Thea Euryphaessa

Sometimes at the end of a relationship a person will think, "There is something wrong with me. I can't have a lasting relationship. Other people are happy together, while I'm doomed to loneliness". Certainly the feelings of depression and disillusionment that accompany an ending are appropriate, and if they are not taken personally and literally, there is even an element of truth in these reactions. The feeling of being inadequate may be a response to an awareness of new levels of relating and being, and there are times when we may need to feel inadequate. But to sink literally into those feelings could interfere with the initiation that is offered. Rather than say "I" am not able to be intimate—a narcissistic sentiment that goes nowhere—we might say, "My soul is asking more from me in relationship. I have the opportunity now to be close to another in a more profound way". — Thomas Moore, Soul Mates: Honouring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship

On relationship endings.

You're welcome, Angela! ☺️

Find LiSe's free online I Ching here:

Make your life not bigger than you are yourself. Its richness does not depend on its size, but on your presence in it. If you fill in your territory everywhere to its borders, it is a greater life than an unlimited space which is not full.

— LiSe, Hexagram 54 line 2, I Ching

Whenever some great work is to be accomplished, before which a man recoils, doubtful of his strength, his libido streams back to the fountainhead—and that is the dangerous moment when the issue hangs between annihilation and new life. For if the libido gets stuck in the wonderland of this inner world, then for the upper world man is nothing but a shadow, he is already moribund or at least seriously ill. But if the libido manages to tear itself loose and force its way up again, something like a miracle happens; the journey to the underworld was a plunge into the fountain of youth, and the libido, apparently dead, wakes to renewed fruitfulness. — Carl G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation

Gold from Jung on how the way down is, at the same time, the way up.

We often assume that once two people have come together, they should never part; yet relationships are always ending, and people drift apart as naturally as they turn toward new connections. I'm not suggesting that we should simply be realistic and acknowledge the bitter truth that relationships end; the sense that they will go on forever is always a part of making new connections. But when they do end, we may have to face the dark and demanding will of the gods, which often goes against all human desire. We can take that lesson home and lodge it in our hearts—life is a constant interchange between human will and divine providence. We need both the courage to plan and create a life, and piety of the most profound kind in relation to the mysteries that undergird it. Each of us is asked to be at the same time existentialist and pious, responsible and responsive, practical and immensely imaginative. By Thomas Moore from, 'Soul Mates: Honouring the Mysteries of Love and Relationship'.

'Loss of love and intimacy can be a profound form of initiation. Paradoxically, 𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 means beginning, and yet the most powerful initiations always involve some sort of death'.

More from Thomas Moore's, 𝘚𝘰𝘶𝘭 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴 below:

The body doesn't lie. Even when a person tries to hide his true feelings by some artificial postural attitude, his body belies the pose in the state of tension that is created. No one is fully the master of his own body.

— Alexander Lowen, Bioenergetics

The great conundrums of life—the mystery of human suffering, the quest for a sense of deeper or higher reality, the enigma of death—have occupied philosophical, theological and psychological thought for many centuries. Myth offers us rich insights into these rites of passage, and can give us subtle but profound guidance in those spheres of life where we are confronted with the unanswerable. Human beings may grow and be enriched through such critical junctures in their lives, but it is not always easy to find the elusive glimpse of meaning which can allow us to make something constructive out of frustrating or painful experiences. 1/2

Instead, we may become disillusioned and even bitter, because we have failed to understand the deeper levels and potential inherent in such difficult crossroads in life. Because life's mysteries are paradoxical, mythic tales about the encounter with those powers greater than ourselves can give us a broader and more inclusive vision than the more didactic answers of science or even conventional religious teaching. There is great strength to be found in the human soul, but it is often called into being only by the realisation that there is a meaning, if not an answer, embedded in that which we find most baffling in life. — Liz Greene and Juliet Sharman-Burke, The Mythic Journey: The Meaning of Myth as a Guide for Life 2/2

On how myths can help us navigate life's rites of passage.

