08 May 25 Thu

"There was an enormous difference between my mother's two
personalities. That was why as a child I often had anxiety 
dreams about her. By day she was a loving mother, but at
night she seemed uncanny. Then she was like one of those 
seers who is at the same time a strange animal, like
a priestess in a bear's cave. Archaic and ruthless; ruthless
as truth and nature. At such moments she was the embodiment 
of what I have called the 'natural mind.'[3]"

[3]"The 'natural mind' is the 'mind which says absolutely
straight and ruthless things.' (Seminar on Interpretation
of Visions [Zurich, privately printed, 1940], V, p. iv.)
'That is the sort of mind which springs from natural sources,
and not from opinions taken from books; it wells up from the
earth like a natural spring, and brings with it the peculiar
wisdom of nature.' (Ibid, VI, p. 34.)"

-"Memories, Dreams, Reflections," by C.G. Jung (pg. 50)

Read this passage in bed last night. and it's been echoing
in me. How far from this 'natural mind' the strictures and
expectations of polite daily life--"work" in a rigidly 
regulated environment--how far it all takes me from ruthless 
truth, which i have heard howling inside of me since i was 
little.   

i've started to feel i don't even like calling it work, 
because i want my work to be something holy to me. i'm in a 
"helping profession," so there is purpose to it, and i'm 
good at it. but the system of delivery is not a shape i'm 
meant for. it chips at me as i wedge myself into it.

i think any work that's entered into fully and honestly 
can be holy. for me, it's holy work to make art, to share
of myself, to listen when i'm needed, to bake bread, to plant 
seeds, to pray. when my father was nearing the end, it was 
holy work to wash his back. i've done holy work in community, 
where i could arrive as myself and let my efforts well up from 
within me like a spring. that was during the one stretch in my 
adult life where i had security in resources without working 
for it ("unemployment"). sometimes work can be holy, and still
hurt. can it?     

i know this: i yearn to be the seer in the cave.