Psyche & Soul 55: Midlife XII ATONEMENT (AT-ONE-MENT)

Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-55-Psyche--Soul--117-e14h1df

Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition, I present another midlife challenge: atonement.

Integrity that we explored and reflected upon in the previous podcast calls for atonement, understood as at-one-ment, becoming one, becoming whole.

 An essential challenge here is to work through and heal from the painful feelings and experiences we have carried with us into midlife.

 At-one-ment involves reconciliation - making peace with self, with others and may be also God, something that most of us find a real challenge.

 Reconciliation

To experience atonement, we must come to terms first of all with guilt over our own wrong doings. We need to forgive ourselves for our foolish choices and decisions, for messing up our lives, and turning a deaf ear to the deepest longings of our soul.

We need to let go our grievances against others for the real or imagined damage they have done to us. We need to forgive and reconcile with people who we feel put us on the wrong track or stood in the way of fulfilment of our dreams.

In the pursuit of our ambitions and misplaced priorities we might have been unfaithful to our promises to others, to husbands and wives or to God as religious men and women. We are challenged to right these wrongs, forgive ourselves and others, as well as ask forgiveness. We are called to reconcile, to reach out to others and end our alienation.

Reconciliation is a challenge for most of us. Some of us are able to achieve it, some of us do not. Some of us do not want to reconcile, preferring to carry our hurt, anger and resentment, seeing our stubbornness and pride as badges of strength.

Antony and Rajan were very close friends who set up a business together. The business thrived for a few years. Then profits declined, the ledger was showing big losses. After a careful internal auditing it was discovered that Rajan had been siphoning off money on various spurious accounts. Antony was very angry and upset. He angrily confronted Rajan and resigned from the company and decided not to have anything to do with Rajan or his family. This situation went on for a quite a few years. During a spiritual retreat Antony had a conversion experience. The words of the preacher on forgiveness touched him deeply. Though painful, Antony decided to forgive Rajan and reconcile with him.

Sr. Prabha had been the principal of a higher secondary school for several years. She had worked hard to bring the school to a standard of excellence and everyone was very happy with her. Ten years after she had taken over, her Provincial wanted to give her a transfer. Her considerable talents were needed elsewhere. Prabha talked the Provincial out of it.  Another three years passed. There was now a new Provincial who also decided to transfer Prabha, who tried to talk her too out of it. She shared with the new Provincial all the plans she had to take the school to still  greater heights, and that there were a number of works she had initiated that needed her attention. However, the Provincial stuck to her decision. Prabha obeyed and took up her new assignment, angry and resentful. She also stopped talking to her Provincial, and continues to avoid her even now when that Provincial has finished her term of office.

Antony realized the futility of holding on to his anger and was able to let go and make peace. Prabha was unable. She is still holding on to her hurt and resentment which keeps her fragmented, splintered within herself, alienated from others. No reconciliation, no atonement, no integrity.

Acceptance

Atonement is manifest also in the greater acceptance of the paradoxes of life, between good and evil, failure and success; in the giving up of our rigid and unbending opinions, and greater openness to contrary views; in becoming more sober and less impulsive in our judgments and our behaviour; in the willingness to acknowledge and accept more easily that we have been wrong on many matters and in many situations.  

 Atonement is manifest in the capacity to accept and tolerate ambivalence, conflict and failure. We no longer have the compulsion to be always perfect. We become more accepting of our limitations as well as appreciating our strengths and our accomplishments.

Inclusiveness

Atonement also calls for becoming more ‘catholic’- more universal, more inclusive, making space for everything and everyone in our heart, learning to cross narrow boundaries. We exclude nothing and no one, rather we embrace and include all, breaking down walls, broadening our perspectives and expanding our horizons.

 This acceptance and inclusion apply also to parts of our own selves and our personal history that we have despised or rejected.

Mourning

Atonement calls for mourning. Mourning is grief over unrealized dreams and lost opportunities, foolish decisions and roads not taken. It is coming to terms with our mistakes, failures and disappointments, letting go and moving on.

In authentic mourning, we process the past and discover who we are as a result of our experiences. We realise we cannot undo past events or the foolish choices and decisions we made, or the wrongs that others have done to us. We accept them and their consequences for us, who we have become as a result, and move on with life.

 We have to mourn those aspects of our personality we were unable to develop because of past choices or circumstances. We have to deal with the disparity between who we are and who we had dreamed of becoming— that is, mourn the person we have not, and now may never become.

