Poulnabrone

Mystical Irish Dolmens

Dennis Eamon Young Photography 2006

Poulnabrone is one of Europe's best known and most photographed Dolmen (Portal Tomb) structures, dated at approximately 5,500 years old. It is part of The Burren, an ancient limestone plateau which covers most of county Clare in Western Ireland. The thinking is that it was formed at the end of the last ice age. Along with its austere beauty, it hosts 1,000 species of flowers which draw their sustenance from the underground waterways coursing through the subterranean caves flourish there.

http://www.burrenpage.com/Poulnabrone.html (a website for more info on this dolmen)

Kilmogue: Below is the portal tomb I visited and it felt magical to be in its presence.

Photograph by Kimberly Fox

Kilmogue: Here is the sign that led to and explained this portal tomb:

Photograph by Kimberly Fox

Notes from 2005 Jung In Ireland

Jung In Ireland 2005 Notes
Opening Lecture by Jeffrey Raff:
Second Sacrifice and Birth of the Self

Second Half of Life

35-40: Change in relationship to psyche, selfSymbols of Transformation (volume)
Psychic energy could run through a number of channels, including sex but not limited to it (This idea led Jung to break with Freud)

There is a demand these phases make and consequences.

Self - whole range of psychic phenomenon in a human being
Personality is mostly unconscious
Equals the god image within us
Self guides all the psychic impulses that are occurring
Most people – self is functioning at a weak level, specifically if not looking at dreams, etc.
Latent self – individuation transforms latent self into powerful manifest self

Begin to feel an inner strength that was not thereEgo comes into relationship with the self

Pay attention to the self and its messages

Individuation depends on ego’s relationship-self

Demands attention in second half of life
Meet demands of first half and second half respectively

First half of life is about the development of ego

Ego learning to adjust and adapt – leaving family, getting a job

Ego asserts itself, leaves home and deals with the world

Take psychic energy invested in mother and invest it into the world (adolescence)

Or negative, devouring unconscious forms – helpless, dependant

Sacrifice (Nut?) your mother in order to make that transition into the world
Have to kill this image

Energy released progresses into outer world

Second half
Things begin to feel flat – outer endeavors become tiresome

Regresses into the unconscious

Energy flows backward- can go all the way back to collective unconscious

Sacrifice the World (Hindu horse sacrifice)

Sacrifice all the energy (what you have built) you’ve put into the world
-depression
-fairly important dreams
Archetypal – needs to be dealt with

Our culture doesn’t honor this phase

If you don’t go into it – men- motorcycle, younger wife
Women – surgery

Flow with the process – introverted period

Second Sacrifice

Unconscious is active and alive in a way it’s never been

Has a message but the message is unknown

Fantasy images – dreams *active imagination, major tool
Contact and make conscious

Ego needs to turn within

Self is trying to make itself manifest, presenting material you need to make that known to you

Active Imagination – Principle means self manifests
Ancient history

*Experience unconscious in a waking state –
Conscious interaction with them, find a way to record them
Dancing, painting, dialogues

Enable the ego to encounter the unconscious in a conscious condition

Transcendent function
2 conflicting ideas are united in a symbol

Logical person starts having feelings but has known logic, meet an inner figure (in active imagination) who teaches you

Hold the tension and move through discomfort, feeling and thinking into a new image
Transcendent function creates a third entity from the two
Union of ego and unconscious = self

Feeling of being guided and strengthened by something greater than one’s self
Active imagination – conscious and direct interaction
Analysis is the process in which you teach analysands active imagination

Second Half

First half= ego growing and strengthening

Second half – has to sacrifice itself

Ego resists self-sacrifice

Ego must sacrifice its dream of all power

Can’t rule the unconscious any more
Can terrify people – crazy, loss of control
Pay attention to what the unconscious is telling you
Profound transformation available

Self sacrifice and re-entry into the mother (archetypal great mother)
Unconscious is now in partnership with you
This growth is endless
Ego will feel surrounded and supported by divine presence
Rootless = failure to meet these challenges

Some people able to simply avoid these challenges
Paying attention – incredibly powerful tool ego has at its disposal
Attention is blood

Incubation heats up unconscious
No alchemist then alchemy doesn’t occur

Inner figures are real entities
Process that needs your help to transform
Take these figures seriously
Not living for ourselves anymore but for everybody – create Tikkun
All the unconscious forces

Second half confronts death, spiritual transformation; connect with the divine in some way
Respond to demands of inner voice – active imagination twice per week (15-20 minutes)
Ego resists
Return to the world in a transformed way.

Pay attention to what’s happening, going on in your body, fantasies
Why now?
Dialoging with figures
Consc suffering – particularly in the world’s pain
Reflective of your own
This is our purpose and gives life meaning

Personal myth – self will tell you something that suits you perfectly
Dialogue A-B until C

Sacrifice ego’s position of total dominance

Meditation is great way to start active imagination

“Empty nest gives you the chance to lay an alchemical egg.”

