HAGITUDE: Sharon Blackie on the Power of Aging
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- UNLOCK THE SECRETS OF YOUR DREAMS: Dream School provides a gently paced program with live interactive webinars, an uplifting online community, thought-provoking audio modules, and guided journaling to deepen your experience. Lisa, Deb, and Joe crafted the program with you in mind and companion you through the process. “Step-by-step, we’ll teach you how to interpret your dreams.” Join the revolution of consciousness! Join Dream School and Transform Your Sleep into the Greatest Adventure of Your Life: thisjungianlife.com/join-drea...
*****************************************************************************************************
Sharon Blackie calls us to the ancient archetype of the Hag as a figure of unapologetic emergence from cultural pressures that lock us into outworn roles and limiting beliefs.
Drawing upon her transformative experiences in menopause Blackie grounds the mythic figure of the old woman who fashioned the world in her fierce determination to dissolve and reconfigure her professional and personal life. Identifying and rejecting cultural pressures to look and act a certain way as she ages, she claims the second half of her life for a post-heroic journey of intense creativity and unapologetic self-expression.
Ancient Celtic fairytales, myths, and folk stories carry the spirit of the Cailleach, the divine old woman who shapes the landscape and scourges it clean through winter storms. This Queen of Winter is sharp and wild. Those who discover the Cailleach within carry her ruthless truths as unavoidable facts that demand acknowledgment. Her stark reality strips away one's inner illusions and avoidance of death, leaving her sharp eye facing outward. Tending the web of life becomes the great task, and acting to restore balance to the community, the central role.
The path to the Hag is hidden in stories. Blackie reminds us that reviving the ancient themes and images expands our imagination and helps us recover the dark woods we once knew well. Wise old ones revive awe and connection. Trees and plants, rivers and crows have secrets to teach us that require a depth of listening undisturbed by collective gibbering.
Elderhood can be a time to shed the roles assigned to us. Menopause can be welcomed as a rite of passage with the Hag silently waiting for us to see her. If we have learned how to recognize her, renewal and reclaiming is possible. The stories of those who have gone before us carry a strange beauty that can stir a memory in our soul and set us on the path.
Here's the dream we analyze:
“I’m in a Baby Fostering and Adoption facility. Babies are waiting like chicks in low, wide plastic containers. They could see out but were content to wait. I wanted to select one past the crying stage, so I asked the caretaker who was the oldest. She extracts a teenage girl they’ve had for a long time from the center of the container. I take the girl to foster. We went to a city and stopped at a takeaway to buy her a salad, though the restaurant did not look healthy. I pay and assume the girl is behind me. I don’t understand the currency, so I offer it to the guy at the counter to choose. He takes some and gives me back a lot of coins whose value I don’t know. The girl was gone when I turned with the salad. Frantic, I tried to find her because I was supposed to return her to the facility. I desperately cry, “Help me! Help me!” I rush into a daycare and ask a female staff member to help me. She might have, but she was in charge of the daycare. As I wake, I realize the girl slipped away by choice. I wasn’t scared she was abducted; I just panicked that she left without a discussion. I felt like a bumbling idiot because it reflected badly on me, and I wondered why I had agreed to begin with.” [This dream was edited for brevity and clarity.]
ABOUT SHARON:
Website: sharonblackie.net/
Order her book: Hagitude. Reimagining the second half of life: hagitude.org/
RESOURCES:
Philadelphia Association of Jungian Analysts, ADVANCED CLINICAL PRACTICE PROGRAM: A case seminar for experienced clinicians to read, explore and apply Jung's concepts to clinical practice: www.cgjungphiladelphia.org/as...
ARE YOU INTERESTED IN A SERIOUS STUDY OF JUNG? Enroll in the Philadelphia Jungian Seminar 2023 Fall Semester and start your journey: www.cgjungphiladelphia.org/se...
HELP KEEP US CORPORATE FREE--BECOME OUR PATRON: Hey folks, we need your help. Please become our patron and keep This Jungian Life podcast up and running: / thisjungianlife
SHARE YOUR DREAM WITH US: Submit your dream for a possible podcast interpretation: thisjungianlife.com/share-you...
SUGGEST A FUTURE PODCAST TOPIC: Share your suggestions: thisjungianlife.com/podcast-f...
YES, WE HAVE MERCH! www.zazzle.com/store/thisjung...
So grateful. After a my son's traumatic accident and subsequent realization of some serious failures in our parenting, I had a serious Kudry chapter in this year. This was profoundly difficult for me to step out of a very conciliatory pattern and into a confrontation that has, (hopefully temporarily) divided our family and has been deeply wounding for all, but to me felt profoundly imperative to address. My partner and I both come from families in which only one family member really mattered (fathers) and subordinate mothers. I realized that we had unconsciously created a similar family pattern. The Kudry example was precisely what was alive in me; a fierce desire for excessive arrogance to be questioned, for empathy for others experience to be valued, that it behooved my young Percival to develop these muscles. Sadly for him, humility was not something we had oriented him towards--erring on the side of creative + free range.