 Shanti was brilliant in school. She had dreamed of becoming a doctor. But when she completed her school finals, she felt a call to become a religious. She felt she could fulfil both her dreams – be a religious nun, as well as a doctor. She became a nun; but her dream of becoming a doctor was never realized. After taking her religious vows, her superiors wanted her to be in education. She was deeply disappointed. But she obeyed, though with some initial resentment. She qualified in the educational field, obtaining a PhD, the only one in her congregation to do so. She has accomplished much as a well-recognized and appreciated educator. She still feels a tinge of sadness when she recalls her unfulfilled dream, but she is also grateful when she recalls how many lives she has touched as an educator.

Mourning is not regret. In regret we remain tied to a non-existent past, revelling in the “If only…” wishing things were different. Historical events cannot be wished away. All our wishing to the contrary will not make an iota of difference to the fact that something happened, however unfortunate it was.  But we can change our attitudes toward what happened. We can accept what has happened as part of our history, as something about which we today can do nothing and move on with our lives focusing on the present and the future. This is mourning. This is what Shanti did.

The Challenge of Atonement

As psychologist Daniel Levinson observes, failure to undertake this challenge of atonement can move us into late adulthood, bitter and resentful about perceived or real injuries, as “angry Martyrs,” our energy sapped by rage and self-righteous indignation. On the other, when we experience atonement we move toward the sunset of our lives enjoying peace and serenity.

I conclude with William Kraft’s description of the challenge of atonement: “…middle agers are challenged to reflect on life and to bring integrity into their relationships with themselves, others, and the world. Out of guilt, they come to forgive themselves and others. Out of depression, they come to a deeper fulfilment. Out of limits, they come to experience the unlimited. Out of resentment, they affirm their dignity and learn to be compassionate and forgiving. Out of anger, they become gentle and touching. This is the age of atonement, the time to become one with self and others. (Spiritual Growth in Adolescence and Adulthood, 1983, p. 21).

Reflection Exercise

·         What aspects of Atonement described here have you engaged in? Which do you still need to engage in? Which of them do you find difficult to engage in? Why?

Prayer

The story of Joseph and his brothers in the Old Testament (Genesis Chapter 42-45) is classic case of atonement – forgiveness and reconciliation and moving on.

The young Joseph is sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Later Joseph becomes the premier of Egypt and when a famine ravages their land his brothers are forced to go to Egypt and beg for grains from Joseph who recognised them. He is able to let go of the cruel injustice they had inflicted on him and treat them with love and affection and given them the grain needed. Not only, he invited them and their father to stay with him in Egypt.

What does this story evoke in us?  We could spend a few moments with our God, talking to God about our challenges related to atonement and seek his help to do the needful, so that we can move into the second half of   life less burdened by resentments and anger, and in serenity and peace.

 Have a blessed, safe and healthy weekend.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Courtesy google Images

 Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Psyche & Soul 53 MIDLIFE – IX: BALANCING THE MASCULINE AND THE FEMININE

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Podcast Link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-53-Psyche--Soul--113-e13pnch

 Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with another edition of Psyche & Soul.

In this edition, I present another midlife challenge: integration of the masculine and the feminine, or the anima and the animus.

“You were not like this. What happened to you?” Anita’s husband asked her with some annoyance in his voice. Anita had been a very self-sacrificing wife and mother, a compliant and pleasing type of person, always saying “yes” to whatever her husband and others asked of her. Now she had learned to say “no” and take care of her own needs. While Anita felt good about the changes in her, others were less pleased.

Rahul, a midlevel manager at a firm, had been a difficult person to deal with. He was very demanding on others, used to get easily angry and irritable. He always wanted things to be the way he thought they should be, and gave little consideration to other people’s needs and situations.. Now those around him noticed that he was changing. He was more calm and more considerate and understanding. He was now less driven by the need to achieve and they found it easier to relate to him.

What Anita and Rahul were experiencing and others noticing in them were the kind of changes midlife can bring about in our personalities.

These changes are part of the journey toward wholeness that Carl Jung described with the term “individuation.” For us to become more whole, for individuation to occur, it is necessary to bring about greater balance between our masculine and feminine qualities.

Animus & Anima

All of us, men and women, have both masculine and feminine qualities. In the first half of life men develop their masculine characteristics. Their feminine characteristics remain underdeveloped within them and are personified as the anima. In the first half of life women give priority to development of their feminine characteristics. Their underdeveloped internal masculine characteristics become personified as their animus. The animus is also known as the “internal masculine” and the anima the “internal feminine.”