When sacrifice not done, then life makes it happen
Walking willingly or being dragged by the self
Death of a parent


Coming to birth of self is the most profound mystery you may ever experience.

Talmud: “Dream uninterpreted is like a letter unopened.”
Jung said the best way to age is to live as if you’re immortal.

“Purpose of a problem is not to be solved…but to experience it.” – Jung

New perspective of your consciousness – it’s really not a problem any more
(I see this as a facet of how I do psychic readings)

(My thoughts: What this tells me is that there is a divine and perfect order that we often fail to see, but if we utilize every experience as if it were meant to be, our lives will take on a rich, transcendence.)



Claire Dunne: Carl Jung, Wounded Healer of the Soul

The psyche is, by nature, religious according to Jung

Personality 1 – By nature
Personality 2 – Created to fit in

“Why be a second class Jung when I can be a first class me?”

“I’m glad I’m Jung and not a Jungian.” Jung

Authenticity. We need to become our complete selves.
Perfection is a masculine concept
Completion: feminine wholeness

Death of a Woman by Jane Wheelwright (look up?)

“Doubt and insecurities are indispensable components of a complete life.” Jung (letters)

Deep in the psyche you must meet the spiritual.
Self can appear as images, such as wise old man, priestess.

“People, even theologians, are embarrassed to talk about God.
It is more polite to talk about sex.” - Jung


John O’ Donohue: The Art of Balance

Gift of the mind is the greatest gift
“In time of peace the warlike person attacks himself.” Nietzsche

Quality of presence of mind
Grey-blue light, pools of silver – epiphany and brightness were eventing themselves

Balance and middle way only make sense as constructs

Balance that is truly formed,not frightened paralysis

Experience is structured with loyalty to duality

Where the dualities meet-at a threshold–vigorous placeEach of us is a force field, which makes us more interesting than chairs, doors, windows, intensity of isnessWhat are you leaving out in yourself that’s dying to talk to you?

Sophia Institute in California

A soul is a bloody dangerous thing to have.
Disturbing, yet imagination loves duality

We are imagined by ourselvesYour knowing of yourself is an act of imagination

Introduce yourself as anyone you want

Imagination loyal to wholeness and wholeness – opposition inevitably invited

Hospitality to miracle of thereness,

As if identity were equivalent to biography

“It’s easy to choreograph a fairly flat life but it’s such a waste.”
We can get so lost behind the facades of respectability that it completely masks that we are totally lost.”

Substantial magnetic ordering in us
Subtle form of who you are will begin to love? Live? After itself
Poem will start misbehaving and define itself

Let the complexity of yourself emerge – natural coherence of rhythm
Great respect for the unknown within us

If we brought the same hospitality to the things we don’t like about ourselves

(Tempkin Museum in San Diego)

“It is on no map; no true place ever is.”

Always a shape of presence latent in the chaos

Finding the myth in the mys

Emergence of form to the imagination that welcomes it and can receive it
Balance is a living thing. It has passion – requires loyalty to the opposing force (art of balance)

Balance is a grace
Adventure of being doesn’t offer you security; anything can happen to you
Need to go down beneath turbulent waters to the still place
Unseen force
Priestliness of the human heart
“There’s something about being in the rhythm of a thing; it looks after you.”


John O’Donohue: Midlife – Invitation to a New Sensuousness

Takes us longest to reach what is nearest

Come home to being a body and like it

Vows to themselves – a wedding to one’s own body

Awakening simultaneously act of distance and act of nearing

Broken, exiled relationships to one’s own body and yet rare to see someone
Who didn’t belong to the body they were in
What declarations are visible in me?

Irony is that we’ve never seen our own faces.
Mirror exercises: what I glimpsed in myself that I never suspected

We are a threshold between visible and invisible

Without the visible we’re boring

Last secret is secret of privacy

Geography of psyche revealed through rhythm of the body

Incredible that we’re not totally invisible

Death scraped tracings on the invisible

Visibility sister of vision

Visibility maturing to invisibility

Invisibility claiming space

Belief in invisible – you should have no fear

“If we let our bodies alone they would have an incredible belonging with nature.”
Rilke: In difficult times you should always endeavor to stay close to one thing in nature.

Liturgy that starts with the toes
Psyche and spirit – when you attend to both rhythm words incredible logic of darkness in eros of the body

Don Patterson, Scottish poet: all of the body almost speaks
Daniel & Siegal: Developing Mind – Brain is learning, self-activating organ

What enzymes are up to in their private time

Orchestra of the body speaking to the little broken string

Yes there will be music again

Sophistication of senses in us

Everything pivots on individual integrity allied to some kind of natural belonging to our body – Home

Mindfulness that unfolds in your senses

Bring a consciousness to your body – Under a mindful gaze, the world deepens
Ask yourself – what did I really see?

Listening. Being visible is like having a day off

Which of my senses do I not give fair pleasure? Take an afternoon and take that one out.

