FA+
Shop
Conversations With Soul • Personal
a year ago
This is an intimate journal that contains our innermost conversations with our soul.
Please be aware that this journal is extremely sensitive.
This journal is an experiment to connect with the soul while in self-exile for 6-12 months.
Goal: Sit down silently, speak to our soul, and then write down what was said.
Dedicate one hour of the day away from technology and verbally engage with oneself in conversation.
"I" = Ego. I is used to show humility and honesty to the unconscious.
"We" = Unconscious. We is used to give expression to the unconscious consciously.We live in a world that wishes to rid us as quickly as possible of suffering through a behavioral change or a pill.
But stop and think for a moment about the word psychopathology.
Psyche is the Greek word for soul.
Pathos refers to suffering. Logos means "word" or "expression."
So psychopathology is literally the expression of the suffering of the soul.
Wouldn't it make sense to stop and pay attention?
And remember also the etymology of the word therapy.
Therapeuein means "to listen or attend to psyche, the soul"
-to pay attention to rather than suppress psychopathology and to ask,
"What is the soul trying to say to me?"
Nobody can fall so low unless he has a great depth.
If such a thing can happen to a man, it challenges his best and highest on the other side;
That is to say, this depth corresponds to a potential height, and the blackest darkness to a hidden light.Exile Dream:
The following is a dream that occurred on August 8th, 2024.
The dream starts with a mission to break into a building.
Shortly after we approached a chain-link fence and crawled under it.
The metal seemingly came alive as we made it on the other side.
A piece of long wire hooks onto us to prevent us from going further.
Eventually, we were freed from the wire and were able to explore the location.
As we look around we feel like we are trespassing or treading somewhere we should not.
The feeling that is being registered here is that we are outsiders. Someone who is unwelcomed.
We entered a large open area that was populated with furries in fursuits. This is a convention.
They were standing around talking to one another and lounging around on the floor of the area.
Which made it difficult to traverse the area due to the sheer number of individuals on the floor.
The dream then entered a 'lucid confusion' state where we were stuck between dream and reality.
By this, we mean that we knew it was a dream but the psyche still saw the people as autonomous entities.
We became confused and remarked in a way that implied that this was reality and we were about to wake up.
After entering this state we came across a security personnel and saw a door slowly closing that we entered.
We would then enter a dining area with purple-cloth round tables that were decorated and set.
To the far left was the entryway to a dimly lit room that was reminiscent of a theatre dressing room.
There we were confronted by our "inner-brother" figure that criticized us harshly.
He blamed us for our interests and for being expressive and open about them.
It was then that he revealed that he had been plagued by an infection that had spread to us.
As he left the backrooms we quickly went over to the sink to clean ourself of the infection.In-Depth Dream Analysis & Additional Details:
The following is our analysis of the dream and what happened before and after it occurred.
The mission to break into a location implies that it's a place that we don't belong.
The chain-link fence hooking our pant leg indicates the unconscious doesn't want us to go there.
The feeling of trespassing is similar to our feelings of being isolated at AC and not belonging.
The large room of people shows that we have difficulty relating and fitting in with others.
People lying on the floor is the equivalent of traversing a minefield or a den of sleeping lions.
The doors slowly closing means that a decision must be made. You must act soon.
The theatre dressing room is a place for actors and their costumes. Costumes are archetypes.
It is a deep and intimate area of the unconscious where aspects of the psyche meet and talk.
The "inner-brother" aspect is The Shadow archetype and he was wounded and hurt by others.
The infection reflects being denied self-expression and the repression of positive qualities.
Cleaning the infection means recognizing the source of the infection/problem and curing it.
Two days before the dream we were denied the ability to express ourself properly.
The experience resulted in positive energy being repressed. Turning it against us.
The feeling of guilt and shame for being honest and sincere to others.
That day of the dream we were wounded again by expressing the psyche.
It was then that we realized that the source of the infection was The Other.
Thus the decision was made to self-exile into the forest of the unconscious to commune with our soul.Whenever we touch nature we get clean.
