Easter to the Soul April 6, 2012

One of the oldest recorded myths comes from Sumeria and tells the story of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. After a period of growing, assuming her authority, working to bless the world with the gifts of civilization, courting, marrying, birthing and mothering, Inanna descends to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, its Queen. On the way down she is stripped one by one of all her earthly possessions: symbols of her beauty, success, femininity and the power she has worked so hard to attain. At the bottom she is met by Ereshkigal who has her hung naked on a meat hook. And there she hangs. But on the third day, with the help of her loyal priestess, Ninshubur, and Enki, the God of Culture, she’s rescued and returns to life in the world above.

This is an allegory of a universal truth. Like all great myths, which are stories about our relationships with the gods, it does not have to be factually true on the outside but is always true on the inside, the domain of the soul. The truth is, whether or not we all agree on the meaning, names or details, this story is relevant to every soul.

Physically, it’s about the seasonal Death/Rebirth cycles of vegetation and fertility. Psychologically, Joseph Campbell saw it as a metaphor for the soul’s empowerment and evolving consciousness via the descent into the unconscious, the experience of powerlessness, and the realization of our strength through facing our disowned shadow qualities. Spiritually, it’s about the universal longing for salvation and redemption through divine revelation and intervention.

To the ego it sometimes feels crucial that we get the facts right, possess the “correct” interpretation — especially the religious one — and reject the “wrong” one. But to the soul, these details are beside the point. To your soul and mine, this story is a celebration of the sacred miracle of life, and all three interpretations are equally true.

Every soul is grateful for the sun which brings warmth and light to our days so plants can grow and we can learn and improve and do the hard work that brings meaning and comfort to our lives. We’re all glad when each productive day is followed by a cooler, softer, moonlit night when we can rest, enjoy our loved ones, rejuvenate our bodies and spirits.

Our souls appreciate the exquisite balance of seasons whose alternating cycles likewise bring times of arising, thriving, descending, and dying. And every soul celebrates when the ego dies to its ignorance and meanness and awakens to its nobility in a miraculous new season of enlightened forgiveness, gratitude and compassion.

Above all, our souls know our ego selves did not make any of this happen. Something far greater, some Sacred Mystery over which we have no control, some benevolent, boundless, timeless Otherness set the processes of life in motion and keeps them working. And when we set apart times like this to stop and think about it, we remember that we are blessed beyond measure to participate in this miracle.

In this season of rebirth and renewal I send my blessings to all celebrators everywhere of the miracle of life.

The True Hero’s Journey December 20, 2011

At the age of ten I dreamed the Lone Ranger shot me. This big dream about my hero was more real than any other I’ve ever had. I was devastated to think he hated me so much he wanted to kill me and I couldn’t understand why. I had practically worshiped him, his beautiful horse Silver, and his trusty partner Tonto; yet he shot me! The injustice of this was intolerable!

One thing I’ve come to understand is that this dream spoke to my childhood image of God as a heroic male and my growing sense that I was unworthy because I was a female. In 195o’s America God was a He, history was still about males, and females could not be bosses, ministers, presidents or heroes.

That new awareness was very painful to my ten-year-old heart, and I tried my best to suppress it for many years; but ultimately, belatedly, it forced me to take myself as seriously as I took my loved ones, to search for my truths, and to connect with God in ways that were personally meaningful instead of entrusting this most crucial of my soul’s tasks to others — especially others who did not value me because of my gender. It also inspired my creativity. My struggle to understand and empower femininity and the feminine side of the Sacred Mystery is at the core of everything I write.

A second message of this dream was the inevitability of death. While being alone most of the time I wasn’t in school or church seemed normal to me at ten, my dream said that unconsciously I was feeling very vulnerable and insecure. I could be left alone to make my way through a dangerous world, I could be victimized, I could die. When my father died a few months later this suspicion became a certainty and my trust in my hero/God was shattered. Apparently I knew something no one else did: the heavenly hero everyone thought of as perfect was secretly untrustworthy, unjust and cruel.

I tried to repress this awareness too, but it was nevertheless a bedrock reality that fueled my determination to do everything I could to stay on God’s good side! Ignoring my wounded Persephone, I concentrated on developing my Athena, the brave, noble and wise defender of patriarchy! And I got pretty good at being heroic in the outer world of ambition, achievement and work.

