Tag Archives: spirituality

How Belief Shapes Reality: The Science of the Placebo Effect

“We do not possess a body; rather, the psyche inhabits the body and makes it live.”
— Carl G. Jung (Psychological Aspects of the Persona (Collected Works, Vol. 7, para. 389))

I want to preface this piece by saying I am not a religious person. I do not believe that there is some magic daddy in the sky – quite the contrary actually. However, I do believe in the religious experience that draws so many to religion. I have felt it for myself. I also understand that there is more to this world than what we can measure. To assume there is no higher power at all would be, in my view, painfully naïve.

So, I ask you, dear reader, to enter with open eyes and an open heart, because we are about to go into territory that may (or may not) rub you the wrong way. Regardless of the emotions that may arise, my hope is that this will provoke thought and inner reflection.

Let us now dig in.

The Placebo Effect: Proof That the Divine Lives Within

What if the most powerful medicine you could ever take wasn’t locked away in a pharmacy with an ungodly price tag? Not prescribed by a white coat. Not manufactured in a lab. What if it was already inside of you, quietly waiting for your permission to work?

Science calls it the placebo effect, and as a forever-student of the human mind and this strange, beautiful existence we call life, I find it extraordinary. Philosophy calls it the power of the mind. Mystics have called it the divine spark within. Hermeticism recognizes it as the principle of “As within, so without” – the idea that your inner state shapes your outer reality.

Think about that for a moment: your inner state may be shaping the very reality you not only perceive but experience. That’s not just a nice idea to let swim by your mind…that is a holy-shit moment. No matter the label, the knowledge is the same: your perception can transform reality – not just in your thoughts, but within your body. Health psychologist Kelly McGonigal’s notable TED Talk, How to Make Stress Your Friend, touches this same notion: how we perceive our realities is the manner in which our life takes shape.

Belief That Heals

What the placebo effect is not about is “fake pills fooling gullible people.” That is the tired, cynical take from those who are not yet wholly able to see that belief itself is an active force.

For what the notion is about is something far more extraordinary: the measurable, biological changes that happen when you decide something will help you. The mind sets an intention; the body fulfills it.

Let me be clear here: this is not referring to the watered-down notion of the “Law of Attraction,” which reduces the complexities of existence to little more than wishful thinking. The laws that govern mind, matter, and meaning are far more intricate. Life does not bend itself to our desires because we pasted affirmations onto a bathroom mirror or onto the white board next to our desk. It responds when we are aligned. When the conscious and unconscious are in active dialogue, when our inner architecture supports the reality we are building.

Consider a 2015 study on participants with Parkinson’s disease. After more than twelve hours without their medication – symptoms raw and unmasked – participants were given a treatment they were told was either worth $100 or $1,500. The twist? Both treatments were identical placebos. MRI scans revealed improvement in symptoms with both “drugs,” but the expensive one worked better. How could this be? Because the mind had already decided it was more powerful. The body simply obeyed. It was not the drug. It was the mind.

From a Jungian lens, this is the psyche creating meaning and the body responding to that meaning. Symbolically, the “expensive drug” functioned as a talisman: an object imbued with the authority of healing and thus, carrying the weight of transformation. But this is not magic in the sense of bypassing reality; it is the psyche in its proper role as the architect of lived experience.

True creation is not about summoning wealth or power as a substitute for the work of the soul. The unconscious is not satisfied by material trophies. The real “right path” is revealed in synchronicities that signal alignment between the inner and outer life: moments when the Self (the archetype of wholeness) moves us closer to individuation. That, not the accumulation of external symbols, is the highest aim of life.

“The spirit is the life of the body, seen from within, and the body the outward manifestation of the life of the spirit — the two being really one.”
— Carl G. Jung (The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man (Collected Works, Vol. 10, para. 195))

When Labels Change the Body

In another study, participants were given identical pills labeled in three different ways: plain generic, enhanced generic, and branded. Every pill was inert. Yet anxiety levels and blood pressure shifted depending on the label affixed to the bottle. It did not matter that there was no active ingredient. What mattered was the story the mind told about what it was receiving. The label was not a superficial detail – it was the carrier of meaning.

This is Hermetic law in action: The All is Mind. Matter follows meaning. The label operated as a symbol, and symbols have power because they bypass the conscious gatekeeper and speak directly to the unconscious, where archetypal associations live. “Branded” signals authority. “Official” signals legitimacy. “Real” signals potency.

From a Jungian standpoint, the label functions like an archetypal mask: an image that shapes expectation, and through expectation, shapes physiological reality. It is not mere packaging; it is the psychological architecture that scaffolds the body’s response. The rhetoric – its authority, legitimacy, and promise – works first upon the mind, and the body answers in kind.

The takeaway is clear: perception is not a passive lens through which we watch life unpredictably unravel itself. It is an active sculptor of our experience…chiseling reality to match the patterns we believe to be true.

The Spiritual Dimension

Placebo research has revealed something many in the scientific community once dismissed outright: spirituality itself can amplify the effect.

A 2011 literature review found that individuals with a spiritual orientation often respond more strongly (both psychologically and physiologically) to placebo treatments. Faith, prayer, ritual…these are not idle gestures. They are deliberate, symbolic acts that anchor belief and direct the psyche’s capacity for self-healing.

In 2021, another study demonstrated that when participants believed they were drinking water from Lourdes (a Catholic pilgrimage site associated with miraculous healing) their brains responded in measurable ways. Functional MRI scans showed increased connectivity in the brain’s salience network and decreased activity in regions linked to cognitive control, suggesting that religious belief can literally reconfigure neural processing to support a healing state.

And in 2024, physician K.R. Sethuraman made the case that belief-based forces (including the placebo effect, the Hawthorne effect, and spiritual conviction) account for more than half of the healing dynamic in many contexts. Modern medicine, he argued, has flattened “evidence-based” into a narrow synonym for pharmaceutical intervention, ignoring the very cultural and psychological mechanisms that have supported healing for millennia. We trust the authority of the prescriber more than we trust the innate intelligence of our own bodies…until we don’t, and then even the “proven” treatment may fail to work.

From a mystical standpoint, none of these findings are surprising. In Hermetic philosophy, ritual is the art of fixing intention into form, impressing the inner state upon the outer world. In Jungian psychology, ritual functions as a symbolic vessel, a structured space where the unconscious is invited to participate in the aims of consciousness. The placebo effect thrives in such vessels because they bridge the psychic and the material, dissolving the false boundary between inner meaning and outer event.

