Prodromal Psychosis/ onset of Schizophrenia

[spiritual_emergency]

Mjolnir: I wonder how often the Animus becomes the Shadow?

The Animus, and the Anima both have a negative pole. This was very much evident in my own experience of a positive masculine figure and a negative masculine figure. Jung broke his model down into very distinct stages: Persona; Ego; Shadow; Anima/Animus; and Self however I believe it would be reasonable to suggest that the exact lines become hazy at the borders. Have you happened to see this discussion? It's a good example of what we are both saying: The Lady Who Lived on the Moon (A Story about Jung, Trauma and Schizophrenia).

My own experience has been that when the ego barriers break down, the first "layer" of the psyche you encounter is the Shadow. The Shadow is where we store all manner of rejected, denied or frightening aspects of our personal experience. If there is something negative there, it's going to come up. It can't help but come up because the the barriers that might keep it suppressed have broken down.

Traditionally, the Shadow is always of the same outward gender so if you are male, you would expect to find a masculine shadow and if you are female, a feminine shadow. There is also those hazy areas however and it's here that you're most likely to encounter the Shadow aspects of the Anima/Animus.

See also:

- Fight Club: Entering the Land of the Unconscious: The Shadow

- Levels of the Shadow

[spiritual_emergency]

A post that may be of interest to you at the point you return Mjolnir: The Jung Topic ~ The Shadow: The Pain Body

[spiritual_emergency]

Hello Mjolnir,

I came across this old note today and thought something in it might resonate for you...

By witnessing our own destruction, we find those parts that cannot be destroyed.

... There are losses and then there is what I call a "Kali loss": the sense that our entire reality was an illusion and nothing real remains. This feeling does not respond to typical cheer-up methods because those methods, too, reveal their illusory nature. Alone and scared, we yearn for deep, unchanging truth. Anything less just adds to the overwhelming carnage. Most people cannot afford to witness this level of destruction because doing so might crumble their own comfortable sense of reality. Instinctively, they put up walls to protect themselves, fighting us when we try to share the magnitude of our experience. When our usual support system fails, we're supposed to turn inside, but inside's a terrifying mess right now.

We cry out to the universe for help and Kali herself arrives-in the form of someone who has already witnessed his or her own destruction and rebuilding. Someone who honors the beauty and life-giving force of such experiences. Someone who can afford to look at our mess because his or her reality has already crumbled and reassembled in a powerfully expansive way. Non-attached to our previous conceptions or enculturations, s/he can more quickly and easily sift through the rubble, drawing our attention to pieces ready for new construction. S/he also helps us to look Kali in the face, recognizing our own prayers for change and ability to manifest the answers. When we paradoxically turn to Kali for help, she reveals herself not just as destroyer but as Mother-Creator.

Initially we might find Mother Kali in a book, a synchronous new friendship, a spiritual advisor, or Life Coach, but eventually we begin to recognize her in ourselves. By witnessing our own destruction, we find those parts that cannot be destroyed. We find our Essence, "that" which defies all labels and runs through everyone and everything. Kali's black form absorbs all color and all vibration: she contains it all. The sword and head in her left hands symbolize Divine inspiration striking down our ego. The 50 human heads around her neck represent the 50 sounds of the Sanskrit alphabet-the root of all language. "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." "But the Word is very near. It is in your mouth and in your heart so that you can do it." We feel Divinity surging through body, mind and spirit, and we, too, begin to dance. "Let the dead bury their own dead. Come, follow me."

Only then do we notice Kali's two right hands-ready to bestow the blessings. As a Mother, Kali does not shelter her children. She throws us into the fire and lets all illusion, enculturation and attachments burn to a crisp. We scream as costumes turn to ash, railing against a universe that allows such suffering. And then it happens. We emerge from the fiery, bloodstained pit. Lighter, easier and full of Grace. We no longer fear death because we've already been through it. Signs of life sprinkle the horizon as green shoots push their way through now fertile soil. We learn that some trees will not plant seeds until the searing heat of fire tears through their casings. Pain and sorrow reveal themselves as parts of Life. Freed from the limitations of fear and resistance, we can revel in naked existence. Recreating ourselves in ways that express the fullness of our being. When ego goes up in smoke, we turn ourselves inside out and let our Light so shine.

Source: Kali - Goddess of Destruction

See also: Marion Woodman: The Dark Goddess Returns

Music of the Hour: Red Hot Chili Peppers ~ Universally Speaking

Are you finding that some of your own fears/terrors in regard to that experience are coming down in size, being re-examined, being integrated through the course of these conversations Mjolnir?

