alone with my subconscious
when I was thirteen, I bought and was obsessed with a book called The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy. it was next to the poetry section, where I spent most of my time as a teenager in our family’s weekly trips to Borders bookstore in Raleigh, North Carolina. before that, I would borrow books from the public library about astral projection — anything slightly witchy - and attempt to try those things at home. (it never quite worked.)
fifteen years later, since settling into my digital solitude (and solitude in general) in this confinement in an old Japanese house, I’ve been more attentive to my extreme moods and psychic variability on a day to day basis. when there’s nothing like phones, or jobs, or other people, or social media — to constantly distract and numb you, you really are left alone with your mind. all the debris of your conscious mind surfaces. and then, if you get past that, the stuff from the shadowy, darker layers of your subconscious mind surfaces. you are so alone with it that it’s sometimes scary.
recently I’ve been having vivid dreams about men (not pleasant ones). oftentimes, they’re violent in different ways. yesterday I was working on an essay that brought up all my father issues — then I did some “somatic yoga-body work” on the floor. for the rest of the day, I felt this exhaustion and heaviness in my body, weighing me down, like a thousand pound anchor. I just wanted to be on the floor.
I think that the body is most definitely a most direct way into the subconscious and the psyche — it stores emotions and understanding in a way which language cannot access, or even being to make intelligible. language can only approximate. my subconscious is always speaking to me through my body and my dreams. the question is: do I want to listen? do I have the fortitude and spaciousness within me, now, to dive deeper?
I’m not sure. but I might try. I’ve made a list of books on this topic that I really want to read (and reread) — documenting here:
TO READ
She - Understanding Feminine Psychology by Robert Johnson (a Jungian psychologist, using Greek archetypes of Psyche vs. Aphrodite to talk about the feminine consciousness, seemed fascinating, even if it is written by a man…
Inner Work - Using Dreams and Creative Imagination for Personal Growth by Robert Johnson (same guy, I will see if I like him)
The Interpretation of Dreams by Freud — is this worth reading? at least worth a skim, I think.
The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell - I started listening to this on audible and I cannot say how much I loved it.
Women Who Run With Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés - one of my most cherished books of all time, need to reread it after 3 years.
The Body Keeps Score - by Bessel Van der Kolk - definitely need to read this, about trauma being in the body
a lot of these books are on mythology, which is one language of the subconscious. that, and the body. what can I do, except learn, and listen? this inner work is a massive and ongoing life process that will never end. ocean of myself: here I come.