Culture is at odds with itself. The numinous is 'back' but naturally many intellectuals want to fend it off. The rational mind is having to take up arms against an unruly sea of numinosity, which is threatening to inundate barriers erected against it.

— David Tacey, The Darkening Spirit

Projection is a term that—like the objectivity of the psyche—is commonly misunderstood. People are always inclined to think that we project actively, even consciously. Nothing could be farther from the truth, as the term is used in Jungian psychology. Things we do not see in ourselves project themselves wherever they can find a suitable hook, i.e., a certain resemblance between the person or thing into which they project themselves and the inner content that has not yet been seen. By Barbara Hannah from her book, 'Jung—His Life and Work: A Biographical Memoir'.

On the psychological concept of projection.

'What to Remember When Waking'

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents,
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

— David Whyte, from, 'River Flow: New and Selected Poems'

We can best serve humankind by bringing our absolutely individualised fragment of life force to it. We will find better relationships when we ask less of them. We may even find them more comfortable as they become less predictable. This ambiguity is intolerable to the young, but a solid achievement for those who over the years have gained a relationship to themselves, a relationship which will survive no matter the outer vicissitudes. From the perspective of one's own hard-won reality, one can easily risk friendship and communication in terms of who one is. By Jungian, James Hollis from his book, 'Creating a Life'.

On the complexity of relationships.

The incompleteness of our lives, the always unfinished journey, makes frustration and defeat inevitable. And in any given historical setting, no justice is final, no vindication unequivocal, no cause permanently achieved. The long view of history must be an expression of faith, tempered by realism and pragmatism rather than cynicism. What little drop we contribute to the ocean, whatever spark we contribute to the bonfire, is nonetheless the needed part of the whole. Individuation itself is obscure, its goals uncertain, and yet, as the carrier of the purposes of nature, or of the gods, it is the means through which the universe is progressively incarnated. While we may not believe in the doctrine of progress, as did our Victorian antecedents, we may nonetheless see history as a progressive unfolding of a great drama of which the individual is a necessary part. This faith, as it were, is not professing certainty or clarity, merely an openness to the possibility of a meaning which transcends not only our personal defeats but which embraces us. By Jungian, James Hollis from his book, 'Creating a Life'.

So real, yet so beautiful from James Hollis.

Out of the unconscious flows the well of life, and what you don't accept in yourself naturally falls back into that well and poisons it; when you don't recognise certain facts, they form a layer in the unconscious through which the water of life must come up, and it will be poisoned by all those things you have left down below. If they are accepted in your conscious life, then they are mixed with other more valuable and cleaner substances, and the odious qualities of the lower functions disappear more or less. They only form little shadows here and there, sort of spice for the good things. But by excluding them, you cause them to heap up and they become entirely evil substances; for a thing to become poisonous, you only need to repress it. — Carl G. Jung, Nietzsche's Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939, Vol. II

Jung on the shadow and the well of life.

A man once complained to me bitterly that his former wife was utterly selfish when she divorced him in order to be with someone else. He lived in his bitterness for years, as though waiting for his wife one day to admit her fault. It's especially easy to dodge fate when the partner has done something that has the slightest shadow in it. Yet after some conversation, it became clear that he, too, had felt the marriage to be an impossible burden. I asked him why he hadn't made any moves to leave a relationship that was obviously soulless and lifeless. "I kept hoping", he said, "that one day it would change". Fate demands receptivity of us, and yet receptivity is not the same as passivity. It takes courage to read the signals of fate asking for change, asking us to acquiesce to the bitter truths that are revealed slowly and painfully. An ending may be part of the special logic of relationship, an expression of its logos, its deeply inherent nature and its own laws and requirements. — Thomas Moore, Soul Mates

On how fate demands receptivity of us.

