Last fall, a succession of visions about a week apart unexpectedly appeared. I perceived them as metaphors of life and they arrived as my whispers of mystery do: as flashes that interrupt my own mundane thoughts, those petty thoughts of my “human self.” Since messages to me have been auditory, these visual images playing like a video were a new surprise.
Each one presented a different metaphor from a different facet fitting into my reflections of the “human self” and the “eternal self.” I posted the first, the Smorgasbord, in November, where I also introduced these distinct parts within ourselves. Quite unlike Augustine’s convoluted logic, still mysteriously taught by some churches, we are not made “in sin.” The creation of Adam is shown clearly in Genesis 2:7 in two parts: from the dust of the earth (the human self) and from the divine breath (the eternal self). Both are natural and neither part should be despised. They are often in conflict, however, and since the human part is physical, tangible, it is the part we identify with, leaving the eternal part elusive.
This vision began with a single female diving into the deep-end of an outdoor pool and swimming underwater. The pool was shaped like an upside-down capital “L,” with the deep end off to the upper right of the swim lanes. I watched the diver swim downward toward the bottom of the pool like a graceful dolphin, down, then forward, then down, then sometimes up, then forward, then down again. It seemed she was attempting to touch the bottom of the pool. I held my breath for her, and I worried for her, mentally encouraging her to rise up for a breath.
You want
to see swimmers breathe?
My whispers had finally spoken during my otherwise silent vision. They shifted the vision to the main part of the pool, to the swim lanes. There, I saw the lanes filled with swimmers, appearing as adults as if at a swim team warm-up, all swimming backstroke, about four or five per lane about two swimmer lengths apart from one another. Then I heard another voice in the background, muffled and quite distinct from my whispers’ voices or from my own mental chatter, apparently the swimmers’ coach. He instructed them to flip over to swim freestyle.
But the swimmers kept swimming backstroke. None had flipped over. I waited for the coach to repeat his instruction, but the vision remained silent. The swimmers remained on their backs, swimming at the same pace, in the same rhythm, with the same movements, with neither a twitch nor a startle. Had they heard their coach?
I watched the swimmers mechanically lift their arms for their strokes and kick their feet to rudder themselves forward. None was fast, but none slow, and they swam sufficiently straight, a feat which takes some level of skill for backstroke, though their form lacked the power of the pros. The vision continued in silence, with the backstroke swimmers mechanical and the coach apparently now absent.
I wondered over these swimmers ignoring their coach. I had not seen him, only heard his voice, somewhat muffled in the background, only once. Had he tried to instruct them before I arrived at the vision, and he had thrown up his arms and left? Given up on them? Or had he instructed them only once to flip to freestyle? Had they heard him? Why had they not flipped over?
After an extended silence, my whispers finally spoke again.
They
would have to put their head under water.
“Yes, soooo?” I asked, puzzled.
They are afraid to immerse their heads into the water.
Thinking too logically, I asked, “Then why do they look like they’re on a swim team?!”
My whispers didn’t reply. Instead, they returned the vision to the deep-end diver. While the backstroke swimmers appeared to still be mastering the skill of swimming, even of their obvious preference for backstroke, this swimmer was graceful, elegant and quick, moving through the water like a mermaid. Continuing downward, her destination to the bottom of the pool was unchanged, and by this time, she had almost reached it, almost able touch it, but not quite.
My whispers entered once more.
She’s seeking her eternal self.
The deeper she swam, the greater the pressure of the water resisted her movements. Swimming is easier at the surface than it is further down. Just as the air is thin at a high altitude, water is denser at a deeper level. I watched her struggle against the density.
Once again, I held my breath for her and encouraged her to rise to the top to catch a breath. She must have heard me, as just then I watched her lift herself upright, take a grand scissor kick, then shoot her two arms up and quickly pull them down to her waist, rocketing herself up, and rising to the surface in quick frog-like movements. She reached the surface, pulled her head out of the water, took a deep breath, then slowly swam breast stroke to the edge of the pool. I felt within her both triumph and agony. She had swum deep and far, but had not reached bottom. Might she touch bottom the next time?
Unlike the Smorgasbord vision, which my whispers narrated along the way, this vision was largely silent. Messages from the world beyond have come to me auditory, hence my blog title: “whispers of mystery.” The silence of this vision felt powerful to because it was so different, and the vision left me with many questions.
If the deep end swimmer was seeking her eternal self, were the backstroke swimmers ignoring theirs? Did their coach represent this eternal self? Had they heard him and ignored him? Or, were they so mechanically established they couldn’t hear him?
To these questions, my whispers did not reply. As often, they tossed out a riddle. They said the deep-end diver was seeking her eternal self, and they presented a diver who was not flying up into the sky, but down into the water. Curious.
The ones who were looking up to the sky, where we might expect to seek an eternal self, were the backstroke swimmers. They could also breathe and were not struggling. But, they were mechanical, not graceful. Grace doesn’t come easily; it comes after much struggle.
Water, according to many spiritual traditions, represents emotion. I felt that the deep waters of the deep-end swimmer represented the waters of our heart. I reflected that our human self is made up both of our conscious, mental self -- like that chatterbox in my head who complains too much, but also tries to be nice – and also of our inner child, the vulnerable one in our subconscious who feels emotion, gets afraid, and guards its traumas.
Could the vision suggest the swimmers’ fear to dunk their heads in the water was fear of facing their traumas? This may be why water also represents cleansing. We may need to cleanse from trauma, but fear doing so. To dive into the water of our inner child to face these emotions, fears, and especially the traumas, is frightening, as it exposes the trauma to our conscious self. This calls for much endurance, patience, strength, and courage.
How much more we would like to reach the stars than to dive into our traumas. And how much more do we like to mechanically breathe than struggle in dense waters. So we ignore the call or let ourselves not hear it, as the swimmers heard not their coach. Was the coach, then, to the backstroke swimmers like my whispers are to me?
Once we do begin to listen and to glimpse this elusive eternal self, we long for nothing more than to meet it, to touch it like the deep-end diver was attempting to do. We find in this eternal self one quite unlike the moralist of Freud’s superego or the mixture of positive and negative of the Jungian Collective Unconscious. No, this eternal self, this part shown by the divine breath in Adam’s creation, is gentle and wise, sometimes teasing, but loving.
While many spiritual traditions affirm a High Self akin to what I call the eternal self, few western psychologists do. Could it be the western psychologists are like the backstroke swimmers? They can’t hear their inner “coach,” their own eternal self?
I suspect many of them do, but
don’t say. Carl Jung practically did in
an interview, but he didn’t publish it as he may have been scorned by his
colleagues. Still, once we glimpse this
eternal self, there is no denying this self, more real to us than anything
else, and there is no going back.
Other
Metaphors of Life Visions
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