This podcast pointed exactly to a role I viscerally felt was being demanded of me; that I felt my son desperately needed this other dimension to develop, that I could only point to shakily (and with a great deal of contempt and criticism coming at me for my complete change in tune). Stepping into that hag role felt massively unnatural to me and it did coincide with a particularly physically painful menopause. This podcast pointed to my exact calling for something bigger and better to develop in my son, and in myself requiring me to also find new powers of resilience, and a marital upheaval hopefully for the better. The risk of accepting things as they were was clearly worse than the many losses I was willing to sustain. Work in progress...but our young people do not simply need bubble wrap...and it is perhaps no gift sometimes to simply look the other way when young adults are missing important dimensions.
This is such a rich discussion. I am loving every bit of it! At 41 this feels extremely timely. Not to mention for the work I do and where I see it headed. Thank you so very much! 🙏🏻
Just beginning to listen and what has really caught my ear was hearing Sharon say that the heroes’ journey is not made for a woman’s psyche. I am feeling more and more clarified as I discover my own dwelling.
Just found this site…feels like I’ve come home.❤
This was such a wonderful conversation. So profound and lovely. Thank you for this. I'm so glad to have found this channel.
In case if anyone’s interested in Sharon’s reference to certain Sufi concepts:
Pertaining to the concept of mundus imaginalis within the Sufi tradition, there’s a categorization of human existence and a human makeup.
Pedagogically, within the concept of “fanaa”, also known as an annihilation of self or rather self-interrogation and re-construction of self, the self is made of three significant parts: nafs, qalb, and rawh. Nafs, known as self however not in its entirety, is characterized by flaws related to physical desires, access, and luxury. Qalb, which means heart, is characterized by faults involving search and love for prestige, power, and authority; from within it emerge failures that don’t deal with physical needs and desires, but intangible ones pertaining to one’s sense of identity (e.g. arrogance, envy, etc.). Also, rawh, which means a soul, is characterized by the flaws of longing for recognition with the Divine or that which is metaphysical, desires to be distinctive and special with and to the Divine, and a longing for entitlement regardless whether it’s due to one’s worthiness/hard work or not. These are characterized by flaws in order to know what a wayfarer, one who aspires to become a Sufi, has to work on, usually in a presence of a learned scholar. However, philosophically, the rawh and the qalb are one and the same for innately, they unlike the nafs, or self, cannot be bad - the soul and the heart can either be elevated or debased, their nature does not change.
What is more, the Sufi concept of veils are strongly tied to the idea of fanaa - self re-construction, for it states something like the following, “it is not the True that is veiled from you, but rather you who are veiled.” - ibn Ataillah from The Book of Aphorisms. Meaning that beyond the realm of one’s existence there are pluralities of realms of the Divine, but it is not the Divine that veils them from one for it is the faults in one’s self that need to be re-constructed in order to remove those veils.
If you’re interested, Khaled Abou El Fadl, a prominent scholar and human rights activist, has UA-cam series on this topic.
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés did a great deal of work in this area. I highly recommend her books and recordings. ❤🧡💛💚💙💜 Great video, thanks for sharing this with us.
I love you guys, you always upload high quality content and Im so gratefull for that. 🌞🌻🌞
You have not had real growth until you have had a major crises. I find it fascinating that she had a mid life crises in her 30s. I had mid life crises in my 40s and now I'm going into my 60s with a brand new life because of my transformation. My peers have delayed their midlife crises by not facing it and are just now in their 60s having their crises.
Wow! Sharon Blackie on your podcast!! I have all of her books. She is a wise woman. I have learned so much from her. Thanks for this wonderful conversation.
What's she's saying about older women not knowing what they are angry about is true. I've taught in older adult arts education and there were so many women that had all their needs met: retirement, vacations, a lovely car, owned a house, money in the bank, assets, but no creativity, no inner child work, no healing work, no sense of the sacred or myth. As a much younger, happier woman, child-free, husband-free, fancy-free, deep in my passion as a professional dancer AND artist, I was often the target of their jealousy and rage. I didn't wait till menopause to start a joyous, creative, hand made life, it really started around age 6! But they waited until 75 or later to begin. I had decades of knowing that they didn't, and it stung them.
Thank you for this lovely, thoughtful conversation.
I felt the crow encounter me, watching from the stoop as they soared down the hilltop valley behind my house, a thunking sound I felt in my skull. Delight on my end.
Wonderful interview. Thank you! Hagitude has become my support, my companion, and the discussion that took place here made the book all the more significant. Clarissa Estes Pinkola may be another "Jungian" author you might consider interviewing.
I paused your BPD video halfway through, needing to digest that more slowly some other day.
This video appeared next in my feed this not-christmas morning.
I am grateful to have found you.
Oh my goodness! Thank you for sharing! ❤ This is fabulous. I can so relate!
Thanks for watching!