The animus represents the human potential for active modification; assertiveness and abstract (impersonal and objective) rationality. The anima represents the human potential for receptive accommodation, contextual (empathic) thinking, and focus on feelings and relationships.

The terms masculine and feminine derive their meanings from a social process of gender splitting by which culture distributes aspects of human personality differently between the sexes. Within a particular culture, an individual tends to develop qualities attributed to his or her own sex by that culture and to suppress qualities attributed to the other sex.  Generally in most cultures, men are encouraged and expected to focus on getting things done (accomplishment). Women, on the contrary, are to focus on relationships and nurturing others (affiliation).

 

However, it is to be noted that it is not just cultural expectations that shape the animus and the anima. Biology also plays a significant role.

Masculinity and femininity in men and women are significantly influenced by hormones. Oestrogen, progesterone and oxytocin (hormones responsible for nurturing, bonding, care giving) predominate in women in the first half of life. Testosterone (the hormone responsible for aggression/assertiveness, sex drive) is dominant in men during the early years. In midlife there is a noticeable decline in these hormones in both men women, leading to a lessening of their impact and increasing the influence of the opposite hormones and helping to bring about greater balance.

These biological dynamics are able to lessen the impact of cultural expectations and allow men and women develop greater androgyny – an energizing blend of the masculine and the feminine. At midlife both men and women naturally begin to manifest their contra-sexual qualities.

 As a result men at midlife tend to appropriate the qualities of nurturance and tenderness, traditionally associated with women. Likewise, midlife and post-midlife women adopt the assertive and competitive qualities which the men at this stage are beginning to relinquish. This was the experience of Rahul and Anita.

Greater balance of the masculine and feminine can be further facilitated by a conscious effort as well.

 

Men’s Midlife Challenge: Moving from Accomplishment to Affiliation

The challenge for men at midlife is changing their attitude toward work and emotions. They are invited to move from ambition and aggressiveness on the work front to warmth and caring in relationships.

As psychologist Daniel Levinson observes in his study of men titled Seasons in a Man’s Life, the masculine pattern is characterised by a concern with doing.  Men are expected to “perform, accomplish, produce.” It is work (performance) that gives meaning to their lives. The desire to move ahead in their careers makes them work harder than needed.

Men pay a price to this dedication to work: starving emotional needs and neglecting relationships.

Psychologist Roger Gould describes some of the more hazardous price men pay for this focus on achievement: depression after a big failure; stroke, bleeding ulcers, or sudden crushing pains in the chest; heavy drinking and/or heavy womanising; disappointment with what they have achieved; deep sense of personal failure and worthlessness leading to bitterness.

These negatives sometimes lead to some positive transformation as well: They “lead men to open themselves to deeper recesses of their being, search their souls for unexpressed areas which they had been afraid to touch before” (Transformations in Adult Life, pp. 232).

It is in giving more importance to emotions and relationships that men cultivate the feminine. In midlife, men are invited to reclaim the qualities they formerly denied in themselves and projected onto women, such as tenderness, sensitivity and vulnerability.

Another way to develop the feminine is cultivating aesthetic interests.  Commitment to art, music, drama and exploration of nature will release men’s blocked feminine energies.

Women’s Midlife Challenge: Caring for and Developing One’s Own Self

Women’s challenge at midlife is changing their attitude towards caring and self-interest  They are invited to move from undue focus on other-care to increased self-care; to meet their own needs than others’ needs; to be  assertive on behalf of their own interests than being obliging and compliant toward others.

Most of the first half of their life, women have neglected their own needs and dreams in order to care for and help others, especially the men in their lives, by being loving, giving and self-sacrificing. They gave priority to relationships, to nurturing others, at the cost of self-nurturing and self-development. Many women, for example, have given up their own dreams and careers to serve the needs of others.

At midlife women feel an inner urge to act on their own behalf and seek their own growth and the realisation of their own dreams, rather than stick to the stereotypical wife-mother role. To do this, and gain control over their own destiny women have to confront whatever inner fears or external controls have interfered with their achieving a full life for themselves. Once they take back their power and stop being subservient, they are able expand their personalities and grow in self-confidence.

In her bestselling book on the crises of adult life Passages, Gail Sheehy described this challenge as follows:

It is not through more caregiving that a woman looks for replenishment of purpose in the second half of her life. It is through cultivating talents, left half finished, permitting ambitions once piggy-backed, becoming aggressive in the service of her own convictions rather than a passive-aggressive party to someone else’s. (p. 426)

For many professional, as well as religious women, the animus/anima integration challenge is very similar to that of men: i.e., developing their feminine personality. Many religious women were thrust into positions of responsibility and of power early in life. Professional women had to compete hard with men to attain positions of power and influence. In order to be effective and remain competitive in a male-oriented power structure both religious and professional women had to suppress their anima qualities –warmth, compassion, tenderness, vulnerability--and strive to become “more manly than men.”  Their midlife and post-midlife challenge then becomes reclaiming these suppressed and underdeveloped feminine qualities.

