Marianne
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On Stephen’s quote of Campbell
“All life is sorrowful” is the first Buddhist saying, and so it is. It wouldn’t be life if there weren’t temporality involved, which is sorrow – loss, loss, loss. You’ve got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent this way; for this is surely the way God intended it …
It is joyful just as it is. I don’t believe there was anybody who intended it, but this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line: “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.” And the way to wake from it is not to be afraid, and to recognize that all of this, as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation. The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of there being a world at all …
I will participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera – except that it hurts.
(Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, pp. 80-81)”
Thoughts on this quote:
In this respect, even a birth hurts. It is “welcome to this wonderful opera” as Campbell has called it an opera, yet we know it’s all temporary, and that “the ends of things are always painful.” The end and the pain is built-in, and already! it is already there!–“all ready,” in other words. Participating in the sorrows of life joyfully for me means to find joy in the little moments of beauty and peace and what is most near and dear to our hearts, whether a moment of laughter or a hug with our grandchildren or a warm cup of coffee with a good friend, or enjoyment of a good book despite the sorrows. The joy is contained within the sorrows of the opera or soap opera–you find them, the moments of joy, or the joy life is, between the most sorrowful most painful lines or measures of song. You can only go so long feeling deep sorrow before a smile cracks open across a face–pain leads to the gentle acknowledgement of joy nonetheless in some mysterious weird way.
It seems to me an enantiodromia: “the tendency of things to change into their opposites, especially as a supposed governing principle of natural cycles and of psychological development,” as defined by Google dictionary, and also on Lexicon.com. Wiktionary goes one step more definitive and says, “The principle whereby the superabundance of one force inevitably produces its opposite, as with physical equilibrium” [emboldened emphasis mine]. Also,
Enantiodromia is a principle introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. It is similar to the principle of equilibrium in the natural world, in that any extreme is opposed by the system in order to restore balance. However, in Jungian terms, a thing psychically transmogrifies into its Shadow opposite, in the repression of psychic forces that are thereby cathected into something powerful and threatening. This can be anticipated as well in the principles of traditional Chinese religion – as in Taoism and yin-yang. Though “enantiodromia” was coined by Jung, it is implied in the writings of Heraclitus. In fr. 126, for example, Heraclitus says “cold things warm, warm things cool, wet things dry and parched things get wet.” It also seems implicit in other of his sayings, like “war is father of all, king of all”, “they do not know that the differing/opposed thing agrees with itself; harmony is reflexive, like the bow and the lyre”. In these passages and others the idea of the coincidence of opposites is clearly articulated in Heraclitus’ characteristic riddling style, as well as the dynamic motion back and forth between the two, generated especially by opposition and conflict.
(Retrieved from https://www.definitions.net/definition/Enantiodromia)
Why when I am very angry do I sometimes smile? Enantiodromia.Why when I cry (when intensely in anguish) does my face scrunch up the same way as a very intense smile does–making it like a very pained smile? Enantiodromia. Why when we are at our deepest depth of depression or sorrow do we suddenly get up and out when we have “no where else to go but up?” Enantiodromia. Enantiodromia, it seems, or yin and yang, it seems, the waves of the Tao at the shore going back and forth into one another like the waxing and waning moons, it seems.
This is beautiful, Stephen (quoting you here): “That, for me, captures the essence of mentoring – sharing the accumulated wisdom of one’s life experience not out of duty, but love.”A teacher may love teaching and usually it is a paid job unless one is a volunteer, but then mentoring often involves going beyond the scheduled hours for which one receives monetary pay.
P.S. I think my question #2 is related to Stephen’s question about the difference between a teacher and a mentor.
Hello, John, and thank you for your Mythblast and answering our questions.