So it was a bit of a shock to realize at mid-life was that I was copying a surface version of the hero myth  that emphasizes external trappings of power and success and ignores the inner life. Beneath the image of the independent, white-hatted cowboy on a white horse who rides off in search of bad buys to kill with his silver bullets is a much deeper meaning that is also the deeper meaning of  every authentic religion: True heroism, the kind that lasts and makes a difference in the world, is the ability to rein in the ego, lasso and befriend our shadow, learn compassion, and embolden our true Self so we can care for others in ways that are beneficial to all. In conforming to a mold that didn’t honor my inner realities I was betraying myself and the Great Mystery we call God.

Here is the message I want to convey:  We don’t have to settle for dysfunctional God-images or self-images. Acquiring the consciousness to recognize our wounds and complete our souls so we can serve our communities with compassion is the true Hero’s Journey. This is a spiritual path anyone can take.

The Value of Ritual June 25, 2011

In 1997 four other women and I formed an organization we called The Matrix. Our purpose was to discover, define, and address what is valuable in the lives of women. Having experienced many benefits from engaging in personal rituals, it was important to me to find concrete and memorable ways to express our hopes and desires for the Matrix — for example, to devise meaningful programs, to relate honestly, to work in harmony with one another, and to help women create connections with their own deep wells of wisdom — and so I created rituals for each meeting as well as the events we produced. To my delight, the others participated eagerly, and after a while I earned the unofficial title of “Ritual Lady,” a distinction I wore with great honor.

At first, the most obvious benefit of our planning session rituals was that they connected us with our innermost selves, often at levels much deeper than those normally accessible. Rarely did we complete a ritual without deep emotion and affirming new insights. This soul-baring work established the foundation for an unusual degree of intimacy and trust which gradually changed our group from a secular organization into a spiritual community. As a woman who has been very slow to trust that others would accept me if I spoke my soul’s truths, I experienced a huge breakthrough the first time my Matrix sisters created a special ritual for me in which to express some anger. Their encouragement to communicate honestly and openly, and their acceptance when I did, was life-changing.

I would never have had the courage to do this if we had not, meeting after meeting, month after month, year after year taken the time to create a sacred container for ourselves and our work through ritual. For me, this proves the truth of an assertion by Kay Turner in her article, “Contemporary Feminist Rituals,” that “Feminist ritual practice is currently the most important model for symbolic and, therefore, psychic and spiritual change in women.”

Whether personal or collective, rituals help transform individual souls and bring them into proper relationship with One Soul. In Turner’s words, “…ritual space and activity are sacred in the sense of representing the possibility of self-transformation. Part of the power and the fear experienced in ritual is the realization that one may change, become ultimately different, as a result of the experience or that the experience may suddenly make recognizable change that has been slowly rising from the depths of personality and ideology.”

A major benefit of ritual is growth in consciousness. As I wrote in my post from February, 2011 titled “Your Body As Your Partner in Dreamwork,” I’ve found that participating in original rituals helps me clarify and integrate important new insights. Even if I should someday forget the ritual my Matrix sisters conducted for me, the courage, relief, self-validation and personal empowerment I experienced changed me forever. I still feel anger and other powerful emotions, of course, but I am no longer at their mercy, nor do I feel compelled to deny them healthy outlets, for the simple reason that I am more conscious.

Before I began writing this post I lit the lemon grass and wheat-scented candle on my desk and spent a moment in quiet self-awareness. This never fails to inspire me. When I am finished, extinguishing it will bring the comfort of knowing I have completed a task that is important to my soul. What are the rituals that nourish your soul?

Journey to Summer Camp June 18, 2011

Today we’re on our way back to the mountains for a cooler, kinder summer. Our car is filled with various essentials, (my clothes mostly!), and carries an equally stuffed “pod” on the roof. But this year the back seat is not occupied by Bear, my best golden retriever friend who snoozed there on our annual treks for many years, or by the hanging rod with my clothes. For the first time it will be filled by our two granddaughters.

This was their idea. When their mother asked them if they wanted to attend a camp this summer they said they wanted to go to Camp MaBoppa! In case you hadn’t guessed, their names for us are Ma and Boppa. They like “Camp MaBoppa” because it sounds Native American, which is fitting since our summer home is near Cherokee, NC. We know they used to hunt deer and bear on our land because my mother-in-law once found an arrowhead in Buck Creek. The mountain on which our cabin stands is called Deer Lick by the locals, but the deer are long gone. In fact, the creek was named for the last buck to be killed there.  But there are still lots of bears.

