Gone to Australia - Back in three weeks

Whose tune are you dancing to? Clarissa Pinkola Estes tells the story of a poor girl who has painstakingly handcrafted a pair of red shoes which give her much pleasure. The shoes are representative of the hand crafted life, of living by one's own values. But sure enough, along comes the test, in the form of a golden carriage and a rich old woman who says she will look after her from now on. Those precious red shoes are thrown in the fire and now she has to do what she is told by the old woman - she is dancing to the old woman's tune. 

Her heart longs for those red shoes made by her own hands, however, and she is attracted to anything that reminds her of them, so when an up-to-no-good shoemaker shows her his red shoes, she fools the old lady into buying them. Even though they are red they are not her shoes. Now she is dancing to the shoemaker's tune and this is a mad dance that leads her to the executioner's door and only stops when he chops off her feet - a dramatic ending but right symbolically for dancing to another's tune is exhausting and can lead to the death of the spirit.

This week has been a stressful week - builders in the house, trying to get ready to go away and a partner down with a nasty flu. When trying to deal with all this the main thing on my mind was - I have to write a whole load of blogs to post for while I'm away. Why? Because They - yes the mysterious They - had said you must blog at least two or three times a week!

Ah - the beauty of stories. All week long the Red Shoes has been popping into my mind - finally I got the connection - I was trying to dance to someone else's tune - instead of handcrafting my blog the way it suited me - I need to dance my blog not let my blog dance me.

So, thank you, all you lovely readers for enjoying the posts. They will resume shortly. In the meantime I have negotiated the technology so now you can email subscribe and have new posts sent straight to your email box.

p.s. so as not to leave the story on a grim note - according to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, this is a fragment of a much longer story and in the lost passages, after an incubation period, her feet would have grown back and she would have found some shoes that were just right for her. 

What fairytale characters have to teach us

Winding down the Stars - detail - etching

I've always loved the Jungian idea that all the characters in a story are aspects of one psyche. It makes fairytales so much more interesting and valuable. It is too easy to identify with Snow White and despise the wicked step-mother. Looked at in Jungian terms, however, I am not only the innocent child, but also the jealous, scheming Queen and the ineffective, gullible King - not to mention the hunter, the dwarfs etc. Accepting this allows me to connect with those  resisted aspects and find out what part they are playing in my life. 

Our world abounds in stories. We love stories - in books and movies, on TV soaps and before that around the kitchen table or the fireplace. Without necessarily being conscious of it, we live our lives as if it were a story. To discover one's story, and the array of characters within it, is a fascinating journey and can lead to great inner treasure - knowing what role you are playing, gaining an insight into your strengths and vulnerabilities, shedding light on ones shadow aspects - can lead to living a more authentic life in a more powerful way.

One way to discover one's story is to choose a favourite fairytale, one that has always resonated for you. List the characters - which can include animals or important objects - for example, in my own exploration of the Princess and the Pea, I included the pea and the mattresses. Next take each 'character' and write a short piece as if you were them - a monologue - as if they had turned to the audience and were speaking directly about what is important to them and why they did what they did and how they felt about it. This doesn't have to be a written exercise - it can also be acted, danced, sculpted etc. 

This exercise can be done with any story or film that has caught your imagination. I even did it with an episode of Star Trek Voyager that particularly haunted me - with amazing results. I'll summarize my own discoveries from the Princess and the Pea in the next post.

Taming your Perfectionist - the process of Active Imagination

cameo etching

I suppose there must be some people who do not have a perfectionist in their family of archetypes, but I haven't met one yet. The perfectionist comes in many guises: the critic, the judge, the censor, the dictator, the tyrant, the slave-driver, the bully. Each person's perfectionist will have its own flavour. My own is the hard task master.

Taming your perfectionist means getting to know it. It means having a conversation with it. It means finding out what its values are, what it cares about and where it comes from.

The best way to do this, that I know of, is to use a Jungian technique called active imagination. Active imagination means to have a dialogue with an aspect of yourself. You can do this as a conversation in your mind, but I prefer to write it down. 

First of all, I write down an open ended question, such as - Will you tell me your story? Or - What is important to you? Or - What expectations do you have of me?

Then I wait for the answer which I hear with my inner hearing and sometimes there are images or kinetic sensations in my body as the archetype adopts a different body language from my own.

All I have to do is listen and write down what I hear. I don't have to wait long, believe me, your archetypes are only too eager to connect with you and have their say.

When doing active imagination it is best to maintain an attitude of inquiry, (a bit like Data from Star Trek who was curious about everything but in a very neutral way), to trust what you hear and allow it to flow - after all you are finding out some very vital information about yourself. 

You may want to ask some clarifying questions or point out the effect the perfectionist has on your life - which may not be what that archetype intended. For example, when my hard task master gets going, it will set impossibly high standards and set exhausting work schedules with the intention of creating success - what actually results of course is exhaustion and despair.

Having a conversation with an archetype is useful for these reasons:

1. It lessens the power that archetype has to ambush you. Before I got to know my hard task master, I could be operating under its power without being aware of it, now I recognise it sooner, am able to say, oh it's you again, and choose a more balanced approach.

2. Think of yourself as an iceberg, with all you know about yourself as the tip, the 1/8 that is above the water. By doing active imagination you get to know more of the 7/8 below the water, the unknown, hidden you. Being in dialogue with an archetypal aspect makes it possible to negotiate change, transformation, for both of you to find a new attitude to the issue at hand.

3. The more you know yourself, the richer and deeper will be your work and the more authentic will be your way of going about your life. As Tolstoy said:

If you want to work on your art, work on your life.

One tremendous bonus of bringing a shadow* aspect into the light is the enormous amount of energy that comes with it, not to mention a greater sense of inner ease and inner strength.

* Shadow does not mean horrible or frightening, it simply means an aspect of yourself you don't know yet.