Now, this all does not mean a clinician should impose their beliefs onto a patient – for this goes against our code of ethics. But it does suggest something profound: when an individual engages a belief system that resonates at the deepest level of their being, the body responds as though the directive came from the soul itself.

Open-Label Placebos: Healing Without Deception

One of the most intriguing developments in placebo research is the rise of open-label placebos: treatments openly identified as inert, with participants fully informed, “This is a placebo.”

Common sense would suggest this disclosure would wholly dismantle the effect…and indeed, in some cases it does. But in others, the opposite occurs: merely understanding how the placebo effect works, and consciously consenting to engage with it, can still produce measurable improvement.

This also challenges the assumption that belief requires ignorance to be effective. It suggests that the conscious mind, once aware of the mechanism, can choose to collaborate with the unconscious rather than being tricked by it. In such moments, the placebo becomes less a deception and more a deliberate act of self-participation in healing.

From a depth-psychological perspective, this is a prime example of what Jung called the transcendent function: the meeting point where conscious awareness and unconscious forces interact to create something new. Here, that “something new” is the healing process itself, arising not from external substances but from the psyche’s capacity to mobilize the body in service of meaning.

“The patient will get well if he can be made to see his illness in a light that has meaning for him.”
— Carl G. Jung (The Symbolic Life: Miscellaneous Writings (Collected Works, Vol. 18, para. 398))

Belief as Biology

At its core, the placebo effect dismantles the false boundary we have drawn between “mind” and “body.” Your beliefs do not merely color your mood, they reorganize your biology. They alter neurotransmitter levels, modulate immune function, and change pain perception. An inert pill can trigger the release of dopamine. A sham surgery can produce measurable improvement in joint mobility. A sugar pill can lower blood pressure.

If this is so, the placebo effect is not a parlor trick or a failure of reason. It is proof that the body answers to the psyche. Hermetic philosophy would say that spirit impresses itself upon matter. Jung would say that the psyche is the master architect of experience, shaping not only our inner landscapes but the physical realities we inhabit.

Perhaps this is the most unflinching evidence we have that the mechanisms we chase in the external world are already alive within us…awaiting recognition and command.

The Inner Healer

Ancient traditions have always known this. The yogi who slows his heartbeat in meditation until his pulse is nearly imperceptible. The shaman who draws illness out through song and ritual. The mystic who experiences the presence of God in every breath.

These are not romantic embellishments. They are cultural acknowledgments of a force modern neuroscience is only beginning to map: the self as healer.

In Hermetic Kabbalah, the human being is a microcosm of the divine – a living conduit through which higher planes of mind, spirit, and archetype descend into the material. In Jungian psychology, the Self holds the blueprint for balance, and the body responds when we align with it.

Carl Jung wrote, “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” The placebo effect is modern medicine’s reluctant concession to a truth it has long sidelined, that the power to heal is not solely delivered from without, but also arises from within. Modernity, in its obsession with external solutions, has buried this understanding beneath the authority of prescription pads and clinical protocols. Yet it quietly remains in every instance where meaning mobilizes the body to restore itself.

“The individual who gains self-mastery gains the whole world.”
— Manly P. Hall (The Secret Teachings of All Ages)

So, What Do We Do With This?

The placebo effect is not a license to reject medicine or replace treatment with naïve optimism. It is an invitation to reclaim the authority you have ceded to external systems. To stop underestimating the role you play in your own healing. In creating your own existence.

It is a reminder that the stories you tell yourself are not incidental; they are the architecture within which your body operates. Faith (whether placed in science, spirit, or self) is not merely a sentiment. It can initiate measurable, biological change.

You do not need to choose between science and soul. In truth, the most enduring forms of healing occur where the two meet…in that space where meaning directs biology, and biology confirms meaning. The placebo effect stands as living proof of what mystics, healers, and depth psychologists have understood for millennia: the source of life is not only above or beyond. It moves through you.

It is you.

“Man’s mind is a mirror of the Universe, and his heart is the throne of the Divine.”
— Manly P. Hall (Lectures on Ancient Philosophy)

Rethinking Depression: A Descent Forward

“We do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl G. Jung (Alchemical Studies (Collected Works Vol. 13, para. 335))

The Nigredo: Depression as a Sacred Descent

What if depression is not a malfunction of the mind, but a message from the soul – a summons to a life not yet lived? This is not a clinical breakdown, but a rethinking of depression. One that sees it not as a failure, but as a descent forward and an initiation into deeper wholeness.

Life moves in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. While many cultures and spiritual systems speak of this in terms of reincarnation, we can also observe the same process unfolding within a single lifetime. These inner cycles of loss and renewal (especially those marked by depression) can be seen as a symbolic initiation. In Jungian psychology, this experience is mirrored in the concept of the Nigredo, a term borrowed from medieval alchemy meaning “blackening.” It marks the initial stage of psychological transmutation: the symbolic death of the ego, the decomposition of outdated identities, and the necessary descent into darkness before something new can be born. Though bleak in tone, the Nigredo is not pathological – it is mythic. And it is through this inner decay that rebirth becomes possible.

The Myth of Constant Happiness

Many people describe the feeling of “having the rug pulled out from under them,” just when life appeared to be going well. This sensation is not uncommon, and it tends to arise from an unspoken belief that life should move in a linear, upward arc toward perpetual happiness. However, that myth is precisely the problem. When we expect stability and comfort to be the norm, we perceive disruption as betrayal.

Life is a chaotic wave we are meant to ride, not resist. Cycles of darkness and light are not only inevitable, they are also essential. In Western culture, we often see depression as a deviation from the norm, a detour from what life is “supposed” to be; this narrative framing is precisely what keeps us tether to our suffering and unable to transform it. We keep reaching back toward a past self, a familiar story, rather than surrendering to the transformation that depression is trying to initiate.

“In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.”
— Carl G. Jung (Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works Vol. 9, Part 1))

The Tao of Descent

In Taoist philosophy, humanity is meant to align with the natural rhythms of nature and life rather than exert dominion over them. There is a profound wisdom in the concept of flowing with nature rather than pushing against it. When we combine this with Jungian psychology, we come to understand that surrendering to the flow of emotional cycles (especially the painful ones) is where we find synchronicity. But again, this flow is not always joyful…and in many cases, the farthest from it.

The path of individuation is deeply personal and often wrenchingly difficult. It requires not only that we allow all emotions into awareness, but that we consciously descend into them. Particularly in the case of depression, this descent becomes a portal: a journey into the underworld of the psyche. Here, the past self that no longer serves us can decompose, so that something more authentic may emerge.

