Jean
Benedict
Raffa

Matrignosis

A BLOG ABOUT INNER WISDOM

Coming Home to Integrated Spirituality

This month marks the second birthday of this blog. Writing it has been an extraordinary experience in many ways, but the most meaningful and joyful part has been meeting you. Knowing you are out there has been deeply comforting, and reading your inspiring thoughts and figuring out how to respond has had a powerful impact on my work. I love it that our dialogues have motivated me to clarify my thinking and explore new ideas. Most of all I appreciate how you’ve helped me trust myself and be bolder about sharing my truths, especially concerning religion and spirituality.

March 2, 2012 No Comments

Trees and Disney Princesses Revisited

Did anyone sign your high school yearbook, “Don’t ever change”? Maybe you wrote it in a few yearbooks yourself. This is the normal desire of an adolescent ego. What it wants is so simple: to be old enough to drive, get a job, earn a lot of money, become independent, satisfy all its instinctual desires as much as it wants to…and then stop growing.

February 28, 2012 No Comments

The Hero, the Shadow, the Anima, and Love

We meet our anima and animus as they are reflected in other people (both in waking life and dreams) who are so fascinating to us that we are filled with wonder and awe. This “spiritual” falling-in-love feeling of having been touched by the Mystery is the tip-off that we’ve met an image of our anima or animus, for they are the feminine and masculine sides of the Self, our God-image.

February 24, 2012 No Comments

Alice, the Anima, and Anorexia

I was pondering two questions this morning as we drove to the airport after a long family weekend away: What should I write about for this post? and How should I answer a recent e-mail from an Iranian student? She’s writing a thesis about the anima and animus archetypes in two of Virginia Woolfe’s books and wonders how to approach her task. Should she just look for images represented by the writer or should she study the characters or events as a Jungian analyst would?

February 21, 2012 No Comments

Feminism's Political Momentum and the Bond Girls

Now I realize that at first glance, one might not automatically associate the Bond Girls with an advance in consciousness! After all, they were uniformly young, slender, beautiful, and sexy. (Mrs. Moneypenny and Bond’s boss, M, are not Bond Girls!) Aaaarrrggghhhh! We might as well call them Bond Barbie Dolls. But bear with me here. There were some subtle differences.

February 17, 2012 No Comments

The Idea of Love

As I write this I’ve just finished unwrapping, trimming, and arranging the three dozen red roses I received from my husband for Valentine’s Day. This set me to musing about love. As is my habit, I immediately went for the symbolism of flowers and recalled a comment my internet friend, William Horden, made in response to an early post. I had written that my goal in writing this blog is to raise psychological and spiritual consciousness and here’s what he said:

February 14, 2012 No Comments

Why Should Society Promote Self-Knowledge?

“To transform the world, we must begin with ourselves; and what is important in beginning with ourselves is the intention. The intention must be to understand ourselves and not to leave it to others to transform themselves or to bring about a modified change through revolution, either of the left or of the right. It is important to understand that this is our responsibility, yours and mine…”

February 10, 2012 No Comments

Compulsive Computing: The Perils and Pleasures of Writing 600 Words

It’s noon on Monday and I have five hours to write and schedule a post before I have to stop (we’re attending a Magic basketball game this evening). My posts come out twice a week, at 12:01 a..m. every Tuesday and Friday morning. I’ve been doing this for almost two years and am kind of obsessed about staying on schedule. Last week was unusually busy so I’m under the gun today. Only five hours to come up with a topic and 600 words. Holy crap!

February 7, 2012 No Comments

Freedom to Feel

As a young married woman I was utterly captivated by the film, Blume in Love, for reasons I didn’t understand. The same thing had happened three years earlier when I read my all-time favorite book: The Magus, by John Fowles. Why did I find it so incredibly fascinating? Did it have anything in common with Blume in Love, or were these just random coincidences? I didn’t know then. Forty years later, I do.

February 3, 2012 No Comments

How Love Emerges

While the plot details weren’t the same, this romantic comedy portrayed our theme and the theme of every couple in an intimate partnership. As a shockingly innocent and ignorant product of 1950’s conditioning, I was finally getting it that marriage is not a happily-ever-after instant fix involving two separate individuals whose roles and feelings will never change, but a crucible for soul-making.

January 31, 2012 No Comments

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

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