The sacred flame

Sacred Heart (Mexico)

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At this point it becomes easier to understand why Jung always required of analysts that they should ultimately work the most on continuing to make progress in their own individuation. In doing so, they take their analysands along with them on their journey, without trying to influence them directly (which would be an abuse of power). In an early letter, Jung even goes so far as to say that the therapist should only analyze the pathological aspect of the patient’s psyche. This is because intellectual understanding is destructive. Understanding (Latin comprehendere), after all, means “taking hold of,” “grasping,” and this corresponds to an exercise of power. When the patients being and destiny are at stake, one should relate to his unique mystery with wordless respect. As Jung said, “we must understand the divine in us, but not in another in so far as he is capable of getting on and understanding on his own.” Our dreamer, as we will recall, was apprehensive about his encounter with patients. His dream points him back to working on himself

~ Marie-Louise von Franz, Psychotherapy

I thought about the secrets I had stored up inside my body. How many times I’ve crawled out my bedroom window to get in a car. The unstoppable fire between my legs. A fire not his. I thought about vodka. Nearly drowning. By the time he sat me on the couch to tell me I was his, I was miles away from daughter. A black suitcase making shape and story in my dreams. I felt like there was a muscle between us. The muscle was my sexuality. Not his.

~ Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water


Welcome the madnesses, the stalemates, the gordian knots. Even though it's hard and painful, welcome these burdens. What you see as the Great Enemy who is trying to ruin all of your carefully laid plans is really your severe and demanding Guardian Angel, providing obstacles that will train your spiritual body into something strong and beautiful. Our madnesses are the Self trying to incarnate in us, God trying to come into the world.

The shaman is always a wounded healer. Those who can go into their own madness and come out of it whole are the only ones who are able to carry the weight of the Self into life. This is the important thing; your weakness is your strength. What is weak in outer, subjective reality is the yoke that links you with the Self. It is your way to bring the Self, or as much of it as you are able, into the world.

To understand boorishly and without care is to do violence to the soul. That desire in us - to know, to control, to make safe - diminishes that which is sacred into a “nothing but.” It turns what is glorious and beautiful and terrible into bland meaninglessness. Hindu’s greet each other with palm to palm, bowing as the God in them acknowledges the God in you. When we, or someone else, is experiencing madness, we put our hands together wordlessly, reverently, bow to this holy presence that is trying to come into the world. It’s not the places where we’re strong that matter, but where we are embarrassing, unpleasant, and inconvenient.

What is needed is a reverent attitude toward life, toward ourselves as well as others, toward all of existence. An open-hearted and open-minded attitude, an attitude of sympathy and compassion when we're in the thick of the struggle. Not everything needs to be known, or judged.... measured, or fit into “it's place.” Reverence stops us from harming ourselves and each other with our drive to put everything into safe little boxes. The thing in us which is bigger than the universe cannot be fit into a small, neat little box. By freeing our hearts and our minds we remember the Sacred that lives in and through us all.

The thing in us which is ours is ours. The thing in others which is theirs is theirs. We can - and should - clash and disagree, fight and struggle. But, at the same time, we must most of all always recognize and honor the Sacred that is laboring to birth itself into the world.