And yet, we resist this descent. Not because we are weak, but because rebirth is unknowable…and the unknown perpetuates humans living in a fear-based mindset. The past is easier to cling to because it is tangible, already lived, already understood. The future, by contrast, is shadowed and unfamiliar. We convince ourselves that because we have suffered, we are destined to continue suffering. This is the trap. But the stage of Nigredo is not a prison, it is a crucible.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain.”
— Carl Jung

Alchemy of the Self

We are in a constant state of ebb and flow…finding and creating ourselves. Depression is not a static condition to be pathologized. When we define it solely as a chemical imbalance or a DSM diagnosis, all nuance is lost. Reality is flattened. We miss the alchemical truth: that this darkness is part of a deeper initiation into being. When met with introspection and care, the Nigredo stage can transmute into a radiant rebirth, a more integrated and resilient Self.

In this light, depression is not a flaw or failure. It is the call to transformation. It is the soul whispering that something must die – not our lives, but our illusions, our attachments, and our false selves. When we honor this experience as something deeply meaningful rather than defective, we allow it to do what it came to do: burn away the hollow performances and reveal what is real beneath. This does not mean the pain will vanish. It means the pain will become purposeful.

Now I shall leave you with this final thought: perhaps it is not the past that haunts you while in the depths of depression, but rather the future calling you to become someone you are still afraid to meet.

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
— Lao Tzu (Tao Te Ching)

The Illusion of Self-Invention in Modern Society

“The self is not only the center but also the whole circumference which embraces both conscious and unconscious; it is the center of this totality, just as the ego is the center of consciousness.”
— C.G. Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

We are living in an age of self-invention, aesthetic personas, and curated digital selves. However, beneath the surface of this seemingly radical freedom lies an epidemic of confusion, anxiety, and soul starvation. What if our obsession with identity is not freedom at all, but perhaps a symptom of disconnection from the very thing we claim to seek?

The Psychological Crisis of Modern Identity

The modern world is in the throes of an identity crisis. While it is partially due to a lack of sincere self-expression, it is most notably due to a profound disconnection from the true, inner Self. Society’s emphasis on external validation over internal integration, radical individualism without introspection, and performative identity rather than authentic selfhood has left individuals fragmented, directionless, and spiritually unmoored. At the crux of this crisis is our overidentification with personas: masks we have unconsciously constructed for survival, social belonging, and self-preservation. These masks, reinforced by societal narratives, have become indistinguishable from the Self, trapping individuals in pre-scripted roles rather than guiding them toward true individuation.

The fear of self-knowledge stems from the existential risk it poses: if we question the identity we have built, we also risk losing the belonging we have centered our lives around. The root of this crisis is a misunderstanding of freedom and individuality and further mistaking boundless self-reinvention for self-knowledge and equating superficial labels with personal depth. Until individuals engage in the inner work of confronting their unconscious, the modern identity will remain a mere illusion – an act of self-preservation rather than self-realization.

A World Unmoored

The modern identity crisis is a reflection of inner worlds in immense disarray. People search endlessly for a sense of self, but their efforts remain fixated on external validation rather than internal discovery. What we see in the world today is not just a breakdown of individuality, it is the external manifestation of inner dis-ease. Our unconscious fears, unresolved insecurities, and desperate longing for meaning shape the societal structures we participate in. The barriers we encounter in defining ourselves are not simply imposed by external forces but are perpetuated from within, arising from an inability to face the discomfort of self-exploration.

This crisis stems from a fundamental misunderstanding: identity is not something found, nor is it something entirely created. It is both. To believe one can “discover” themselves without active participation in their own growth is naive; yet, to believe one can “construct” an identity from nothing is equally misguided. True identity emerges from the reciprocal process of self-discovery and self-creation, requiring deep engagement with one’s unconscious, one’s history, and one’s values. However, modern society does not encourage this kind of introspection…instead, it offers external solutions (i.e., labels, movements, political identities, aesthetic subcultures) that masquerade as authentic selfhood while keeping the true self buried beneath copious layers of artificial constructions.

From childhood, individuals are conditioned to prioritize external frameworks over internal understanding. Sir Ken Robinson’s critique of modern education as a factory-like system illustrates how institutions suppress individuality in favor of obedience and standardization. Schools do not encourage students to explore their inner world; they train the most vulnerable of learners to meet external expectations, reducing identity to performance rather than authenticity…and as a result, individuals emerge from these systems ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of selfhood, forced instead to assemble identities from whatever societal structures are available.

This has led to an age of personas. Carl Jung illustrated to us in his theories that personas serve as an essential function in adapting to social environments, but when they become overidentified with, they become quite the barrier between the Self and the unconscious. Thus, over time, the authentic Self is buried beneath layers of adaptations, performances, and unconscious defenses. The more one seeks to “find” themselves through social belonging, political allegiance, or external validation, the further they drift from their authentic being. Their Self remaining trapped beneath the rubble of misguided attempts at self-definition.

The Mirage of Radical Individualism

This phenomenon is particularly evident in radical individualism, which falsely promises self-empowerment while leading to greater disconnection and inner fragmentation. The modern world tells people that they can be whoever they want to be – that their identity is fluid, self-determined, and unconstrained by anything but personal will. But without internal coherence, this freedom becomes an abyss rather than a path forward. People harness this freedom and yet remain unfulfilled, anxious, and detached from any deeper sense of meaning. The paradox here is clear: the more one pursues self-definition through external means, the more fragmented and lost they become.

This crisis is not just psychological, it is spiritual. The old principle “as within, so without; as above, so below” reveals that social disarray is a direct reflection of internal chaos. The widespread confusion surrounding identity is a mirror of the unconscious turmoil within individuals. Without a grounded inner world, people turn outward, seeking answers in ideological movements, social tribes, and political identities, not realizing that these external constructions only serve as temporary relief from the depths of a deeper existential void.

The Way Back to Self

True identity is forged through the confrontation with the unconscious. It requires integration, not escape and demands that one look inward, acknowledge the fragmented aspects of the true Self, and rebuilds from within. Until individuals reclaim their inner world and recognize that identity is not something that can be passively received, but actively cultivated, the crisis of modern identity will persist.

