Well, it’s the Chinese Year of the Rabbit this week.

Feb 3, 2011 marks Xin Mao, the new year for the lunar calendar which is designated by one of twelve animals each year. Perhaps not as exciting at first glance as the dragon or tiger, the rabbit holds a very significant place in the cycle of Chinese totems. One of the essential qualities of the rabbit ion Chinese folklore is its ability to act quickly and nimbly in the face of a challenge and avert disaster. The hare is the epitome of the escape artist.

While I’m not Chinese and really don’t observe the Chinese New Year, I like to think I am an “observer” of life. I find it very meaningful that in this age of computers, cyberspace and smart phones that almost half the planet will recognize a rabbit as part of their consciousness this week. While most of us may not live in nature the way we once did, there still exists remnants of our totemic past, fragments of our connection with nature and our animal cousins that call us back to something bigger than high speed internet service.

There are endless lessons to be learned from nature. We design products based on ergonomics, the “fit” between people, our stuff and our environments. We look to sharks for answers to cancer because they don’t get cancer. We call our operating systems Snow Leopard or Panther based on our projected beliefs as to these animals strengths and agility. We call our cars Mustangs and Pintos based on our feelings when we witness animals running wild and free. So, why not name every year something bold and exciting like the dragon?

Symbolically, rabbits are skittish creatures. As often as a rabbit eats, a rabbit listens for danger. Rabbits are gentle creatures who like to eat, sleep and have a lot of sex. It’s hard to argue with that. On the other hand, rabbits tend to be generally fear based. Afraid of tragedy, rabbits like to have fun but are always worried that their fun will be taken away. Because they fear something will happen, they create a life of anxiety, sprinkled with moments of pleasure. What an interesting notion for our planet to consider for an entire year!

Every time I allow myself to worry about the “what if’s” in life, I create an inability to live in the present moment. In so doing, I project to the world the message that I am afraid and in so doing, I create more fear in my life and for those around me. What a profound message for all of us.

So, Happy New Year, once again! Remember our beloved rabbit this week and each week hereafter as we breathe into her deep message: that which we resist, persists. Whatever we run away from, chases after us.

Are you stressed?

It seems like stress has become a way of life for so many of us, simply a “given” in much the same way as paying for bags on an airplane or basic cable television. Has it always been this way? Have we always been anxious, throughout the ages?

I like to fantasize about what daily life was like at different periods of history in different parts of the world. We have a tendency in our moment in the human record to project our own experiences back into the past onto our predecessors. For example, there are few reconstructed images I have seen of “prehistoric, ” a fascinating concept in and of itself, man where the hairy, unshaven fella wasn’t chasing or being chased by a Woolly Mammoth or menacing dinosaur ( yes I have heard they didn’t exist at the same time ).

Talk about stressful! Have you seen Jurassic Park? I know it was all just on one little island but if those velociraptors lived on my block I guarantee I would carry pepper spray.

I think back to the days of the Second Temple in Jerusalem. Zealots and Sanhedrin, Romans and Right-wingers. Roaming prophets spoke about the end of days and it must have been hard to change the channel because they were right there, screaming and shouting while you slaughtered your goat. Wait, what if my soul really doesn’t go anywhere when I die? It seems like it might have been pretty relaxing, just living out in the desert with one’s family and a little extra wine with dinner until I consider the various marauders, armies and general kooks looking for something or another.

No public assistance programs for tough times or local security forces for the kooks. I imagine the “good old days” had a possibility of becoming terribly frightening very quickly. Not exactly stress-free.

I think about the ways technology and industrialization have made certain challenges much easier and peaceful the past few hundred years. I suppose common folks just made peace with bowel elimination in cities and villages a thousand years ago…until another plague was unleashed. I have a romantic notion of the early American pioneers, setting out from the muddy streets of New York with the intention to work the land and live life under the stars. Create one’s own destiny… what a wonderful banner to soar above our log cabin in the woods. Until the real native stewards of the neighborhood got fed up with the concept of “manifest destiny….”and murdered us. How’s that for anxiety and stress?

