Like waves on the ocean, life is full of ups and downs. Why make more? Why make it harder for yourself when life offers enough hardships. Find peace and calmness from the hardships of life in simple doings; read a good book, get creative, take a walk, look at the night sky, talk to someone nice. Ship off the hardships of life on a boat of dreams at night and dream that a new ship arrives at dawn’s early light. All things pass, all things change, all things eventually sail on. In the meantime foster change within, and change without will soon come too. Your new ship will arrive. It’s just the way it is. Don’t miss it. Make things right within so that you are really ready to receive it, happily waiting on the shore to greet it! Happy sailing!
Step back and regard yourself from the point of view of others, without your self-judgments and ideas about yourself. Then you are neither good nor bad, just a being who is living and is going to die like everyone else. Notice that your inner feelings about yourself disappear then and all you see is what you are. Freed of your inner conflicts, are you not just another human being trying to make your way and figure it out? Have a little compassion for yourself. Know that you are human, fallible, made imperfect yet always striving for perfection. All of these things make you interesting, the ups and downs of life, both inner and outer, the things that make you who you are—alive! Gotta live to learn, so keep on living and learning. It’s what it’s all about!
We meet the animal that we are in the bathroom. Despite the soft, white, scented Charmin’ tissue paper that we wipe ourselves with, what leaves our bodies is stinky, sticky and dark, the color and texture of muddy earth.
C. G. Jung suggested that the bathroom is the room where we most encounter our instinctual selves, thus it is equated symbolically with the collective unconscious. The day I read Jung’s reflections on this specific subject, a client, who has graciously agreed to allow me to share it, had the following interaction with me:
Me: “So, have you had any dreams?”
Client: “Funny you should ask, I had a disgusting dream that I’m not going to tell you” (and then she did).
Here is a summary of the dream: “I’m in a red-neck setting, one I’d never be in. I’m hidden under a tree. I’m on my side looking at people. Suddenly and uncontrollably I take a long, foamy bowel movement. I’m extremely embarrassed. I move away, afraid they’ll find out it was from me. I decide to go back to cover it over but can’t find it.”
As we reflected on the dream we came to understand that the client was attempting to get away from something deeply uncomfortable, hidden in the shadow of the self, something “behind her,” a fact she’d much rather keep “flushed away” from herself. Her instinctual dream would not let her get away with this however.
We unearthed the disowned fact, which reached back decades into childhood. The shit became a pearl and opened the door to address and shift a lifelong source of shame.
Jung pointed out that the alchemists considered excrement to be a prima materia from which gold could eventually be extracted. They called this stage in their experimental operations the nigredo.
In these modern times, humanity identifies itself as a rational mind, a fast acting logical computer that I would call a spirit self. In our times, spirit has withdrawn from the heavens and been reframed as the mental place, the thinking brain. Spirit humans hardly see themselves as animals governed by bodily dictates.
In our dream, the instinctual self teaches the spirit/mental self, that avoids earthy red-neck environments, that the gold lies in that which is most rejected and avoided in the self.
Everyone has had dreams of public toilets without doors or of defecating uncontrollably in public places. These dreams are really about our deepest nature attempting to draw our attention to that which we are most afraid to expose ourselves or others to, and yet, like the diamond that emerges from the blackest coal, these dreams really should be treated as holy shit.
If we allow ourselves to own the shit, refusing to be shut down by shame or embarrassment, we disarm our emotional defenses and free ourselves to become more human and to discover the most valuable pearls of wisdom from the refuse of our own bodies.
Changing times call for inner change, for each individual to change too, to let go of old ideas of the self and others, to release old childish voices and needs, to move beyond that which may leave one stranded and left behind while everything and everyone else moves on. Changing times call for bravery, stability, and maturity as the changes that come unbidden are faced, embraced, and allowed to become the seeds of new growth, the air of new ideas, the light of new life. Change is always here, knocking at the door every day, asking you to come on out and join it. And change is good!
Change is cyclical, the urgency and desire for change natural. Like a farmer preparing the soil for planting, prepare the self for planting new seeds of change. Get the self ready to bring forth new ideas and new energy to support a changing self, for all of nature seeks change, evolution, and new growth and you are no different. Like a tree firmly rooted, reaching its branches to the sky, so does a new seed seek both the nurturance of the soil and the sky, the dark and the light. A human being is no different from the rest of nature, for some part of you seeks always something new. Even if you won’t admit it or don’t allow for it, there is a part of you always seeking something new. And what is that? Well, it’s You of course, a deeper, higher Self, and you don’t even have to leave home to find it!
