A Curious Girl: A lesson in psychology

Later editing: Jungian psychology - wouldn't recommend, mainly as I do not agree with Jung in many things

Come with me into my unconscious.

The italics are the instructions I was given.

Close your eyes.

Breathe slowly until you have a relaxed, regular breathing pattern. Slowly tense and relax the muscles in your feet, thighs, buttocks, back and neck.

You are walking on a trail up a mountain. It is dark and there is a full moon. You can see your surroundings. Look at them. Observe how you are feeling.

The trail is muddy, and through a pine wood. I can see a rabbit, briefly, and a fox. Crickets are out, the whole forest is alive and hostile. I am cold, lonely and apprehensive.

The trail has a side-path, which leads off to a cave where a wise person lives. Walk up that path, and observe how your scenery changes.

I climb up the path, finding it quite steep. The trees become more sparse. There are hardly any plants, only a few remains of dead pines. I can see the cave.

Outside the cave you see a small campfire, at which the wise person is sitting.

I can see him. He is old, with a shadowy face in the poor light, and a grey-white beard.

Put some wood on the fire, and sit down. The fire burns brighter and you can see the wise person’s face. What do you see?

I see an ancient man, with long white hair and a long curly beard. His eyes are pale blue, laughing and twinkling eyes. He sits cross-legged as I do, and his robe is soft cream silk.

Ask him a question that is important to you. Watch his reaction. What does he do?

His hand flashes before me; he opens his palm revealing a compass, but pulls it back before I can see which way the needle is pointing. I recognise the compass. It is one I drew in the hand of a woman with fairy wings.

So many questions spin in my head. I try to pick one, eventually settling on my career.

“Should I be a doctor?”

He throws his head back and laughs, a long haunting laugh, a mocking laugh which shakes me. I am afraid. I long for him to stop; I don’t understand what he finds funny. Thoughts of David are in my head also. They swim and collide with the laughter. I don’t understand.

How do you feel about the wise person?

I am afraid of him. He is a lunatic, an insane man that has made his way into my mind. And yet I know he is, too, wise.

Ask him any more questions if you like.

I try to, but it seems so futile. The cave is still echoing with laughter.

You are about to go, but before you do, he reaches into his bag to give you a gift. What is it? How do you feel about the wise person now?

He reaches into the bag. I can see it is cluttered, full of things, and he is reaching for something small and valuable.

It is an old-fashioned watch, on a chain. The lid is open, and I can see the face, although I cannot focus on it. I am confused.

Say anything else you would like to say, and then leave.

“I don’t understand.” He says nothing, but grins the vacant smile of a mad man. I struggle for something else, something I should know about the wise man, to prove to him that I too, am wise in my way.. But I think of nothing.

Go back down the path, carrying your present with you. Notice the surroundings so you can remember your way if you want to visit the wise man again.

The sun is coming up. The trees are just as I left them, and I move on to where they become thick and green again, the watch dangling on its chain in my left hand.

Now look at your gift. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Turn it over in your hands. What does it smell like?

I hold it in my hand. It is golden, but I feel it and decide it is brass. I feel the engravings. I look inside the lid, and try to see the manufacturer, but I cannot and this is not important. It smells of metal, just like coins. It has a little golden knob on it, and on the face I briefly see a tiny dial where the second hand appears to be. I turn it over, feverishly trying to see an engraving on the back. It says “To my love”, but this is incongruous; not from the wise man, or to the wise man, and maybe it is not directed to me either. The chain is golden too, and running my hands over it, it feels just like the chain on my hospital ID badge.

Now put the gift safely away in your memory, and become aware of yourself in this room. When you are ready, open your eyes.

The watch disappears as if into a black pocket in space. I feel my arms and legs, move my shoulders. I move my mind out, suddenly aware of the others in the room. I open my eyes and find myself in my psychology lesson.

I think on the watch; it occurs to me now I never checked what the time was on it. I had hardly looked at the face at all, but indulged myself in trivialities of its smell and manufacturer. I did not want to look at the face. It would tell me time is running out. But running out for what? There is something I have to face up to. I dare not look upon it.

This was a bit frightening, but not really terrifying. Darren E took us through it today - we compared wise people (mine was a cross between the soothsayer in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, Belgarath the Sorcerer and the strange man in 'Enchanter's End Game') Yoda, Oracles, Buddha, you know the kind of thing. When I told Abi, she said she saw her dad, and then he turned into Charlotte (a fun friend of hers, also a lesbian).

We also compared scenery - most imagined a wood, some with rivers and lakes, for some it was bare. I didn't hear any mention of animals, so maybe I was alone on that one.

As for questions or gifts, Darren E didn't ask about those. They are too personal, really. Rachel Boothby said she was given a ring she had lost that she was givn when she was seven, and a necklace from her grandma that she had broken. That sounded quite nice to me. Darren E said that once a girl had hung behind, as her wise person had given her a dead baby. This sounds awful, particularly when you consider that she was asked to touch and smell it. She had had an abortion a few months before. I heard Crystal was given a baby as well, but I didn't find out its vital status.

It's based on Carl Jung, who believed that using our imagination we can learn things from different aspects of our personality by seeing them as separate people. Darren E explained that there are other we can meet - the part of us that has opposite gender characteristics, the 'inner-child' and the 'shadow'. The shadow has our bad characteristics, all the things that we keep in our unconscious. Its opposite is the persona, which is the part of us we show to the world. He said that if we meet our shadow, it can be very scary but if we take all those negative aspects and turn them into positive things, we can become more creative and spontaneous. Then he told us about when he met his shadow, and that really shook him up. He said that as far as he was concerned, it could stay in his unconscious.

He also told us about methods we could use for meeting the shadow - the best thing is to imagine a safe place, a paradise where you are in control and only you are allowed to let people in or push them out. It's easier then.

He compared these symbols to Star Wars - ie Yoda is the wise man, Darth Vader is the shadow (the dark side!) and Leia is the feminine side of Luke. Han Solo is the hero figure, who sorts things out. (But what's Obiwan???) It reminded me of a leaflet I read at Frindsbury Baptist Church going on about how we too have a choice, an equivalent of the force and the dark side. So hence Star Wars is the most fantastic saga ever. I must watch it sometime... :-)

Random word for today:

<< last entry ... next entry >>
top of page

Give food for free.