I wonder if there has truly ever been a time in our history when there was not a relationship to anxiety or stress. So, perhaps the lugubrious suggestions we like to make about how life is more challenging today than it was for our grandparents isn’t so accurate? I hear quite often that all this technology has added so much stress to our lives that perhaps it isn’t worth it!?! Really? No one is forcing us to spend an hour a day on Facebook or keep up with the spam folder but it sure is nice to be able to Google a topical solution for psoriasis, YouTube a video on how to perform CPR or use my smart phone to call AAA when my car is stuck in a ravine.

There is no doubt in my mind that life today has its unique share of stressors and strains. At the same time, I firmly believe that each generation is faced with a relative drop-down menu of anxiety manifestors befitting the day, era and location. At least we can post an updated status to our friends when we are feeling overwhelmed.

A mood of universal destruction and renewal…has set its mark on our age. This mood makes itself felt everywhere, politically, socially, and philosophically. We are living in what the Greeks called the kairos—the right moment—for a “metamorphosis of the gods,” of the fundamental principles and symbols. This peculiarity of our time, which is certainly not of our conscious choosing, is the expression of the unconscious human within us who is changing. Coming generations will have to take account of this momentous transformation if humanity is not to destroy itself through the might of its own technology and science…. So much is at stake and so much depends on the psychological constitution of the modern human. — Carl Gustav Jung

In 1925, Carl Gustav Jung, one of the most brilliant psychologists in our field’s brief history, took a trip to New Mexico. In fact, his experience in Taos with a group of Native Americans is considered to be one of the most significant contributions to the development of his unique approach to psychology and more importantly, his perception of human behavior. Jung noted that at the core of his discoveries at Taos Pueblo was the notion that humans “need a sense of their individual and cultural significance to be psychologically healthy.”

In his book Memories, Dreams and Reflections (which happens to be one of my very favorite books, ever) Jung suggested that his experience in New Mexico made him aware of his imprisonment “in the cultural consciousness of the white man.” As a man living in Chicago this week, I have to say that I feel somewhat imprisoned by some cultural consciousness as well.

For the past several days, client after client has walked into my office and somewhere during the hour uttered the words, “Bears, Packers?!?” Sometimes it comes across as a question, sometimes as a simple fact. “Did you see the game?” “Where will you watch it on Sunday?” “So, who are you for, Bears…Packers?” As a man who has historically maintained precious little interest in football, it is a fascinating experience to suddenly feel swept into a Midwestern whirlwind of rivalry and vigor, longing and lasciviousness.

Women and men alike, care about this game on Sunday. Folks who were born and raised in the streets of Chicago care. Transplants from other countries and states, care. Political conservatives and wacky liberals know it matters who wins and they have opinions. Homosexuals are weighing in and heterosexuals, too. Women who cheat and men who hide their real feelings have a lot to say about Bears/Packers…

The Taos Pueblo is separated into two tiny, mud cities by a modest river that weaves down into the valley beneath a great mountain. One of the details that Dr. Jung found particularly significant was the fact that the pueblo’s natural separation by the river had created an ever so slight variation between the two sides of the village. In fact, when it came to engaging in rituals, hunting and even sporting events, the gentle designation of the two distinct teams created a friendly rivalry and competition that served as a projection for interpersonal tensions and aggression. Jung noted that as a result of this sometimes heated team rivalry, there was considerably less aggression, hostility and strife in people’s homes and in the whole tribal community.

I don’t really care who wins the game this Sunday. I’d like to believe that the not always so friendly rivalry between Bears and Packers fans is a healthy projection of aggressive energy away from real people and real issues onto something like an NFL rivalry. At the same time, I continue to be amazed by the number of men and women who use their feelings about sporting events, wins and losses, as springboards for dealing with their own hopes and dreams, perceived successes and failures. Either way, I just might succumb to the local cultural consciousness and watch the game..

I wanted to believe that this might be the only blog in town this week not about Osama or Obama. That I wouldn’t write a tome about “to kill a killer” or “to gloat or not to gloat.” Yet, in the end, it’s all really about the meaning of life, anyway. I’m talking about BIG stuff, here. I’m talking about THE POINT.

