A Life of Meaning: Relocating Your Center of Spiritual Gravity by James Hollis Ph.D

Author:James Hollis, Ph.D. [Hollis, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PSY045060 PSYCHOLOGY / Movements / Jungian, SEL032000 SELF-HELP / Spiritual
Publisher: Sounds True

5

Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives

We all live in haunted houses and sleep in memory’s unmade bed. In this chapter, we’re going to look at the presence of the past that’s with us all the time—what I call “hauntings.”

The Human Psyche Is Timeless

While housed in a fragile frame, the human psyche is timeless. That’s how you can suddenly dream of a child you knew in third grade and perhaps haven’t seen in decades, remember an old schoolteacher, or revisit some moment in your history that was long ago and far away. In those moments, you realize the timelessness of the psyche. Everything that’s ever happened is present, recorded, and often “storied,” as you’ve read in prior chapters. What are the stories that we evolved, consciously or unconsciously, around those moments?

Photographs are examples of how we consciously seek to retain a link to our past. Why do we take photos? We’re trying to freeze the moment. We’re trying to stay the passage of time and be able to go back to it and somehow recreate it. In that little frame, we have a whole welter of emotions and untold stories. But all that has happened is stored intrapsychically in any case. It not only remains there, waiting to be activated, but it carries a quantum of energy capable of moving us to tears, unwitting behaviors, and occasionally moments of insight.

Diane Wakoski wrote a fascinating poem titled “The Photos.”1 She recounts a rather painful visit with her mother and sister. It’s clear there is much unspoken, much history, and many ghosts. She constantly refers to her “well-dressed” sister and her more casual self as well as her mother’s sour and critical presence.

On the table is a photograph of her father, the former husband of her mother. She makes a passing reference to it, and suddenly everything comes down to that photo, which stirs up all the memories of the past. It becomes very uncomfortable for all. She has to get out of there, so she makes an excuse and drives off toward her home. As she’s driving down the highway, all she can do is think about her mother’s face and how she inherited that face. She sees her reflection in the rearview mirror as she crosses lanes, she sees her mother’s face staring back at her, and she realizes she is still haunted, owned by that history, which she has been so desperate to escape.

Clearly the photo contains a lot of history and a lot of “ghosts.” Given that she’s a poet, I’m sure she pays careful attention to what each word means. She could have said, “Oh, I don’t like the fate that brought me into this particular marriage, this particular family, this particular history.” But instead she says “destiny,” almost implying as much as she tries to flee, as much as she wishes to get away, history pursues her. History’s haunting is even imprinted in the face that she’s inherited from the mother from whom she is so estranged.

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