Greater balance of the masculine and the feminine, the anima and animus, enables men and women to be more integrated, more whole and enriches their personality. Life once again becomes a meaningful and energising adventure. This is a major challenge at midlife.

Reflection Exercise

·         Are you noticing changes in your personality? If yes, what kind?

·         Are other people commenting on changes they notice in you? If they do, what are they saying?

·         What is your challenge in terms of greater integration of your masculine/animus and feminine/anima qualities?

·         What is it you need to do to respond to this challenge?

Prayer

In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas Jesus speaks of the need for integration as follows: “When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same…then you will enter the Kingdom.”

Thus, in the Gnostic Christian tradition, this journey toward wholeness through the redemption of the shadow and the integration of the animus and the anima are necessary to enter the Kingdom of God and as such can be considered necessary spiritual exercises.

We could stay a while with whatever is evoked in us through the ideas expressed in this podcast and the quote from the Gospel of Thomas and spend some time talking and listening to God.

Have a pleasant weekend. Be safe. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening.

Pictures: Courtesy Google Images

 

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com

Psyche & Soul 50: Midlife VI -REDEEMING THE “SHADOW”

Podcast link:

https://anchor.fm/boscom/episodes/2-50-Psyche--Soul--107-e12iaqg

 Hello, this is Jose Parappully, Salesian priest and clinical psychologist at Sumedha Centre for Psychospiritual Wellbeing at Jeolikote, Uttarakhand with the 50^th Edition of Psyche and Soul.

In this edition I shall talk about the redemption of the Shadow at Midlife.

 

Midlife is the time when the shadow makes its presence felt. Carl Jung used the term “shadow” to describe that part of our personality that is repressed because it conflicts with the way we wish to see ourselves and be seen by others. It is that part of our personality we are now unaware of because it was  deemed incompatible with our ideal personality and has been conveniently forgotten.

Shadow Formation

Our real self consists of both light and shadow, goodness and ugliness. We have our “angels and demons” –aspects that we admire and appreciate and feel good about and their opposites. Goodness and evil are both residents of our psyche and soul. As writer Henry Nouwen loved to remark, “Where God appears, the evil one is also present.”

However, we tend to hide our demons and would like to appear all angel. So, we create our “persona.” In our effort to conform to social expectations, we try to present ourselves to the world in the way the world wants us to be. To live up to an idealistic self-image we suppress aspects of our personality that do not fit the self-image. This image of ourselves that we consciously cultivate and project in order to be and seen in a particular way is our persona.

For example, we and others may have an idealistic image of who a good priest or religious needs to be. We may discover that there are characteristics in us, such as our anger, lust for power, tendency to gossip or our sexual desires that do not fit that image. We suppress these consciously; after a while we forget we suppressed them (Tell a lie over and over and after a while we ourselves will begin to believe it to be the truth!) and they become part of our unconscious. They get swept under the veneer of our proper self. The proper self that we present to the world becomes our persona. In creating the persona, many aspects of our lives get repressed, split off from our conscious self and awareness. These repressed aspects become the “shadow.”

The persona, that masks our real self (Persona originally referred to the mask worn by actors in Greek theatre to represent a character), is not all bad; it does serve a useful purpose. It helps us to adapt to the demands of our social and cultural circumstances. We cannot always say what we really feel, or act on every impulse regardless of circumstances. However, problems arise when we identify with the persona and begin to believe that we are the front or the mask that we present to the outer world, and we lose awareness of our true reality, especially the unacceptable aspects of our personality.

The more we identify with an overly good or righteous persona, the darker will be our shadow. Those of us who are religious or priests are especially vulnerable to shadow formation because our vocation involves commitment to very high spiritual values and standards of moral conduct. Understanding of religious life as a call to “perfection” or the priesthood as becoming another Christ, makes us supress anything in us that prevents us from appearing perfect or Christlike. Thus, we can easily supress our angry feelings or our sexual feelings and longings and send these into the deepest basements of our psyche and soul, to become part of our shadow world.

Destructiveness of Shadow

What is destructive about unrecognised shadows is that they continue to be operative in our lives even though we are unaware of their existence. They drive our conscious behaviour, often in dysfunctional and even destructive ways.

