Multiple personalities need multiple rooms

"I like to imagine a person's psyche to be like a boarding house full of characters. The ones who show up regularly and who habitually follow the house rules may not have met other long-term residents who stay behind closed doors, or who only appear at night. An adequate theory of character must make room for character actors, for the stuntmen and animal handlers, for all the figures who play bit parts and produce unexpected acts. They often make the show fateful, or tragic, or farcically absurd"  James Hillman

Does this at least partly explain why we have different rooms in our homes, each designed and decorated to satisfy  our different characters, their particular moods, fetishes and indulgences?  I'm inclined to think so.

So, how do we create individual spaces for our soul dwellers, some of whom are only too ready to show up for extravagance and vulgar ostentation and others who must be lured out with the assurance of quiet, reflective nooks and brooding crannies. 

"Ah, the perfect brood 'bode" 

Image from here

"Now she won't be able to see me"

Image from here

"Oh, come on Henry, don't be such an insufferable bore"

Image from here  

What about you? What kinds of spaces do your characters seek out?

Do you know what your life work is and do you know that you know?

No, I'm not trying to be clever here because this is a question that I've been trying to answer for a very long time.  To be honest, I'm actually ashamed to admit it.  You'd think that by my age I'd have surely got something so fundamental sorted out.  Sadly, that ain't the case.

I've done a few different things in my life, job-wise, but I've soon tired of them and so moved on or moved away.  I often think of some of the things I might have done or might still be able to do and I wonder why I didn't or why I don't.

It's not that I'm desperately unhappy or even bored.  It's just that I feel there's so much more for me to experience and enjoy and I believe that the thing that I give most time and energy to should be the where and how I have these experiences.  Is this unreasonable?  And please don't tell me it's unrealistic because I beieve that reality is what we make, not what happens to us as we passively sit on the side-walk of life.

 So, I guess, the question I need to ask myself is: Why am I not making the reality that I really want?

Now, here's where everything I've read and heard about the Law of Attraction might provide some answers.  Well, I've gone down this alley and I've discovered some really useful things.  Like how to use visualization and how to get clear about your beliefs and change them if necessary and also, how to take action. 

 

I'm not saying I've learned everything that I need to learn from it but I'm sure I've learned enough to help me create the reality I want. So why am I still feeling like there are worlds out there that I so want to explore?

Thomas Moore, a psychotherapist and author and who is greatly influenced by James Hillman, writes about the soul's work in his book, A Life at Work.

  

Now, I've noticed that you cannot read about 'soul' without also reading about 'alchemy'.  Sooner or later, you're going to have to meet it and get to understand it.  Hopefully, at some point, you'll actually experience it. So, why am I mentioning it here?  Because the overriding theme of Moore's book, A Life at Work, is alchemy.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to go into alchemy in this post but I will in other posts as I feel it's critical to 'soul talk'. But I mention it here because, according to Moore, our life and the work that we engage in is a constant process of refining our understanding of our soul's purpose, the work that it is here to do.

     

I like that.  I like that a lot.  You see, it's so easy for me to dismiss some things that I've done (and even things that I'm doing) as unimportant or less important than others.  But to see it as a meaningful and critical part of understanding my soul's purpose, which is really about doing what I want to do and knowing that it is what I want to do, would be nice. 

I like this thing that Moore says:

"We humans are not evolving but circling, and that the stuff of our souls keeps coming back for more attention and more living.."

Soul movement and Mood Swings, Not!!

I don't know about you but I've noticed that my mood can change rapidly. 

Now, before you continue reading, having smugly concluded that I've got a monstrous case of pre-menstrual or menopausal symptoms, just let me clarify one thing.

These are not mood swings from 'I could wring his *#%* neck' to 'Honey, why don't you let me massage that tired back of yours with my twin-top?".

They are just changes, fluctuations, if you will, or 'flow' or something that's not associated with extremes, especially extremes of a hormonal, female kind.

But I digress.

My last post was about lighting, in an obtuse sort of way, I guess. And I find that I'm still fascinated by it (No, not the post but the lighting).  I've probably been fascinated by it all my life without realizing it.

I'm fascinated by how much light (and its absence) really affects us, causing changes, fluctuations, flow, whatever,  in (or should that be 'of'?) our mood.

 This image from http://archinspire.com/

Just a few minutes ago, for instance, following a brief shower (it rained), the park behind my apartment looked like it had been to a funeral - dark and somber, it waited to be consoled. And it was. In a flash.

Literally before my eyes, as if someone had clicked the forward button on a slide show, sunlight flooded it! The entire park smiled as the sun's light played with the leaves on its trees and the grass on the ground.

Now that was one 'wow' moment for me. It was then that I realized how I'd been feeling just a moment before - heavy, dull, uninspired and probably uninspiring.

Which brings me to the real subject of this post - natural lighting for our rooms and what I feel the soul likes.

