Begin Again: Recent Episodes

View Details

Quick note: I have one final spot available in my new dream group starting Thursday, 16 July. 8 sessions, 7-9pm BST, online via Zoom—get in touch today if you’d like to join a wonderful group of dreamers on an unforgettable deep-dive into the unconscious.

Show notes

• Who is the archetypal Lilith

• How Laurence discovered his interest in Black Moon Lilith

• The archetypal significance of Black Moon Lilith as a point or portal, not a planet, and how to distinguish the energy from other archetypes in the chart

• How to identify where you encounter Black Moon Lilith in your life

• The cost of refusal and exile

• Patriarchy, colonialism, and the significance of Black Moon Lilith today

• Black Moon Lilith in psychotherapy and our current obsession with purity

• How to find this point in your natal chart

About Laurence Hillman, PhD

Born in Zürich, Switzerland, Dr. Hillman entered the world of archetypes at sixteen and has remained in sustained dialogue with them for nearly five decades. An archetypal astrologer, coach, consultant, and teacher, his work explores how mythic patterns shape purpose, leadership, and meaning, especially during periods of cultural transition. He is the co-creator of Archetypes at Work™, a framework used by global organizations to develop leadership capacity in complex environments. Dr. Hillman has lectured internationally and has long been in conversation with depth psychology. He is the author and co-author of several books on astrology and archetypal leadership, holds a PhD in psychology, an MBA and speaks five languages.

Connect with Laurence

• Coming up on 8 August: lecture on portals at Astrology University (not announced yet)

• Join Laurence at Colloquium in Ascona, by Kosmos Institute (early bird discount ends 15 July)

• Black Moon Lilith: The Astrological Portal of Refusal and Liminal Intelligence Advanced Training Certificate at Pacifica Graduate Institute

• Get a reading with Laurence

Watch our previous conversation

This is an excellent conversation and a great introduction to archetypal astrology, symbolic thinking, the integration of astrology into psychotherapy, and some of Laurence’s key insights from decades of practice.

How to find your Black Moon Lilith in your astrological chart:

• You can get a natal chart drawn for free with Astro.com (go to “charts and calculations”, then “extended chart selection”, and add your birth data).

• On the main screen before generating your chart, scroll all the way to the bottom to the “additional objects” section. Click to expand “List of other horoscope factors and "hypothetical" planets and choose “h13 Osculating Lunar Apogee (also called “True” Lilith / Black Moon)” from the list.

• Generate your chart and look for where the glyph is located in your chart: note the sign and the house.

Thank you for listening. If you’re interested in working together, I offer depth psychotherapy in Marylebone, London and online, and I also offer astrological consultations through a depth psychology lens. Get in touch to find out more.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

“By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘Here’ Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice ‘Come to me!’ She calls as he calls. He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing. He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours. She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours!’”

- The Myth of Narcissus and Echo from Metamorphoses by Ovid

In this conversation, we discuss:

• The experience of recognising narcissism in yourself;

• How to deal with people who exhibit narcissistic traits;

• Echo’s story in the Narcissus’ Myth and feminine desire;

• How the culture of youth breeds narcissism;

• Narcissism, singularity, sameness, and the challenge to intimacy;

• AI and narcissism;

• How to heal narcissism in therapy: the unconscious as Other;

• The persecutory inner voices, envy, and destruction in narcissism;

• Contemporary manifestations of cultural narcissism;

• The body and narcissism.

About the guest

Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst educated in Zurich, Switzerland. For many years Susan has been giving workshops and presentations at numerous local, national, community and professional organisations, and lectures worldwide on various aspects of Jungian analytical psychology. She has written several journal articles and book chapters on daughters and fathers, Puella, Sylvia Plath and has co-authored a couple of books.

Explore further:

• Buy the book: “An Analytical Exploration of Love and Narcissism: The Tragedy of Isolation and Intimacy” from Karnac or Routledge

• Read the article “How to Love a Narcissist” by Susan E. Schwartz

• Read the article “Aging and Narcissism” by Susan E. Schwartz

• Susan’s website

• Echo and Narcissus on Wikipedia

Listen to our previous interviews:

• Puella's paradox: A conversation with Susan E. Schwartz, PhD

• How real are you? The "as-if" personality with Susan Schwartz, PhD

• The Absent Father: A Conversation with Susan E. Schwartz, PhD

Fancy joining other paid subscribers for our monthly Book Club? The August book is The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life As an Act of Love by Thomas Moore. And if you join now, you’ll get access to the (soon-to-come) monthly dream meet-up for paid subscribers only, where we’ll get to discuss all things dreams and dreamwork. Otherwise, find out more about the regular dream groups I offer online and get in touch to find out about the next one.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Curious to explore your dreams in an intimate and creative group setting? Join a my upcoming 8-week dream circle starting on Tuesday, 18 February. There’s only one space left.