In Stephen’s post/question of November 18, 2020, # 4277, he tells of his experiences as a teacher and of how teachers work with groups more perhaps than 1-1 relationships. I am wondering about (in our contemporary times and aside from fiction/fantasy here: 1) how many teachers who teach classes (larger groups) have also found that often one student (or two perhaps) in particular choose that teacher to be a mentor (and that when that call is answered) 2) what might be the/some difference(s) then of the classroom experience (teaching of larger #’s at one time) and the mentoring 1-1 process (aside from highly individualized attention) within the experience of the same classroom ? I am also wondering 3) what might certain or special reciprocal qualities be that might make, say 1 out of 28-125 students (big as a lecture hall, perhaps) somehow call to that teacher as a mentor, and 4) when one who is already a teacher is called to be a mentor say regularly of a certain subject matter how often you may have heard that it was a particular student who called (each time?) or a less particular or more general calling (as in offering regular classes)? and if the student does “call” somehow unconsciously to the teacher/mentor in more personal situations than classes. There is that old mystical saying that when a student is ready the teacher appears. Perhaps sometimes in classrooms the one who calls out (perhaps silently) to the teacher to be his/her mentor is an individual who has a great respect for the subject being taught and also somehow there is some key through the doorway to of the personalities, therefore 5) I am wondering how similar the mentor and one who is mentored might be at the get-go, from the very start and how often you know of stories in which they seemed opposites at first or to have some opposing qualities and then later find similarities.
I have had two professors who were mentors to me, and I have often felt that certain historical writers and poets and musicians were mentors of a sort as if I could feel some strong kinship and relationship with those deceased for a century or more. You really made me think about how students would model or mimic the teacher/mentor such as in works of art. I know that in each case where I have had a mentor I felt an immediate sense of admiration for that person or that historical personage/artist/writer/musician. Sometimes those that are historical personages seem to me in my own experience to act as the Muse. I know that at least in one case of myself as a young poet I did go about making it an exercise/study of mine to attempt to mimic a particular poet yet in the manner of also finding my own voice (mimicking some of the techniques and modus operandi but not so much copy or imitate per say) and others just less as when their music actually mentors my own life and my own experiences within my life. There are questions I have somewhere in this last paragraph I wrote here but at this time I cannot quite find the words for them and would have to think on that more.
I am also thinking, on the question on teachers and mentors, if it can perhaps be thought that all mentors are teachers but not all teachers are mentors.
6 and 7) The idea above also makes me wonder as perhaps a last question if negative examples can serve as a mentor? or mentoring experience or would mentor apply to only overall positive influences? Can a negative academic teacher so long as we learn from them be a valuable mentor?
Thank you so much.
haha, I meant “not longer articles,” not “not loner articles!” I guess that was a Campbellian slip? A Jungian slip? So many people feel like loners these days with the pandemic.
I know how people say a virus has no conscience and means no harm, but just is, but sometimes (now and then) it just feels like there is something almost sinister to it all when I cannot hug my granddaughter! One minute I feel strong about it (and optimistic and take it in stride) and the next I feel sad and less optimistic (especially with the Covid case #s growing again). I think we are “allowed” to feel strong and sad at the same time–?
It seems too we are all called to be heroes to this pandemic story in one way or another–even if we are not out there on the front lines as medical people or as food servers or grocery clerks, many of us find ourselves championing our families, kids, grandkids, significant others, or parents in nursing homes, and our wonderful animal friends in our household living with us.
James and Stephen and Everyone,
Please forgive my absence from the Forum. I know we do not have to feel pressured to hurry and respond to things here and that it can unfold, over time, as Stephen says. But I never meant to be so absent to all the vital conversations going on. I had a lot of computer work to do and after I would get my work done I would feel computer overload or sensory overload with the light on the screen on my eyes. The only media I have been on lately has been quick facebook visits where I was not reading any loner articles or forums or pages. feeling eye strain and shoulder/arm strain. The anniversary forums on dance were wonderful and I had not been back here since until now. I think this topic of writing and journaling and getting inside oneself to then let things out in self-expression is a great reminder in these times of this pandemic, as James says. And I think it so wonderful that Stephen brought up how keeping a journal or diary is not just a fun hobby (with implications to some people when people think of that as being perhaps somehow self-indulgent also as if those who journal should be more “actively” doing something more “important” or pressing with their time (unless one is a professional writer writing for a magazine or newspaper, or who writes books, etc.) as if those who are “not writers” may as well not keep a journal. But unless a person slept in late and is running late for work, what is more pressing than something that needs to be expressed? When expression is repressed, it can become depression. Depression presses down and into the skin beyond the skin-deep layers of being. I think it is a wonderful idea that people write or find whatever kind of expression they find wanting to arise out of them–journals, poetry, song lyrics, musical melodies, drawing, painting–and oh the loveliness of sketchbooks with both doodles and journal notes!–or dancing or singing–any form of expression. What is nice about writing is that we can “talk” to someone else we are “writing to,” so to speak. I also like how Stephen brought up how therapuetic a journal can be. I did not yet get to the pages James suggested in the Art of Living book. Thank you both of you and for the sources pertaining to the ideas you provide here.
