Even though I’m not a dad.

I do not have kids and there is a strong chance that I will die without children of my own. It’s not that I have anything against children or fear parenting, it is simply a result of a number of life circumstances that has led to my being, now over forty years old, a non-father.

Now hold on there. People wish me a “Happy Father’s Day” for days before and days after the June holiday as they “Merry Christmas” me silly in December. There is an interesting assumption people make about such things. I’m not a dad and I’m not a Christian, but it doesn’t stop folks from throwing their cheer my way.

It used to really irritate me about the Merry Christmas thing, and there aren’t many things that truly irritate me. Especially with the popular campaign to “put Christ back into Christmas” which does a wonderful job debunking those who wish to persuade me that Christmas is an American holiday and not a religious one. But I digress. Or, do I?

Why is it that people assume I have children? Perhaps it is because I’m a man over forty. Perhaps it is because I choose to grow my facial hair. Perhaps it is because I am a psychotherapist. Perhaps it is because I smile at other people’s kids (in a nice way, not creepy) and even strike up conversations with young people in a way that I believe not many adults have a tendency to do.

However, I’m thinking the answer has less to do with me and more to do with you.
Yes you.

Why do you feel the need to wish me a happy anything when you are not sure if that specific happiness applies to my life? I think the answer leads us back to that favorite topic of mine, projection. There were precious few women whom I dated in my life (or married for that matter) that didn’t stare at me with that look in their eyes and say, “You’re going to be such a good father.” I typically smiled, nodded and particularly enjoyed the sex that night.

I’m not sure there is any real basis for an extrapolation of current behavior, depth, compassion and general “good with kids-ness” that automatically leads one to being an exceptional father. There is, however, a very real projection from you to me that hopes I will be a good father because good fathers are like gold. What is most notable to me is that what I think so many project onto others when it comes to the “fatherly” vibe is just that, a vibe; an energy.

The Father Archetype is something I feel I have connected with for many years. It is an embodiment of kindness, patience, strength, understanding, wisdom, depth, presence and availability. In fact, it is not difficult to confuse the Father Archetype with simply the best of the MALE energy. Simply being a solid, self-realized man is what so many people hope to find in the man with whom they are in a relationship, studying with, learning from, working for, or, yes, co-parenting.

Which brings me back to Christmas. The realization I had about Christmas is the same that helped me relax about Father’s Day. When you wish me a happy anything, you are initiating a connection, offering kindness and most of all, you are attempting to place me inside of your utopic world of understanding and the way things should be.

You want to live in a world where everyone celebrates Christmas because you love it so much and want me to be a part of it. You wish me a Happy Father’s Day because you love being a father and want me to love it to. You want me to be the kind of father you think I would be because you want to be that kind of father or be connected to that kind of father.

Sure, some of you are just so self-absorbed that you fail to accept that not everyone believes what you believe or has chosen the same life choices you have chosen. I used to think that you all occupied this category but I see now that it isn’t that simple. In fact, at this point, I’m pretty honored that you feel I embody the qualities that make a good, strong, father figure.

So, wish me a Happy Father’s Day. In fact, you can call me Dad if you like. I’ll simply sit here and smile patiently, nodding and holding the space with a quiet strength that exudes FATHER.

It seems like the new Lady Gaga (or was it Madonna) song about being ok with our bodies regardless of our deformities is following me everywhere I go from my car radio to television to my own damned humming. While the message is, of course, a good message (Love Yourself) the image of Ms. Gaga onstage last week at the Grammys lingers for me in a somewhat different manner.

Lady Gaga is extremely skilled in catapulting herself between two gender extremes, the masculine and feminine. And what a tremendous gift that is. It is a great feat to file away in one’s primate processing center (PPC) “Lady Gaga is hot. I am attracted to her,” only to find a new file tossed on the pile a week later stamped with “Lady Gaga is not hot. Cancel previous designation, post haste. ” What is it like to feel billions of people look at you on the planet as a “sex symbol?” By its very definition, a sex symbol suggests the projection of an ideal sexual partner. My sense is that most folks who fantasize about having sex with Lady Gaga do not think about what that really means for her, for themselves and for our culture. It is also no surprise that our greatest female superstars react to the projection by publicly exploring their larger than life, massive, unruly… animus.

