Doctortayria's Blog

I always liked Tom Petty’s song, “Refugee”. He has in it the line, “You don’t have to live like a refugee” and I have been singing it to myself repeatedly. Oh, I wish the line were true for me! I am living like a refugee.

I am not appealing for sympathy, because it wouldn’t be deserved given that I chose to live as I live, in the high country of Western North Carolina. But I will say that having had to leave home quickly and unexpectedly in mid-December due to a weather front moving in that might have locked me in through the holidays, and now not knowing when I might get back due to a huge weather front moving in that may last for a week – I viscerally feel the plight of refugee status, even to this very modest extent. That story has always been an extremely sad one, a horrible concept, people having to flee from home. But it all remained somewhat conceptual in my mind. Not so any more.

This has something to teach me. The circumstance and feelings must be happening for a reason. “My skin is my home,” a dream once told me. Somehow, now, that skin feels like a thin home. God bless refugees everywhere in the world.

In spite of multitudes of daily foibles, thousands of bad turns or wrong choices, misfired words or gestures, forgotten intentions and promises, character flaws that reach deeper than earth’s most dramatic canyons, life still seems to offer her mercy. It is hard not to be deeply moved by this. I have learned to trust in this aspect of nature and the divine, and I want to embody and express it fully in my whole being, always. Thanks to God for sweet mercies.

A friend shared a dream with me yesterday that was fascinating; and after that conversation the images shared kept unfolding in front of my eyes through almost everything that happened as the day progressed. This day continued similarly. There is so much information, almost scriptural, and deeply archetypal, in dreams. The fact that they are ignored so consistently in modernity continues to sadden and amaze me. Cultures who listen to each others dreams and live by them are rich, and wise.

If an angel flies into your bedroom, appears before you and delivers a message, you will listen I am guessing. It should be no different when a dream comes. Each one is a message from that same source, with information that is that important. Even if you don’t understand the language, begin to receive it by giving attention and respect. The language is easily learned, and the rewards are beyond imagination.

I have long experienced movies as huge collective dreams. The themes that are in them are potently revealing of what is in the collective psyche. The unconscious, more than the conscious mind, drives the production of these. I am convinced of it.

I rarely see movies on the big screen anymore since I live on a mountain top. But, home for the holidays, I have seen two movies; one of them I saw twice, The Black Swan, and today I saw Tron. I was fascinated today noticing the parallel themes in both of these very different movies – one about the world of classical ballet, and the other a science fiction film about characters caught in a video game cyber-world. As different in genre and probably in audience as they are, both movies are astonishing similar in theme. The main story of each is about  a split off twin self, a dark version of the film’s protagonists. Each of the films dealt clearly with the theme that the quest for perfection is a dangerous and failed pursuit, leading to destruction and evil – the splitting of the self between a light side and a dark side. Both of the films were about necessity of integration of the dark self into the acceptable, enculturated self.

I have written in recent weeks on this theme as it has presented itself to me in a variety of ways. “Ways of Imperfection” was the title of one of these recent writings. Life has been teaching me  emphatically about the acceptance of imperfection as being a Way, a way to love and understanding, a way reflective of Nature herself, as she is. She is imperfect, and perfect in her imperfection. This theme has been weaving through my thoughts, experiences and dreams for weeks. Then this holiday season, these two very different movies show me the cultural dream – that these themes are also being widely dreamed and imagined. Art is a powerful messenger. We need the messages.

Years ago I studied with a Nigerian shaman for a long period. He told me that I should build an altar to my Twin Self, as his tribal people called it – the self who lives more fully in the spirit world that is yet unknown and unintegrated. I have always remembered this and have had such an altar in my heart, but never physically in my home. When I get back to the mountain, this will be the first thing to do.

Integration of one’s personal shadow is such a tough assignment, even for the most conscious, aware and sturdy of people. I wonder why nature made it this way.

The easiest thing is to see rejected parts of the self as “other” and perceive them as elsewhere, to forget we live in a world of mirrors. The hardest thing is to acknowledge absolutely everything we see as part of the Self without fear or revulsion, rather with respect for the truth.

Our senses seem to be designed so that we can only see one side of reality with our physical apparatus, and the rest must be perceived through intuition and other forms of observation and information gathering. If we are looking at the moon, we see only one side, the other half must be sensed in another way. It is the same with anything in the world, whether it is a physical thing, a situation or event. There is the conscious part, and the unconscious part.

I notice the difficulties regularly of acknowledging in the first place that the unconscious part even exists; and after that, since it is unknown, it seems to be instinctively cast as “other”, not self, is regarded with suspicion, as wrong or evil. Even if we get the theory, perceiving this moment by moment is the labor of making the unconscious conscious. It is work.