As we return to the wilderness home of my soul I’m thinking about the choices that brought me to this moment. I could have made so many wrong turns on my journey. I went to college in the 60′s, a watershed decade for America. Some of the boys in my generation died in the Viet Nam war. Some of the girls became hippy drop-outs, rock band groupies, Playboy bunnies and swingers who, with the invention of the “pill” succumbed to the soul-numbing pleasures of free love or surrendered to the pain-escaping allure of the drug culture, never to recover their balance. How did I manage to keep mine?

Many women of my generation joined the early, angry years of the feminist movement when we were shedding the detritus of thousands of years of repression — the stereotypes, glass ceilings, condescending attitudes and religious prohibitions that had limited our options and buried our souls. Some sacrificed the pleasures of family and children for careers only to regret their choices in later years. Some, like me, struggled to combine both with varying degrees of success and satisfaction. Most managed to move past our rage to places of forgiveness and self-respect, but a few were sucked into whirlpools of heart-wrenching, relationship-destroying disappointment, bitterness and blame. How did I survive that shipwreck?

I’ve always assumed most of the credit belongs to the positive models of my mother and father, but I know of many loving people whose children seem hell-bent on self-destruction so I can’t stop there. There must be many factors, genetic inheritance among them, but I’ve come to believe that the single most important factor responsible for the blessings in my life today is that early on I somehow acquired a religious attitude. As I wrote in my Dec. 21, 2010 post, “Sophia’s Gift of Meaning,” by “religious” I do not mean believing in specific creeds that reflect personal or cultural biases. I mean having reverence for the unconscious, unknown otherness in the world and ourselves. How did I acquire my reverence for life? I honestly don’t know. But Carl Jung believed it is essential to a whole life well-lived and I’m inclined to agree with him.

At this time of the summer solstice, may we cultivate reverence for the miracle of new life bursting forth from every seed. Happy traveling to your soul’s favorite summer camp.

Living From the Heart May 24, 2011

Last week my husband and I took our son Matt and his wife Robyn with us to a Kris Kristofferson concert. The venue, an old movie theater-turned-concert hall, was so intimate that as we were leaving Robyn said, “I feel like I’ve just been hanging out with him in the living room.”

I felt the same way. Much of the friendly atmosphere was due to this singer/songwriter’s no-frill style. He had no opening act, no accompanying musicians, no dancers, videos, bells, whistles, mirrors or smoke. He just walked out on the darkened stage with his guitar and harmonica and did what he does best: stood there at the microphone and sang his heart out for two hours.

If you’ve read my post from March 22, 2011 titled “Kris Kristofferson: Midlife Mentor,” you know I’ve been a huge fan since I discovered his music in the mid-seventies. Since then I’ve attended perhaps five of his concerts, two of which were held in similar settings. Although I would have loved nothing more than to walk up afterwards to shake his hand and tell him how much his music meant to me, I was far too self-conscious. After a lifetime of hiding how much I care about things others consider unimportant, I couldn’t bear the thought of being criticized for being too bold or looking like a gushing teen-aged groupie, so I just stood watching from the back of the hall while he greeted fans less inhibited than I.

Over the years I’ve castigated myself for wasting these and other precious opportunities to act on my heart’s desires. I know the value of “seizing the day” and “following your passion,” and I’ve experienced the rewards of doing this many times. Yet there were also times when I couldn’t take my own advice. Why have I let self-consciousness hold me back from doing so many simple, harmless things like jumping at the chance to hire a waiting camel to ride to the site overlooking the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found? Or accepting an invitation to sing a song I love on a stage with a group of musicians I admire?

Years of analyzing my dreams have brought some insights. Because I admire Kris Kristofferson so much for his courage and integrity in overcoming his fears and following his passions, he’s shown up in many dreams as an image of my positive animus. The issues in these dreams always relate to my deepest desire to boldly sing my soul’s song in my writing and speaking, and to do it with the kind of honesty, simplicity, and grace he embodies.

I’m delighted to report that as of last week’s concert I’m a bit closer to my goal. After the kids left to relieve their baby-sitter, Fred and I walked to the back of the building where the tour bus was parked and joined a group of waiting fans. In my purse was a copy of the March 22 post with Kris’s picture on the front and a handwritten note scrawled in the margin. I can’t deny that my resolve wavered when he came out the door and walked toward us, but after watching him sign autographs for several people, with Fred’s encouragement I moved into an empty space on the railing, handed him the post, and told him why I’d written it.

I didn’t get his autograph. I didn’t need one. His warmth and graciousness, so evident in the photograph above, are more than enough reward for overcoming so much of my debilitating self-consciousness. Thank you, dear friend of my soul, for showing me how to live from the heart.