Jungian analyst, author, and co-host of This Jungian Life Podcast, Lisa Marchiano, returns to Begin Again for a fascinating chat about dreams through a Jungian perspective.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Lisa and her co-autors’ process of writing a dreamwork “cookbook”;

• The dream ego vs the waking ego and ego-less dreams;

• Why emotions are the dream’s currency and how to interpret anger;

• What overflowing toilets might represent in a dream;

• Dreaming about your clients as an analyst or therapist;

• Lisa’s evolving relationship to her dreams;

• How dreams broaden our emotional spectrum;

• Why dreams leave and how to bring them back.

Lisa Marchiano on Begin Again:

• Owning Your Feminine Shadow: A Conversation with Lisa Marchiano

• Motherhood: A Conversation with Lisa Marchiano

Follow more of Lisa’s work:

Dreamwise website

Lisa’s website

This Jungian Life Podcast

Find out more about Lisa’s event at the DRI Centre for Dream Studies in London

Image is Orpheus by Odilon Redon

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

“Accessing joy means an openness and appreciation of oneself and honouring one’s place in the world.” (Susan E. Schwartz)

Susan E. Schwartz, Ph.D. is a Jungian analyst educated in Zurich, Switzerland and is a licensed clinical psychologist. For many years Susan has been giving workshops and presentations at numerous local, national, community and professional organisations, and lectures worldwide on various aspects of Jungian analytical psychology. She has written several journal articles and book chapters on daughters and fathers, Puella, Sylvia Plath and has co-authored a couple of books.

In this conversation, we discuss:

• Puella’s absence in psychoanalytic and Jungian literature

• What is the puella and her importance for the collective

• Puella and body issues

• How to identify a puella, her dreams, and her struggles in therapy

• The downside of the puella archetype

• Puella’s void: inner emptiness, singularity, and narcissism

• The demon lover, father absence, and the Bluebeard fairy tale

“The journey of puella is to extricate herself from the psychological retreats of obsessions, food and substance addictions and the numerous other mechanisms of internal distancing to the healing and joyful layers of the psyche. The energy becomes amassed by breaking patterns that no longer fit, peeling off the dross and being real.”

(Susan E. Schwartz)

--

Explore more of Susan’s work:

Susan’s website

On Begin Again: The Absent Father: A Conversation with Susan E. Schwartz, PhD

On Begin Again: How real are you? The "as-if" personality with Susan Schwartz, PhD

Book: Imposter Syndrome and The ‘As-If’ Personality in Analytical Psychology

Book: The Absent Father Effect on Daughters: Father Desire, Father Wounds

Book: A Jungian Exploration of the Puella Archetype: Girl Unfolding

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This interview is free to watch or listen to. To support my work and access paywalled content, please upgrade to a paid subscription for only £5/month or £50/year.

Laurence Hillman is a professional astrologer, teacher, and consultant. He is the son of James Hillman, founder of archetypal psychology. Laurence holds many degrees, including a PhD in psychology with a focus on Transformative Leadership, an MBA, an MCM (Masters in Construction Management), as well as a degree in Architecture. He is the co-creator of Archetypes at Work™, a new cutting-edge method to assess and develop people and organisations to become fit for the future.

In this conversation, we talk about:

• Astrology as the study of the quality of time and why this is relevant today;

• The three different ways of living life and how astrology can help with meaning-making;

• Why literalism kills us and how archetypal thinking can help;

• “You do the gods or the gods do you”: how astrology provides insight into problematic behaviour;

• Astrology and psychotherapy: one hundred years from now, will therapists who don’t use astrology be seen as charlatans?

• “B**t doesn’t survive a Pluto transit”: why Pluto is the most feared energy in our cartesian worldview;

• How to become future-fit in the Age of Aquarius and through Pluto’s transit through Aquarius: the internet, the ethics of AI, aliens, scientific breakthroughs, psychedelics, and the evolution of consciousness.

