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Creating Bridges: The Spiritual & Philosophical |
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Teachings from the Western Mystery Traditions:
The Esoteric "Paths of Return"
Soul Loss
A Spiritual Crisis That Resolves in Love
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by Jacquelyn Small
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Soul loss is a spiritual ailment that can cause many to fall into the throes of addiction, deep depression, or complete loss of interest in life. Feeling empty inside, and often out of touch with your body, you can spend countless years of psychic energy searching outside for your lost self, hoping to fill up that hole in your middle. Then, of course, it?s so easy to become addicted to chemicals, food, sex, shopping, or romance, or constantly giving yourself away in codependence.
According to shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman, the most common indicators of soul loss are:
• having gaps in one's memory of childhood, even sometimes into adolescence
• having a strong sense of having blocked complete memory of past traumas, but certain they occurred
• living outside your body, seeing yourself often as in a movie
• preferring to live out-of-body
• experiencing numbness, apathy, or feeling deadened
• having trouble staying in an intimate relationship
• feeling chronic depression and a sense of unworthiness
• having tendencies toward addiction to chemicals and other things that help you to stay numb, or to feel more energetic
• having difficulty finding what you feel is your true life's work
• living with an inability to really believe someone else loves you, even when they vow this from their hearts
• In severe cases, there can be symptoms of dissociative personality or multiple personality disorder.
Soul loss is felt in the inner life of your psyche, that voice that speaks to you in your head. Your psyche is your consciousness, your incarnated soul. Everything we think or feel is filtered through our psyches, giving us our knowledge of the world and the picture we make of it. It is the container of all that makes us both human and divine. And obviously, many of these beliefs, attitudes, and feelings you hold come from your childhood experiences and from those who influenced you early on. If you experienced abuse or neglect, your soul left your body anytime some painful event was happening.
The soul can actually split into parts and travel in many dimensions of consciousness, being so much greater than our little ego self, and sometimes simply does not return. It can constrict and hide in some unconscious fear places, so that whatever is feared is never integrated and healed. Or it can go into lofty places of a spiritual bypass, so that the psychic wound that caused it to leave remains unconscious and is therefore not remembered. Since your soul is your consciousness, this explains the gaps in your memory, feelings of emptiness, or lack of selfhood you may be living with. Yet, even though unconscious, this wound does exist in your psyche and causes serious unwanted effects in your relational life. Soul loss also explains nightmarish visions you sometimes have of dark dungeons and evil spirits. A spiritual crisis like this runs deep, and limits every aspect of your life in unconscious ways. Without the proper help, soul loss can lead to spiritual emergencies that masquerade as psychosis, or can even lead to one?s death.
To heal from soul sickness requires a re-awakening to the higher or greater aspects of yourself, a re-embodiment of your soul. You have to get to know your psyche and discover how it works. Then, you learn to meet not only your ego's needs, but your soul?s needs as well. To retrieve your lost soul, you must travel backward in time, with the proper guidance, to find where your soul is hiding. Making it conscious and relating to it compassionately, with confidence that it can now be safe, will often bring it back. You can only do this by committing to a deep process of Self-exploration and willingness to return to the painful source of your loss. But first, it's crucial for you to remember that you are much bigger than the bad experience you had. Perhaps the Goddess Psyche can remind you.
The Gift of Psyche
Your Guide for Personal Transformation
The mythical story of the goddess Psyche can help you get started in your healing, by reminding you of your "bigger story" as a soul traveling through time. Myths speak to us symbolically of our universal human story, and consequently, of the life experiences of every individual, helping us to feel less alone. The characters in myth, like Psyche and Eros, are "real," because they function as psychic impulses that drive our inner human unfolding and inspire us toward our higher ideals. As the archetype of the human soul, Psyche's journey through incarnation teaches us of our soul?s longing to be human, and of our human longing for spiritual transcendence.
Psyche's treacherous journey on earth as a human girl, lost and searching for Love, is indeed our story, too. At its most profound level, the myth of Psyche is a spiritual parable of the transformational trials we all must successfully encounter and resolve to regain the memory that we are divine. It is a harrowing journey, full of peril and promise, mysterious helpers, miraculous insights, tricks, stratagems and disobedience, despair and victory.
