I'm making my way through David Whyte's audiobook The Three Marriages, so this is where I will enter the conversation, mid-stream, navigating the currents of relationships to another person, a work, and this precarious and unsettling connection to something within which I refer to as the Self, Psyche, or Soul...depending on my mood and which teacher-in-absentia I am learning from on any given day.
THE UNIVERSAL AND PHILOSOPHICAL:
Regarding the nature of passionate love (whether it be for a person, an inner calling, or an outer vocation), Whyte says that it is characterized by an "unconscious drive toward vulnerability", that despite all rational thought, common sense, or sound advice, one is compelled to follow the "hidden, non-negotiable conversation that will reorder and reimagine us, preparing us for the marriage to which our falling in love leads." To follow that longing despite the odds, despite the probability of rejection and humiliation, takes us toward an encounter with something that will utterly change us.
In the following poem, he shows us that this encounter is not necessarily what we are dreaming it to be--happily ever after with our true love, fame and fortune in the perfect job--but something far more significant and perhaps terrifying to the small ego trying to control and manage our lives:
Self-Portrait by David Whyte
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
from Fire in the Earth
©1992 Many Rivers Press
In his recently published private journal,
The Red Book, Carl Jung says, "He could find his soul in desire itself, but not in the objects of desire. If he possessed his desire, and his desire did not posses him, he would lay a hand on his soul, since his desire is the image and expression of his soul." I believe this is related to Rumi's statement (translation by Coleman Barks), "Lovers don't finally meet somewhere/They are in each other all along." Whenever we are feeling that deep, undeniable longing for someone or something, the desire that does not fade and that will not let us sleep, we are hearing the call of the Soul. This also reminds me of Joseph Campbell's exhortation to "Follow your bliss."
What happens when we refuse to follow that call? When we turn away from our desire, our longing, our love, out of fear that we will never have it , or having had it, lose it, we turn away from our own Soul, away from the Self. What does this look like? In
Swamplands of the Soul, Jungian analyst and author James Hollis describes "desuetude", a kind of depression and loss of vitality, as the emotional state that occurs when we are headed in the wrong direction. When we are driving ourselves away from what the Soul wants, she withdraws the life force, cuts the fuel line, kills the engine so that you come to a complete stop until you figure it out. Maybe she is hoping you will ask for directions!
THE PERSONAL and PARTICULAR:
In college, I studied English poetry and Shakespeare, Theatre, and the sublime but completely impractical art of Oral Interpretation. Can you imagine a Masters' degree in anything more self-indulgent than reading poetry out loud?? Can you imagine my father's anxiety, wondering how in the world I would live on that? He tried so hard to get me to study teaching, so that I would always have a job. Well, I did what I had to do...studied what I loved. And I got a job teaching the art of reading poetry--and other things--out loud as soon as I graduated. I taught that for a decade, and loved every minute of it. Then I got a degree in Jungian psychology. There is nothing less practical than Jungian psychology when you work in a government funded agency. But those loves changed me...brought me closer to my Self than I could ever have imagined as a young woman entering college.
I have also had experiences loving a person that made me a compulsive neurotic wreck. It was so much easier to follow the career desires! I have been absolutely obliterated by this: the mythology of who I thought I was, left shredded on the floor every time. Luckily, when I picked up the pieces, I was somehow better. And bigger on the inside. A part of me would like to give up all this suffering for love, but another part of me just takes over and all I can do is fall into the center of my longing again and again, and see where it leads.
My Wild Heart
I have a wild passionate heart.
Restrained by rules and roles
Dutifully acknowledged for years,
She pulses secretly,
and tentatively
reaches out whenever she can.
Soon, in stillness and in play
She will break free
To love what she chooses.
You cannot control or capture
My Wild Heart.
You may only accept what she offers
(or doesn't offer, on her whim)
And tend to your own heart,
Beating wildly within.
BUT ENOUGH ABOUT ME...
Have you ever given in to a passionate longing for someone, despite your better judgment? Have you followed a dream, with trepidation and uncertainty, that you were told was impossible? Do you find yourself turning within, in solitude and silence, when you really 'out to get out more'? Marion Woodman would ask, do you go by choice or by compulsion? The answer is always "yes", but even when one is abducted, like Persephone taken down into Hades, there is also a certain amount of courage in the surrender. Where have you been courageous? Where have you refused the call and suffered the consequences? Tell us! Inquiring minds want to know!