Connect with Laurence:

Laurence Hillman’s website

Planets in Play: How to Reimagine Your Life Through the Language of Astrology

Archetypes at Work

Laurence’s Astrology Course at Kosmos Institute

Future Fit in the Age of Aquarius: How to Embody Your Inner Renegade lecture

-

My dream community, Dreamwork Circle, has been running dream groups for almost two years. If you’re interested in making a deep commitment to your individuation by diving into your dreams, I’m opening a new 8-week dream group from February. Drop me an email at maria@beginagain.space and I’ll let you know when registration opens.

-

💭 I would love to hear from you:

What did you most enjoy about this conversation? Did you learn anything new? How are you planning to embody your Renegade for the times ahead? Let me know in the comments and if you liked this post, please share it with others.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

Bringing queer perspectives to Jungian dreamwork

I’m delighted to introduce you to Gregory Ganymedes, who will be leading the our upcoming class in Dreamwork Circle at the end of the month. In this short discussion, Greg and I talk about our mutual love of dreams, how he overcame the limitations of Jungian psychology when it comes to the queer psyche, and what he’s prepared for the class. Listen all the way to the end as Greg kindly shares a very special dreams with us!

About Greg

Greg is the creator and curator of the Ganymede Project, an exploration of the queer masculine psyche through depth psychology, archetype, spirituality, and myth. He also runs virtual queer men’s dream circles.

About the class:

Voicing Homoerotic Pathos: A Queer Dreamwork Classon Sunday, 30 June, from 7pm BST / 2pm EST / 11am PST

This exciting new class aims to re-center queerness in dreamwork through the tale of the Little Mermaid. Greg will be using a depth psychology lens to examine the storyteller’s homosexual heartbreak he distilled into his infamous tragedy of a love-stricken young siren who concedes to silence and sacrifice in pursuit of a soul.

He will also make space for you to share your dreams, so don’t miss out on this very special class.

How to join

The class is free to attend for Dreamwork Circle members as part of their subscription.

Non-members can sign up for the class without purchasing a membership and will receive a recording afterwards. And if you’re a paid subscriber, don’t forget that you get 25% off all my classes—just get in touch to receive your discount code.

As you may know, I’ve been running a very special project called Dreamwork Circle for over a year now. This project has been an absolute treat as the group steadily grew to its current size of about 12 people who turn up regularly to discuss each other’s dreams. Besides our weekly dream circles, we meet once a month for a live class exploring a new dream theme. So far, there are over 20 hours of recorded classes and so much more to come—including this special announcement.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This interview is free to watch or listen to. To support my work and access paywalled content, please upgrade to a paid subscription for only £5/month or £50/year.

Jungian analyst, author, and podcaster Lisa Marchiano returns to Begin Again to discuss her latest book, Vital Spark: Reclaim Your Outlaw Energies and Find Your Feminine Fire. In this lively conversation, we discuss:

• My experience of the book as a process

• What is the vital spark and how we know we lost connection to it

• Lilith, the feminine shadow and feminine wholeness

• Shrewdness, disagreeableness, trickster, desire, sexuality, rage, authority, ruthlessness, and why we might fear developing our Lilith qualities

• Ruthlessness and lying as essential to survival

• The problem with innocence

• Envy and how to protect yourself from envy attacks

• Snow White and mothers who envy their daughters

• Bluebeard as the inner predator

• Why sexuality is so important for women

Connect with Lisa Marchiano further:

Our interview on motherhood

Lisa’s website

Spinning Straw: Lisa’s fairy tale community for women

This Jungian Life

Music (CC BY 4.0): Jazz Jamboree On The Ivories by Sascha Ende

💭 I would love to hear from you:

What did you love about this conversation? Was there anything that surprised you? How do you feel about the dark feminine qualities and which ones do you find easy to own? Which ones do you resist?

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

“This person has an impoverished or emotionally and physically uncomfortable relationship to the world belied by their presentation of glitz and shine. They cannot bear, even momentarily, to be seen up close, beneath the skin. Others might perceive them as winners, as having made it, but often they are internally empty, disillusioned, anxious, confused, alienated and, most of all, estranged from themselves. Looking successful to others does not fill the empty spaces within.”

(Susan E. Schwartz)

In this conversation we discuss:

• What is the “as-if” personality

• The “as-if” personality, imposter syndrome, and narcissism

• The traumatic origin of the “as-if” personality structure

• Growing up with psychically dead parents

• Emptiness, void, and disembodiment

• Shadow work and the creative potential of this type

• The “as-if” person in therapy and how to become real

• The transformative power of dreams

More about Susan Schwartz

Find out more about Susan’s work on her website, including free samples of her books. Her new book is available on Amazon, Routledge, and Karnac Books.