 This image from http://www.nabuzz.com/

In my last post, I'd concluded that the soul prefers soft lighting.  Perhaps I should have said diffused light - would that be a classier phrase to use?  And when you couple that with some of the soul's artwork like you see in the image above, well, I can't imagine the soul not smiling, can you?  What an absolutely genius idea!

But, you might be wondering, why does the soul shy away from bright light?  It's not a vampire, is it? 

"Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life".  James Hillman

It can be very tiring being in the light all the time, especially if it's light that doesn't change like the lighting in an office.  It's like being in a perpetual conversation with one person and hearing the same thing over and over again.  You're stuck in the same groove.
 

But natural light is always changing and its changes allow our mood to change as things flow - thoughts, ideas, feelings, movement.  It means things are moving.  It means being alive. Well alive.

Fancy being a Soul Detective?

Frantisek-Drtikol-The-Soul--1930Fan

I had a whole torrent of thoughts and ideas (anyone care to point out the difference as I'm sometimes not sure myself?).  But then there was this mental tussle - shouldn't this go in my other blog, Thought Bubble Ten, currently under Google scrutiny for supposed spam? (Puhleeeeaseeeeee)

Anyways, it was a good thing, this tussle, as it made me think again about how this blog is different from all others.  And so, a reminder to myself (and you) of its main themes:

The Soul
Psychology (yes, clearly soul talk to me but perhaps not so clearly to others)
Creating rooms for soul expression

    

At some point, I shall have to go into some in-depth soul-talk but not today and not now.  You see, I really think that the soul is constantly expressing itself, or at least, trying to. We can get in the way which is one reason why I'm so keen to (re)acquaint myself with it.  No, not through analysis (though there may be a place for that too) but through observation. (Alright, go ahead and tell me that observation involves analysis. It doesn't but it sure as heck invites it like certain traders in a red light street).

So what do we observe? Why, our dwelling places, of course. And places or spaces that we take partial or temporary possession of and personalize, like our offices or workstations. (Incidentally, did we have workstations before play-station?).

But it's not just our dwelling places or rooms that I'm encouraging us to observe.  It's also the other areas that we consider 'ours' or, at least, that we're responsible for, like our wardrobes and pantries and gardens and toilets.

But, you say, aren't all of these expressions of our personality and not our soul?

Ah, what a great question you challenge me with!

Of course they are, but tell me, where does your personality come from?

From.... well...from...uh...well...em...lots of things, like our upbringing (especially our upbringing), our genes, our social environment, our...

Yes, yes, yes, you're right.  Of course you're right.  But there are other 'right' things in that mix, like the soul, for instance.

Yes, the soul is perhaps the greatest shaper of our personality.  The thing is, because of all those other factors, it tends to shape our personality more as a result of suppression than as a result of active expression. Which is why observing all our dwelling places and our shared spaces (including our blogs) gives us vital clues about the soul.  It's like they tell us about our personality but hint at our soul.  Know what I mean?

"By soul I mean, first of all, a perspective rather than a substance, a viewpoint toward things rather than a thing itself. This perspective is reflective; it mediates events and makes differences between ourselves and everything that happens. Between us and events, between the doer and the deed, there is a reflective moment -- and soul-making means differentiating this middle ground". James Hillman

    

So here's a little exercise for you: What does the space below tell you about the soul of its creator?  Oh, go on.  It's not a test and by all means, humor me (and yourself).  Just keep it clean :)

  

My soul takes me to a room of immeasurable beauty

Come, said my soul,
such verses for my body let us write, (for we are one),
that should I after death invisibly return
or, long, long hence, in other spheres,
there to some group of mates the chants resuming
(tallying earth's soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)
ever with pleas'd smile I may keep on,
ever and ever yet the verses owning --as, first, I here and now,
singing for soul and body, set them to my name

Walt Whitman, Inscriptions to Leaves of Grass,


I am in real danger of losing myself in the things that I love doing that I may become completely unreachable.  Which is why I blog.  It keeps me here, talking.  Well, pretending to talk to someone, you.  It forces me to try and make myself comprehensible, to use words where I may not be inclined to, dissolved and wordless as I can sometimes feel, when I'm lost in what I love.

And when at last I return to some humanly recognizable form, I find myself speaking, dare I say it (?), rather like a poet.  And I feel compelled to immerse myself in the language of poetry for it seems to be the only one that I can understand or that understands me.

I could blame my soul.  But why do I speak of blame, as if these episodes are harmful to me?  They are not, but I find myself trying hard to convince myself of it.

The soul, after all, is a daemon, a guardian angel, a genius, who, more often than not has to cope with or stave off a world determined to rein it in, indignify it with its pathetically low standards. (Robert Zoller writes nicely about James Hillman's daemon here or, even better, go read James' book, The Soul's Code)

   

Oh,these are the times when my soul easily lures its body into some of the most beautiful rooms in the world like this one:

 

or this

Image by hanzen_bucket