This Miracle of Being May 17, 2011

I’m at my desk reading the Goethe quote on my coffee mug: “Nothing is worth more than this day.” I feel the truth of this deeply, but wonder if I really understand it or can express it adequately. I want to try.

I close my eyes to feel the life in my body and follow my breath. Tiny tinglings everywhere…chest and belly rising and falling…the air conditioner fan whirring away to my left, an airplane humming overhead…the solid floor beneath my feet…the warmth of my clasped hands…the softness of my velvet robe.

I open my eyes and look out the window at the stand of bald cypress with their knotty brown trunks and newly green foliage. I watch the soft sway of their gray Spanish moss beards. I wait…for what I don’t know. I smile. It’s a relief not to need to know. A love bug lands on the window at eye level. No, wait; it’s two love bugs! My smile expands. My heart seems to expand too. I’m enjoying this tiny reminder of love. Fluttering leaves sparkle. Some show their paler sides; others are a deeper green. A dragonfly flits by. Cottony clouds with dove gray undersides sink slowly below the cypress canopy.

I rise and step outside to see if the great blue heron is still fishing across the creek. S/he’s gone, but a pair of black-feathered, yellow-legged, red-billed birds (young coots?) fly past, then abruptly make a U-turn and hurry back in the opposite direction.

I remember the brilliant cardinal that kept dropping by one day last week to peck at the picture window, either flirting with his image or trying to pass through the sky’s reflection. I Googled the symbolism of cardinals and found this: [The cardinal] “reminds us to hold ourselves with pride – not ego pride. Rather, the cardinal asks us to stand a little taller, be a bit more regal, step into our natural confidence as if we were born to lead with grace and nobility.” Good advice. But that was a few days ago. I return to this moment.

Other random thoughts intrude and I invite them to pass on so I can stay present. I realize I’m hoping to close these musings with some sort of sign or synchronicity I can share to prove how rewarding just appreciating this day can be! But nothing is showing up and I’m running out of writing space.

Wait. Something is showing up. (As I write these words a cardinal darts by…is it my cardinal?… but that isn’t what I mean.) What shows up after I’ve written the previous paragraph is an awareness of my ego’s influence over my thoughts and writing. My ego wants a sign it can use to be impressive, but my soul just wants to be! And just as I was thinking this the cardinal passed by. I guess I did receive a sign after all: ego pride!  I smile and let it be. Self-knowledge is healing but self-criticism erodes my confidence and robs me of this moment. Simply being aware of everything, including these barely conscious tendencies of mine, is the true value of this day.

Why? First, because mindfulness creates consciousness and compassion which, in turn, contribute to the expanding consciousness and compassion of all humanity. Second, so I can experience the love pervading everything that is. And third? So I won’t miss a moment of this fleeting miracle of being.

Easter to the Soul April 22, 2011

One of the oldest recorded myths comes from Sumeria and tells the story of Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. After a period of growing, assuming her authority, working to bless the world with the gifts of civilization, courting, marrying, birthing and mothering, Inanna descends to the underworld to visit her sister Ereshkigal, its Queen. On the way down she is stripped one by one of all her earthly possessions: symbols of her beauty, success, femininity and the power she has worked so hard to attain. At the bottom she is met by Ereshkigal who has her hung naked on a meat hook. And there she hangs. But on the third day, with the help of her loyal priestess, Ninshubur, and Enki, the God of Culture, she’s rescued and returns to life in the world above.

This is an allegory of a universal truth. Like all great myths, which are stories about our relationships with the gods, it does not have to be factually true on the outside but is always true on the inside, the domain of the soul. The truth is, whether or not we all agree on the meaning, names or details, this story is relevant to every soul.

Physically, it’s about the seasonal Death/Rebirth cycles of vegetation and fertility. Psychologically, Joseph Campbell saw it as a metaphor for the soul’s empowerment and evolving consciousness via the descent into the unconscious, the experience of powerlessness, and the realization of our strength through facing our disowned shadow qualities. Spiritually, it’s about the universal longing for salvation and redemption through divine revelation and intervention.

To the ego it sometimes feels crucial that we get the facts right, possess the “correct” interpretation — especially the religious one — and reject the “wrong” one. But to the soul, these details are beside the point. To your soul and mine, this story is a celebration of the sacred miracle of life, and all three interpretations are equally true.