In what follows, I'll briefly tell you Psyche's story, and describe the four initiations your soul will be required to undergo on the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels, to remember that we are divine.
Your Psyche?s Greater Story
Psyche began her life here on earth in an unconscious trance state, still living at the mercy of the gods. Being a universal immortal goddess, she didn't know how to be human. Her experience on earth is our story of how we awaken from pure innocence to the wisdom of human experience.
Aphrodite was jealous of Psyche's youth and beauty, and was furious with her for abandoning her goddess duties to experience a personal life on earth. To punish Psyche, she sent her son Eros to prick Psyche with one of his arrows so she would fall in love with any dreadful creature who came to claim her as his bride. But as Eros drew his arrow from his quiver, he pricked his own finger and fell in love with the lovely girl himself. Eros was a silly god who loved to frivolously make people fall in love. Until now, he had never felt love's potent sting himself.
In their initial pairing, Psyche and Eros were like two children playing house in the night worlds of the creative imagination. Psyche had to promise Eros she would never see his face or know any more about him. He convinced her that gods can only live "in the dark." Both were quite content to remain in this unconscious dream state, seeking the whimsical pleasure of coupling without accountability. In their fantasy life, everything was done for them by magic hands. They lived in utter luxury and didn't even have to think!
This is indeed a vivid case of spiritual bypass! How often have we tried to live like this, in the crevices of the uncarved imagination? It's so natural for us to want to escape in fantasy from the harsh realities of life, and especially in our romantic pursuits. Unrequited love can always remain perfect, since it never has to be tested in the light of day. This can become the seedbed for seeking chemical "highs," or for the romantic love addiction.
Now, as you may recall, Psyche finally tired of living in ignorant bliss. So one night, she shined a lamp on her lover's face, and saw that he was, indeed, a god! The lamp is symbolic of consciousness. Now, Eros, only wanted to remain an eternal youth, and could not face the light of day. So when the candlelight from Psyche's lamp dripped and burned his flesh, he awakened in rage, and fled, accusing Psyche of betraying their love. To find the divine love she has lost, Psyche will now be required to take on her earth life fully and learn how to be a mature human. We'll discover that though the twists and turns of each person's journey are unique, most of us pass similar markers. These are the four initiations we must all take to be whole.
Psyche's First Initiation
Sorting the Seeds
When Aphrodite learned of Psyche's disobedient behavior toward her son Eros, she ordered Psyche to perform the impossible task of sorting the seeds in an enormous pile of mixed wheat, barley, millet, lentils, and corn. She had to learn to recognize each type so she could treat it realistically according to its nature. She was being taught to come fully into the human condition. She had to learn that running away from the painful elements of life without examining and understanding them keeps us in an unconscious, non-growth state. All must be faced and recognized for what they truly are if we are ever to be wise to the ways of this world.
Psyche was completely overwhelmed by this task, until a colony of ants said they would help her. Ants symbolize "children of the earth" and know how to work naturally, rapidly and methodically to bring order out of chaos. This was Psyche's lesson, to claim her dormant human skill of discrimination. Our own first task along our journey of individuation is to separate off from Mother and Father, where all our decisions were made for us. We must learn on our own how to use our natural instinctual human forces that know how to bring order into our lives.
So ask yourself: How good are you at this first task? Do you allow confusion or a lack of discrimination to keep you from moving forward in your life? Or do you have trouble recognizing the true nature of things and of others so that you can relate to them with practical wisdom? The task of sorting the seeds teaches us to be an active participant in our lives rather than passively waiting for events to "just happen" in the night worlds of fantasy and imagination.
Psyche's Second Initiation
Gathering the Fleece
Psyche's second initiatory task teaches her to balance her emotional nature and bring it to maturity. She was ordered to enter an open pasture of fierce, crazed rams to retrieve from their coats their golden fleece desired by Aphrodite.