C.G. Jung offered humanity a helpful tool with regard to our internal gender tension. For the great psychologist, each person’s wholeness involves the interplay of both masculine and feminine qualities. In order to exist in a balanced, mindful, conscious state, a person must negotiate their internal pull toward the other gender on a regular basis. For men, there exists an internal feminine presence known as the anima; for women, the animus.

Many men in our society still wear their masculinity on their sleeve while plunging their feminine elements deep within. Not surprising, a great number of women have done much to summon their inner masculines in order to get ahead in the business world, politics and even in the home. However, the real question is about integration. How many of us are truly comfortable interchanging our masculine and feminine surges without questioning our own identity? It is, like so many things in life, a process of balance and acceptance.

In a world where there is still such high demand for black and white thinking, the notion of gender is one that defies the rigidity of this or that, man or woman. Instead of getting so caught up in “well, which one are you?” perhaps it is high time we start to ask “which one do you feel strongest right now?”

It is not uncommon for our biggest sex symbols to react to the widespread projection of sexuality with a gender reaction. “Oh, you want me? Well, would you want me if I was more masculine?” The greatest female sex symbols of our time have played with these societal projections by pushing the boundaries with regard to gender. Madonna was well known for playing with gender and her animus ( animus rhymes with penis, sort of ). Hers was a Madonimus struggle, one might say. Kim Basinger the epitome of a sex object in the cult classic film, 9 1/2 Weeks, enjoyed a scene where she dresses in drag to meet her lover, Mickey Rourke. Like many men watching, he didn’t like it.

So, I’m happy that Ms. Gaga is responding early to the global projections by humans everywhere by presenting her Gaganimus for all to see and deal with.

“The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several millions of human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche. C.G. Jung

It was a fascinating synchronicity in my life. As my house was pelted by thundering winds and layers of thick, unrelenting snow last week, rocks, bottles and bullets flew in Cairo. The inundation I experienced here in Chicago felt in some ways to be overshadowed by the revolution taking place in Egypt, and yet, in other ways the two events felt strangely aligned. I skipped back and forth between CNN and the Weather Channel, watching for a break in both relentless storms.

While elements of change ebbed and flowed from the heartland of the United States to the ancient sands of the Middle East, I couldn’t help but ponder the significance of an apparent web of momentous physical and psychic events occurring on our planet and in our consciousness.

I suppose I unconsciously took it for granted that folks in the Middle East were not willing to fight for their rights. Regime after controlling, oppressive regime in the Arab world seemed to have taken advantage of a few convenient scapegoats (the U.S., Israel, capitalism, Hollywood, “The West”) through the years, conveniently overshadowing their own horrible human rights violations, the economic rape and pillaging of their common citizens and the general manipulation of hearts and minds.

Over shadow is truly at the core of it, too. It takes a lot to blur the deep human longing for wholeness, joy and love and it relies upon an overarching, bloated shadow that swaddles our essential love for life in rags of doubt and resentment. The greatest tragedies in human history have typically occurred as a result of similarly monolithic entities who have successfully brainwashed the collective consciousness with a tribal cool-aid aimed at using our inherent desire to protect against ourselves.

Not dissimilar has been the environmental snow job on the planet…

The only thing that matters is our advancement. You want to protect our evolution as a species, don’t you? Then who cares about strip mining? Who cares about aerosol cans and light bulbs? Who cares about sucking the earth dry in a matter of a few hundred years what took millions to create? You want to be the best nation, don’t you? The strongest power? Drink, drink, it tastes like fruit punch…

The archetype of the wounded healer is one that has long resonated for me. The notion that in order to truly help others heal one must have done his or her own fair share of suffering and grown from it, i.e. placed the pain and near death experiences (physically and/or emotionally) into a constructive context, is probably the most potent response to “why bad things happen to good people.”

