When you write or
speak about personal growth you encounter two jostling rocks which you need to
negotiate your way through. On the one hand, in your attempts to systematize or
plot a course in order to give some form to the inner journey, you specify and simplify
elements and sign posts. On the other hand, you must never lose sight of the
individual's uniqueness. So for almost every generalization you recognize that
what you propose as the rule to follow may just as easily be broken and prove
to be the exception. Generalization versus uniqueness! Yet it is just this
point that distinguishes authentic art and real creativity from mere daubing,
hack art, and empty contrivance.
The great books,
paintings, sculptures, and dramas tend to have this single point in common -
they express the universal through the particular. The impersonal appears out
of the personal! And this is how it should be, because in the deepest darkness
of the human mystery known as the psyche an impersonal seam of truth lies
awaiting the convulsions of the land of the soul and spirit, an earthquake of
the power and magnitude of those that erupt and reveal mighty huge crystal
caves that lay for thousands of years beneath the earth's surface.
Deep within us are
the luminous, crystal caves of the soul. Reaching into them is a journey of
daring. Not all receive the call to this adventure. But for those of us who are
called there is an intense rightness about the path to the core of ourselves,
an intense and growing realization that, without the discoveries the call
yields, we remain unborn and denied the fresh vistas of life's treasures, which
are so expansive, so deep, that our previous life pales in comparison.
It is as if we are
waking up - and must wake up -- to some new dimension of life
and, as with all calls to new life, the process begins with an invitation, a
gateway, to change and transformation. This gateway is an archetype - recurring
patterns in human behavior, universal symbols and motifs. But the reward
demands a certain effort.
Let us draw on the
myth of the heroic journey that essentially is comprised of these three
elements: the call to adventure, the adventure with
its trials and initiatory events, and finally the return with
the gift for collective society. The journey requires willingness, receptivity,
courage, resilience, faith, and surrender.
For many however,
resistance or refusal to hear the call is the first challenge. For human beings
are prone to delusions of safety and security. These delusions stand between
them and the adventure of change and transformation. The more radical and great
the adventure they are called to, the more resistance and struggle they are
liable to experience. Psychologically this is known as attachment.
Our first attachment is to our mother and the dynamics of the relationship and
the narrative of how that evolved in our early lives comprises the familiar and
"safe" holding pattern that is likely to preside over our lives.
We are shaken out
of our attachment to our ordinary world. The life we have structured and
scheduled around this familiarity is our comfort zone and our comfort zone can
easily become the stagnant pond of our lives. We may fear the call to the
unknown, hesitate at the risk involved, grow fearful of what we must give up
and leave behind, feel apprehensive about what others might think of our
reckless behavior, and falter at the perceived cost to ourselves and the life
we have known. As we track back we can see the times in our lives when we were
called to new adventure to change, to the new gateways of developing life.
Perhaps a letter or an email, reading an inspiring passage in a book, or
hearing a catalytic speaker who opens us up, the sight of a person we haven't
met before, a challenging job offer or a promotion, the chance to move to
another country... or of course starting therapy.
For those of us who
persist in to the further reaches of personality work we encounter the ultimate
call on the childhood egoic level that call is to finally release all.