The work progresses when basic assumptions are challenged and we begin to imagine that there isn’t anything we see that isn’t exactly a part of us, as well as a part of everything else, since the universe is all made of the same basic fabric. The more we reject or revile something, that response tells us how unconscious it is, like that other side of the moon we just can’t see. Rather than split that side of reality off in our minds, something else happens as we attempt to own it and see how it fits into our wholeness. If we treat each part of the self, of others, and of the world with respect, compassion, curiosity, and actively reach out to it, a paradigm shifts. The mystery of life enters more fully, and life’s challenges are embraced differently.

I’m seeing the split very much in myself and in the world and want to work with this more actively in the new year. It seems to be very necessary work.

1. Love. The ruling principle. The first and last word. The only real priority.

2. Non-judgment. Always, in all cases. Without exception. Including self.

3. No fear. Not about anything. Not for any reason. Break the habit.  Get over it. “Perfect love casteth out fear.”

Life has put me into a bit of a holding pattern right now, and I am noticing what it is doing to my nervous system. There is an urgency to get on with things rather than just be…     be here…  be still…  be settled…  peaceful…  patient. I feel like a lion who wants to get up and prowl. What does that hungry beast want?

There is much to learn from times like this. I have exhausted myself through the prowl and the hunt, my dreams have warned me recently. Gonna learn to sit with this. Get the wisdom from it.

“The world offers itself to your imagination, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting,” poet Mary Oliver says in her gorgeous poem called Wild Geese. The only failure in life is the failure of imagination, and of persistence and courage to follow it. Life lays banquets of possibilities before us and says, come, eat, talk with me, let’s create.

What is it that steals from us simple faith in the visions we are granted, saps our courage and will to persist? Sometimes it seems like “self-preservation” to draw back and protect the little fortress we have built rather than cast ourselves out into an unknown future. But what is that “self” we are “preserving”? Do we want to put it in a jar and keep it? When we open the jar, then what?

Life offers itself to our imagination. I want to accept it’s offering, to imagine freely. It takes faith and a capacity for joy to follow it. Whatever it is that steals these capabilities from us, banish them.

Today I saw the movie Black Swan with Natalie Portman in the starring role of a ballerina who is cast in the role of Swan Queen in Tchaikovsky’s classic ballet. A young woman who has strived hard for perfection in her dance, and in her person, by being cast in the role of both the white swan and the black swan, must encounter completely unexplored parts of herself in order to convincingly play the passionate role of her evil, seducing, conniving and manipulating twin who betrays the white swan.

I have written lately about a dream I had in which I heard the words “There is a crack in everything” which I later realized to be a line in a Leonard Cohen song. This dream caused me subsequently to write on the theme of Ways of Imperfection. The movie I saw today amplified these themes and my reflections around them hugely.

I could, and might, write a book on this subject, not that the world necessarily needs any more of them. But I feel there is so much to say. The Greeks, who laid the foundation for Western thinking and philosophy, expressed the messiness of human and divine nature genuinely. The gods they loved and revered were just as lusty, mistaken, malicious, prone to impulsiveness and failure as were the humans. The idea of questing for perfection came sometime later, and led to the psychological problem of idealizing others or the self , projecting the idea of perfection into them. Holding oneself or any other to such a standard becomes an unconscious pressure, cruel, torturous and impossible. a set up for devastating and on-going experiences of failure and excuses for cruelty to others.

I often reflect that the story followers developed about Jesus reflects this problem and impossible standard to us in a dangerously charged way. He was divine and human, so that got translated into some extraordinary idea of perfection. Everyone and everything is divine and human, but nothing is perfect. Not even the divine. It is always changing at evolving. It is us. We are it. That was Jesus’ message too. The crucifixion theme is mixed into this – it’s a bloody mess.

And still the theme of the quest for perfection seems to remain and sustain itself in Western psychology and ideology. It is a latent and mostly undiagnosed psychosis in the collective psyche. Because of our general lack of acceptance or forgiveness for imperfections, we try so hard to deny or hide the pervasive looming flaws of nature in ourselves and each other. Self punishment abounds, as well as unapologetic abuse and torture of others. The literal and physical level of these abuses and tortures are often the least destructive. Those at the psychological and spiritual levels can be much crueler and more enduring.

The movie The Black Swan is genius in portraying this struggle, a story of the split that has developed in all who have been trained to split off rather than integrate the dark side of nature, of God and of the Self. Whether this or another story in scripture, literature, psychology, art or poetry is your catchiest entry-way into this theme, I do believe the time is good, is now, to do this work of awakening from denial and moving toward integration. It is a difficult and laborious work, but why live life without such primal challenges? What else could be the point?