Jean
Benedict
Raffa

Matrignosis

A BLOG ABOUT INNER WISDOM

A Path With Heart

Here’s a spiritual truth I’ve learned through personal experience. Without self-knowledge, all the offerings of organized religion — group worship, teachings, scriptures, retreats, sacraments, guidance from helpful religious professionals — and all the correct beliefs, good intentions and divine interventions we can experience are not enough to transform us into spiritually mature beings. Why? Because there is no such thing as spiritual maturity without psychological awareness!

April 11, 2014 21 Comments

The Soul's Twins

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

April 3, 2014 11 Comments

The Suspicious Girl

I don’t usually talk or write much about sex. Yet I feel compelled to share this disturbing dream.
Dream #4518: The Suspicious Little Girl: I’m staying at a house with other people. A noise wakes me up at night. Someone is opening the door. An eleven-year-old girl is sleeping beside me. Fearing a man is sneaking in to kidnap her, I wrap my arms protectively around her.

April 1, 2014 No Comments

The Heroic Making of a Soul

Earlier this month on March 10, my darling child, Matrignosis, turned four years old. As it has been with my human children, so it has been with Matrignosis in many ways: Pouring my passion into her and learning more about myself as she’s grown has been one of the greatest privileges and pleasures of my life. Indeed, the overwhelming maternal feelings I have for her and what she’s taught me are reflected in her name: matri (Lat. Mother), and gnosis (Gk. knowledge).

March 28, 2014 10 Comments

The Well of Feminine Power

As Joseph Campbell says in Pathways to Bliss, the feminine is the source of the energy and the masculine is its specification in any particular direction. She is the sea of energy out of which creation arises, he is every visible manifestation of that energy. She is the whole; he is a part.

March 25, 2014 20 Comments

On Interrelatedness: No Beginning, No End

Yesterday I met with my writer’s group, The Purple Pros, at the Barnes and Noble Café. As is our custom in this group which has met for over twenty years, one of us brings a meditative reading; another brings a topic we write about for five minutes. Despite the fact that these activities are randomly chosen, their themes are almost always remarkably similar, if not identical.

March 21, 2014 6 Comments

The Soul's Never-Ending Journey

With my 1989 discovery of Jungian psychology and the healing value of dreamwork, I started paying attention to images and symbols that felt important. Over the next five years of intense study I recorded and worked on hundreds of dreams and wrote two books. Both featured meaningful symbols that were helping me make sense of my life.

March 18, 2014 11 Comments

The Secret to Healing Relationships

Here’s one of the most important things I’ve learned about relationships: If we do not understand our worth and respect our right to be different, our relationships will be seriously impaired because others will not understand our worth or respect us either. But if we accept the natural entitlement that belongs to every soul, and if we can learn to trust our soul’s processes enough to stand firm in the face of misunderstanding and opposition, we can more easily bridge the divide between ourselves and others.

March 14, 2014 4 Comments

Formula for a Successful Marriage

Yesterday my friend Pat sent me a link to an article in the New York Times she knew I’d like called The All-or-Nothing Marriage. It asks the question, “Are marriages today better or worse than they used to be?” Writer Eli J. Finkel writes,

February 19, 2014 11 Comments

A Valentine For My Internet Friends

When I began blogging and posting on Twitter and Facebook almost four years ago, I never imagined I would meet so many wonderful people who I now feel I can call friends.

February 14, 2014 14 Comments

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“Where wisdom reigns, there is no conflict between thinking and feeling. ” -Carl Jung

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