Again, Psyche was overwhelmed by this task until the swaying reeds along the riverbed told her the secret of how to deal with this situation. She was told to observe how the rams were only powerful during the daytime, as they drew their fierce power from the sun. When the sun?s light began to ebb, their energies dissipated and their wild frenzies ceased. So she realized that when the rams were safely slumbering, she could gather the fleece that clung to the trees and bushes in the grove. They would never even know she was even there.
Psyche was learning that she didn't have to directly combat the rams? aggressive masculine energy. She could meet her task through a careful, harmless strategy using analytical thought. She was also learning to keep harmony with the rhythms of the day.
Her inner helper had been the reeds. Water, like our emotions, has many moods, from violent storms to a glassy calm. Though the reeds near water, their roots are solid in the earth while they flow gracefully in the air, a symbol for the mind. Often, in an emotional crisis we will feel we're in deep water and have "gotten in over our heads." What usually helps is "coming up for air."
Thusly, Psyche is learning to balance the masculine and feminine energies within her herself -head and heart, logic and intuition --as a central task of her journey into maturity. She now has to learn how to bring her girlish, unconscious, out-of-control emotional responses into balance with the analytical, problem-solving power of the masculine principle. So here, we all learn to use both our intuition and our logic to outsmart the rams. We must all learn, as did Psyche, to steal some of this magic solar power for ourselves to balance these often too feminine tendencies. How good are you at this? When emotionally upset, can you get to the bottom of what?s really bothering you, own your shadow, and take responsible action?
Psyche's Third Initiation
Containing the Waters of Life
In Psyche's third task, Aphrodite forced her to go to a high mountain and look down on the dark waters of the river Styx that violently cascaded with all of humanities unhealed turbulence. Poor Psyche was ordered to go into the middle of the poisonous river and fill Aphrodite?s crystal goblet to the brim and bring it to the goddess. Just as she was about to give up, a majestic eagle, the royal bird of the high god Zeus, flew into her vision. "Give me the goblet," commanded the bird, known for its sharp eyes and deadly precision in swooping down on its prey. The god, Zeus, her heavenly father, had turned himself into an eagle, rushing to save her life. Upon seeing the eagle and recognizing his royal nature, the waters quieted, and the eagle dove into the river, filled the goblet, and delivered it to Psyche.
What is the message here for Psyche and for us? Seen in the light of depth psychology, we might think of this river as the human collective unconscious mind, the powerful floodtide of unprocessed and disorganized archetypes, images, and passions. Within these waters is carried all of life's vitality - birth, death, joy and suffering, triumph and disaster, eternal movement, eternal change. So how can a fragile human contain this onrush and not be shattered? The crystal goblet is a symbol for the human ego, the vehicle Spirit must use to embody here. We all must learn to carry our right proportion of humanity's conditions. So often, we either try to take on too much, or avoid responsibility, leaving others will do our part. Psyche's container must be sturdy enough to accommodate all that is rightfully hers to hold without cracking apart. This is a vital lesson in codependency, enabling, and of viewing the world through the eagle eye of clarity of vision.
As the collective unconscious, the river Styx carries the generative seeds of all imaginative and creative endeavors. This task is teaching Psyche to gather the waters in this small goblet, thus giving the waters form , just as the pregnant Psyche is obviously learning human form-making. As her container strengthens to encompass both the inner feminine and masculine energies, both Aphrodite and Zeus have come to her aid, as elements of her own inner divinity.
We, too, must struggle to transform and give new shape to some portion of the collective unconscious potentials for humanity. Like the eagle, we are to develop the discriminating bird's eye view to see clearly what boundaries to set up, what parts to take on and what to leave alone. When we can acknowledge that we are the authors of our own successes and failures, our creative achievements strengthen our sense of who we are. And now comes the big question: Can you accept the fact that you, like Psyche, are both human and divine?