[Mjolnir07]

Hello Mjolnir,

I came across this old note today and thought something in it might resonate for you...

Are you finding that some of your own fears/terrors in regard to that experience are coming down in size, being re-examined, being integrated through the course of these conversations Mjolnir?

It's interesting that you should bring this into conversation. Just last night, as I lay awake haunted and terrorized by endless mental revelation in perhaps one of my most difficult to endure episodes yet, I realized that there was a small part of me watching all of this in silent, undisturbed observation. While my conscious mind thrashed and writhed in an attempt to make sense and to reverse the destruction of my comfortable, known absolute truths; a still, quiet aspect of my persona was standing to the side in my mind completely undeterred by the horrors I was experiencing and looking on with indifferent confidence.

These conversations have helped me in a tremendous number of ways. Most specifically, when I'm enduring that dire loss of tangible truth, that moment when you come to understand perfect isolation. You see, I've had a few fleeting trans-personal moments, but more often than not my state of mind is the exact and extreme opposite, I begin to suspect that the world is just a series of inputs to my own, selfish perception. I realize that this has much to do with my brain trying to discover a way to provide some sort of comfort to my loss of reality, but it is at moments like these when I realize, partly if not largely due to our conversations and this forum, that others have gone through this, others are going through this, others are suffering as I am and even far worse. It is when I acknowledge this that I am able to take the position of this still, quiet observer, and allow the madness to take its course, instead of giving into the temptation to end my own life in order to escape it.

Indeed, this has helped me in more ways than I have words. I hope that it will do the same for others.

[spiritual_emergency]

Namaste, Mjolnir. Some more information...

Ego-Fragmentation in Schizophrenia: A severe dissociation of self-experience

In this chapter, I will propose that schizophrenic syndromes represent a unique type of 'ego' or 'self-pathology', an ego fragmentation that in extreme forms could be considered an annihilation of the "ego/self". I consider this fragmentation or splitting of the ego to be a special form of dissociation, striking the ego/self along the five basic dimensions of vitality, activity, coherence/consistency, demarcation and identity. From this perspective, the schizophrenic syndromes can be thought of as lying on a continuum with other disorders, such as dissociative identity disorder (DID) and borderline personality disorder (BPD) all of which can be characterized as "non-cohesive" disorders. However, the perculiar rigidity and fragility of the schizophrenic ego which predisposes it to fragmentation contrasts with the fluid ego-states observed in DID and BPD. This 'ego-fluidity' may protect those with DID or BPD from the extreme fragmentation and deterioration seen in the schizophrenic syndromes....

... I assume that a highly unstable and fluctuating ego-self is less disposed to ego-fragmentation -- the most severe form of dissociation. It is even possible that is it the very instability or fluctuating nature of the ego-self in dissociative identity disorder that protects it from ego-fragmentation. This would mean that the precondition for a schizophrenic dissociative ego-disorder would be a more rigid ego, predisposed for fragmentation, rather than fluctuation. One can imagine schizophrenic symptoms as glass and dissociative identity disorder as quicksilver: the rigid glass fragments split apart and do not reassemble easily, whereas the quicksilver glides smoothly apart into globes -- little wholes -- but quickly unites without splitting apart.

Source: Psychosis, Trauma and Dissociation: Emerging Perspectives on Severe Psychopathology

~*~

Fragmentation

The experience of fragmentation occurs in some stages of spiritual development. In the deeper stages it loses its threatening and terrifying character. This is partly due to the increasing insight that it is an image that is fragmenting, not oneself or one's body. Also, the individual increasingly attains a capacity to be the self without the self-representations. So we can experience the self and the self-representation separately. And since we can see directly that it is not who or what we are that is fragmenting, but some representation of who or what we are, there is more equanimity about the experience. (The Point of Existence, pg 505)

In dealing with narcissistic issues, or with issues on the level of deep ego structures, one sometimes encounters the experience of fragmentation. As a result of either an already existing weakness in the structure of the self, or deep work that has dissolved ego structures, the individual experiences fragmentation, or disintegration. The sense of fragmentation often feels literal; the person experiences his body in fragments. This terrifies him and brings fears of death… how can we explain the graphic and vivid experience of one's self in fragments when in actuality one's body remains in one piece? The usual understanding is that the fragments are not of the body itself, but of its image in the psyche. However, the individual’s feeling is that he himself, not an image in his mind, is fragmenting, and thus, he will likely experience physical terror. This is because the image of the body forms a central component in the self-representation. (The Point of Existence, pg 60)

Source: A.H. Almaas - Glossary: Fragmentation

I don't know if you will find those passages to be reassuring. I did. Yes, it's frightening but less so if you have some understanding of what is happening and also, the assurance that others have passed through it and you can too.

