Alchemy and the Law of Attraction: Psyche - Body - Image - Metaphor - Mind

At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what's true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden
(Bob Dylan, "The Gates of Eden", 1965).

Metaphor is the image made of words, the expression of what the mind understands of what the psyche tells it through the sensations of the body. To have a full life, one comes through an individuation process, which builds self/psyche/soul in communication with ego so that the person is whole in body, mind and soul. The psyche/soul speaks in image-sounds, sights, smells, tastes, textures-and the ego/mind responds, to the extent that it understands, in words. Often "what we have here is a failure to communicate" (Cool Hand Luke).

What is the constellation of the body, psyche, and mind? How do metaphor and image connect us with our souls, with each other, with the collective unconscious, and with the universe? These questions are much too broad for a simple, end of the quarter essay, but to begin to assimilate the information we have discussed in this class, they are necessary. According to Woodman (1993), "The body is the best friend we have, although most of us think it's our worst enemy. It's like a donkey that gets beaten again and again, but still tries to hold whatever balance it can" (p. 77).

What each of us wants in life is a sense of control, of meaning and of our belonging to some part of the whole. Marion Woodman (1993) says that many people seek psychotherapy because "they are starving for an inner life, because they are cut off at the neck" (p. 14). Depth psychology works with people to help them find and decipher the messages from the body and the soul through the dreams, dance, art, and active imagination. Often people work with myth to find metaphor in story as a map for understanding their own experiences. Hillman (1992) is working on "a psychology of the soul that is based on a psychology of image...a poetic basis of mind and a psychology that starts neither in the physiology of the brain, the structure of language, but in the processes of imagination" (Hillman & Ventura, p. 156) .

We have been well trained to live in our heads, cut off from the natural body and the natural world: Copernicus removed us from the center of the universe, Darwin took from us the image of God, and Freud showed us that we were not the master of our fate (Tarnas, 2002). We have been trained to be alone, isolated and untouchable; according to Hillman, "the emphasis [is] on withdrawal, innerness-in Augustine's sense of confessions, in Jerome's sense of hiding out in the desert. This is the result of a long discipline to sever a person from the natural world of community" (Hillman & Ventura, 1992, p. 41). The result is alienation, fear and a sense of hopelessness to be drowned in consumerism, media overload, or new-fashioned war.

Tarnas (2002) describes two meta-myths of Western civilization as Progress and the Fall. Like the caduceus of Apollo and Hermes, these sometimes poisonous stories slither around the wand of nature, a symbol of fire and life energy, each the shadow of the other, much like other dualities of the Western mind whether Enlightened or Romantic, light or dark, energy or matter, body or spirit. As Tarnas notes, the words "of man" usually follow the story of progress, typified by Prometheus and the Apollo space project. Often the story of the fall involves a woman, though Tarnas does not mention her as Eve, Pandora, or Martha Stewart. "Victim," Hillman (1996) says, "is the flip side of hero" (p. 6). Tarnas's stories emphasize the same metaphors from different perspectives: That is which is spirit is far away from this existence; that is good which allows "man" to have power over material, and all reality is out there, not in here.

But as in Kurt Gödel's theory of the fundamental incompleteness of formal systems (Hofstadter, 1979), we are learning that some things just don't add up, and truly more things exist than are found in Horatio's philosophy. "What is a self," asks Hofstadter, "and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?" (preface, p 2

In the face of terrorism, information overload, and unrealistic expectations of all kinds of relationships based on ego fantasies, we need all the help we can get just to stay relatively sane. Our culture is teetering on the collapse into meaninglessness, which may be a sign of the puberty of Western Civilization, as Tarnas (2002) suggests. Woodman (1993) describes the changes of the recent years: "We cannot go back to identifying with mater, unconscious matter; and there has never been an era of conscious femininity... There has to be a counter balance to all that frenzy, annihilation, ambition, competition and materialism." (p. 82). Without learning to find the moments of joy in our lives, without taking the time to listen to the messages of our bodies and the images of our dreams, our lives will have no purpose, no meaning-and we may soon lose even our lives. Tarnas (2002) says, "Meaning is rendered by the mind and cannot be assumed to inhere in the object, in the world beyond the mind, for that world can never be contacted without having already been saturated by the mind's own nature" (Secular Modernity, par. 4). We must learn how to make meaning of our sensations, to focus our attention on that which is beneficial and away from that which is designed to create fear.

The alchemists accepted their separation from the transcendent God, but searched for that which would let them be as gods in the flesh: "the ability to alter the body and chemical reactions, to determine one's own fate and wrest control of it from the start, and in effect, to order and control all life" (Raff, 2000, p. 60) But all their workings were inside the vessel, actions upon a prima material that was as individual as the alchemist. Even one of the most well known names in physics and mathematics, Sir Isaac Newton wrote several million words on alchemy and Bible interpretation, more than his youthful working out of calculus and the physics of light (Gardiner, 1996, par. 6).