If you haven’t already, I recommend listening to our previous interview about her first book on the absent father effect on daughters.

Want to hear more?

I will also release a longer video this month where I’ll be discussing some of the highlights from the book. This will only be available for paid subscribers, so if you’re enjoying my content and want to support me create more in-depth explorations like this, upgrade to a paid subscription.

You also support Begin Again when you like and share this post, and leave a comment below–I’d love to hear your questions, stories, or observations on this fascinating topic.

And if you want to learn more about narcissism or other fascinating topics, join my free Mighty Networks platform. You’ll find more video content including somatic practices for self-regulation, worksheets, and a chat to engage with others members.

Plus, you can join my paid membership, Dreamwork Circle. You’ll access a suite of practical resources about dreamwork, over 13 hours of teaching content on how to work with your dreams, weekly dream circles, a dream analysis forum, and a kind community of dream lovers.

Thank you for listening and for being here!

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit beginagain.substack.com/subscribe

View Details

This episode’s guest is Susan E. Schwartz, PhD: a writer, Jungian analyst trained in Zürich, Switzerland, and a licensed clinical psychologist with a private practice in Paradise Valley, Arizona.

Show notes:

Why the father is culturally absent from literature.

What is the father archetype, and what are good and bad expressions of it.

The somatic imprint of growing up with an absent father.

What happens when a father is absent for most of a daughter’s life but returns later to pursue a relationship that’s based on his need for connection.

The evil of remaining unconscious.

The dead father effect and the impulse to rescue the father.

Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath’s relationships to their absent fathers.

The father’s gaze, and the link between the absent father wound and auto-immune disease.

The as-if personality, the puella archetype, narcissism.

Finding oneself through the absent father wound, bearing the pain, how to heal through relationships based on emotions and love, and how to fill the absence.

Dept of further investigation:

Buy Susan’s book from her website, Amazon, Karnac

Daddy by Sylvia Plath

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

The Dead Mother book by Andre Green

Music: Father’s Song by Missin Red

“There is a treachery, a secret psychic death that begins in childhood when a child is unloved and unseen, the ‘I’ unnoticed. A centre of gravity that should be internalised becomes loosened and damaged.”

-Susan E. Schwartz, The Absent Father Effect on Daughters

Thank you for listening! Please support Begin Again by liking and sharing this post, and leaving a comment below - I’d love to hear your questions, stories, or observations. For further support you can become a Patron, send a one-off donation through PayPal, or work with me.

Subscribe at beginagain.substack.com

View Details

“The expectations that we have of ourselves, of mothers, to always be kind, to never be harsh, to be empathic and understanding and attuned are actually leading us to be bad mothers in another kind of way.”

Well, this is exciting.

Lisa Marchiano is a Jungian analyst, writer, and co-host of This Jungian Life podcast. She’s also a mum of two, and has recently published her own take on motherhood through the lens of Jungian psychology. I’m so grateful for all the wisdom and humour she brought to this conversation, and I hope you enjoy our chat as much as I did!

Show notes:

On the two main myths that we can live out: motherhood and the hero’s myth, and whether they belong to any gender.

Motherhood as a journey of individuation seen through James Hillman’s acorn theory.

The parental fallacy: are we overstating nurture?

Motherhood as an opportunity to heal and get our agency back, as told through The Handless Maiden fairy tale.

When motherhood is not a journey of individuation: mothers who regret motherhood, the cycle of connection and disconnection, attachment.

The shadow of motherhood, the bad mother vs the dangerous mother, and the step-mother archetype in fairy tales.

Trauma, destiny, and the parent’s role to help a child build resilience.

The mother wound vs the father wound.

The mother archetype, how the positive and negative mother complex manifest, and how to heal the mother wound by mothering yourself.

The father wound as daimonic possession, and the Rumpelstiltskin fairy tale.

Dept. of further investigation:

Buy Lisa’s book on her website or Amazon

Lisa’s article Marrying Mr. Rochester: Redeeming the Negative Father Complex

Four episodes of This Jungian Life podcast: The Dark Side of Mothering, Motherhood as a journey of individuation, Negative mother complex, Healing the negative father complex

Four Archetypes by Carl Jung

Regretting motherhood by Orna Donath

Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum

Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion by Meghan Daum

Mothers who can’t love: A Healing Guide for Daughters by Susan Forward

Make it scream, make it burn by Leslie Jamison

Motherhood by Sheila Heti

Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi

Lisa’s superpower as seen through this gif

Music by Joystock

Thank you for listening! Please support Begin Again by liking and sharing this post, and leaving a comment below - I’d love to hear from you. For further support you can become a Patron, send a one-off donation through PayPal, or work with me.