The Self cannot be found in labels, nor can it be fabricated through social affirmation. It is only in the depths of introspection and in the reconciliation of the inner and outer worlds, that true individuality may emerge.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.”
— C.G. Jung (Psychology and Religion (Collected Works, Vol. 11))

The Silent Crisis: Men and Mental Health

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.”
— Carl Gustav Jung (Modern Man in Search of a Soul)

We are witnessing a quiet crisis in the United States…and not one that comes with all the bells, whistles, or media fanfare. No marches are held for it, no signs drawn up, nor flags waved. It does not necessarily draw headlines, for it is the kind of crisis that festers in boardrooms, in bedrooms, behind the wheel of a car, and beneath the ribcage. It is adult men who are suffering and mostly silently. Mostly alone.

While awareness of mental health has grown, men remain one of the most underserved and misunderstood populations in the field. This is not due to a lack of pain – rather far from it, actually. It is due to a lack of space, and more critically, a lack of nuanced understanding.

A System Not Built for Them

Men die by suicide at disproportionate rates. They are more likely to externalize distress through substance use, violence, or even total emotional withdrawal. Their mind does what it knows best: protect the heart by building a palace of thought. But they remain emotionally silent. Stunted. Of all demographics, men are the least likely to seek help. The reasons of such are complex – cultural, social, psychological – but one thing is all too clear: the mental health field, for all its progress, has done too little to speak to men in a way they can hear and respect.

The prevailing scripts tells men to ‘be vulnerable,’ yet simultaneously pathologizes their silence, aggression, or stoicism, without curiosity to ask what might lie beyond the surface.

Most clinicians are ill-equipped to reach men on a soul level. The problem is not just one of technique, it is an absence of projection withdrawal, and of mythic literacy: the understanding that every man is living a story deeper than he can name. Few men have been initiated by elder men into their psyche, their wounds, or their inner world. They have instead inherited a hollow script: manhood shaped by worry, war, and work, as Jungian psychologist, James Hollis, so poignantly described.

Thus, men are emotionally stunted not by nature, and not entirely by choice, but by inheritance.

“Our society has long treated men as machines, as bodies expendable in the name of progress or profit. Men have overruled their pain and soul’s delight, taught to think of themselves as “mechanisms”.”
—James Hollis (Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men)

The Wound Beneath the Armor

As a clinician specializing in working primarily with male clients, I have sat across from men whose bodies are taut with rage, whose minds race with shame, and whose eyes are starved to be seen. I have witnessed what James Hollis also described so incisively: men dominated by unconscious complexes, ungrieved betrayals, and a loss of inner authority.

Men are not suffering because they are physically weak – quite obviously the opposite in many cases. They are suffering because they were never taught how to be strong in a way that includes the soul. A strength that makes space for vulnerability, for attunement to the inner world, and for the courage it takes to feel.

Instead, men have become possessed by the survival-driven aspects of the masculine psyche: logic, control, pride, and dominance – while the balancing presence of the inner feminine has been severed. Receptivity, emotional attunement, softness, and intuition have been amputated (often in childhood) in an unconscious attempt to survive in a world that shamed their presence.

In the present age, these qualities are still mocked and pathologized. Men are told they embody “toxic masculinity,” a phrase that wholly fails to offer compassion or even a glimmer of curiosity. Masculinity, in any form should not be worded as “toxic”. It should, in many cases, be understood as wounded (often profoundly so) and those wounds are almost always shaped by early experience and the internal narratives those experiences gave rise to.

“Men today cannot claim their identity via culture because they are obliged to find other uninitiated males as their models or succumb to the empty values of a materialistic society.”
—James Hollis (Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men)

The Mythic Terrain of the Male Psyche

The work of Marie-Louise von Franz and James Hillman, moreover, offer rich insight in the realm of the biological male psyche. Hillman, in his work, The Puer Papers, explores the archetype of the puer aeternus: the eternal boy. This pattern reveals itself in men who remain suspended in fantasy, unable or unwilling to root themselves in the demands of responsibility, commitment, and time.

However, what is often missed in comprehending this archetype is thus: the puer is not a problem to be solved, cured, or disciplined. He is rather a psychic figure, a deeply human experience, longing to be witnessed. The puer aeternus is not some immature impulse, he is a mythic call for meaning, imagination, and for divine connection… he is the flame of the soul and the whisper of the Self. When pathologized, he becomes a shame-ridden burden, but when honored, he becomes a masterful guide: fierce, restless, poetic, and raw.

“If the soul is to be healed, the myth must be remembered.”
—James Hillman (The Puer Papers)

Too often in our field, we treat symptoms without touching the myth…the symbolic core from which symptoms arise. We medicate in order to retrain, because physical restraint is now seen as unethical. Attempt to motivate through rehearsed unconditional positive regard, though behind the mask, many clinicians are unconsciously activated, subtly (or perhaps overtly) disdainful, and lost in countertransference. And moreover, mandate behavioral change without ever asking:

  • What story are you living?
  • What inner gods are you serving?
  • What unlived grief is demanding expression through your actions?
  • And, perhaps the most vital of all: Who are you behind your masks of bullshit – who were you conditioned out of being?

The Cost of Emotional Starvation

One recurring theme I have observed in therapy with my male clients is this: a disconnection between the mind and the body. Many cannot name what they feel. Some cannot even admit that they feel anything at all. For some, emotional illiteracy was simply the absence of teaching. For others, it was far more brutal: they were actively shamed out of knowing. Anger, anxiety, guilt, and irritation became the only acceptable expressions. Beneath those, however, lies something far more primal: terror. Grief. And an aching, near-unbearable hunger to be understood.

The absence of comradery. The evaporation of deep male friendships that are not ruled by the unconscious ego. The relentless performance of manhood. All of it contributes to a quiet but excruciating sense of isolation – rarely spoken of, but constantly lived. Competition has replaced brotherhood. Pride has replaced presence. Many are breaking under the weight of it all, and they are doing so in silence.

“Perhaps the greatest tragedy for men is that fear estranges them from their own anima—their source of feeling, connection, and vitality. This inner disconnection obliges an outer one as well: estranged from themselves, they become estranged from other men. What remains is often only surface-level conversation—sports, politics, events—while the deeper current of relatedness goes unspoken, unfelt.”
— James Hollis (Under Saturn’s Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men)

Not Redefinition – Reclamation

This is not a call to redefine masculinity according to some sanitized script. It is a call to reclaim its fullness, its complexity, its inherent contradiction – and to invite men into deeper contact with the soul of their being. The goal is not to “soften” men or domesticate them into passivity. It is to honor them. To be a witness to them. And through that witnessing, help them encounter the totality of who they are, including the myth, the rage, the erotic, and the divine.