If that piece sat okay with you, perhaps try this next one...

Annihilation

This is a black, empty space encountered at a very subtle level of identity, the sense of identity which stems from the experience of existence. Here we are not dealing with boundaries of any image; we are dealing with the identity itself, the actual feeling of existence. Identity itself, both ego-identity and essential identity (identification with Being) is annihilated here in this space. As this space arises, the individual encounters fears of death, of disappearing, of annihilation, of nonexistence. This space is actually the experience of nonexistence, of complete extinction of self, of cessation. The cessation can be so deep that even awareness and consciousness cease for a time. The person here is not only afraid of the death of the body, but is also afraid that his mind will cease to exist. And this cessation of mind is exactly the experience of this space. This space, although it arouses the greatest terror, is experienced as the greatest peace. (The Void, pg 148)

Source: A.H. Almaas - Glossary: Annihilation

[As a possibly humorous side-note: Whenever I type that word, I type it like this -- annhiliation. Then I have to come back to put the "i" in it that I've forgotten to include.]

Music of the Hour:

[spiritual_emergency]

I rediscovered the following in my wanderings this evening and was reminded of this thread...

... Dr. Rasmussen... one day asked him (Najagneq) if there were any in whom he himself believed; to which he replied, "Yes, a power that we call Sila, one that cannot be explained in so many words: a very strong spirit, the upholder of the universe, of the weather, in fact of all life on earth -so mighty that his speech to man comes not through ordinary words but through storms, snowfall, rain showers, the tempests of the sea, all the forces that man fears, or through sunshine, calm seas or small, innocent playing children who understand nothing. When times are good, Sila has nothing to say to mankind. He has disappeared into his infinite nothingness and remains away as long as people do not abuse life but have respect for their daily food. No one has ever seen Sila. His place of sojourn is so mysterious that he is with us and immensely far away at the same time.

And what does Sila say?"

The inhabitant or soul of the universe," Najagneq said, "is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman, a voice so fine and gentle that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is: Sila ersinarsinivdluge, "Be not afraid of the universe."

Now these were very simple men-at least in our terms of culture, learning and civilization. Yet their wisdom, drawn from their own most outward depths, corresponds in essence to what we have heard and learned from the most respected mystics. There is a deep and general human wisdom here, of which we do not often come to know in our usual ways of active rational thinking.

Source: Joseph Campbell ~ Schizophrenia: The Inner Journey [PDF File]

See also: Schizophrenia & The Hero's Journey

Music of the Hour:

[spiritual_emergency]

These words are going to walk with me for a while...

THE MICROCOSMIC CHARACTER OF THE SELF

Jung views archetypes as the equivalent of the world outside the psyche and as complementing that world: what lies outside has a counterpart within; what happens outside also happens within. Archetypes thus have a cosmic character, which is why they are experienced as numinous and "godlike". The collective unconscious is described as a microcosm -- "the small world," the universe in miniature -- within us, as wide and universal as the universe itself. We are sons of the macrocosm -- "the great world" the universe in its totality. The mandala, the major symbol of the Self, is said to express this microscopic nature of Self.

Jung remarks that the experience of the psyche's essential archetypal character as an imprint of the God-image is an experience of the imprint of the whole universe, an experience of the universe from its very center. The experience of the Self, the center and essence of the collective unconscious and of the personality in its totality is, in other words, an experience of being at the very center of the universe, an experience of our midpoint of all existence. We have heard Jung to the effect that the archetypes are arranged in a concentric order around the Self; everything in the psyche revolves around the oneness and wholeness of the Self. But so, too, Jung is saying does the entire universe.

The experienced midpoint that is the Self is of truly cosmic significance. Having the same essence as the universe and being its very center, the psyche in its structural totality (Self) is held to be in agreement with -- to correspond to -- that of the cosmos: what happens in the macrocosm likewise happens in the microcosm.

Source: Psychology and Religion

Music of the Hour: Red Hot Chili Peppers ~ Universally Speaking

See also:

- The Luminosity of the Dark Goddesses

- The Mandala Experience: Visions of the Center in Schizophrenic and Fictional Accounts of Disintegration