Subscribe at beginagain.substack.com

View Details

A million lifetimes ago (well, actually, six years ago) I got my third tattoo. It was meant to honour the peak Vonnegut phase of my early twenties, but also a truth so poignant that I couldn’t stop thinking about it the second I read it. How embarrassing to be human. Getting the tattoo hurt like having five periods at the same time (relatable?), but there was something very compelling about literally making these words part of me. There was nothing transcendental about it, as I was a die-hard atheist at the time, but in the light of my recent psilocybin journeys, I wonder about it.

As you know, last month I gathered the courage to dive deep within my psyche for the first time in a year. The 2 grams of psilocybin mushrooms unexpectedly propelled me all the way to the deepest level of consciousness. The novice in me called this place Pure Being, but lifelong psychonauts and researchers like Stan Grof also call it Absolute Consciousness, The Supreme Cosmic Principle, Universal Mind or Cosmic Consciousness. What unfolded felt like the most meaningful experience I could ever have in terms of getting closer to the truth of existence, and it’s something I’m learning more about every day. Which is why this newsletter, more than anything I’ve written before, has changed shape almost every day for the past weeks. So thank you for your patience, and for tagging along as I continue to make sense of this crazy journey. Now… where were we?

A raindrop becomes the ocean

After going around the circle enough times to figure out that I was trapped in it, I finally settled into Pure Being. I became it. I was the raindrop melting into the ocean, becoming aware of myself as more ocean rather than raindrop. Consciousness was meeting consciousness for the first time, and it had lots to discover about itself.

This space was so far removed from reality that I began questioning what it was. The visuals I was used to from previous journeys were completely gone, and this space felt like a massive, infinite void that contained both nothing… and also everything. In the last chapter of The Way of The Psychonaut, Stan Grof aptly describes this place:

“While it does not contain anything in a concrete manifest form, it seems to contain all of existence in a potential form. The Void transcends the usual categories of time and space. It is unchangeable, and lies beyond all dichotomies and polarities, such as light and darkness, good and evil, stability and motion, microcosm and macrocosm, agony and ecstasy, singularity and plurality, form and emptiness, and even existence and non-existence.”

Indeed, ideas like duality, time, feelings, even biographical events felt ridiculous. It was at the same time peaceful and overwhelming. But if this void was the true reality, then what the hell was there waiting for me when I would open my eyes, and why was I dreading it so much?

A made-up world

The answer came pretty quickly. Made-up world, I’d repeat, suddenly amused by my human struggles. In that moment I understood what stoned dudes had been saying all along. My body, my Maria-ness, the sofa I was sitting on, the mother I’d spent thousands of pounds understanding in therapy… they were all part of a very believable illusion. In that moment, life felt a lot like a video game, and I suddenly remembered that I was not just the character on screen, but the thing that’s holding the controller. I was both the creator and the player of the game, all of a sudden breaking the fourth wall and curiously staring into each other’s eyes. Alan Watts was really onto something:

“So then, here's the drama. My metaphysics, let me be perfectly frank with you, that there is the central self, you can call it God, you can call it anything you like, and it's all of us. It's playing all the parts of all being whatsoever, everywhere and anywhere. And it's playing the game of hide and seek with itself. It gets lost, it gets involved in the farthest-out adventures, but in the end it always wakes up and comes back to itself.” - from here

Follow this brilliant illustrator here

And that was exactly what was happening. My consciousness was once again coming back to itself and remembering that it got a little bit too caught up with the role it was playing - the same way I’d sometimes forget that I’m not actually Batman those times I played the game way past my bedtime. It would often take failing a mission enough times to remember that real life was not about solving the Joker’s riddles to save humanity, but getting to work at 9am the next day to write a powerpoint presentation.

Creative, bored and lonely

Yet, weirdly, the video game analogy felt important. There was something inherently playful in consciousness’ process of creation. Like an artist with unlimited resources and an infinite amount of time on their hands, consciousness seemed to be on a quest to manifest and experience all possibilities, to know itself. But this, as Stan Grof suggests, “requires polarisation into subject and object, the experiencer and the experienced, the observer and the observed.”

