both the hand and the DNA that forms the hand. As movement is made deeper into the archetypal psyche, away from subjective experience, the psyche becomes increasingly objective and universal. As movement continues along this continuum, archetypes of the objective psyche, or the collective unconscious, eventually crossover into the realm of matter referred to as the psychoidal realm. Jung saw the psychoidal realm as the central ground of empirical being which exists beyond time and space. Jung considered this a unus mundus, an ultimate unity of physical and psychic energy.

The Philosopher's Stone

The Philosopher’s Stone (as Symbolized by the Peruvian Shaman’s Mesa Bundle)

In alchemy, the Philosopher’s Stone symbolizes the alchemical procedure of transforming lead into gold. In Jungian Psychology, this refers to the process of individuation; a movement toward wholeness and a unification of opposites. The Philosopher’s stone may be thought of representing the archetype of the Self.
In Spanish “mesa” means table, which according to one Shaman “is the place decisions are made around.” In Peruvian Shamanism, a Mesa is a group of individual stones that one is “drawn to,” has collected, and assembled over time. An “open” Mesa is a group of stones arranged in a circle in a way that “feels” right in the way they “hold space” together, connecting the personal and transpersonal. When the stones are first found, preferably in nature, they are the prima materia, arcane substance, or undifferentiated material.
Similar to the prima materia, if Mesa stones are “cooked” they can become a medicine bundle or Philosopher’s stone; a method for psychological development and healing. The stones must be worked with, exposed, merged with, and taken out and into life. Like a mandala, the Mesa is a temenos and means for engaging with the unconscious, that over time becomes an embodiment of personal power, or consciousness. The stones become symbols fused with psychic libido through the process of coagulatio, and are a concretization of archetypal images. In a sense, they are a form of working with active imagination. Like the Philosopher’s stone, the goal of working with a Mesa is transformation. This occurs through a process purification and raising conscious awareness in what the Shaman refers to as shifting from “the personal” to the “mythic or archetypal” level.
Opening a Mesa always begins with the ritual of calling sacred space, from the four directions of sky, earth, east and west in the path the sun (conscious awareness) follows. In alchemy, this represents the quaternity, a symbol of wholeness. The four also represents the four elements of air earth, water, and fire which are worked with in the various alchemical procedures.
Through a process of coagulatio, the stones are woven into the subtle body through breath and intention. Like a transitional object each stone becomes imbued with intense, personal meaning. In beginning mesa work, the initial stones become symbols for the shadow material of the personal unconscious. The Shaman apprentice begins to understand their own path or purpose, by connecting with their personal lineage and past. Each stone is given a pattern, signified by memories of past relationship wounds to hold. By imaginally placing negative patterns into the stone, the process of separatio occurs, allowing one to separate and begin to differentiate from identifying with one’s complexes. The process of clearing for one’s self, ancestors, and children begins.
The operations applied to transforming prima materia into the Philosopher’s stone are used in developing a Mesa. Initially, one is working with a “wounded Mesa” and enters a nigredo phrase, with a descent into the dense material of personal history which is held by the stone, as a transitional object. A process of putreficatio begins as inner heat brings about decay and greater awareness of compulsions, defenses, and complexes rises to the surface of consciousness. One engages in the process of morticatio, dying to an old way of being. The question, “What will you die to?” is asked, meaning, what complexes are you ready to face? The process of calcinatio occurs symbolically through fire ceremony. The phrase “taking it to the fire” refers to the purification of releasing old patterns and beliefs into the fire. The sulphuric intensity of heated feelings begins to decrease as energy is shifted from unconscious complexes into ego awareness.
In alchemy the stone is referred to as the “food of angels,” suggestive of the process of coagulatio. In Peru, if asked, “Can you grow corn with it?” it is being suggested to only hold on to psychic material that will further growth toward individuation. This is also suggestive of the fertility principle.
Through sublimation, the painful process of objectifying the psyche and letting go of being identified with one’s story or persona begins to occur. The initial operation involves a solutio as past lineage and personal history is dissolved and fluidity increased, as one begins to somatically experience through the belly, merging with the energy of Amaru, the great snake of Pacha Mama, or Mother Earth.
Over time the size of a mesa increases as one’s capacity to hold power increases. The individual Mesa stones change. Synchronistically, some stones may disappear when the apprentice no longer holds an affinity for the woundedness or complex it symbolizes. Stones that may have symbolized a negative mother or father complex are replaced by new stones that hold the image of the Great Mother and the mountains of the land. Relationships or “membership” to the great mountains begin to form and coagulate as the qualities of the mountain spirits are “downloaded” into the mesa and symbolically emerge in the stones. There is movement from the personal to the mythic collective as energy “sourcing” shifts from the past trauma and complexes to the collective of the great Apus or mountain spirit archetypes. When a Shaman’s is no longer claimed by personal history they open direct communication and dialogue with the holy mountains. The Shaman’s mesa is connected with a psychoidal reality that exists outside of time and space and has the capacity for prophecy through its “membership” to the various mountains. The more availability and consciousness awareness a Shaman has, the greater their power, and capacity to experience the “numinous.” In Ego and Archetype, Edinger (1972) states, “the (Philosopher’s) stone gives a power of conversing with angels by dreams and revelations. To be in contact with the Self brings awareness of transpersonal meanings here symbolized as converse with angels (p.287).”
This process must occur through connecting through the heart and cannot be achieved by staying in one’s head. In alchemy, as the work with the Philosopher’s stone progresses, love is thought to increase. This love is not a personal love but rather a capacity for relatedness toward, what the Shaman refers to as, “the collective” and what is referred to in alchemical or Jungian terms as the process of solutio or experiencing the numiousity of the archetype of the Self.