The 'descent into the basement' strongly suggests the universal archetypal mythological theme of the 'descent into the underworld'. The hero/heroine of myth often has to descend into the depths (of the unconscious) to find the 'treasure' (wisdom, courage, strength, and creativity) that is needed to revitalise the 'upper world' (of waking life). Such a dream is an excellent example of how this kind of mythological motif will appear 'in modern dress' in the dreams of contemporary people, still carrying the same deep and essential symbolic meaning that it has always carried in even the most ancient stories. This collective, archetypal level of meaning is always present to some degree in every dream. By Jeremy Taylor, The Wisdom of Your Dreams

Ever dreamed you descended into a basement or the metro/underground/subway?

Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

— Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Someone has to get it across to mankind, caught up as it is in a search for outward well-being and satisfaction, thirsty for pleasure and power, that all our achievements in taming the elements, our control over matter, and all the intensity and speed of technological advance, have at the most an instrumental value or a symbolic meaning. Only through an awakening of our deepest soul, only when the sovereignty of the Spirit is recognised and made a reality, will man be able to achieve that true power, that secure peace and that divine freedom—the unconscious goal to which he is aspiring. — Roberto Assagioli, Transpersonal Development

As above, so below; as without, so within.

We run after sex, chasing the god again, but so often we get the dehumanised, poor-quality Dionysian experience. Poor-quality Dionysus expressed sexually is a terrible thing to behold. Instead of lovemaking we get rape, or sexual acts completely devoid of spirit. Just as we try to cut off our heads from the rest of our bodies, we have tried to separate our sexuality from the rest of our lives. We have even given sex its own section of town. Here, in the hours of darkness, what passes for sexual abandon in the twentieth century flashes its lights and plays its music. Our metaphors for sex are filled with energy, but the energy does not strive upward. We say, get it on, get it off, do it to me. This low-grade ecstasy is enough to keep us going, but it does not lead to transcendence. By Jungian, Robert A. Johnson, Ecstasy from his book: 'Understanding the Psychology of Joy'.

On low-grade ecstasy.

We often bemoan the 'loss of intimacy' in our society. We are quick to take a stranger to bed, but we are loathe to be touched emotionally. When we lost the concept of touch as a way to contact the god, we became ashamed of our natural urges and guilty even for our fantasies. Perhaps we most deeply fear the loss of ecstasy because implicit in it is a loss of control. Surrender, even to the divine, is something our culture does not encourage. Surrender to the divine means crossing over from our well-defined roles and worlds into the realm of the gods, where everything is possible and nothing is explained. We have no idea what to expect, and so we are afraid. As the poet T. S. Eliot said in Murder in the Cathedral, we "fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch . . . less than we fear the love of God". Truly to experience ecstasy, the love of God, would mean to invite profound change, and this we are unwilling to do. By Jungian, Robert A. Johnson from his book, 'Ecstasy: Understanding the Psychology of Joy'.

On intimacy and ecstasy this Valentine's Day.

In his dream seminars, C. G. Jung once made the comment that "people think that eros is sex, but not at all, Eros is relatedness". Eros is not the physical expression in sex alone, but is rather the physical and the emotional combined. More accurately, it is the meaningful connection established by sex, felt and understood by the people making love. This eros we feel in sex and romance is also the broader magnetism that holds the universe together, the go-between spirit said to keep the planets in orbit and the seasons on track. What we seek in sex is not only bodily satisfaction, but a response to the soul's need for all that eros offers, for a world that holds together and a whole life that is creative and motivated by love. By Thomas Moore from, 'The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love'.

On eros as relatedness.

[W]e cannot assuage our cravings by pursuits in the material world, no matter what their nature and scope. Nothing short of the experience of mystical unity with the divine source will quench our deepest longing.

— Stanislav Grof, The Cosmic Game

The inward journeys of the mythological hero, the shaman, the mystic . . . are in principle the same; and when the return or remission occurs, it is experienced as a rebirth: the birth, that is to say, of a 'twice-born' ego, no longer bound in by its daylight-world horizon. It is now known to be but the reflex of a larger self, its proper function being to carry the energies of an archetypal instinct system into fruitful play in a contemporary space-time daylight situation. One is now no longer afraid of nature; nor of nature's child, society which is monstrous too, and in fact cannot be otherwise; it would otherwise not survive. The new ego is in accord with all this, in harmony, at peace; and, as those who have returned from the journey tell, life is then richer, stronger, and more joyous. — Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

Joseph Campbell on how those who persevere with the inner journey may eventually savour the hard-earned fruits of rebirth.