So consciousness was the creative principle itself, trying to experience itself by constantly creating and splitting itself off into parts that could live out its creation. Why? Well, it turned out it was bored, and a little bit lonely too. I’m making it all up, I know. Why I’m creative... Because I’m bored?, I asked myself, feeling a weird kinship with this almighty force. It made sense. This whole universe is going to be endless. Chose to come back and make myself small, I continued, understanding creation as consciousness’ attempt to entertain itself through the humdrum of infinity.

It’s all made up, just chasing my own tail. For fun? For loneliness?, I pondered, feeling like I was tapping into another truth that felt both cosmic and human at the same time. The loneliness I felt permeated all levels of being, like a voice bouncing off against the elements of the universe, eternally reminding it of its aloneness: nothing but me, nothing but me, nothing but me. But soon I realised that this longing for a companion, for another to witness the creative process and say I see you, you exist was nothing but another lap around the mandala, missing the point that when you’re the only thing there is, you are theonly thing there is, playing hide and seek with yourself.

And so, the same way a painter’s vision has to become separate from him in order to form a painting that he can look at, in the process of creation consciousness splits itself into infinite parts that take on a life of their own.

Onenness and separation

This idea wasn’t completely new to me. In a previous journey I’d seen myself as just another blob rising from the blobby soup of consciousness along with friends and family and other beings, and then falling back into it. We were all made of the same stuff, blinking in and out of existence, like raindrops falling into the ocean. Only that this time I was no longer a blob becoming aware of its interconnectedness. I was the soup itself, choosing to split itself into infinite blobs.

This shift in perspective was significant, and for a while I wondered whether this meant that I was the only conscious being in the universe, like John Malkovich going through his own tunnel only to discover a world where everything was happily, but unconsciously Malkovich. The trap of solipsism was tempting, and partly true. I, as consciousness, was indeed the only conscious thing there was. However, the infinite blobs that I was splitting myself into, including myself as Maria, felt like they had a bit more going on for themselves. Just the fact that I, as Maria-blob, was having this experience, suggested that there might be more to us than just a soulless, unconscious simulation.

To test this, I opened my eyes and began observing the blob - I mean, the human that was closest to me. My sitter, my former partner, was there, diligently taking notes of everything I was saying. It’s why I like you, I know you, I giggled at him, recognising myself, as consciousness, in him. There was no doubt, we were made of the same stuff. And yet, we weren’t. Even though I felt like I knew him to the core, something about him escaped me. How can I accept that you have your own world?, I asked myself, seeing him as another split-off part of consciousness running its own video game - one where I was no longer the all-knowing protagonist, but a mere supporting actress. It’s like two Venn diagrams overlapping, I said, seeing us like two circles that have more in common than not, but will probably never be able to fully share their entirety. How tragic.

This tension between connection and separation suddenly took on personal meaning. I can see how you are a reminder of me, because you are me. I needed to be annoyed and to suffer to come back. In this sense we are Yin and Yang. The pang of separation that I was feeling reminded me of Jung’s concept of animus, the soul-image. Jung considered the animus/anima to contain all the repressed aspects that usually correspond to the opposite sex. Instead of integrating them into our selves, we project them onto people we’re attracted to, hoping that our union would finally complete us. But this projection points us towards our own deficiencies, and pushes us towards accepting that these traits also live in us. It’s a path of heartbreak, especially if it takes you a long time to figure out what’s happening. But the path is taking you to wholeness - a place where you realise your completeness, your true nature as everything-consciousness, as god. To the place where I just was.

What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.

Enlightenment?

It was pretty clear to me that this place was what the mystics had been calling enlightenment - or, merely, a glimpse at it. The chronology of my whole life suddenly became a long series of synchronicities. Looking back I could see how none of the things that happened to me were random, but, in fact, an endless number of clues that were trying to point me in this direction.

It was like reality as I knew it had stripped itself of its disguise, revealing the purpose and symbolism behind every little thing. According to my sitter’s notes, this is how I voiced my revelation: Make nature pretty and leave books and symbols lying around. Created Jesus and Buddha just to remember. Reading… I wrote it, just to discover it. Like making a nice meal for yourself. Nothing was accidental. The impossible beauty of nature, the books that I’d been so drawn to, the strange symbols that stopped me in my tracks and filled me with wonder, the story of Jesus, and, later, of Buddha, the existential despair I’d always felt, all my suffering - they were all peepholes into the larger, truer reality. They were what I, as consciousness, had purposely left behind for my embodiment as Maria to see, so I could remember and come back.