Psyche's Final Initiation
Descending to the Underworld
In fairy tales, there are usually three tasks. Psyche is given four. In the science of numerology, three is the number for creation, and four symbolizes manifestation and grounds creation in the physical plane. In this final stage of her initiation, Psyche must enter the mysteries of the inner divine feminine, represented by the great goddess Persephone in both her light and dark aspects. Psyche must face the question of whether she is mortal or divine. This task will teach her that she is both, which prepares her to undertake her divine function here on earth. Though she still hasn't realized this, Psyche is to be "the new Aphrodite," a goddess who can feel and relate not just universally as all gods and goddesses do, but as a personal individual as well.
Aphrodite now gives Psyche the task of traveling down into the dark Underworld and gain from the Queen of Hades a box of her beauty ointment. And she must bring this ointment back to Aphrodite with the stern admonition that she was not to open the box under any circumstances.
Psyche had not realized that the heavenly goddess Aphrodite and the Underworld goddess Persephone are two sides of the same divine Feminine archetype. As the human link between these two, Psyche must discover that mature femininity contains both the light and the dark, creation and destruction, love and death. To learn this, the human psyche must delve deeply into the dark, inward places where the extremes of beauty and ugliness swim together in paradoxical chaos. There Psyche will realize that only when she faces both the luminous and shadowed aspects of existence is it grounded in reality.
Persephone is the perfect final teacher for Psyche, as she, too, was once an innocent, carefree young goddess. Now, she lives in the harsh winds of winter for half of every year, then ushers in the springtime for the other half. Having been kidnapped and forced to marry the God of Death, Persephone has grown into one who knows both the heights and depths of feminine experience. Now this wisdom is being passed along to Psyche, though she is unaware of this great gift until it bursts forth spontaneously from her decision to open the box and put the beauty ointment on her own face.
Now why on earth would Psyche make the lethal decision to violate this order and open the box of beauty ointment? How could she have been so careless? Well, we human girls can certainly relate. She was walking along, dreaming of her immanent reunion with her beloved soul mate, and her longing for him became so strong she could feel his arms around her and hear his sweet voice. As she reveled in this fantasy, she glanced at her reflection in a pond and, horrified at how bedraggled she looked, could not bear to think of him seeing her like this! Then, she remembered the precious beauty ointment, and thought: "If I can anoint my face with this divine beauty, my lord will find me irresistible, for I will be as a goddess myself and fit to be his bride."
When she opened the box, out flew a noxious cloud of sleep wrapping Psyche in a deathlike slumber. And there she lay as though a corpse, her life force seemingly extinguished right at the time of her greatest triumph. Had Psyche simply succumbed to vanity and self-forgetfulness, all her efforts for naught? Or, was there a higher purpose this new disobedience served? Yes, indeed. Psyche's apparent fatal decision was the kind of mistake known as a felix culpa - which means "a happy sin." This is a type of disobedience that pushes one toward a greater good. Psyche has brought on the kind of sleep that shifts us from one state of consciousness to another. When she falls asleep, she dies to her immature "maiden" identity as an unconscious girl.
By this final disobedience, Psyche has unwittingly announced her willingness to enter into a mature personal love and raise it to the level of the sacred, to marry the human with the divine. This love was so strong, it was felt by Eros who flew to her rescue and kissed her awake from her sleep. The Eros who awakens Psyche is no longer the silly boy nursing his wounded pride- the puer aeternus, or eternal youth, of Jungian psychology. Eros has now become a redeemer god who can recognize, serve, and honor genuine love.
When she awakens, she is no longer the young girl but a conscious woman who has claimed her life's purpose as the goddess who brings divine love and beauty from the archetypal dimension down to earth. Psyche opened a new door for humanity, a new possibility that divine love can live in individual human minds and hearts right here on earth. And for the gods, she brought them an awareness of the personal life beyond their limitation of only knowing universal love.
Thus did Psyche, a mortal, become the wife of an immortal god. She has connected once again to her soul. Soon Psyche gave birth to their daughter, whose name in heaven is Joy, while on earth she is called Pleasure. She is the marriage of the soul's happiness with earthly sensual pleasures.
So what can this last task teach you about your own journey home? In the classical sense, initiation connotes an expansion of consciousness, an opening, stage by stage, to a recognition or remembrance of the inner divinity that is our essential nature. It is a gradual awakening to that which already is!
