The Furious Spinner

I wanted to leave you with a quote, so I picked up Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia by Rob Brezsny, a book one of you dear readers recommended to me, and I opened it up randomly to "What If Your Desires Are Holy?" I do think our desires are holy. Someday I may take out the paragraph below "Furious Spinner" and put the Mary Oliver quote in its place: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves." So here is part of what Rob Brezsny says about desires:

"...At the Beauty and Truth Lab, we walk a middle path. We believe there are both degrading desires that enslave you and sacred desires that liberate you. Psychologist Carl Jung believed that all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they may seem. Frustration and ignorance may contort them into distorted caricatures, but it is always possible to locate the divine source from which they arose. In describing one of his addictive patients, Jung said: 'His cravingn for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in meddieval language: the union with God.'

"Therapist James Hillman echoes the theme: 'Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way.' A preoccupatin with porn or romance novels, for instance, may come to dominate a passionate person whose quest for love has degenerated into an obsession with images of love. 'Follow the lead of your symptoms,' Hillman suggests, 'for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul.'"

So go out and express yourself.

Labels: Mary Oliver

3 comments

3 Comments:

Love this - 'ther's usually a myth in the mess' indeed!

Hungarian-Jewish-Mexican Jungian Cantadora Clarissa Pinkola Estes suggests we all have one archetypal story which functions as a sort of template for our individual paths: that whatever story haunts us in whatever way - stands out from the rest - holds the key to our whole expression.

The one we remember above others, the one that holds the greatest emotional whallop, the one we dreamt about, the one we kept secret or feared -

She also points out that much of the time our problem is that we identify with the passive person in the tale, and our hero's journey as human beings involves switching our identification to align with the active principle.

Interesting stuff. I knew immediately what my story was, and began to use it as a tool to excavate the kind of life I want, and found it an enormously useful tool -

Nice essay, Kim! Thanks.

By  Theriomorph, at 9:15 AM  

So glad the book is good for you. It certainly was good for me.

As for theriomorph's comment: I talked in my own journal recently about identifying the fairy tale or story that really moved you as a child and using it to idenfity important themes in your life.

Blessings to you,

Venecia

By  Venecia, at 7:30 AM  

Hi, Venecia! I'm glad you reminded me who it was because I had forgotten. I hope you're doing well. I haven't read the book from cover to cover. I pick it up now and again and take pieces of it—sort of like a box of chocolates. Oh geez. I think I just channelled Forrest Gump...

Yes, and thanks, theriomorph. I need to do that. So many fairy tales speak to me, but there are a couple which keep coming back to me again and again. Does she talk about that in Women Who Run With the Wolves? I read that again every few years. Loved it. We did a day long "workshop" of sorts with her in Albuquerque many years ago. It was a (large) group of us sitting around listening to her talk and tell stories, and she was mesmerizing (in a good way); the whole thing felt very authentic, rooted in story. Thanks for the reminder, both of you.

By  Kim Antieau, at 7:45 AM  

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