Your knees have had experiences that your elbows know nothing about

(My thought: real way to be a psychic is to be a poet of the moment and the invisible)

This must be from Areyah “He who says something in the name of the person who said it, redeems the world.” Talmud

Christina Mulvey: Images that Heal

“The years when I was pursuing my inner images were the most important in my life – in them everything essential was decided.” -C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections

“The challenge seems to be staying true to one’s own tune within the orchestra of life.” – Christina Mulvey’s tape

You can understand with your mind but unless you connect with your heart, nothing really changes – Jung

Pay attention; healing images are there all the time

Stand the tension of opposites in our own being and wait and listen,
Pay attention. I’m important enough to take the time and space
(Jung v.16, pg 489)

How do we accept what we are? -Christina

“The sorrow that cuts deep leaves more space for joy.” – Gibran

The self is the one we could rest in and nest in if we would allow ourselves
Mostly it’s the accumulation of work that makes the difference

We’re terrified of what we might do

Do what you can, not what you think you can. – Jung

It’s not about smoothing but honoring and respecting

Persona – outer mask

“All shirts are wrinkled in a different way but all smooth shirts are very similar.” – Christina

“All true things change so only that which changes remains true.” – Jung

“To have someone who just delights in the wonder of you is a wonderful gift.” Senter (from our group)

Christina wanted to stop her work at the Jung Institute in Zurich. Combining thinking and feeling, she questioned why she should do this. In truth, she was afraid to go on.

Very relevant for me at the conference, times I feel blocked and I don’t want to go on, do anymore, and in truth, why should I? But what happens if I recognize fear coming up and simply continue?

Claire Dunne: “Mother Ireland”

Granddaughter of Noah led here (to Ireland) 50 women, 3 men
Feminine principle in this country is natural

“To be natural is to be holy.” John O’Donohue

Carl Jung: “The psyche is by nature religious.”

Of the land – pagus

Deer is a sacred animal, like the swan

We come from the earth, not the earth from us, thus she is mother

Jessica Power (writer) “I sometimes think we pass life by.”

Michael Danes (writer) mythic Ireland

Human and divine=living between two worlds

Winter as chaos initiating (gestating?) rebirth

Go into the darkness – form a relationship with it.

“You cannot go through the Rockies and remain small.” Claire
Pilgrim At Tinkers Creek

St Brigid = 3 elements in one
Derry = sacred oak grove
3 patron saints
She’s the third and amalgam of three different layers, elemental fire goddess
Royal daughter of the god “(Daigido?) worshipped by poets
Christian saint – Mary of Gael

“Landscape has a secret and silent memory.” Jung

Myths are stories of psychic process of death and rebirth
Receptivity

Recommended Reading: Symbolic Landscape by Paul Deveraux

Maisey Cavanaugh: when we go out in the bush we don’t talk, we listen to what the land is telling us

A.E. Russell – Shining beings – midworld
Opalescent beings – heaven world


Manisha Roy “Aging as Initiation”

Midlife – last chance for puberty rite that we miss in the west
Natural process of initiation

Initiation is at the core of human experience – cyclical process, can’t control death.


Carol Pearson, Archetypal Stages of Hero’s Journey

Happy child = innocence story
Teenage = seeker story

– innocent and orphan are two sides of inner child

Warrior/caretaker are two sides of inner parent

Midlife Transition: Seeker, Destroyer, Lover, Creator

Return: Living the stories of Ruler, Magician, Safe and Jester
If you haven’t connected with their stories, you may have a hard time moving through them

Psyche type = hardware

More software than we even know how to use

Free upgrade of our archetypes (Johnny Depp movie Don Juan de Marco– sees bigger picture)

What stories have you been living?
What stories still want to be lived?
What stories may you be resistant to living?
www.capt.org

drudge/caretaker- self sacrifice

Innocent – optimism denial

Orphan – realism, wounded child empathy self-destruction

Move into archetype, become less dependent on original imprinting

Caregiver martyr enabler take care of one’s self

Warrior soldier set a goal and go after it winning –

work to death for something of great value

Principle set a boundary, akido – deflect violence

Midlife is liminal space

The Hero’s Journey (Carol Pearson)

Hero’s journey is an initiation into the reality of the soul’s journey. It requires us to establish and then let go of control over our lives, to put aside our horror at confronting death, pain and loss.

To experience life’s wholeness we must let go of sentiment, safety and predictability. Even our own concern with physical safety, effectiveness and virtue. We move out of the duality of good and bad, me and you, right and wrong and into a world of paradox.

Different morality from ego’s. Ego wants the world to make sense.

The journey requires us to put all these desires aside and see the soul’s truth that essence of life is mystery.

The soul’s truth does not necessarily make any sense from a rational ego point of view. It is good to be healthy, wealthy and wise but what makes us alive and real is journeying into the central mysteries of life where we learn about death, dissolution, sex, passion, ecstasy, and to see the beauty of it all.

Preparation of the journey is about learning to be strong, moral and healthy but the journey itself is about experiencing the great mysteries of life—death, passion, birth, creation—as mysteries.

There is no punishment for failing to connect with one’s soul except the ever present sense of meaninglessness in one’s life.