For people who think/say “I can’t write!” there is an exercise that writing teachers often use called ballooning. It is a rather well-used exercise for what is called the “pre-writing” stage; it is a good way to get comfortable writing out one’s thoughts or thinking them out first before stringing sentences together. Make a balloon in the center of a page, and put a word or topic in it such “this pandemic” and then draw lines out from it, and then at the end of each short line drawn out from the balloon, write another word/idea that comes out of that word and then circle that one too. Then you can blurt out more that comes to mind about each of those subtopics by making more lines going out to more balloons…Pretty soon, there are circles/ovals all over the page and it looks like some kind of big bang creation on paper. Then if you want you can write a paragraph, a few paragraphs or even a whole bunch of pages out of those immediate thoughts. It is fun for people who are visual thinkers too. It is one form of brainstorming. It isn’t important in a journal that you write the best sentences or use correct spelling and this or that…just that you write. It is a fun exercise for people who say, “I can’t write” and also fun for people who write all the time. You can also draw an umbrella and the thoughts are the lines pouring down from it into raindrops, and each drop is a new thought. Writing students often think they cannot write; but I believe that if you can sit down with a friend over a cup of coffee or tea at a coffee table and express an idea or a story, that you can write. Or, in short, if you can talk, you can write. Again it doesn’t have to be formal–if it’s a private journal, no one else will mind (!) except you! so you may as well get over any imperfections!
Thank you for this wonderful reminder, James when you wrote, “By that I mean the psychological aspects that myth addresses as compared to the spiritual, religious,or more mythological aspects. (He calls this the 4 functions that myth serves.) Somewhere in the audio lectures topic I posted about one of Campbell’s lectures describing those 4 functions–I love that, those 4 functions!
Hi Patrick, thank you so much for being here with us and sharing your story about your film-making and the bliss and the blisters. My favorite part of Finding Joe is the Golden Buddha story and also the Death and Rebirth, as that is a repetitive theme in my life also, almost as if at each turning of each decade there was a rebirth–and always, first the death. Big deaths, little deaths, what have you, they were there. My bliss is in story and ideas, in whatever way or form or shape they manifest. I too had my own mid-life crisis when I wondered what in the world was I doing at my job and where did all the time go? It was a good job in theory (the idea of ideas again!) but the circumstances there were not good in practice. After dealing with the work environment for 7 years, when I felt I could not take it anymore, my appendix decided to burst and due to surgery I could not sign my renewal contract for the following year. This was one situation in which something violent and terrible-seeming turned out to be the pivotal point of something good for a renewal, a rebirth, a leave/departure, then a return to home–inside myself. Now I am doing what I have always wanted to do–write, write, write; to simply be, to simply be in my writing, to write what I have always felt pulled or called to do yet had not made much time for. One of my favorite Campbell quotes is “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” I first read it years ago and wish I would have thought more about that when I was younger before I let so many things that were not for me override who I was/am. Sometimes we hide the gold in our souls under a facade to make money, as you say. Your new film interests me very much and I look forward to seeing it. I can say too thank you for being who you are and making the film Finding Joe that touches and inspires so many people, myself included.
