Another Week!
4/22/01
Nearly another week has passed. I'm beginning to understand what other retired people mean when they say they are busier in retirement than when working!
For one thing, retiring is hard work! You need to spend endless times with people like accountants and stockbrokers. And as it turns out I'm setting up a living trust and redoing my Will. So I have poured money into the waiting mouths of many professionals this week.
A very funny thing happened to Diana and me. She is in Los Angeles this weekend for a workshop. Her ex Husband, who has a PhD in "poor me", has in the past been totally unwilling to take more than one of the kids at a time, and for more than one day. The times he has done so have occasioned long wailing guilt trips.
So I said to her, "hey, when you are away, why don't I jsut stay with your kids. They can see your ex during the day like they usually do on Saturday, and I don't mind staying here in the evening." She asked her kids, who were OK with the idea. (Yson, who is growing like a weed, had just one question: 'can he cook?'). So it was all arranged. Until the ex found out about it. The next thing you know, he was falling all over himself to take the kids all weekend! Diana couldn't stop giggling about it. "I hoped you would be a role model for my kids" she said, "but I never thought you'd be one for my ex."
In fact, she is staying with her ex's sister in LA--she has remained on better terms with his family than he has. She gave me the phone number which I put into my Palm Pilot. When I went to call her on Fri., the Palm was dead! Luckily, I had updated a day earlier, but I lost the phone number. Just as I was racking my brains trying to figure out how to get ahold of her, she called! My psychic powers are improving. Or not...
Every spare minute (there haven't been too many) has been spent with the book. I now have drafts for 5 chapters (out of about 35). I get pumped up again every time I read the table of contents. I told the publisher I would have a draft by June, so I have my work cut out for me!
This week I've had two responses to my journal from strangers. People who journal often speak about how wonderful it is to get responses, and I'm here to tell you, they're right. The first response was from the webmaster of Phil's Fish Market, ultimate source of the wonderful Cioppino. They had seen the references and were "checking in". The other was a nice letter about the Tarot. I have wanted to do an entry about divination with the Tarot, I Ching and other methods, but just haven't had a second. So here goes...
As I've said in earlier entries, in midlife I've really taken to Jung's ideas of archetypes. Maybe it just took seeing enough of them, or maybe it involves having finally decided to look inward. But I observe that there are a number of divination methods that work more or less as follows:
- Select a rich set of archetypes.
- Pick one or more from a reasonably random process.
- Consider how these archetypes relate to your life now.
I think there is something inherently valuable in staring deep into the eyes of archetypes. I find they are like ringing a bell, and something inside me resonates, and, with this resonance I discover that piece of me that contains the energy of this arthetype, and say hello to it again.
To quote Jung again, I think we all have the potential to assume the energy of all the archetypes within us. Some of them we repress into our unconscious, where they become our Shadow. Our task in midlife is to reclaim our shadow.
So, consider what happens when I pick a random archetype and confront you with it. If you are conscious of the energy, then you feel a sense of connection and affirmation--the energy is reinforced, and you are more likely to manifest it in the next few days--the 'prediction' comes true. If the energy of this archetype is largely in your shadow, you still resonate with it and give it energy, and potentially move it closer to a conscious connection and acceptance. In any case, it too is more likely to manifest because you have put energy into it. Once again, the prediction has come true.
I think in order for this to happen, your connection with the archetype needs to be deep and emotional, even passionate. This is best done if you really believe in the divination method. It's long been my experience that things like Astrology and the Tarot really work well for those who believe strong that they will work. The Christians speak of the power of Faith--this is probably the same effect. If you believe strongly enough that Lourdes, or Jesus, or your statue of Mary will heal you, they will.
Remember how powerful the placebo effect is. All those people in the cancer study who were fed sugar pills, but believed that they were getting a cancer drug, and their hair fell out! We have wonderful powers to affect our bodies and the world around us. It takes a passionate connection with the world, and with the archetypes within us, and we can indeed move mountains.
Thank you for reading.
Copyright © 2001 Pete Stevens. All rights reserved.
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