James Hollis, Ph.D.

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘳𝘰𝘬𝘦𝘯 𝘔𝘪𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘳: 𝘙𝘦𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘝𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘖𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘴 explores the need to know ourselves more deeply, and the many obstacles that stand in our way. The various chapters illustrate internal obstacles such as intimidation by the magnitude of the project, the readiness to avoid hard work, and gnawing self-doubt, but also provide tools to strengthen consciousness to take these obstacles on. Additional essays address living in haunted houses, the necessity of failure, and the gift and limits of therapy. Most of all, Hollis address the resources we all have within, or can obtain for ourselves, to lead a more abundant life and to step into larger possibilities for our unfolding journeys.

Refracted Visions of Ourselves

The Broken Mirror

Laura Mei

There is within each of us, a constellation of energy Jung called "the archetype of the hero," the carrier of desire into the world despite the intimidations of the world. The spirit of evil, he notes, is the negation of the life force by fear, or its seduction by lethargy. And only by risking these compelling powers can we live the meaningful life, that is to say, not get our way, but serve the life that wishes expression through us.

The ego is a tiny, frangible wafer tossed about on a tenebrous sea. Any ego not dwarfed by the magnitude within is simply non-reflective, or unconscious altogether.

There are hours in one's life, in most folks' life, which are truly desolate. Hanging on is what one has to do. Churchill said that when one finds oneself lost in a dark wood, keep walking. Jung said that at the bottom of every depression, and there is always a bottom there, one will find a task, the addressing of which will take one's life in a new direction.

In my years of analysis in Zurich, and the years since, the thing that I most had to face, and found most difficult to accept, was that what I had become was now my greatest obstacle. What I had become, what we all become, is a series of respondings.

At the end of that silken thread snaking through the thickets of our psychological history, there is a complex, an affect-laden script with a behaviour attached. When catalyzed, it enacts its script, and the attached behaviour enters the world. We may ask, "Why did I act that way yesterday? What came over me?" Seldom do we tumble to the fact that today's act may very well have its genesis in a time and place before any capacity to reflect upon it or choose differently.

We are creatures who need to understand, at any cost. And so, we "story" our experiences, and those stories — provisional, localized, and often created at an early stage of our history — become defining narratives.

So it is with all of us; at all times, we are a congeries of stories, interpretations, epiphenomenal renderings of raw experience into narrative form in the hope of understanding it. No matter how conscious or mature a person may be, she or he will always find contemporary decisions, reactions, expectations to be strained through the alembic of our historic narratives.

Occasionally we may ask the question: 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘮𝘦? This question is a movement beyond the iron grip of history into some enlarging service to the summons of individuation. Thus is the moment when fate can yield to destiny.

In those new hours, we will not be spared conflict or struggle of course, but the struggle may prove in service to enlargement rather than diminishment. Conflict cannot be removed, that is imaginary. Conflict must be, if one lives at all. But the way you deal with it, that is the question — whether you are overcome by the conflict, whether you get drowned in it, whether you get drowned in it, whether you get identified with one or the other side of the conflict. Individuation simply means you find your place amid the turmoil; you keep yourself in the midst of conflict; you are in the conflict yet above it.

All of us, in varying degrees, are riven with self-doubt, insecurity, debilitating complexes, all of us. It never goes away. The question, then, is do we show up and meet the demands of life when they come? We all need to find out what we can do, how high we can fly, what the limits of our talents and capacities are, and then make the most of it. All of us have to try to separate from the infantalizing and seductive culture all around us that distracts, diverts, and denies our summons to personhood.

To know what supports us when nothing supports us is a genuine treasure. There are many who skate through life unperturbed, some with naiveté, and some with sheer opacity of soul. But there are those out there who picked themselves up off the floor, those who emerged from the crash, those who listened when something inside demanded they persist, and from then forward they knew that something supports them from within when the outer world has fallen apart.

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