–Marianne
Hi Shaheda, thanks so much for your response, and your ideas and your dream you include are expressed in a way that is so lovely. It always delights me when two people (or more, of course) have the same types of archetypal images come up in dreams which demonstrates the universality of the archetypal symbols even when they present/express to different people in different ways/variations. There is a theory that archetypes too shift (Mercury) and evolve just as we do, that the archetypes go through their own type of growth and individuation so to speak. When a symbol is known to conscious psyche, it does make the “dream dictionary” definitions of things in a dream such as the glass ceiling more apparently meaningful to an individual–and as you say the meaning of the glass ceiling which you provided here is a literal definition. So even though I usually do not look to dream dictionary type definitions for dreams, I like how you add and consider the definition for the glass ceiling that you came across and may have been consciously aware of prior to the dream. What really stands out to me are the diamond patterns you say the sparkling glass makes on the floor. That sounds so very special and rather numinous. I could give rather quick possible meanings of the dream or things to consider which I am sure you already have, that even with the definition of the glass ceiling being literal as in meaning no advancement (what is above you) that at your feet what presents itself anyway are beautiful diamonds of sparkling richness of earth material and gems/mythologems. (I say mythologems, knowing you.) The song “Diamonds on the souls of her shoes” comes to mind too, but it does not have to be material wealth but gifts nonetheless from the “inner” earth come to surface and at your very feet (what is beneath you). It sounds like a beautiful image and perhaps the glass ceiling is not a limitation in career with no room for advancement but instead a clear vision into higher floors/realms, clear sight into the sky or ceiling of ‘beyond.’ It reminds me of the Qabalistic maxim of “As above, so below. As without, so within.” It reminds me too of the diamond soul, the diamond mind, the diamond sutra. And that all sounds very much like brilliancy, brilliant thoughts, feelings, and words, brilliant mind and soul, or psyche and soul.
I also enjoyed the Campbell quotes you applied to my dream and I thank you for those and they are so fitting. The journey to the afterlife was very much a ritual, a ritual journey, and it was also where I was at the time feeling the tiredness and weariness of my grandparents’ in their old age in my heart as compared to how they were when they were young. It is interesting to me to think of this dream now that I am now a grandmother and also am finding my body (or mind for that matter, lol, when I forget things sometimes!) is not what it used to be. It is also true that my dream was about a permanent condition in my psyche because a lot of my life has been about death (as I mentioned in my earlier post), just as Stephen said to you that at our age we have had more people we know and love die by now. And there is more I will not discuss here now. And here I think way back to Alison’s post (when the forum was just starting up again!) about trying to save the dead bird and then all the dead birds in my yard after that in a storm. Throughout my life, as in many lives, a big question was always the question of death, what it was like, what might be after life, etc. so that is a permanent thought in my psyche, and of course too it is hard not to wonder about it when one was raised in a Catholic family and Catholic school!
Thanks so much, Shaheda!
Hi Stephen, Everyone,
I am sorry for my late response to you and everyone. I enjoyed your response very much, and find myself in agreement with you. My post was certainly not thought out or planned very much and was rather spontaneously written, without drafting or planning, so there is no way that one such short post of essay could contain all I think or believe about dreams in general or this one dream. Each and every dream, especially with archetypal content, could merit its own book if going into detail. What stood out for me the most in your response was your remark that sometimes there seems little difference between a “big dream” and a “little dream” followed by your quoting Campbell. It seems so true to me as well that sometimes it is hard to discern between a big or little dream because many dreams contain elements of both. One case example I can think of from my own life is that when I was much younger I used to dream that there was a glass of water at my bedside/nightstand and I would reach for it to take a drink and wake with my hand closed into a grasping fist around the glass of water that was not “really” there. I could ask myself if this was a wish fulfillment dream (if I was thirsty in my sleep!) or if the glass of water and drinking stood for (was a symbol of) something else, something larger. I could ask, What might I be thirsting for? What elixir of life might be in that glass? What do the waters of life hold for me? What do I want/need to take in? Yet, it might not have been that “heavy”–it might have been all very “little,” that I was simply thirsty in my sleep a lot of times.