“The opposite of repression is not expression. The opposite of repression is responsibility.”
—James Hollis

True strength is not domination; it is integration. Maturity is not emotional sterility; it is responsibility. And healing does not happen in isolation, but rather in initiation: in fellowship, in the presence of another who sees you not as a pathology to be corrected, but as a human soul navigating a forgotten myth.

Men were given a broken compass for navigating their inner world. That brokenness is not their fault, but it is their inheritance. And healing begins the moment we dare to tell them that.

Final Reflections

This blog post is far from the end of the story, it is the beginning of a re-storying.

We must meet men where they are: not with judgment, but with depth. Not with platitudes, but with presence. Not with quick fixes, but with the long, winding descent into the depths of hell…or in other words, their personal unconscious; that is where the real work happens. It will take time, patience, and perseverance. But, it is the most vital work we can do.

Let us, as clinicians, give men a place to go with their pain. Let us give them stories that honor their longing and their rage, their erotic charge, and their sacred wounds. Give them unpolluted eyes and attuned ears, where their authentic selves and unlived desires may finally come to be seen, heard, and held.

Let us become witnesses and guides, instead of saviors. Moreover, let us not be golems of our education: mechanical, reactive, hollow. I ask that we learn to walk beside men as they step into the wilderness of their own becoming and comprehend that as within, so without.

“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being.”
―Carl Gustav Jung (Memories, Dreams, Reflections)

Unlocking the Power of Dreams in Therapy

“This whole creation is essentially subjective, and the dream is the theater where the dreamer is at once: scene, actor, prompter, stage manager, author, audience, and critic.”
— Carl Jung (General Aspects of Dream Psychology (Collected Works, Vol. 8, para. 505))

Beyond Behavior: Why Dreams Matter More Than Compliance

The field of clinical mental health counseling overly privileges observable behavior as the golden standard, largely because it can be assessed through our five senses. Yet we ignore how subjective even behavior is: What I view as “appropriate,” another may find unacceptable. We can offer a general spectrum for functional behavior, but at the end of the day, behavioral analysis often turns into something few are brave enough to call by its real name: manipulation.

We manipulate children, adolescents, and adults to adhere to behaviors that we deem acceptable. By “we,” I mean clinicians en masse, armed with interventions that make people more palatable to the world, but not nearly more whole. This is especially visible in the rise of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) services for individuals with autism. ABA does not aim to deeply understand; it chisels away at the individual’s uniqueness so they might fit into a narrow mold crafted by society. It may help some who are overwhelmed by severe symptoms, but for many others on the spectrum, we could and should be asking better questions.

Now, what gets missed when we only look at the surface? Well, everything. A person’s dreams, defenses, distortions, complexes, archetypes…none of it is visible in behavioral checklists. And yet, those are the things that contain the essence of who we are. Dream analysis is one such approach that actually honors this depth, and it is the primary focus of this essay.

The Symbolic Language of the Soul

What are dreams? This question echoes endlessly through the halls of academia. Some settle on the view that dreams are meaningless…mere flickers of random neurons. But others, including myself, argue that dreams are not only meaningful, they are essential.

Dreams are the language of the unconscious soul. They do not speak in bullet points or diagnoses. They speak in images, metaphors, distortions, and riddles; they speak in symbols: a language that most modern clinicians have tragically, long forgotten (and have little interest in learning) how to read.

Contrary to common belief, dreams do not simply reflect external events. The psyche is far more clever and complex for that kind of spoon-fed narrative. It weaves what we have witnessed into tapestries of meaning that reveal the truth of our inner lives. A monster in a dream is not just a scary image, it may just be the shadow self: the rejected and disowned part of our psyche we’ve exiled to protect our conscious ego. Dreams force us to confront what we have avoided. They demand our attention….or else, we forget under the guise of “I don’t dream.” Unless we heed to the call, the call becomes muted.

To reclaim symbol interpretation (as a clinician, and as a human) requires that we first do the work ourselves. If we dare claim to help others, we must help ourselves first. Dream journaling and analysis are perhaps the most powerful tools we have for integration. It is how we make the unconscious conscious. It is how we reclaim what we have buried. Moreover, it acts as a fundamental benchmark in examining our own and our clients’ progress along their path to individuation.

Personal Dream Example: The Devil Behind the Clock

Here is a personal anecdote to my time utilizing dream analysis: When I was four years old, I had a recurring dream.

I was at my aunt’s house: a place that, in waking life, felt safe and loving. In the dream, however, something was wrong. I was sitting on the couch in the living room while my mom and aunt talked in the dining room. A large grandfather clock stood nearby. And behind it… was the Devil.

The depiction was exactly as I had seen him in a Christian movie growing up: red skin, horns, sinister. I cried, pointed, and ran to my mother. She didn’t even turn around. She waved me off with intense irritation. My aunt barely looked up. I was desperate, in agony, as this evil figure crept toward me. But I was dismissed and being overtaken.

Jungian Interpretation:

This dream, like many from early life, was not random. The devil behind the clock was not simply “evil” in the religious sense, it symbolized the forbidden, the repressed, and the terrifying unknown. In the context of a rigid, hyper-religious upbringing, he embodied not only projected fears around the body and sexuality, but also the unspeakable trauma that was taking root in my psyche.

The two women – figures who were sources of comfort and safety in waking life – were not villains in the dream. Rather, they represented a feminine energy that was emotionally unavailable, disconnected, and fragmented. Their dismissal in the dream was symbolic of a larger absence: the absence of grounded, attuned feminine containment. They did not betray me in waking life, but their dream counterparts portrayed what my psyche felt in that moment of crisis: alone, unseen, and forced to face the shadow without an emotional mirror.

This was the beginning of my inner rejection of the feminine. Not out of hatred, but as a survival mechanism. My mother (herself animus-possessed) modeled a way of being where logic, control, and emotional suppression were used to navigate life. Her feelings were powerful but unspoken, guiding her from beneath the surface. And so, I followed suit.

The dream encoded the psychic conditions that formed the early architecture of my inner world:

  • The growing dominance of my internal masculine (animus) as a protector and suppressor
  • The repression of my intuitive, feeling-based feminine qualities
  • The emergence of a mother complex shaped not just by relational dynamics, but by the archetypal distortion of what the feminine had come to represent for me: danger, denial, disconnection

This dream revealed the symbolic moment when the feminine was unconsciously exiled within me, and not out of blame, but out of necessity. It marked the beginning of fragmentation… and, much later in life, the very clue that would lead me back toward integration.