Every soul is grateful for the sun which brings warmth and light to our days so plants can grow and we can learn and improve and do the hard work that brings meaning and comfort to our lives. We’re all glad when each productive day is followed by a cooler, softer, moonlit night when we can rest, enjoy our loved ones, rejuvenate our bodies and spirits.

Our souls appreciate the exquisite balance of seasons whose alternating cycles likewise bring times of arising, thriving, descending, and dying. And every soul celebrates when the ego dies to its ignorance and meanness and awakens to its nobility in a miraculous new season of enlightened forgiveness, gratitude and compassion.

Above all, our souls know our ego selves did not make any of this happen. Something far greater, some Sacred Mystery over which we have no control, some benevolent, boundless, timeless Otherness set the processes of life in motion and keeps them working. And when we set apart times like this to stop and think about it, we remember that we are blessed beyond measure to participate in this miracle.

In this season of rebirth and renewal I send my blessings to all celebrators everywhere of the miracle of life.

The Soul’s Twins April 12, 2011

Have you ever felt like more than one person? I’m not talking about a psychotic split, but about how we can feel and behave differently in different situations or seasons. How sometimes we want to be with people and sometimes need to be alone. How we can be passionate about something today and indifferent tomorrow. How we occasionally feel separated from our true selves. If you’ve ever wondered about things like this, you, too, have pondered Life’s Big Question: “Who the heck am I anyway?”

I used to ask myself this during long summers at our vacation home in the Smoky Mountains. There I can spend hours on the porch contemplating hummingbird hostilities, listening to birds define their territories, scanning the sky for soaring hawks and gray clouds, conversing with the gurgling creek, and absorbing the rhythms of the day. I care for animals, feed fish, hike, garden. If we’re having a drought I spend hours driving around the property in my green John Deere Gator with the big water tank labeled WEEKEND WARRIOR lovingly spraying water on every growing thing in sight. I thrive on being alone. I love going nowhere, listening, feeling, sweating, getting dirty. I can’t get enough of the solitude or outdoors.

Do I want to be outdoors in Florida? Are you kidding me? It’s HOT out there! And why would I want to water plants? If they don’t get enough moisture from the dripping humidity and afternoon thunderstorms they’re on their own! In Florida I rarely think about fish or watch clouds or tend to plants. I don’t care if it rains. I want to be with my family, socialize with friends, write.

So who am I? In Florida I’m a wife, mother, grandmother, writer, supporter of the arts, social person. In North Carolina I’m a loner, gardener, observer of nature, enjoyer of solitude. In Florida I side with Apollo, god of the sun, civilization, the cerebral life and culture; in North Carolina I honor Artemis, goddess of the moon, wilderness, the instinctual life and nature.

Did you know these two Greek deities were twins? Which is the real me? The answer, of course, is both. Carl Jung said, “Within each one of us there is another whom we do not know. S/He speaks to us in dreams…” This Another is our unconscious, an inner soup of unknown characters, complexes, untapped interests and disowned emotions. At an early age our ego adapted to the life into which we were born by incorporating the tastiest of these tidbits into our conscious personality and neglecting the rest. We may not normally be aware of the rejected ones, but they are still part of us. Since most are not crucial to our soul’s purpose they don’t mind being ignored. But there are always a critical few we have wrongly disowned. Until we befriend them they show up in our dreams and erupt into waking life in problematic ways.

Splitting my time between two homes in separate and very different settings has actually helped me heal what was once a split between my soul’s twins. For many years my ego favored Apollo’s high ideals, intellectual pursuits and cultured sensibilities, but no more.   Now Artemis leads me through the wild, dark unconscious and Apollo helps me write about what she shows me. Because I love them both as much as I love my twin grandsons, there’s no sibling rivalry, no need for them to vie for my ego’s attention. Life is so much richer and more peaceful this way.

Connor and Jake, this one’s for you. Thank you for enriching my life.

Entering the Mystery of Myself February 8, 2011

I’ve been trying to understand myself for most of my adult life. I first became aware of this idiosyncracy in college. One day I was in the library browsing through the psychology section and came upon a book about personality types. I was as thrilled as if I had discovered a treasure map. Or the key to the weathered door of a mysterious hidden garden. Or the holy grail!

I found an empty table and sat down to read, glancing around self-consciously like an adolescent devouring a book about sex. I’d spent my teens masking my insecurity and self-doubt with a persona of poise and confidence and didn’t want to blow my cover.

It was everything I’d hoped for. The first part was a lengthy questionnaire.  I savored each question the way an oenophile relishes each sip of wine, rolling it this way and that to consider every nuance of flavor. Like a writer of wine labels I suffered the delicious agony of indecision over which subtlety had priority. Like a reluctant suitor I hesitated to commit myself. Rarely had I enjoyed myself so much.

