Exploring the Rabbit Holes of My Psyche
It’s Tuesday, the day on which I’ve published a new blog post almost every week for the last 12 years. Something in me has changed and I want to be present to it. As I approach the eighth decade of my life I want to learn the lessons it wants to teach me. And I […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part VII: An Outer Other God
As our bodies have a mysterious imperative to grow and develop physically, so our psyche has a mysterious compulsion to evolve. We don’t know what this is, we just know it is. Carl Jung thought of the psyche’s compulsion to evolve as the archetype of Divinity. He saw it as both the core and circumference […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part V: A Gender-Biased God
For most of my adult life I’ve struggled with the idea that God is a male. Many spirit persons don’t imagine God as a supernatural gendered being, but many ordinary people do. Everywhere we turn, religious language still speaks of God as one-sidedly masculine. As a child I found this curious. By midlife I found […]
The Evolution of God-Images Part III: A Tribal God
“[R]eligious statements without exception have to do with the reality of the psyche.” C.G.Jung Answer to Job, CW11, par.752. My mother was emotionally repressed and mistrustful of her femininity, and my father died when I was at an impressionable age. What does my history have to do with my adult spiritual quest? Just this: My […]
The Lover Archetype
You can learn about your Lover archetype from mythology. One Greek god in particular, Dionysus, exemplifies the Lover’s healthy and shadow aspects. Lover is a romantic with a soulful earthiness and an unabashed appreciation for life. He is the curious child who closely examines and fiddles with new gadgets. The playful child who lures his […]
My Holiday Blessings to You
My dear friends, Soon it will be twelve years that I’ve shared my associations with Christmas and the New Year here at Matrignosis. Communicating my soul’s truths and discussing them with you has been one of my life’s greatest joys—a special kind of magic I never imagined possible until a few decades ago. I am […]
The Thanksgiving Gift of Two-Way Partnership
Most people think working with horses is a one-way form of communication: the human does the training and the horse does the listening and learning so it can serve the human’s needs. Most riders and trainers love horses very much and train them with kindness and patience; others believe they need to “break” horses with bullying and brute force. Either type can achieve great success…from the perspective of the human ego.
Learn Your Story: Write Your Myth
“Just as dreams do not conceal something already known, or express it under a disguise, but try rather to formulate an as yet unconscious fact as clearly as possible, so myths and alchemical symbols are not…allegories that hide artificial secrets. On the contrary, they seek to translate natural secrets into the language of consciousness and […]
The Delicious Blessing of Being
We have a tendency to think in terms of doing and not in terms of being. We think that when we are not doing anything, we are wasting our time. But that is not true. Our time is first of all for us to be. To be what? To be alive, to be peaceful, to […]
Overcoming the Obstacles to Emotional Intelligence
“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity; more than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.” ~ Charlie Chaplin “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to […]
