Or Did I Conceive It All Along?
Does Free Will Exist or Not?
What was it about age 31, which made me, as I reached this milestone, want to change in a deep way? To grow tall and reach up into the sky like a majestic gum tree. But I had to dive down into the depths first for this to happen. At least that’s what happened to me.
Numerology from Eastern cultures bestows a spiritual or mystical dimension on this number when you add the two digits together: 3+1= Number four (4). It’s exactly when some voices from deep inside me warned me that time was running out. Like a thundering or rumbling, as if a storm were approaching, the echo chamber within vibrated with fierce energy. You can learn to ignore such voices from the deep, or you can run with the noise and get caught up until the end.
I was 31 when I met the man who would become the father of my children. In mid-year 1975. The rest, as they say, is history.
My first mentors were Karl Marx, Germaine Greer, and my friend, Josie at Teachers’ College, the daughter of Jewish Communists from Bondi. I clung to their existential ideologies, including writings from Camus and Sartre, while studying at Sydney University.
At the same time, I became addicted to self-development. It was like peeling onion layers; more were always waiting for me to deal with. But I was determined to recover from the effects of crippling emotional baggage — especially guilt — I’d carried since childhood. Enter Sigmund Freud.
Far from allowing me free reign to explore the deepest parts of myself — the early buried fragments — my first gurus, including Freud, were themselves trapped in left-brain thinking. Even though this had enabled me to reach success in educational terms, it had not made me happy. I could produce written texts based on logical and rational thinking, and I’d taught these same skills with aplomb to tertiary-level students. It was all out of kilter with the growth paradigm.
For a long time, I wore melancholy like a badge of a pessimistic outlook on life — one that mocked my existence on this miserable planet. I was an insect clinging to a lump of rock, not wanting to let go, rolling around in a futile circle. The yawning void was below, nothingness above.
Change of any kind requires an enormous amount of energy and some degree of risk. If it touches on or unsettles your very personality — that part of you that is linked to the subconscious mind as well as to the surface “You” — it is doubly dangerous. The very ego must be confronted, just like in the case of an alcoholic wanting to heal. Carl Gustav Jung wrote about this often.
The craving for alcohol is the equivalent of … the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed … as the union with God … Alcohol in Latin is ‘spiritus’ and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as for the most depraving poison. The helpful formula, therefore, is spiritus contra spiritum.
https://aeon.co/ideas/how-jungs-collective-unconscious-inspired-alcoholics-anonymous
And so it was for me. I wanted wholeness. It was only a tiny shift: to see the glass half full instead of half empty. But it took a seismic shift in terms of effort and commitment on my part. It required me to get down on my knees and ask for help.
One of the triggers that pushed me towards change, was that I yearned to have a baby. Everything was in order for this to happen: I was married to a loving partner who had a fulfilling carer; I had a rewarding job. What I lacked was healthy self-esteem and a positive outlook on life, both essential if wished to bring a child into the world.
Enter my first helper, a gentle psychologist, who encouraged me to continue journalling and writing, which was becoming a great passion, as I focused on my childhood memories. The clue to healing was hidden in the darkest events stored in my subconscious mind. One event, in particular, stood out and provided me with a memory fragment to explore, and to re-imagine, amid the guilty clutter that I had carried with me from childhood.
Enter another great mentor here: Carl Gustav Jung. His memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, fell into my hands at some time during the late seventies, when I was approaching the date of my first child’s birth.
As I progressed through therapy, while working and bringing up two small children, as well as engaging in writing, I suffered a painful and cataclysmic nervous breakdown. It was no one’s fault. How I see it now, looking back after the event, was that it was the “breakdown” — that’s what my daughter called it in her class journal — that I had to have. Some have been through a nervous collapse and remained even more broken after the event. What was the element that made my experience different?
Mine was like an epiphany that ushered in a totally unexpected and necessary spiritual change. I had discovered that I had carried with me, since 1950, the guilt for my brother Donny’s near-death-fall from a pony, believing that childish thoughts and words could bring about an accident.
I am in the process of writing a memoir about this happening, called Voices from the Deep. I wish to share with others my experience, in the hope of showing that change is possible if the person is ready and committed to the huge impact and energy required to heal.
Take Away: A change can take place if one really needs and desires it. If the ego is involved, which was the case for me, one must be ready for the commitment that a fundamental shakeup of the ego requires. I had to descend into the subconscious memories from childhood, in order to find and face the incident that had caused me to stop growing emotionally. In my case, the transformation was accompanied by a spiritual change, which was a necessary part of the whole
The feature photo is of a Woman diving in the transparent sea. Freediving beautiful lady in the ocean by artifirsov: purchased by the author from AdobeStock: 502855902.jpeg