When we are surprised by some of our unexpected unbecoming behaviours, it could be a pointer to a shadow. We might have cultivated the image of a gentle, sensitive, patient, understanding and compassionate human being. But during a conversation with someone whose behaviour we are disapproving, we suddenly burst into rage and begin to castigate the person using pretty strong language. In our sober moment, we ask, “What was that? How could I behave like that?” Well, that was our shadow, our repressed anger and resentment breaking through, embarrassing us and shocking others.

Shadow Integration

In midlife we experience the call to live life authentically, to be who we really are, to break out of the tyranny of social expectations. In midlife we hear the invitation from our “soul”— our deep, authentic self --, to recognize our unlived life, our deepest longings that we had repressed.

As the American poet Robert Bly observed, we spend the first half of our lives dissociating the unacceptable parts of ourselves and packing them into the invisible “shadow bag” that we carry on our back. In the second half of life we are invited to collect them back and make them part of our conscious self, and empty that heavy bag that slows down our journey toward wholeness.

 During midlife unresolved issues of the past, and feelings buried for years deep in the recesses of the psyche can re-emerge from the unconscious and demand our attention.  For those of us committed to a celibate lifestyle, our sexuality in particular, often resides in the shadow. Hence owning up and integrating (not acting out) our sexuality and intimacy needs into our conscious self becomes an important midlife task. 

Openness to the experience of intimacy helps us to process many aspects of our self that reside in the shadow. In genuine intimacy we have the freedom to be ourselves, to be “psychologically naked” before the other. We can bare our heart and soul to the other without fear or embarrassment. In that kind of freedom and openness, many aspects of our self that were suppressed rise to the surface of consciousness. We can then process them with our friend and integrate them.

Thomas Keating, Trappist monk and psychologist, highlights this aspect of intimacy: “One characteristic of love,” he wrote, “is that it reduces our defences. When our defences go down, the dark side of our personality emerges. One important aspect of true friendship is the willingness to help each other process that material.” (Intimacy with God, p. 72)

Shadow and Spiritual Life

Acceptance and integration of the shadow can have profound impact on our spiritual life. Jung considered shadow-work so important to the health of the soul that he considered it a religious undertaking.  In his psychology, getting to know the shadow is a way of redeeming all the rejected and lost parts of the soul.

With the acceptance of the darkness within ourselves, we can become more accepting of others’ weakness and become more compassionate. We also become more free to be ourselves, with genuine self-acceptance based on a more realistic sense of self. We recognise that we need not be perfect for God to love us; we could be who we are, with our angels and demons. The result is a quantum leap on the spiritual path. Jungian analysts Wilkie Au and Noreen Cannon describe the process as follows in the book Urgings of the Heart (p. 41)

For as we look at what frightens and shames us and come to know the pain that made us reject ourselves in the first place, we become newly receptive to God’s healing grace…. As God’s love for those wounded parts of us sinks in, we are able, perhaps for the first time, to love ourselves, dark side and all. We also find ourselves more able to reach out in love and compassion to others because we are less self-righteous and judgmental.

As another Jungian analyst, Robert Johnson, has pointed out, “To honour and accept the shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime” (Owning Your Own Shadow, p. x).

Reclaiming what has been lost in the shadow is an essential aspect of the inner journey we need to undertake at midlife. To do so we need to listen to the inner voices that have been silenced, feel the feelings that have been deadened, and sense their yearnings. This necessitates slowing down the pace of life and creating solitude in which what is hidden away in the unconscious can slowly emerge into consciousness and being brave enough to acknowledge their presence and integrate them into our conscious persona.

Introspection

Honest answers to the following questions can point to our shadow:

1. What unacceptable desires and impulses rise to consciousness unexpectedly in our solitudes?
2. What are the embarrassing “slips of the tongue” we make?
3. Who are the ugly or disreputable characters that appear in our dreams?
4. What is it that we intensely dislike or hate in another person or provoke our self-righteous indignation?

 Prayer

When Jesus speaks about the log in our eyes (Mathew 7, 3-5), he was essentially referring to our shadow- something we are not aware of. You could read that passage and stay a while in the presence of God or Jesus himself and ask them to help you recognize and redeem your shadows. And then sit quietly attending to whatever emerges into awareness. End the prayer thanking God for what you have been able to recognise.

May your weekend be happy and safe. Be blessed.

Thank you for listening/reading.

Pictures: Google Images

Jose Parappully SDB, PhD

sumedhacentre@gmail.com