People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods or a bath in the sea.
Entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again.
I must learn the dregs of my thoughts, my dreams, are the speech of my soul. I must carry them in my heart,
And go back and forth over them in my mind, like the words of the person dearest to me. Dreams are the guiding words of the soul.
Why should I henceforth not love my dreams and not make their riddling images into objects of my daily consideration?
You think that the dream is foolish and ungainly. What is beautiful? What is ungainly? What is clever? What is foolish?
The spirit of the depths even taught me to consider my actions and my decisions as dependent on dreams.
Dreams pave the way for life, and they determine you without you understanding their language.Personal Conversations With The Soul & Unconscious:
"I am so deeply sorry to you, my soul. I never intended to hurt you so.
I only wanted to express you in the external world by helping people, being sincere, and having a meaningful connection to nature and others
but all we got in return was a crushed heart and a wounded soul."
"We should've known better. We never truly belonged to this world.
This civilisation cares not for the soul. It values noise, pleasure, & illusion, whereas the soul finds solace in silence, suffering, & truth.
Where we belong is with the soul, within the inner world of the psyche."
"We must remain distant and reserved.
You cannot connect and talk to others, for it leads to trust and openness,
and the moment you reveal your heart those with daggers behind their backs will be ready to strike.
To be open, genuine, and sensitive is a weakness in this world."
"You are my closest confidant.
When the world forsakes me you are always there to give me alms and welcome me into your warm embrace.
Whenever I am lost and alone you are there to take my hand and show me the way forward.
You, my soul, are my guiding light."
"The radiant light of a beautiful, kind soul will always vanquish the darkness and provide warmth as it guides one upon their destined path.
The soul perseveres and shines brightly through even the most harrowing of times. The likes of man can never extinguish it."
"Like a young wine, sorrow can be bitter, but as one age, the bitterness lessens; only then can one truly appreciate it."
"My soul, I now see that suffering is your language in symbolic form.
I listen in silence to hear your radiant voice.
Whenever I get lost it is you who finds me.
It is your voice that guides me out of the labyrinth and back into your warm embrace.
This is the beauty of suffering."
"My soul, is it not childish to mourn another?
Is it not selfish to deny them their rebirth & spiritual renewal by believing we can keep them with us forever?
To keep them in their cocoon so they cannot become butterflies.
Who are we to deny them the beauty & wonders of death?"
"No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven
unless its roots reach down to hell.
My soul,
if we are to ascend to heaven
we must first descend to hell.
We must go into our depths and suffer
so that we may strengthen our roots. (bonds)
If we are to go to heaven
we must first fall to hell."
"We walk this path together but whenever we are hurt I let go of your hand, run into the dark forest, and hide from those who hurt us.
That's what I do best. I run and hide from others and from you, my soul. How often have I run from you only for you to find me again?
I can run and hide from others but you I cannot hide from. You always find me. You break through all my defences and insecurities.
You and your lantern shine through the dark forest of the night and back to me. You are always there to show me the way back.
With open arms, we reunite and continue our journey though the world. With you by my side, all pain and fear fade away."The opening up of the unconscious always means the outbreak of intense spiritual suffering:
It is as when fertile fields are exposed by the bursting of a dam to a raging torrent.
There is a thought, a recurrent fantasy perhaps, that the purpose of life is to achieve happiness.
After all, even the Constitution of the United States promises 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.'
Who does not long to arrive some distant day at that sunlit meadow where, untroubled, we may rest easy, abide awhile, and be happy?
But nature, fate, or the gods, has another thought which keeps interrupting this fantasy.
The split, the discrepancy between what we long for and what we suffer as limitation, has haunted the Western imagination.
To Pascal we are but fragile reeds that may easily be destroyed by an indifferent universe, and yet we are thinking reeds who can conjure with that cosmos.
Goethe's Faust speaks of the two souls that contend within his breast, one clinging to this spinning planet and the other longing for the heavens.
