Tag Archives: spiritual

Fulfilling Your Real Needs

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The Dreamer and the Judge

The Dreamer and the Judge

A few weeks ago, we looked at the subpersonality process as experienced by Maria and her integration of two subpersonalities, Miss Victorious and Miss Silent.

As previously mentioned, the subpersonality integration process includes the following stages: recognition, acceptance, coordination, integration, and synthesis.

This week, let’s look at each of these stages in detail.

Recognition

We begin to recognize our subpersonalities when we consciously choose to identify the different roles we are playing in different situations with different people. A good place to start is with any conflicts you might be facing at the moment. In particular, what roles seem to no longer be successfully working? For example, one client strongly identified herself with a subpersonality called Stella who wanted no problems and needed perfection, control and certainty. This subpersonality was obviously challenged by the uncertainty and ambiguities we all must face in our everyday lives.

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Playing with Dream Symbols

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dreamsAssagioli wrote little about dreams or how to interpret them. Despite being a student of Freud’s and colleague of Jung’s, he felt that dreams reveal only a partial aspect of the human personality. He also believed that only part of the unconscious is able, or willing, to express itself through dreaming. He wrote that dreams that occur during the psychosynthesis process reveal the dreamer’s energetic forces, environment, and the inner world that birthed the dream.

In the last blog, I wrote about symbols and how we can consciously use them to further our personal and spiritual growth. We can also use the symbols that unconsciously appear to us in our dreams. Dreams are expressions of our life force, and the symbols that appear in them can be interpreted a multitude of ways from both a personal and collective perspective. Jung was once asked for advice from someone who had the idea of publishing a dictionary of symbols. His response was not to do it, since each symbol would require an entire book!

Jung’s general advice about how to look at a dream is:

“Treat every dream as though it were a totally unknown object. Look at it from all sides, take it in your hand, carry it about with you, let your imagination play around with it.”

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Living a Symbolic Life

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Orthodox Baptristy Jesus

Ravenna is cold in February, but the sun still manages to warm the ancient stone archways. I place my cheek against a rough granite surface and feel the heat and energy collected over time. I have just spent the morning sitting in the Orthodox Baptistery, staring up at mosaics so carefully placed in the ceiling during the 4th and 5th centuries. The apostles march in procession above us, each carrying a triumphal laurel. In the center, John the Baptist is pouring the water from the River Jordan over the head of Jesus, who stands naked in the rippled pool. The Holy Spirit in the form of a dove dives into the blessing held aloft by John. To one side stands the pagan water god with a reed in one hand and a garment in another.

While admiring the intricate images, we are joined by two groups of Italian children. One school excursion after another quietly fills the domed building as a teacher explains the history and imagery that envelopes us. The octagonal room is relatively small and the space intimate. At one point a teacher asks, “Why did they use so many symbols in their art at that time?” Her answer: “Because the symbols conveyed la saggezza, the wisdom of that age.”

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