Reality Is Subjective: The Limits of Perception

There is such a thing as objective reality, however, no human can experience it. Everything we perceive is filtered through layers of lived experience, cultural imprinting, trauma, emotional valence, ego defenses, and complex structures buried deep within our unconscious. This is why even people raised in the same household often have drastically different interpretations of their past. We each wear unique perceptual lenses and no two alike. What we call “normal” or “abnormal” becomes a judgment passed through a very narrow filter. And so, if we hope to help others, we must first admit that we cannot see clearly. We must own our subjectivity. Only then can we begin to understand the symbolic logic of another’s psyche.

Dreams as the Roadmap to the Client’s Inner Cosmos

If each person carries a private myth; in other words, one’s unconscious is a rich, symbolic architecture and it is no longer helpful to impose a generic model of healing upon the individuals we work with. Instead, we must become curious. We must become guides of dreams. As a clinician, I do not “decode” a client’s psyche like a puzzle. I ask questions. I help hold the lantern while they descend into their inner world. The dream leads the way.

Clinical Dream Example: The Assault Nightmare

A male client once came to me terrified of his dreams. Night after night, he relived scenes of sexual assault, but in these dreams, he was not the victim. He was the perpetrator.

This detail tormented him. In waking life, he had been assaulted as an adolescent. The trauma left him paralyzed with shame, plagued by a profound inferiority complex and a deeply wounded mother complex. Sleep offered no refuge. Instead, it cast him in the role of the very force that had once violated him.

Understandably, he feared what these dreams said about him. But as our work deepened, and we dared to interpret the dream symbolically rather than literally, something far more human, and far more tragic, emerged.

Jungian Interpretation (Male Psyche, Symbolic Violence, and Trauma Integration):

The dreams were not about desire or cruelty. They were a dramatization of an internal psychic war. His unconscious had cast him in the role of the perpetrator; not to shame him, but to illuminate the depth of his fragmentation. What had been done to him was so shattering, so annihilating, that the only way his psyche could begin to metabolize it was to invert the trauma: putting him in imagined control of the very violence that once rendered him powerless.

In Jungian terms, these dreams symbolized the domination of this client’s psyche’s internal masculine function (rigid, disconnected, and tryrannical) over the anima, the inner feminine principle that governs intuition, emotion, and relational depth, because there was an incongruence between the dualities within him. After his assault, his psyche could not afford softness, so, it adapted. The anima was not safe to express, so she was buried. And in his dreams, she reemerged not as a figure of beauty or connection, but as the one being symbolically violated. This was not a literal drama. It was a psychic mirror reflecting how thoroughly his own inner feminine had been suppressed in order to survive.

These dreams were not signs of pathology. They were signs of readiness. The unconscious had begun to reveal, through dark imagery, the deeper truth: that what had been lost could now be reclaimed. The symbolic violence pointed not to moral failing, but to the soul’s attempt at re-integration.

What appears as horror in the dream world is often, in truth, the first flicker of psychic rebirth.

A Reaffirmed Commitment to the Depths

I have been working with dreams for many years through a Jungian lens, and over time, my appreciation for their psychological necessity has only deepened. Dreams are not just curiosities or byproducts of sleep. Over the decades, I have come to learn that they are essential dispatches from the unconscious. And interpreting them is not a technique to be memorized, but a far more sacred practice, one that requires presence, humility, and depth.

Dream analysis, especially when working with another person’s dream, demands a level of emotional insight and attunement that many clinicians are simply not trained to wield. One must not only understand symbols intellectually but feel into them empathically and tune into the psyche of another without overlaying it with one’s own projections. There is a great deal of intuition involved, as well as a kind of inner spaciousness: a willingness to listen to what is unsaid, to notice what appears behind the veil of the image…to look far beyond the mere surface.

This is not easy for everyone…far from it in fact. Those with a Sensing-dominant personality type, for example, are often more attuned to what can be observed through the five senses. Their cognition is rooted in concrete reality. And while this has tremendous value, it can make dreamwork more difficult because the dream speaks from beyond the veil. It emerges from the invisible layers of the unconscious and from the mythic architecture we carry within. It requires us to see in the dark, and to trust that what we cannot touch may still be real.

Closing Thoughts: Why Dream Analysis Should Not Be Optional

We are not blank slates. We are stories: myths, images, and memories tangled in archetypes that stretch back to the beginning of time. To understand someone (and I mean truly understand them) we must move beyond behavior, beyond diagnoses, and beyond surface language. We must comprehend the narrative folding that resides within. Thus, we must go inward.

In closing, dreams are not an accessory to therapy. They are the deepest expression of the Self calling out to be known. They are how the unconscious speaks when the ego is silent. And they offer what behavior never can: truth – truth that is symbolic, personal, and transformative.

What are your dreams asking you to witness?

“Every symbol in your dream has a special, individual connotation that belongs to you alone, just as the dream is ultimately yours alone. Even when a symbol has a collective or universal meaning, it still has a personal coloration for you and can be fully explained only from within you.”
― Robert A. Johnson (Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth)

Exploring the Mythic Dimensions of Sexuality

“Our sexuality is never merely physical—it is mythic. It is the place where our complexes meet our archetypes, where our hunger for transcendence collides with our fear of dissolution.”
— James Hollis (The Eden Project: In Search of the Magical Other)

A Return to the Soul of Sex

I recently wrote the following reflective paper as part of my graduate training in human sexuality. While it was originally intended as a personal academic submission, I have chosen to share it here because it touches on themes that I believe need to be spoken of more honestly, more symbolically, and more soulfully. The true essence of sex was lost long ago and has been buried beneath the pollutants of inadequate social standards and shallow scripts that we have inherited throughout time. Thus, I encourage its come-back that is no longer dripping in taboo and shameful disgust.

It is a common misconception that sex is simply physical. To the absolute contrary, it is psychic, mythic, and raw. Below is my original piece, unedited in content, written from that liminal space between scholar, seeker, and clinician-in-training.

Journal #1: Understanding Sexual Development

Upon reflecting on my own sexual development and the shaping forces behind my internal “sexual script,” I am struck by how deeply both the elements of evolution and experience have etched themselves into the narrative. Gagnon and Simon’s Sexual Script Theory resonates with me in that it acknowledges sexuality not merely as a private, isolated phenomenon, but as a relational, symbolic, and socioculturally embedded experience (1973). It echoes a notion that I wholly believe that is no human arrives at their sexuality tabula rasa. Rather, we are inscribed with a primal blueprint, one that is then sculpted by our biology and then layered with meaning, shame, fantasy, myth, trauma, and desire through our individual lived experiences and in turn, our inner world.

