Heads or Hearts

by Richard Reeve on December 3, 2008

in AziMuth

The main menu with the Mysterium logo

[second in the series of requested post topics: @zamees pitched this.]

The argument between the head or the heart in decision making means allowing the rational to face off with the irrational.  By way of example I’d like to share a personal story.  This past spring I read this passage in “Celtic Queen Maeve and Addiction” by Sylvia Brinton Perra.

…when the warrior Cuchullian confronted the warrior goddess Scathach, she promised any three things, the three highest desires of your heart…if you can ask them in one breath.”

That’s a big IF!  At once I recognized how I’d fail such a challenge from a granting goddess came my way.  I then began to consider the mythic scenario “as if” the desires might emerge in my life at some point.  For the next three weeks I kept reflecting on the simple question: what are the three deepest desires of my heart?

What I learned was this.  My head was not comfortable admitting the answers.  Call it a self preservation mechanism, shielding me from the disappointment of what rationally seemed impossible.  But I stuck with it, paring down the options until I had the three essential items.  Here I’ll share the first of the three wishes:  I desire to become a Jungian analyst.

Now of course that is not possible, right…I’ve got bills to pay,  young kids, I’m not qualified, there’s no trust fund, etc… I was well defended from ever entertaining this irrational desire.  But this is what has happened since.  I explored training options at the Jung Institute in NYC, and learned that their program can be accomplished with only a two day a week commitment.  I learned that my background did not disqualify me as a prospective student in the slightest.  Then I shared my desire with my employers and received green lights to explore the opportunity as it fits nicely into their long range visioning.  Then, after attending an open house at the Institute, I was invited to an initial interview and am now preparing the formal application to begin studies next Fall…

So the point: the head couldn’t see the path so it wouldn’t even entertain the desire.

In their polarity, all psychic opposites (head/heart) provide the energy for life. This huge topic, which is the driving force in Jung’s masterpiece Mysterium Coniunctionis (Collected Works of C.G. Jung Vol.14), gets developed to where we are asked to entertain the combination of the opposites, that a new new psychic reality might emerge: either/or merging into both/and.

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  • jeb
    Richard,
    Been away too long, always enjoy your posts. I think this topic is of great import, as it affects so many of us (knowingly or not). It seems at times that we're 'trained' out of the belief that so much is possible. When we're young, we know, intuitively, that the world is ours. Yet as we grow older, the possibilities seem to dwindle, until we can no longer see how something that isn't today, might be tomorrow. And in this way, our potential is stifled, our mark left unmade.

    I'm thankful, at least, that I can take notice of it, that I might turn that tide.

    Thank you for the reminder.
    Jeb
  • now that doesn't happen on every blog I visit...
  • I've never been to comfortable with the notion of "an irrational mind." I tend to think it's Plato talking.. with his needs to hold those reigns so tight.. he would never be a grail king!

    I think the irrational mind is only irrational with respect to conscious attitude / conceptual frameworks. It is certainly rational in that.. will, many years of evolution forged our instincts.. and now the trouble is how do we modern people relate to our own humanity.. especially those darker depths that seem somehow at odds with the value system of our times...

    Of course Campbell talks about this.. lets go play in the labyrinth in search of the great values lost by our times.. perform the task of differentiating between eternal and spacetime dependent truths.. to meet whatever the challenge is..

    It's also expressed in that.. the ratio of the world of the known to the unknown is about 1 to infinity.. God being the symbol of that ultimate mystery.. and isn't it the context of anything that provides the meaning of anything.. and how does one live when the ultimate context is mystery? I mean in that sense that.. what a thing is, at least consciously, is how it differs from a norm?

    So our poor wimpy conscious mind, with the ego standing at the center.. the task is to find that bogia tree.. that grows at the true center of the whole self.. so that all of fear and desire might be transmuted, philosopher stone style.. in our support.. and after all.. doesn't anxiety have a survival value somewhere?

    Perhaps I'm something like Job.. but that I gave my self over to God's values at 3..

    In any event.. my life has a nice thick plot..

    I've thought of this much.. in Freud's terms.. the issues of sustaining a wish, and how this relates to the construction of the shadow.. The issue of what wish / will might find it's resolution and fulfillment.. If what we know is so limited, how can we be the judge, and yet its our judgement that's defining it.. our judgment that builds the labyrinth.. builds the cages we live in.

    At this point in my life.. I'm risking a future enantiodromia because I refuse to give up on wishes that have been defining my life since I was at least 3 years old. I have enormous fear and anxiety that I might go down in flames... somehow be destroyed.. should the wish not find it's fulfillment. I am simply too committed to it at this point.

    But I'll tell you a secret.. that wish.. that was a secret pact I made with God. But can you really believe in God? Perhaps when I die I'll have to leave a formal complaint! But I'll also tell you.. that every now and again.. there are these whispers in the silence.. it's as if the very surface of reality.. as if it were God talking to me. And I must say.. he seems to forever be encouraging my rebellious ways.

    Err.. but I must stop rambling..
  • sid parham
    The more I read the brain research and exmine my own processes the more I feel the division is false. We do no mental work without emotion, no matter how rational it may seem, Problem is we have language and numbers to explain rationality. To the extent we have a language of emotion we find it in myth and art. Our problems come from emotion that is powerful and inarticulate
  • I have had to learn to give my feelings about things as much credibility in my choices as I have been taught to give my mind. When they are in conflict I know I have work to do to reveal and peel away the beliefs that no longer serve me. I can only hope to save my daughter in even some small way from the perils of valuing thought over feeling in the pursuit of a happy and satisfying life. I have thankfully found my way. The first step was learning to feel - no easy feat! In an effort to keep us safe our minds can destroy our dreams. I am thrilled to hear your dream is winning out! What a wonderful example you are setting for your children.
  • While most people tend to peg me as a "T" on the Myers Briggs, I'm actually a pretty strong "F" (INFJ).

    For years I tried to always do everything from the head. I was raised by a strong "ST", so I always thought that was how you were supposed to be. It was after I took the Myers Briggs in my late 20s that I realized that I just wasn't the person I was trying so hard to be. I devoted my 30s to figuring out who I really was inside and what I really wanted out of life.

    I'm still working on finding my path in life (I'm 46 now), but I'm finding the path much less rugged than it was when I was trying to follow someone else's path. I'm much happier on my path, more willing to embrace what I know to be truth instead of always questioning myself, and more willing to work hard to get somewhere now that I have a better sense of where I'm actually going in life.
  • John Reddish Get Results
    I'm a consummate ENTP, trying to merge head and heart. "F" is hard for me. When I work with the MBTI folks, most of them are "F's" - tends to be exhausting. Head!
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