Yet as we have considered the goals of alchemy, the Descartian shift from Medieval mysticism to Modern Materialism to Post Modern Virtuality, there is always a thread of that which is in the body but is more than the body-the energy that animates the body. Freud discovered in the dream-word that "every reality of whatever sort is first of all a fantasy image of the psyche" (Hillman, 1979, p.137). Making our own world, creating our own reality involves taking control of thoughts, aligning emotion and focusing intent.

During the years I was in psychotherapy, it became clear that I was not crazy, but that the world I lived in was. However, I now believe those are equivalent statements-how I see the world is not how it is, but how I am (with apologies to The Talmud or possibly Anaïs Nin-no clear attribution). Since I have worked with the Abraham material as channeled by Esther and Jerry Hicks, I have come to believe that the imagination of each of us, and all of us collectively affects the physical plane. Our collective thoughts and emotions continually create the physical plane. That imaginal force of creation is why the Universe expands. Imagination creates the body, comes into the body, wounds or heals the body, and eventually leaves the body. Abraham describes each body as "an extension of Non-Physical Source Energy...that broader, older, wiser Non-Physical you is now also focused into the physical Being that you know as you. We refer to the Non-Physical part of you as your Inner Being" (Hicks & Hicks, 2006, p. 20). That Inner Being can be understood as the Self, the soul, or even as guardian angel or Holy Spirit.

Raff (2000) uses the metaphor of alchemy to describe how an ego first protects and then allows the growth of the self. Finally, it takes a secondary position, like a first mate, to captaining a the ship of the individual. "The ego finds itself in a position of being only a partner, and not even the managing partner at that" (Raff, 2000, p. 47f). Hillman (1979) too, sees the work of the ego with dreams and the underworld as a means of preparing psyche for death: "When we wrong the dream, we wrong the soul, and if the soul has the intimate connection with death that tradition has always supposed, then mistaken dream interpretation deceives our dying" (p. 2). The main job of the ego then is to maneuver in the mundane world, adventure in the psychoidal to assist the self, and then surrender to the guidance of the self, the soul. It must take the time to care for the body and to feed image to the soul.

Defining what soul is, other than separate from the body, requires metaphor, the rendering of a mental image, which is the interpretation of a sensation, into a comparison usually made of words to capture and convey the experience of the speaker or writer: soulà imageà metaphorà wordsà mind. The process works in reverse as well; when we take in the metaphor that others send to us, we create an image which we send to the psyche. Given the content of images that we see every day and the content of what we read and here, the cost of medial care is not surprising. Freud viewed the body as being the residence of the soul, where to speak "of its deepest longings and more profound terror, is to speak of the body, of sexuality and death. And that to speak of the body as the soul knows it, is to speak metaphorically, imaginatively, mythically." (Downing, p. 60) The work with dreams, with art therapy, with music and dance all have to do with image and the body. For Woodman, "body work is soul work and the imagination is the key to connecting both" (1993, p. 16).

A favorite word among Jungians is concretize, meaning the action of a person taking a metaphor literally, rather than taking on the effort to develop the self, to communicate with the psyche. One place that the effects of this concretization are most apparent is the body. Our physical ailments are often the result of our cultural concretization. What we have here is a failure to imagine, which leads us into addiction:

Addicts suffer from lack of imagination. They become imprisoned in rigid attitudes. They can't imagine freedom, and because they deny reality, they can't change it. The fail to make the necessary rites of passage from one stage of life to another, fail to mature, fail to get our of boring jobs or destructive relationships. They fail to see the meaning of what they are living. Their dreams would tell them if they would pay attention. The metaphors in dreams give us a picture of our psychic condition and how to change it. (Woodman, 1993, p. 77)

Without a lot of discipline and the techniques of soul-making and listening to psyche, we find it difficult to find joy. We are swamped with frustration and fear, and the people who create the media around us feed on that. According to Michael Ventura, "We live an a technologically hallucinogenic culture that behaves with the sudden dynamics of the dream...[In] the twentieth century...each individual life is a daily progression through a concrete but fluctuating landscape of the psyche's projections" (Hillman & Ventura, 1992, p. 122).

Much of the chaos in people's lives is caused by their constant attention to the mass of images that bombard us through all the media of our lives: "We don't feed ourselves on images that are healthy. The images of war and violence we see on television are actually soul-destroying" (Woodman, 1993, p.16). Consider the collateral damage of the coverage of the Virginia Tech shootings, the Iraq war, and the lead story of murder every night on the news, not to mention the general TV violence. Raff (2000) says, "The essential point of this alchemical view of sickness, however, is that disease is never a purely physical event, but includes the spirit as well. Healing, too, must therefore include the spiritual dimension, and this is most effectively accomplished in the imaginative process." (p.210) The words spirit, soul and self are not clearly defined, slipping across the various depictions of each therapist, sometimes with a masculine aspect for spirit, sometimes a feminine for soul, and an androgynous self. Is it any wonder that folks have problems knowing about how to be comfortable in their physical gender?