As someone high in openness and agreeableness, I approach sexuality with a deep sense of curiosity and respect. My views of sex are not through a moralistic or binary lens, but instead through one that honors complexity. I believe that what consenting adults choose to engage in is not only their choice and business but is also, more often than not, an expression of deeper, symbolic truths, whether that be wounds seeking healing, fantasies expressing power dynamics, or mythic archetypes emerging through the body. Even practices like consensual non-consent (CNC) are rich with meaning. Thus, I see sexual kinks and sexuality as a whole, as a reflection of the psyche in motion. I find both (sexuality and the psyche) to be beautiful, endlessly fascinating and worthy of exploring through a symbolic lens.

However, I do hold strong boundaries around harm – a rather commonsensical approach. Pedophilia, for instance, is a domain where my openness narrows. While I acknowledge that urges are not chosen, and while I also believe that behavior is not always fully conscious (often influenced by unresolved trauma, psychological possession, or overwhelming emotional states, or what may also be called the Shadow aspect of the self (Jung, 1959)) it does not negate the reality that children cannot consent. The neurological and emotional development of a child ensures this, and any sexual exploitation of a minor represents a violation of power and innocence that I cannot condone (Seto, 2008). My moral compass is anchored in the principle of harm and the centrality of consent, which remains the non-negotiable line in both clinical work and ethical reasoning. That said, I reject the idea that individuals should be flattened into their worst behavior or vilified without psychological inquiry. I do not believe in ranking sins as if some are redeemable and others are not. Every individual has a story, and sexuality does not arise in isolation and is shaped by biology, psyche, environment, developmental trauma, and cultural imprinting (Buehler, 2021; Levine, 2003). To dehumanize someone is to sever the possibility of healing, and in doing so, we often reinforce the very cycles of shame and unconscious compulsion that fuel these behaviors in the first place. Thus, I believe the ultimate task of the clinician is to hold space for truth, even (and especially) when it is difficult, and to meet individuals at the level of soul; not to excuse harm, but to understand its roots and help prevent its repetition.

Culturally, I come from a long lineage of sexual suppression. I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian household where sex was cloaked in shame, spoken about in hushed tones, and governed by strict rules. It was not presented as something sacred in the empowering or life-affirming sense, but rather as something to be feared, controlled, and weaponized. It was surrounded by anxiety and silence (rarely was it discussed except through judgment or moral warning) and made explicitly clear that it was to only occur between a man and a woman within a heterosexual, physically committed marriage. There was no room for curiosity, nuance, or safety in those conversations. Desire was treated as dangerous; however, while the purity pill was perpetually force-fed, I was at the same time, taught to think critically, even if only within a narrow framework.

That early exposure to disciplined thinking ultimately allowed me to question what I had been taught. As I grew older and approached the realm of sexuality on my own terms, I began to see how disconnected these teachings were from the actual landscape of human experience. I came to reject purity culture and be drawn to the erotic, to the symbolic, and to the mythic dimensions that often emerge in sexual experience. My own experiences of love and sex have been transformative. They have mirrored archetypes such as the forbidden fruit, projections of the anima and animus encountering one another, and the longing for both union and ego dissolution (Jung, 1969). Sexuality is never just about sex, it is a story told through bodies, reactions, and silent scripts, often written in response to the very systems that tried to silence them.

Becoming a therapist who can work with sexuality, especially as a future sex therapist, feels like a calling that merges my personal openness with my professional identity. People have always confided in me about things they have never told anyone: fetishes, affairs, traumas, confusions. In those confessions, I never recoil. I lean in and not because I am titillated, but because I am reverent of how socially taboo and vulnerable that realm is for many. To be able to sit with someone in that space, without judgment, is an honor that I have never and will never take lightly.

Buehler’s (2021) reflective questions led me to notice how even my own comfort edges, albeit, while broad, still exist. I am less reactive to unconventional practices than I am to societal ignorance and hypocrisies surrounding sex. That tells me something: my bias is toward liberation. Through this conscious awareness, I must then be mindful to not impose this bias in sessions, even if it is cloaked in “progress.” Some clients may come from deeply religious frameworks or desire more traditional relational structures. My task is not to lead them toward my values but to help them discover their own authentic alignment.

In Jungian terms, sexuality is the shadow’s playground. It is where the unconscious speaks in moans, rituals, projections, and resistance (Hillman, 1972). If clinicians want to understand one’s inner world, we must listen to how clients speak about sex… or don’t. There, we will find roots to shame, power, longing, and the archetypal struggle between control and surrender.

If I were to illustrate my sexual development as an image, it would be a labyrinth. Not to be confused with a maze where one gets lost, but a sacred path inward: winding and looping through layers of masks, sharp exhales, and meaning. At the center there is not an answer, but rather, a mirror. Much like all sacred mirrors, it asks only one thing: the courage to look.

References

Buehler, S. (2021). What every mental health professional needs to know about sex (3rd ed.). Springer Publishing Company.

Gagnon, J. H., & Simon, W. (1973). Sexual conduct: The social sources of human sexuality. Aldine Publishing.

Hillman, J. (1972). The myth of analysis: Three essays in archetypal psychology. Northwestern University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1959). Aion: Researches into the phenomenology of the self (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton University Press.

Jung, C. G. (1969). Archetypes and the collective unconscious (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.; 2nd ed.). Princeton University Press.

Levine, P. A. (2003). Waking the tiger: Healing trauma. North Atlantic Books.

Seto, M. C. (2018). Pedophilia and Sexual Offending Against Children: Theory, Assessment, and Intervention (2nd ed.). American Psychological Association.

Closing Reflection

What strikes me now, after rereading this piece (and a few others in academic journals and post-modern feminist magazines, whose pages somehow manage to be both self-righteous and self-referential), is how even the most ‘progressive’ conversations around sexuality remain steeped in judgment, veiled beneath the illusion of liberation. It is no longer a matter of sin, but of social acceptability, dictated by ever-shifting ideological standards. As long as a behavior fits neatly inside a shiny identity label, it is celebrated. But if it challenges our comfort zones, or if it cannot be hashtagged or politicized, it is discarded, condemned, or pathologized.