After reading your response, thinking about Hillman, I wrote the following blog. It was a subject matter and blog I had been planning to write for quite a while now, but your response reminded me to write about my thoughts on Hillman’s concepts of dreams. This blog also mirrors some subject matter I wrote about in a paper a few years back when I took a dream work class, so it is not entirely new. I hope someday to merge this blog with the earlier paper I wrote to produce another draft of the paper. The paper was about a dream I had in which I was analyzing the dream animal and other dream figures as autonomous, looking at the dream from the views of Freud, then Jung, then Hillman, and with Aizenstat’s dream-tending. However, in the end, I found that all the various theories held some merit as to possible meanings of the dream. Here is the recent blog I wrote which contains furthered thoughts into my ideas about dreams and reactions too to Hillman (I added extra indentation to my blog entry):
I refer the reader of this blog to this article on Archetypal Psychologist James Hillman who is often quoted as saying that dreams have no meaning. Do you take his statement that dreams have no meaning as 100% concrete or do you regard it as true if looked within a particular context–or contexts, since Hillman is so multitudinous in each or any of his ideas–of his own meaning? Decide that, what works best for you with your own psyche, then take it from there. I also refer the reader to my post just prior to this one about my dream of being a Freya-type driver of a carriage to the afterlife and back.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/freudian-sip/201102/james-hillman-follow-your-uncertainty
If dreams have no meaning…what a difficult question this is for me to ask, as I am all about dream meanings!
If dreams, as mythologist Joseph Campbell said, come from the same place myths come from (and poetry, btw), and if dreams have no meaning (as Hillman is known to have said), then why do we love, read, and study/contemplate the myths? As Campbell is noted for asking, “What is the message [meaning] of the myth?” (brackets mine). Many people search the myths and also their dreams for meaning, whether mythologists and depth psychologists like myself or not. Most people seem to find meaning (to various extents) in some of their dreams, and find no meaning in other of their dreams. If Hillman really meant that dreams have no meaning, then I would have to say that I would not subscribe 100% to Hillman’s notions about dreams or their function. I dare add that if in a moment Hillman actually meant that dreams 100% of the time have 100% no meaning, that Hillman did not think this 100% of the time, for it seems that elsewhere in his writings he contradicts that statement, but I will get to that later after discussing Freud and Jung who came first in the realm of dream interpretation in depth psychology.
I myself (there is no other “myself” or “I” even if I contain multitudes! and Hillman would agree to that, that we all contain multitudes as surely as the poet Walk Whitman did) subscribe to all three of the best-known minds in depth psychology when it comes to the ideas of dreams: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Hillman, and ascribe each their dream theories to various dreams of mine and to the dreams of others that I analyze and help interpret. Some dreams are wish fulfillment (Freud), some are residual (Freud and Jung), some are the “little dreams” while others are the “big dreams” that contain archetypal content that is of numinous effect upon the dreamer (Jung); still, some might seem “meaningless” and as if they are their own animal (as in how could this possibly have come from my own mind or my own psyche?–it must be its own occasion or phenomena!) (Hillman); and, sometimes I see merit in each of these theories all in the one same dream.
For instance, in my “Freya Dream,” I could say it was a wish fulfillment dream since at that time in my early life I was curious about what it would be like to be old and what might the afterlife be or look like if indeed there was any; my wish was to see it, so perhaps my psyche/dream granted this wish for me. But according to my belief system, I might ask did my psyche alone provide this wish or was this providence a divine providence? To answer that, if it was of a divine providence, then what of the “coincidence” that I was reading about the Norse myths at the time and had encountered the myth of Freya, the Norse goddess whose chariot was pulled by cats as she would take the souls of the deceased to the heavens? It thus seems likely it was then a residual dream. However, this residual information must have had some type of numinous affect upon my psyche (or did it really?) to register itself in a dream. Since I read about the image of Freya in a mythology text, it is then not too surprising or huge that I had a dream in which there was large archetypal material, since the myths are all about archetypes. However, how it presented personally to me with the people in my life (familiar and thus residual as residing in my life), made it all the more numinous to me even if the image of Freya was residual, from the residue in my psyche from reading the myth. Whether the image I received of the afterlife is “real” or “authentic” or “true” or not is not the big matter here; the matter at hand that really counts on my fingers is that I had this opportunity to view such archetypal content in the dream that I could even associate and amplify to other myths (that granted, I had already known about and read). It is the beauty and the sacredness of the dream event, of what was important to me in my life (my beloved grandparents all getting older and closer to death and dying and the realization that I would “lose” them in the near future) that mattered, that spoke to my heart. And that it spoke to my heart was its meaning and that it spoke to my psyche in a big archetypal way was its meaning too.