Responding to Joe’s framing of the hero’s journey (departure from home, independence etc) as having a place is good, I think. But that suggests that this is a linear process, the one that takes you out of childhood (& home) to adulthood & the world. I think she is saying something different. That the experience of rootedness, attachment etc may be the place to START for many. May be where the self actually experiences adulthood & from where the wanderings of the hero’s journey may or may NOT arise. May be sufficient while being complex. Just a thought … am still listening.
Americans really don't have a rootedness. As an American, I have often thought about this. We have a love for the United States, but all of us have "the old country" and we carry our family stories about how our ancestors came to the US. And we cherish and carry on our family heritage.
For a long time, I couldn't understand English people's connection with the British Isles. "Oh, to be in England/Now that April's there..."
Huh?
It wasn't until I read Solzhenitsyn and heard him say, "We're the sons of Mother Russia" that I understood. They didn't come from *anywhere.* Their ancestors came from *right there* from the Ice Age.
Mind-blowing.
This talk was a reminder of our relationship with the wisdom of feminine archetype, which is fully emerging at this time.
Beautiful and insightful.
Just choosing this moment to chime in with appreciation for this and all your discussions. You do something quite special here--thank you!
Wow, thank you!
14:43 I’ve been searching for this answer before I even considered this question. thank you
But she seems then to describe the exact hero's journey playing out in her life...
And later when asked for an alternative she is unforthcoming.
I am interested in the premise but all. I've seen so far of the alternatives are a disruptive mangling of the entire intention of the journey.... Having seen some people formulate what they have called the "heroine's journey" I've been struck by how the entire purpose... Whucb is To become of greater use to ones community... Gets abandoned in favour of mere "becoming more authentically one's self" this is a disasterous u-turn to the inadequate beginnings as far as I can see.... Increased usefulness only becoming possible incidentally.
But... The Hero's Journey without growth to better usefulness as its whole raison d 'etre is just a new age ego trip!
As someone trying to create my own mythological path to follow (Celt/Germanic), all I can say is that I wish that Dr Blackie would create a new mythology. We sure so need it in order to transform ourselves and our planet.
I'd like to hear more about how/why the "hero's journey is not designed for women." This is my second time to listen and as usual hearing things I missed the first time!
Marion Woodman has a book called The Heroines journey.
I can't express how powerful this is.
I loved the dream discussion...
Really enjoyed this week's podcast. Thought the hero's journey was interesting, I really resonated with that journey at one time even as a woman, (I don't think gender necessarily matters btw) it really helped me at a super difficult time.
I also liked the part about feminine rage as I have a similar parental background to the guest author..I'm not sure I've fully learnt how to express and channel that yet..
Lots of food for thought ....thank you.
So interesting! Dream makers!
In 1982, in an altered state( no drugs) I had a " conversation" in which I was told that I had a gift. 4 statements later, I agreed to honor this gift and I was then told... " Then you are the Dreamwalker.
I have used that name as an artist ever since
I love her and her work and this channel , so what a super collision of minds and energy ! Thankyou xx
I had never heard of the concept of the "dream-maker" before. I would really love to hear more about this concept if you guys have more to share
This one was priceless. And I like all of your podcasts. Thanks!
1:42:45 So - this is very interesting, but ive been learning about "cabbage patch babies" and orphan trains recently, so its quite...interesting to get this on a podcast completely unrelated
Really great conversation.
The death she is talking about, that we should befriend sothat we can really live, is not the death of common parlance. It's what she later explicates as the death of the physical.
I am not sure whether the statement that the archetype can change, is valid. Archetypes belong to the heavenly realm, that in contrast to the earthly realm is unchanging. It is the expression of the archetype that changes.
I find it believable that something in the outer world can magically change or disappear, that archetypes function beyond the realm of the inner world. Some say that Carl Jung was psychologizing everything, but I can remember that I have read that when he couldn't find something in his house, he said it was "magic-ed away".
34:55 the purpose of the dream
In India, older women are associated with power. Young newly married women have the least power and women wait till their sons are married so that when they have their turn to be MILs they can do what their MILs did to them. It's a sad cycle of intergenerational trauma that women subject younger women to
With the arrival of the “Kurgan Culture” (Gimbutas), the Great Mother as an archetype of the Origins has been gradually degrading to give way to the God Father. In my culture, Romania, there has been a deep and wide tradition since the Neolithic of the Old Mother - called Dochia [‘Dokia] - actually she is richly represented in all three forms, the Maiden, the Mother and the Old Hag. So, the Good Old Woman has gradually eroded away, to become just the revengeful, capricious, nasty, jealous old woman always ready to annihilate the beautiful, young daughter-in-law. By the time of the Dacians (Trajan’s Wars) women were already described as subdued wife(s) -polygamy was practiced.
The Mother never really died, but she gradually lost her powers over the the male divinity, Zalmoxis. Like Ireland, Romania (all Eastern Europe, as a fact, and Mircea Eliade grew his “mythological muscle” here), has a rich and old mythology, with the population deeply rooted in their ancient traditions ( almost lost through the communist years and now, with the loss of village, agricultural life). It is incumbent to us, now the “old generation”, or “post-menopausal” women to do whatever we can to keep it alive, while it is needed more than ever before.