We have traded purity culture for progressive purity. We still rank sins. Still choose who is worthy of understanding, and who is not. And we still fail to ask the deeper questions and to really think.

Sexuality is not a checklist. It is not a gender, nor is it a slogan. It is soul-stuff: a living current of paradox, shadow, trauma, desire, repression, and longing. Sexuality is not meant to be safe. It is meant to be sacred.

Sex and sexuality is another area in which I am tired of the flatness: of the empty performances of sexual liberation that still revolve around control. Of the cowardice in our discourse, the refusal to sit with what disturbs us, and the rejection of anything that does not come pre-approved by an ideology from either side of the track.

We do not heal by policing people into silence, nor do we grow by judging which wounds deserve compassion. We do not and will continue to not understand sex — truly understand it — until we stop moralizing and start listening.

Life is nuance. Truth is contradiction. And something as sacred, as revealing, and as volatile as sex deserves better than dichotomous thinking. It deserves uncensored honesty.

“Sexuality is the strongest instinctual force that we experience. It carries both the danger of possession and the possibility of transformation. The question is always whether one is possessed by the instinct or is able to relate to it consciously.”
— Marie-Louise von Franz (Archetypal Dimensions of the Psyche)

The Struggle of Being Seen in a Disconnected World

“We meet ourselves time and again in a thousand disguises on the path of life.”
— Carl Jung (The Practice of Psychotherapy)

When a Human Soul Is Dismissed

Today, I witnessed something that deeply disturbed me. I was shadowing a meeting that a seasoned clinician had put together to support a client in immense distress. I sat there watching a team that was in place to help him—a client who had dared to bring his soul into the room—further tear him apart.

He was angry, raw, expressive. He voiced his rage at the systems that had failed him, the people who had overlooked or abused him, the reality he could no longer tolerate. And in return, he was met with condescension and malice.

He was the one with diagnostic labels. The one with physical ailments, including blindness. He was also the one who no longer knew how to comply. But because he did not express himself in ways deemed socially acceptable, he was penalized. The energy in the room created by his group home staff, not so quietly agreed: if only he were better, calmer, more appropriate, maybe then the world would treat him better.

Only one other person in the room truly saw him—his therapist. The rest missed the mark entirely. It was one of the most disgraceful observations I have seen while being in this field. A human soul laid bare, and met with frustration, ambivalence, and scorn.

That hour of absolute shame birthed this essay. Because what I observed is not rare. It is yet another rule.

The Age of Empty Reflections

We live in a world more connected than ever before. Hyperlinked. Hyper-aware. Hyper-informed. Yet never have we been so profoundly disconnected. We scroll past suffering, shout into echo chambers, and lose ourselves in curated reflections. In a world flooded with faces and mirrors, it is astonishing how few we truly see.

We hate our neighbor. We hate the world. And beneath it all, we quietly and largely unconsciously, hate ourselves.

Our hatred is not new. It is not some radical notion I am offering for shock value. It is ancient and archetypal, rooted in the most primitive aspects of the psyche. We are not merely reacting to what we see in others. We are reacting to what we cannot yet accept within ourselves. As Jung observed, “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” But how many of us are willing to follow that delicate, grotesque thread inward?

The Mirror and the Myth

The truth is, we do not see clearly. Not others, and certainly not ourselves. We do not see our neighbors as they sincerely are. We do not see our sister or our brother. Not even our closest friend. And especially not the celebrities we idolize. What we perceive is a distortion: a mirror image of the unconscious. Every human interaction holds up a reflective surface, revealing aspects of ourselves we often cannot or will not confront, whether good or bad.

We are much like Narcissus, mesmerized by our own reflection in the pool. Yet it is not the full self he falls in love with. It is a mask. A mere surface image. A persona. When Echo arrives—when someone repeats our words and reflects back the truth—we reject her. We despise the one who exposes what lies beneath. Narcissus could only “love” what he could idealize, but Echo mirrored back the whole truth, and that was intolerable. Much like what we see in today’s social climate.

The Failure of “Helpers”

This same dynamic plays out in both social and psychological spheres. We champion slogans like “Love and accept all” until we encounter someone who does not share our worldview. “Honor boundaries,” unless those boundaries apply to us. We preach of empathy, tolerance, and self-awareness, but our actions reveal a deeper, shadowy disdain for those who challenge our projected ideals. It is not morality we practice. It is moral narcissism.

Even in the world of therapy, where we are trained to see beyond appearances, we project. It is not just the client who transfers parental images onto us. We, too, transfer. We project ourselves onto our clients: our wounds, our unlived lives, our ideological rigidity. And when clients reflect back the parts of ourselves we have not made peace with, we grow frustrated, impatient, or distant.

We see this in our refusal to work with clients who do not echo our political, spiritual, or social values. It can be observed in our quiet annoyance with those who make us uncomfortable. We see it in clinical burnout—not because we “care too much,” but because we are fractured and attempting to meet others with compassion while rejecting the parts of ourselves that are wounded, judgmental, or afraid. This is not how to sincerely care for those we work for. We call for authenticity in our clients while lacking it within ourselves.

How might we accept anyone as they wholly are when we have not yet accepted the entirety of ourselves?

The Monsters Within

We are all flawed, and we are all blind. We all carry a needle in our eye even as we attempt to remove the speck from another’s. To deny this is to deny the shadow. To live split in half, performing the light while resenting the dark, is to abandon our humanity and flat-out reject ourselves and others.

The result is that we have become beasts in human form. Our egos are calcified. Our unconscious drives run rampant. We roam the world extracting from it rather than relating to it. Devouring attention, dominating narratives, and exploiting the Earth for meaning, control, or catharsis. We no longer seek wholeness. We seek power. All while not realizing that power is not strength. Nor is it through which we may find wholeness.

The Risk of Being Seen

To be seen, in this climate, is no longer a gift. It is a threat. Because if we were truly seen—if the reflection no longer flattered but confronted—we would be left with no more excuses. We would have to face who and what we really are: not just light, but shadow. Virtue and contradiction. Soul and destruction.

But perhaps in that raw, uncomfortable confrontation, a deeper seeing might emerge. One not built on projection, ideology, or image, but on something far more terrifying and far more holy: the sincere truth of ourselves, which lives at the very crux of our perception of reality.

“We are not here to fit in, be well balanced, or provide examples for others. We are here to confront our own souls, to struggle with meaning, to learn how to see.”
— James Hollis (Through the Dark Wood, 2005, p. 13)