Nietzsche reminds us of that day wherein we discover and grieve the fact that we are not God.
William Hazlitt observes:
Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be.
Joseph Knecht in Hesse's The Glass Bead Game laments:
Oh, if only it were possible to find understanding. If only there were a dogma to believe in. Everything is contradictory, everything tangential; there are no certainties anymore. Isn't there any truth?
The litany arising from the gap between hope and experience is endless.
Whether to suffer it stoically, react heroically, or whine about one's condition seems an onerous yet unavoidable choice.
But Jungian psychology, and the disciplined practice of personal growth it promotes, offers another perspective based on the assumption that the goal of life is not happiness but meaning.
We may well experience moments of happiness, but they are ephemeral and can neither be willed into being nor perpetuated by hope.
Rather, Jungian psychology, as well as much of the rich religious and mythological tradition from which it draws many of its insights,
Avers that it is the swamplands of the soul, the savannas of suffering, that provide the context for the stimulation and the attainment of meaning.
As far back as 2500 years ago Aeschylus observed that the gods have ordained a solemn decree, that through suffering we come to wisdom.
Without the suffering, which seems the epiphenomenal requisite for psychological and spiritual maturation, one would remain unconscious, infantile, and dependent.
Yet many of our addictions, ideological attachments, and neuroses are flights from suffering.
One in four North Americans identify with fundamentalist belief systems, seeking therein to unburden their journey with simplistic, black-and-white values,
Subordinating spiritual ambiguity to the certainty of a leader and the ready opportunity to project life's ambivalence onto their neighbors.
Another twenty-five to fifty percent give themselves to one addiction or another, momentarily anesthetizing the existential angst, only to have it implacably return on the morrow.
The remainder have chosen to be neurotic, that is, to mount a set of phenomenological defenses against the wounding of life.
Such defenses too entrap the soul in an ever-reflexive response to life which grounds one not in the present but in the past.
An old saying has it that religion is for those who are afraid of going to Hell; spirituality is for those who have been there.
Unless we are able to look at the existential discrepancy between what we long for and what we experience unless we consciously address the task of personal spirituality,
We will remain forever in flight, or denial, or think of ourselves as victims, sour and mean-spirited to ourselves and others.
The thought, motive, and practice of Jungian psychology is that there is no sunlit meadow, no restful bower of easy sleep; there are rather swamplands of the soul where nature,
Our nature, intends that we live a good part of the journey, and from whence many of the most meaningful moments of our lives will derive.
It is in the swamplands where soul is fashioned and forged, where we encounter not only the gravitas of life, but its purpose, its dignity and its deepest meaning.
There is a power in loneliness, a purity, self-immersion, and depth which is unlike any other experience.
Being lonely is such a total, direct, vivid existence, so deeply felt, so startlingly different, that there is no room for any other perception, feeling, or awareness.
Loneliness is an organic experience which points to nothing else, is for no other purpose, and results in nothing but the realization of itself.
Loneliness is not homelessness. There is no departure or exile, the person is fully there, as fully as he ever can be.
Loneliness involves a unique substance of self, a dimension of human life which taps the full resources of the individual.
It calls for strength, endurance, and sustenance, enabling a person to reach previously unknown depths and to realize a certain nakedness of inner life.
Being lonely is a reality of far-reaching social consequence, yet it is distinctly a private matter.
It is an experience of raw sensitivity.
It is so entirely pure and complete that there is no room for anything else or anyone else.
Feelings of loneliness take root deeply and unfold in varied directions.
Being lonely involves a certain pathway, requires a total submersion of self, a letting be of all that is and belongs,
A staying or remaining with the situation until a natural realization or completion is reached;
When a lonely existence completes itself, the individual becomes, grows from it, reaches out for others in a deeper, more vital sense.
Snowpaw Shaw
~snowpawshaw
It's really refreshing to see someone being so genuine and honest and introspective. Thank you for sharing this with the fandom, I really love the way you write.
Nivardus
~vicechris
OP
Thank you kindly.