In the end, the human Psyche not only marries a god, but also remembers she is a divine goddess herself. Could this remembrance be our sacred mission as well? When we reconnect with our soul, we can each play our part by bringing sacred delight into all our personal human relationships. And by so doing, the passionate ego and the light-filled soul become one. In mythic terms, we marry our souls to Love. May all the lost parts of your soul be retrieved, so that you, like Psyche, can give birth to Joy.
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Jacquelin Small,
Spiritualist, Clairvoyant Psychologist
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JACQUELYN SMALL, LMSW, is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with degrees in human psychology and clinical social work. She is a licensed non-denominational minister and a licensed psychotherapist who works with both spiritual and psychological concerns.
Jacquelyn is a popular presenter and consultant in academic settings, new-thought churches and new paradigm conferences and mental health settings, known for her easy-going, self-disclosing, humorous style of intimate relating with her audiences.
She has a long history in addiction counselor training, consulting and counseling, and trains all kinds of health professionals in the emerging field of spiritual psychology. She is one of the teachers who has been selected by Unity Church for their national TV ministry. She served as the Director of Training for the Texas Commission on Alcoholism and Drug Abuse for nine years, and served on the adjunct faculty of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Stanford, California for four years.
Jacquelyn has authored eight books about soul-based psychology and the process of personal transformation, some of which have become classics in the counseling and consciousness fields. She is represented by the Tom Grady Agency. She has many audio tapes as well through Eupsychia's publishing company, Eupsychian Press.
Her published books are:
* Becoming Naturally
Therapeutic (Bantam)
* Transformers, the
Artists of Self-Creation
(DeVorss & Co.)
* Awakening in Time
(Eupsychian Press)
* Embodying Spirit (HarperSanFrancisco
/Eupsychian)
* Rising to the Call with
co-author Mary Yovino (DeVorss & Co.)
* Becoming a Practical Mystic (Quest Books)
* Psyche's Seeds-The 12 Sacred Principles of Soul-Based Psychology (Tarcher/Putnam
/Penguin)
Jacquelyn is a regular columnist for Science of Mind Magazine and is featured often in other magazines. Among the many conferences and programs for which Jacquelyn has keynoted or presented programs, include:
* The Association for Humanistic Psychology
* Association for Transpersonal Psychology
* Omega Institute
including their Body &
Soul Conferences
* Tracor and Texaco, Inc.
* Church of Religious Science Annual
Conference
* Great Lakes Addiction Conference
* Whole Life Expo
* The College of William & Mary's Annual Addictions Conference
* Most major universities
in the United States
* U.S. Department of Heath, Education and Welfare
* Omega Institute's
Body & Soul Conferences
* New Age Magazine's Bahama Teaching Cruise
The ConferenceWorks!
She has been featured on the Oprah Winfrey Show, America's Talking, Wisdom Television and Radio, New Dimensions Radio, NPR's People's Pharmacy and a CNN's series on Alternative Healing and continues to make regular guest appearances for radio and television.
Jacquelyn Small serves on the Advisory Board of the International Psychosynthesis Association, the National Council on Codependence, and The Holistic Alliance of Professional Practitioners, Entrepreneurs and Networkers, Inc.
She is the Founding Director of Eupsychia (pronounced u-si'-ki-a) Institute which means "good psyche" or "well being" in Greek, a not-for-profit professional training and healing program in Soul-Based Psychology and Integrative Breathwork. With her staff of dedicated, experienced spiritual therapists, she conducts workshop intensives throughout North America on a regular basis.
Eupsychia Institute
PO Box 151960
Austin, TX 78715-1960
(800) 546-2795
Local (512) 327-2795
Fax (512) 327-6043
eupsychia1@aol.com
Contact Webmistress
www.eupsychia.com
Special Note:
Eupsychia's Addiction Treatment Alternative 28-Day Program, Third Stage Recovery, for anyone struggling with any kind of addiction, is January 24-February 21, 2006 at our beautiful and intimate retreat setting, Red Corral Ranch, located within the beauty of the Texas Hill Country.
We invite you to view the program's website at http://www.3SR.org.
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