Although depth psychology is grounded in the use of image and imagination for healing, it too can get stuck in its own mental image. A common metaphor is the contrast of Spirit, Masculine, Mind to Soul, Feminine, Body. Hillman rejects that metaphor:

"Those two totem poles which guard the approaches to psychotherapy like dumb stone giants from Easter Island-I mean the Masculine and the Feminine-are modern monolithic concretisms, a pair of substantiated neurotic antitheses that can draw no support form the flowing play of Yin/Yang images, always subtle, differentiated, and precise." (1983, p. 116)

Marion Woodman often speaks of the divine feminine as opposed to the patriarchal power principle. At a workshop in 2006, I asked her if she could explain the ideas she was explaining by using a different metaphor than the Bride and the Groom. She gave me a deer in the headlights look and said vehemently, "No!" Leonard Schlain's (1998) thesis in TheAlphabet versus The Goddess claims that the rise of patriarchy was based on the beginning of literacy, and the current rise in feminist/feminine thought has to do with the return of aural, and more importantly, visual media: movies, TV, video games and the internet. According to Shlain (1998), "Images, of any kind, are the balm bringing about this world wide healing...there can be no doubt that the wondrous permutations of photography and electromagnetism are transforming the world both physically and psychically" (p.432)

In our world, the soul is under attack from image, which is the only language it knows, yet Woodman thinks we have not "begun to touch the power of imagery in the body." (Woodman, CF, p. 137). In reading Bone, I was struck by Marion Woodman's constant struggle between her mind and her body: she was anorexic, she was in a bad car crash, she had cancer and osteoporosis-her response was to surrender, to listen to her body and not to escape body into spirit. Her story makes clear what happens when we forget that we are spiritual beings having a physical experience in order to grow soul. We need no "fight, flight, food, foreplay, or any other 'f'. The instinctual craving is gratified solely by image" (Hillman, 1979, p.121) The symptoms of the body are revealed in image, both in dreams and in active imagination: "Jung called cancer a disease of despair, arthritis a disease of silent rage" (Woodman, 1993, p. 20).

According to Downing (2004), "soul is in a sense a metaphor, a myth. It has no physical correlate, though we can't help but imagine it spatially. It dwells in the body but can't be located anatomically" (p.61). From the mind's eye, everything is image-there is no direct experience but only the interpretation from sensory data. What is pleasurable to one person is painful to another. What is excitement to one is terror to another.

Since the whole of the universe, from my perspective, is an image created by my psyche/Inner Being/ego/Consciousness or whatever you want to call it, then it is up to me to be aware of and work with that image. My fat is a concretization. It is heavy like concrete, it sags like concrete and it seems both as permanent and as fragile as concrete.. According to Marion Woodman, my fat is my lack of imagination concretized, my issues with my image of mother and mothering concretized, my battle with the cultural definitions of femininity concretized. Yet is am seeing some light coming through the crack. I have control of my experience-with some effort, I can change the way I think about things...allowing myself to look away from what I don't want to what I do want. Allowing myself to endure the tension and fear of change get where I want to do. Even allowing myself to change easily.

In pulling together the notes for this paper, I see a split between image and story-story is one level separated from image, image translated into words, sensations interpreted, which is why it is so easy to get concretized in the words. Much of the imagery (both verbal and visual) that seeks us out is designed to make us desire, to tug at our fears, to tell us that we are not enough, that we do not measure up, that there is a standard to which we can only aspire.

Archetypal imagination is image and story, dance and sculpture, painting and poetry, virtual reality and reality. What it is not is masculine or feminine, sky or earth, black or white-but an array of colors, sounds, scents, textures, and flavors all experienced simultaneously by the body-which includes heart, brain, and hormone producing glands. The concepts of mind, soul, and spirit are all imagined from inside the body, at least most of the time.

If we attempt to live in our heads, ignoring anything below the neck, we manifest illness. If we attempt to live out of body, in spirit, our lives wander aimlessly, like a dog off the leash who can't find its way home. If we attempt to live only in body, without thought, we are at the mercy of the momentary sensation. To live a full life, al the parts must pitch in. We, as points of consciousness, must listen to the images and the sensations of the body to be alive; otherwise, we have no life, even before we are dead. References

Gardner, M. (1996, Sep 1). Isaac Newton: alchemist and fundamentalist. Skeptical Inquirer. Retrieved 4/28/07 from Highbeam Encyclopedia http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-18668828.html

Hicks, E. & Hicks. J. (2006). The law of attraction: The basics of the teachings of Abraham. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House, Inc.

Hillman, J & Ventura, M. (1992). We've had a hundred years of psychotherapy and the world's getting worse. San Francisco: Harper.

Hofstadter, D. (1979) Göedel, Escher, Bach: An eternal golden braid. New Your: Basic Books. Rpt. 1999.

Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: Harper Perennial.

Hillman, J. (1983). Healing fiction. Putman, CT: Spring Publications.

Raff, J. (2000) Jung and the alchemical imagination. Berwick, ME: Nicolas-Hays, Inc.

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Shlain, L. (1998). The alphabet versus the goddess: The conflict between word and image. New York: Penguin/Compass.

Woodman, M. (1993). Conscious Femininity: Interviews with Marion Woodman. Toronto: Inner City Books