Gosh, it felt strange, but maybe those kooky spiritual memes were real. The universe really felt invested in my enlightenment - and yours! Not because we’re special, but, as we’ve seen, consciousness divides itself into tiny bits of me and you and your favourite houseplant and that jerk who wouldn’t wear his mask indoors, so that it can get to know itself. The purpose of the game we’re playing is to figure out that we’re playing a game. And you can do that as much as I can, or the Buddha did. The question is how long it will take.

Necessary evil

The length of this process was a strange one, and felt paved with suffering. Even though everything in our world is a clue meant to support our awakening, sometimes it feels like some of us are playing this game on “hard”. I certainly felt so. My discomfort with being alive that I talked about in the first part of this story brought me a lot of suffering throughout my thirty years of life. But oddly this suffering felt essential. It felt like, for me, this was the only way I could really turn in and face my nature. In fact, the only reason I was suffering was because I kept missing the point of what was going on.

It sounds wild, but this idea ties in neatly with the four Buddhist noble truths. Firstly, as we’ve seen throughout this story, existence is whole lotta of suffering. This existential pain manifests differently for every person, but ultimately I think it can be reduced to feeling small when something in us knows that we’re big. Secondly, the cause of this is in the fact that we’re looking outside of us for happiness and fulfilment. To feel bigger, we grab onto all sorts of things that aren’t us: people, things, ideas about who we are. But people leave, things break, and life has a funny way of disrobing us of our glorious roles over and over. The bigness we’re striving for eludes us. Thirdly, to end this suffering means to look within, so that finally, we find the path of liberation - figuring out that we’re the almighty creator playing its own game.

This idea that suffering is a path to liberation sounded very nice and noble, until, well, I remembered the state of the world. Yes, I’d suffered greatly in my own head and body, but that was nothing compared to the great evils out there. What about the Holocaust? What about the millions that die of hunger, disease, cruelty or just bad luck every year? What about the evil in the world? What about coronavirus?

When a disciple asked Sri Ramakrsihna why there’s evil in the world, Ramakrishna replied simply: “To thicken the plot”. Similarly, when I asked myself as consciousness the same question, I admitted that things are more fun when they’re hard. Saying this out loud made me feel deeply ashamed in my small humanness.

But I was also aware of the bigger picture. In an infinite, all-powerful consciousness, evil was just another potential, along with bliss, beauty, hate, fear, and this TikTok. Plus, the inherent balance of the universe implies that we couldn’t possibly have goodness, love and compassion without their polar opposites. How could we appreciate the depth of love if we didn’t also know the pit of loneliness and heartbreak?

Ambivalence

Holding all these polarities pointed me to a new revelation that excited me and made me nervous at the same time. Consciousness is about love as much as it is about hate. It’s as good as it is bad. It’s cruel and it’s kind. In its infinite power to manifest all possibilities, consciousness is… pretty ambivalent.

This, of course, goes against everything I’d read, heard or been taught so far on my journey. Everywhere I turned, there it was: God is love, the universe is love, love, love, love. And that had never been my experience. Even on my own brightest, sweetest mystical experience, the love I felt was more like a quiet acknowledgement of our oneness rather than an ecstatic experience of orgasmic bliss. My experiences of consciousness had always been, in fact, pretty neutral - in the calmest, quietest, most beautiful sense of the word. I assumed that, since I didn’t see this love that everyone seemed so enamoured with, there must’ve been something wrong with me.

But this idea of consciousness being ambivalent followed me for days after my experience. The more I thought about the spiritual world’s obsession with love, the more it felt like collective spiritual bypassing, a rejection of our entire spectrum of potential. This blind belief in consciousness’ goodness and love was beginning to sound like a counter flavour to religion’s moody God punishing his unruly children on earth. And it wasn’t until I heard Russell Brand’s rant on Duncal Trussell’s podcast that my vision started to feel less insane, and actually pointing towards a more mature and responsible attitude towards spirituality (minute 43):

“If we ain’t good, then God ain’t good. That’s why we have to become good. That’s why we have to become holy. Because God is ambivalent. God is all things. If we don’t manifest glory, if we don’t manifest good, then there is no good.”

Now that’s my kind of spirituality.