When I was finished I tallied my answers and arrived at a number which took me to the description of my particular type. My key was in the door and I was standing on the threshold. With a mixture of excitement and apprehension I prepared to enter the mystery of myself.

But what I read disappointed and puzzled me. To this day I do not know the title of the book because I was afraid to write it down in case someone should go through my papers and see it, so I can only paraphrase the essence of what I recall. It said something like this “We are not sure who you are. You are like a tree with many branches reaching into the sky. A flock of birds flies to the tree and perches on the branches. Then without warning they scatter and fly away in all directions.” I imagined the tree barren of leaves, silhouetted against a gray winter sky. The birds were black. Crows, perhaps. Or ravens. There was no garden.

At one level this seemed a terribly romantic image, but as I read through the other descriptions I grew increasingly uncomfortable.  Mine was the only one with no clear answers. What did this mean? Was it a good thing or bad? Did it mean my personality was gloriously flexible and open to whatever life might bring, or did it mean I was so flighty and unformed that I was vulnerable to whichever way the wind blew? Was I some sort of mysterious nature child, part grounded in the physical world and part free to follow the truths of my soul, or did I simply have no more substance than a ghost or puff of smoke? Did I have an old soul or an extremely young one?

I see now that this was one of the defining experiences of my life.  For the first time it occurred to me that I had absolutely no idea who I was. That’s when the hunger settled in, and I’ve been trying to satisfy it ever since.

If you recognize this hunger in yourself, do yourself a favor and check out this site about the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. Based on Jungian psychology, it was responsible for my first major breakthrough into the mystery of myself and has provided an enormously useful framework for my inner work ever since.

Healing Wounded Masculine and Feminine Energy: Part II September 25, 2010

Last time I described two steps toward healing the  masculine and feminine aspects of the soul.  In this post I’ll address two more that can transform your inner invalids into empowered Kings and Queens.

Step #3. Exercise. When exercising a horse you always train both sides of his body and brain. For example, after you walk, trot, and canter him clockwise around the pen you repeat the same actions for the same length of time in the opposite direction.  You do the same when you exercise your body. You wouldn’t lift weights with just the left arm and neglect the right.

So it is with your mind’s muscles. To get the most out of your brain power and boost your psyche’s immunity to toxic input you need to train both sides of the brain. Reading, writing, taking classes, and studying are all vitally important, but unfortunately they use mostly left-hemisphere skills and neglect the right hemisphere. What I’m suggesting is that you pay attention to the thinking processes you use most often and engage in new ones that will develop both sides of the brain and bring more balance between them.

Exercise your left brain by taking classes, jotting down notes, keeping a journal, noticing details, and making careful distinctions between things. Seek advice from your most logical friends.  Deliberately think choices through without automatically succumbing to habitual behaviors, strong emotions, or instinctual needs. Think before you speak. Practice expressing yourself more clearly and succinctly without rambling. Stick to the point. Use logic and reason. Back up your opinions with facts. Cultivate calmness and objectivity without getting overly emotional.

Exercising the right brain means taking your inner life and relationships seriously. Connect with your inner Beloved as much as the outer. Listen more than you talk. Receive as much as you give. Notice your needs and feelings and use your imagination to find respectful ways of expressing them. If you love to write, don’t just record factual, linear events. Make up stories, analyze the reasons for your feelings, come up with original metaphors, create sensory images. Art, music, and body work also engage the right brain. Draw, paint, sculpt, take photographs. Make up personal rituals, dances or songs. You won’t have to look far for inspiration. It’s there in every waking life situation and every nightly dream.

Step #4. Diet. Medicine and exercise can strengthen and heal your body, but you won’t stay healthy without a regular regimen of nourishing food to maintain and re-energize it. Similarly, a spiritual practice like meditation, yoga, prayer, or dreamwork quiets the mind and redirects attention to the inner life, re-vitalizing the soul on a regular basis with an increase of personal meaning, compassion and consciousness.

You already know my pet practice.  Through the years my nightly dramas have depicted the wounds of my inner opposites in loving detail; watching and learning from them is the manna that sustains my soul.  In fact, my personal mini-myths have been so crucial to empowering my King and Queen that I wrote the book, Dream Theatres of the Soul, to show others how to work with their dreams. As my final response to your question, Annette, I’ll outline my method in my next post. I wish you and all my readers the very best with your own healing.