Lovemaking is a ritual that, like all religious rites of the world, tries to make present the spirit that will make the human activity magically effective. Like all ritual, too, sex requires art, attention to details, and a devoted imagination. It calls for the kind of humility proper to religious ritual, in which the devotee doesn't force but requests the presence of the god or spirit. We may go to dinner, dress attractively, have an intimate conversation, listen to music—all with the thought of invoking the spirits of sexuality. In the midst of lovemaking we may be guided by deep intuition and imagination to do those particular things that not only please ourselves and our partner but take us away from the cool world of the ego and place us in the warm, dreamlike cloud of sexual trance and charm. In this cloud of Aphroditic enchantment—scholars have translated the name Aphrodite as 'shining cloud'—the mystery that is sex takes place effectively and powerfully, as though it were a sacrament in the religion of this goddess whose task it is to deepen human sexuality, giving it a more than human level of meaning. — Thomas Moore, The Soul of Sex

Thomas Moore on divine eros and human sexuality.

In the twelfth century, Hildegard of Bingen, a contemporary of Abelard and Heloise and a great Benedictine abbess, interpreted the myth of Adam's sin as a failure of eros. Adam was banished from Eden not because he discovered nudity and sex, but because he did not enjoy deeply enough the delights of the earth. Recently, Matthew Fox, a Dominican theologian, was silenced by Vatican celibates for his endorsement of Hildegard of Bingen's interpretation of the Eden myth and for his eros-positive creation spirituality. Fox argues that our failure to celebrate the pleasures of the Divine Presence in our loves creates a compulsion to conquer and achieve pleasure elsewhere. He sees a clear causal link between patriarchal religions that deny the nurturance we draw from erotic pleasures, the feminine, and mother earth, and the anti-pleasure, anti-sex value systems of fundamentalism and fascism. By Robert T. Francouer from, 'The Erotic Impulse' [edited by David Steinberg].

On the religious suppression of eros.

The mystery of the psyche is that we are haunted not by we want out of life, but by what life wants out of us. We can never lay these unlived potentials to rest. Relentlessly they seek to be lived out, regardless of how deeply we bury them.

— D. Stephenson Bond, Living Myth

You're welcome. And yes—it really is.

We have been taught to regard ourselves as selfish, and the natural world out of which we emerge as essentially a field of ruthless competition. This has truth. But it is very much a half-truth. Its opposite is also true. We are moral beings, capable of selflessness, fulfilled through our interconnectedness with one another and the natural world at large. We are not atomistic. And the story of life on earth is not therefore one of competition only. It is at least as much, and arguably more . . . a story of co-operation and collaboration. In fact collaboration might be seen as, sensu stricto, 'one of the central characteristics of life'. — Iain McGilchrist, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World

Iain McGilchrist bringing much needed balance.

We must recognise that just as there is a pool of sadness in everyone, so there is a mountain of anger. Anger is a legitimate reaction of the soul to its wounding. We may keep it unconscious precisely because its expression today reactivates the peril its expression once risked. We may turn it upon ourselves by somatising, depressing or damaging ourselves through our contaminated decisions. Or we may transfer this anger to others, thereby wounding those who are the silent surrogates for those we could not confront in the past. Anger, then, is a reflexive response to the constriction of the soul. As such, it is not only part of the defence system of the psyche, it is a vital intimation which, when tracked, may lead to the soul's healing. When transformed by consciousness, anger becomes vital energy which is available not only for healing but also for furthering the desires of the soul. As long as we are wound-identified, we remain stuck in our victimage, up to our ears in the sour soup of wrath. James Hollis, Swamplands of the Soul

A sobering read from James Hollis on anger.

'When I go toward you
it is with my whole life'.

Amen.