What’s the point?

And I’m not coming from that nihilistic, black nail polish kind of place. I’m coming from that stare into the mirror and sigh sort of place.

It seems like back “in the really old days” people had basic survival to contend with more than anything. Hunt, gather, and/ or grow food and do ones best to protect the family from marauders and generally bad people. Also likely was the added concern with the fate of one’s body, mind and spirit in the assumed or hotly debated afterlife.

Today, we’re still concerned with the procurement of food ( I mean, who doesn’t like a cold Coca Cola) and self-protection (could I ever build a wall high enough), however these basic needs are often overshadowed by the pursuit of new technology (patiently, peacefully waiting for the IPhone 5), preparing for retirement (what does that really mean in this day and age) and where and when we will take our next vacation (when did we need a fancy term for staying home instead of going somewhere else).

Back in the day when folks were primarily concerned with the survival of self and soul, do you think they felt an overarching sense of meaning in their lives? Do you think they felt connected to the rest of the planet; a kinship with other humans? Even without CNN? Makes me wonder…

When faced with my survival, is there really significant emotional and physical space to worry about the existential nature of meaning and purpose?

Today there are surely billions of people who are still concerned with their souls in the afterlife and who derive a sense of meaning from their respective religions or beliefs. Yet, I am unsure as to whether there is a unifying, universally coherent, common purpose for us all; something that draws us all together. Was the notion of the Tower of Babel (one of my favorite parables) merely about language or was there a deeper, existential notion of DIFFERENCE?

One would think the condition of our environment would have accomplished a unification for our species long ago yet the fact that the nations of the world can’t seem to work together to solve global warming is an indication of our state of affairs. We still remain scattered across the earth doing our own thing. Some countries still consider global warming an Other issue as a matter of public policy.

Then there is, of course, the issue of doctrine, dogma and subjective truth. The marauders attacking my village thousands of years ago believed they were justified in attacking my village even though I strongly disagreed. I mean, I REALLY disagreed with the essential premise of their approach to life.

Many of us today are in favor of free speech and democratic process until someone threatens us for real. When marauders come rolling through my sense of peace and calm, I want to stop them by any means necessary because I’m still basically a human being who doesn’t care about you until you make changing me and altering my agenda, your agenda. Then we have a problem, man.

The notion of that primordial tower was for all the nations of the earth to band together for a common end and build a structure so amazing that we could reach God, thus becoming Gods. However, that scoundrel God “confounded the language of all the Earth.” (Genesis 11:5-8) and set us back a ways. Now look at us.

I believe that history has a funny (not always ha-ha) way of repeating itself, both personally and globally. It makes me feel better when I catch myself seemingly repeating the same behaviors over and over again to think that it isn’t just me slipping into those old patterns. You do it too, right?

History repeats itself because we often (usually subconsciously) seek out excuses in order to justify acting a particular way:
*Well, because I only quit smoking for a year last time, the likelihood is that I won’t really make it that far this time.
*I always eat too much over the holidays so I assume I’ll do the same this year.
*I’m typically weak when it comes to that ex-him or her, so the likelihood is that I’ll sleep with them again if they come knocking.

Let’s take this simple concept that most of us would agree upon a step further. C.G. Jung suggested that there is a direct correlation between my personal process and the process of humanity as a whole. Somehow the decision tree whereby I calculate the choice not to sleep with that person because I can choose a better path now as opposed to before is indeed a universal progression not limited to my own little drama. Isn’t it yours as well…?

“An archetypal image transmutes our personal destiny into the destiny of humankind” (Collected Works of C.G. Jung, 15/129). A common symbol, idea, experience, even a common dream, has the ability to connect my inner and outer world with your inner and outer world, linking my personal journey to the path of humanity as a whole. There is a certain magic to this concept that makes the world an even more fascinating, more alchemical place to live.

Alchemy is the ancient study (some adepts would suggest practice) whereby putrifaction leads to the transmutation of matter, most notably of metals into gold. The notion that we can seemingly convert static objects and states like stone or metal into a state of change and transformation was a process that intrigued many people before we were given the brain-numbing answer to free time and boredom, reality television. People living only a hundred years ago used to pursue the alchemical mysteries like folks today chase dreams of creating an internet start-up company or a new app for a smart phone.