Evolution

At this point, I was beginning to come up, and my reluctance to opening my eyes to face the outside world was being challenged by the fact that I really, really needed to pee. After a short episode of wriggling on the floor in what I assume was a rebirthing experience, of which I’ll spare you the details at this point, I emerged from the bathroom ready to face the outside world again.

Looking outside at the trees shimmering in the sun, the bigness of the experience I was just leaving felt once again at odds with my human smallness. It feels like draft one, make it better, I humorously said to myself. At that point I saw how human consciousness was only one step in the story of consciousness finding itself. Suddenly, the emergence of AI didn’t feel like a thing humans are toying with, but potentially a necessary new phase in the evolution of consciousness. Maybe, indeed, technology will save us from ourselves, and allow each human on this planet to experience enlightenment, liberation, their oneness with this creative force that’s in each and every one of us. Or maybe it will replace us altogether.

In the context of this experience, the current concern in science against this possibility feels like a collective ego-driven fear. It tends to forget that humans haven’t been around for that long, and don’t necessarily need to be in order for the universe to do its thing. This attachment to our humanness, and therefore the fear of our potential extinction, sadly misses the point of us being the actual infinite, all-powerful thing that will continue to exist and do as it fancies.

But what do I know? I was just a tiny human tripping on 2 grams of mushrooms, trying to find her purpose in life, and instead getting this download of the secrets of the universe. My purpose seemed beyond the point. Because when I did ask about it in the experience, the answer was pretty clear: Purpose? No purpose. Make it up.

OK, so now what?

I don’t really know. If this experience did anything for me, it left me with more questions than I had before. Why did I see this? Is this world really a simulation? Did I actually choose to come back in order to be enlightened? What does that mean for me? And if my purpose was whatever I decided it to be, what should I do?

A liberating idea came to me while reading through Ram Dass’ book Be Here Now. In The Core Book he uses the image of Shiva’s dance of life to illustrate a way of being where one could dance around their human struggles, not letting themselves feel weighted down by them. The idea of dance as liberation came to me again, a little later, when I learned about dakinis - a Buddhist concept describing a dancing female energy, often representing women on their path to enlightenment. These images reminded me of another mystical experience, where the whole universe seemed to be nothing but a joyous energetic dance.

So maybe this careless, joyous dance is the answer. Maybe my life is not a riddle to solve, but a dance to lose myself in. Maybe, as Kurt Vonnegut said in a quote I haven’t tattooed yet, “we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you any different.” And since I’ve always loved dancing, maybe that’s exactly what I came back to do. The truth is, I really don’t know. And I guess that’s okay… for now.

“Only if I remain an ordinary human being, conscious of my incompleteness, can I become receptive to the significant contents and processes of the unconscious. But how can a human being stand the tension of feeling himself at one with the whole universe, while at the same time he is only a miserable earthly human creature? If, on the one hand, I despise myself as merely a statistical cipher, my life has no meaning and is not worth living. But if, on the other hand, I feel myself to be part of something much greater, how am I to keep my feet on the ground?” - Marie-Louise von Franz in Jung’s Man and His Symbols

Dept. of further investigation

The playlist I used for this journey, by Chacruna Institute.

Stan Grof’s Revision and Revisioning of Psychology is gold.

Why Spirituality, Psychology and Physical Health go Hand in Hand (The Human Layer Cake) video by Teal Swan

This great Instagram account.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions or opinions about this topic, please feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email. I’d love to hear from you.

Don’t forget to hit the little heart button, share it with a friend and subscribe :) And if you’re feeling extra-generous, please consider supporting me by becoming a Patron or with a one-off donation via PayPal. HUGS!

Music credits: Joystock - LoFi Chillout, Chad Crouch - Algorithms, Visager - Village of the Peeping Frogs loop, Chad Crouch - Organisms, The Dubbystyle - Rain.

Subscribe at beginagain.substack.com

View Details

Listen now | What a mystical journey into the deepest layer of consciousness taught me about the nature of existence and my struggles with being human. 

Subscribe at beginagain.substack.com

View Details

Hello,

Here I am, emailing you again to let you know that I’ve recorded yesterday’s newsletter and made it into a little podcast. It’s only twelve minutes long, so it won’t take too much of your time.

I love audio storytelling, so this was a real treat to produce. I hope you like it too - in fact, could you let me know if you’d like more of this in the future? I’d really, really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks for being a subscriber. I hope you have a stupidly wonderful weekend.

Maria

Subscribe at beginagain.substack.com