If I were to strip it of its meaningfulness to my psyche and soul, then I could say it was meaningless; but, I cannot do that. Can I still say it was its own animal? That is possible. I could say that Freya and these other images in my dream exist historically and culturally in myths and live there in those texts of culture and book and myth as their own “facts” whether true or untrue, actual gods and places or not. For, to be its own animal, the image of Freya would have to be live somehow somewhere in some content or context as the “living image.” It does not matter how it lives or where it lives as long as the image is living. And it lived in my psyche and dream that night. Hillman calling the dream figure like a dog or circle or person its own animal is quite akin to Jung’s concept of the autonomous ‘level’ of the psyche or of autonomous dream figures and dream images. The “animal” in my dream (or animals) was (were) the horse. Horses replaced the cats that pull Freya’s chariot that replaced the horses in the first place–so my psyche associated the cats to horses, seeming to prefer the horses. And then the humans in my dream–my grandparents and myself) were the human animals in the dream.
It is my perspective that there is usually no one right or one wrong way of looking at or regarding a dream, that dreams can contain multitudes of meanings or meaninglessnesses, that several theories and perspectives can each have validity at once in any one dream and to whatever extent that is to be found, that there can be more than one “truth” to a dream or most any other situation. I as one person, if I too contain multitudes, can maintain any amount of “truths” or interpretations or amounts of meaningfulness or meaninglessness. I could ask myself if it was meaningful to me even if another person could not find anything of meaning in it.
I like to think that when a dream is its own animal, and if we regard it then as the living image, that we have respect for it in its own right or rite of dream passage and perhaps simply wonder at the gift it brought with it in its appearance. I may have to then wonder, however, what was the meaning of the gift, as well as of the myth.
I leave the reader with one last consideration. If Hillman really intended to say 100% that dreams have no meaning, then why in one of his books on dreams did he go on to describe various and numerous meanings or various and numerous dreams right after saying to ascribe dreams no meaning? It would seem he contradicted himself, and it does seem he was aware that he contradicted himself, for he does offer a (sort of) apology, saying that, Well, if you MUST give them a meaning, here are some to consider type of thing. I can add one last thought: that some of his dream meanings have nothing to do at all with mine and I do not always subscribe 100% to all his dream meaning interpretations either. Sometimes what we think and say about a dream says more about us than it does the dreamer, because it can be true, as Jung says, that “We do not see things the way they are, we see things the way we are” (emboldened emphasis mine). That is why dream dictionaries are often no help at all.
One of your dreams I meant to respond to by now that really gripped my attention and is fascinating is the unknown animal breathing on the other side of your door. That in and of itself perhaps has at least one of its possible meanings as the concept of a dream being its own animal. I thought of that dream of yours as I read your response. Of course, it could have many other possible meanings as you have already mentioned. I liked readings about your mysterious dream image because the animal could have been anything, and I found myself imagining all the different types of animals or creatures it could be as the living image!
This is such a beautiful rendition of this song. I remember the song “Autumn Leaves” from when I was very young, my mother playing it on her stereo this time of year. I would listen to it while watching the autumn leaves fall from the maple tree out the front window of the living room. This time of year this song always enters my mind too.
It made me smile, Shaheda, when you wrote, “I know I am not dreaming,” wondering where I wrote about posting something to help start a dream circle–I can chuckle again because I must be running in circles as I do not recall saying “dream circle” but did say if I knew where to put it I would do a post on dreams! I love dreams and dream work, like you and like Stephen!
P.S. Adding to my Get Together song post: I figured to go ahead and use the smiley face emoticon here since Smiley Face stickers went along with the Peace signs and Flower Power signs of the 60’s and 70’s 🙂