It was commonly believed that for a person to attain the knowledge whereby an alchemical conversion was possible, a deep process of self-realization and personal development was essential. In this technologically advanced age, video games, Facebook, Twitter and TV in general, not just the reality kind, are things one would arguably need to suspend during the intensive, introspective, transformational process. Creating gold out of old Matchbox cars and cell phones takes focus. Some would say it requires a degree of enlightenment.

The Latin definition of Alchemy, Solve et Coagula can be translated as separate and come together, dissolve and coagulate. Those are VERY intriguing words for a psychotherapist, and I imagine for many others as well.

Jung suggested that the alchemy of the Self is a process whereby the individual exfoliates, even burns, layers of the self away to reveal the truest, most enlightened, version of our being. Alchemists of the Middle Ages believed that the person who could turn common metals into gold would need to have discovered a panacea, a veritable elixir of life, because it would necessarily be the universal solvent that when mixed with whatever form of matter, creates a metaphysical play dough that can be shaped into whatever the Alchemist chooses.

Following this so far? It’s the key to eternal life (and a reduced need for psychotherapy) so stay with me.

In order to transform the self I have thus far manifested in my relationships, my thoughts and in my life story, I need to uncover a personal elixir, a universal substance (or idea) that allows me to dissolve the places I am stuck and then draw together my broken pieces into a new, more empowered and enlightened form. That’s what I do when I do the work on myself to change old patterns that create harm or hurt for myself and others: I dissolve the old and form new ways of relating. It is also the process I personally strive to facilitate for clients each day in their therapeutic discovery and psycho-analysis.

Which brings me back to Time. I have a tendency (as do many good humans) to view my life historically, through the relationships I have created, maintained and dissolved. I conduct this self-analysis by understanding those connections through the context of time and space as well as my judgment of how I conducted myself in those situations. Hopefully, I view my past in terms of events and behaviors I want to learn from and improve.

For example, “I was a real jerk to that person in college, but I was just a kid trying to figure things out…”

“I ended up having that affair back then because I was longing for love and partnership but I wasn’t fully capable of committing so I chose someone who wasn’t truly available… “

“I chose to marry my husband or wife because I had done enough work on myself, dissolved and coagulated, and felt capable of creating a new version of who I am throughout time and space that, like gold (and Frosted Lucky Charms), I perceived to be magically delicious.”

There is a recursive regression that occurs in and for my self out of my own alchemical process whereby I transform myself in this moment as a result of a series of similarly transformational but static moments in my past. Like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day,” recursion suggests that I am able to define my present state of conscious awareness by relying on a series of moments from the past when I believed I was indeed fully conscious. And yet, like two mirrors facing each other, I am able to see the mirror exactly in front only combined with a series of reflections of the same mirror somehow projected within the image.

Is it possible to perceive the changes I am making right now in the way I do “me” outside of or separate from the moments in my past when I was also conscious of change happening?

Is this possible without a universal solvent? Is there a panacea that allows me to solve et coagula?
There must be some common denominator throughout time and space that allows me to view myself as a self-aware person within a process of transformation. Relying upon this element, I build each moment of transformation upon itself, erecting a metaphysical slinky that when stretched and pulled forward enough, eventually snaps all of my past experiences and internal movements of consciousness forward in an instant. It soars through time and space and slams into the present moment at a grand, alchemical intersection of evolution, transformation, and perhaps even enlightenment. It changes us forever.

As we begin another year in the life, I’d like to invite you to take some time in the coming weeks to consider what constant has existed throughout your life that has helped you dissolve and coagulate. Perhaps it is not something you have ever contemplated and yet it might be something worth identifying, appreciating and nurturing as you move forward on your personal path to self-realization. What idea or belief, physical place, activity, relationship, etc. has truly served as a catalyst for growth and transformation in your life? Are you aware of your universal solvent? Perhaps it is time to become aware and pull the slinky of change forward…

Happy New Year!!!