However, when an archetype is not expressed in a meaningful, transformative, dynamic way, it “loads up with energy and becomes inhuman” (Marie-Louise von Franz). I believe that is the situation we are facing on our planet these days.

Without transforming our collective suffering thus creating a sacred wisdom of the heart borne from pain, we risk the creation of something terrible and ugly in its place.

Without choosing to learn from our arrogance, immaturity and selfishness as a society we don’t really grow up as a species and end up retarding our psycho-spiritual development as well.

“…in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists.” Mahatma Gandhi

Eighteen years ago I graduated from university and headed for Israel. I was twenty-one years old and after four years of college, thoroughly confused as to what was truly important anymore. Several hours into life beyond the shelter of my parent’s roof I entered higher education with the intention that it would give me the tools and the degree necessary to set out in the capitalist way and make lots of money.

Like many recent college graduates, I returned to my parent’s home after graduation with the tassle, the degree, skills I never imagined receiving from a place of higher learning and some well soiled laundry. I remember the feeling of walking into the house I had left four years earlier and sitting down at the kitchen table. I stared at the overstocked napkin holder at the center of the table and instantly felt empty. The desperation of having accomplished something yet not knowing what it had really been for left me feeling anxious and alone. I had been home a couple of hours before I realized that no matter what I did, I had to do something and do it quick. It was no longer my home but I didn’t know where or what my home was, either.

A few hours later I was packing for Israel. I knew deep within that I was ready to discover what it was I had caught glimpses of in the past that felt akin to “numinous” experiences. Twentieth century German philosopher, Rudolph Otto, popularized this term, numinous, as describing the power or presence of some higher being, perhaps God. I was startled to find that as I walked off the plane, there was no flaming chariot, no cherubim, no pillar of clouds to direct me toward my spiritual experience. Very disappointing.

In fact, my time in Israel was very challenging for several months. I was surrounded by people wherever I went; buying, selling, pushing, pulling. Everyone smoked cigarettes, drank sludgy coffee and seemed really wired and intense. I sat on the beach in Tel Aviv, knife in hand before a huge watermelon wondering if there was anything “numinous” left in the Middle East. It seemed like the power and presence was only to be found in the throngs of young Israelis in uniform with machine guns slung over their backs, or in the cliques of super religious Jews, Christians and Moslems whose connection to their respective faiths all felt very distant and inaccessible from where I sat.

Yet, something did happen. I was quite literally pulled to a small northern town called Tsfat. I won’t get into the details here, but suffice it to say that I had never heard of the place before so as the bus wound up the mountain that hosted the ancient city, I was a bit startled to feel something, almost, well numinous, growing within and without me. My time in Tsfat changed my life in countless ways and opened up doors that continue to require explanation and interpretation.

One of the earliest and most profound experiences was at the Ari Mikva. This is an ancient cave named after The Ari, an esteemed Kabbalist, or magical mystic. The enormous cave carved into the side of the mountain beneath the city contained a deep, cold pool of mountain water. Mikva’s are ritual immersion pools and can be found all over the world, sacred to many faiths and traditions. I had been in Tsfat no more than a few hours when some new friends insisted that I join them in this amazing pool. Before I knew it, I was stripped down and nervously following my guides into the cave. As we moved deeper into the rock, the giggles and chatter of the young men seemed to fade and like the last moments before sleep, I felt as if I were in a dream. If it hadn’t been for the ice cold water at my ankles, I’d have fallen over in some sort of trance.

The water rose higher with each step and the light slowly disappeared. I felt the gentle hand of my new friend on my shoulder and heard his whisper “Get to the center of the pool and dunk yourself in all the directions while you listen.” In an instant, I was chest deep in the icy water, surrounded by the darkest darkness I have ever witnessed. There was silence except for the occasional gasp of air and the coarse, gutteral rumbles of unknown men. I considered that just a few months earlier I was in a college classroom in upstate New York but this was something more than a world away. In that moment I knew this was why I had come to the Middle East. I was strangely calm and slowed my breathing in order to relax my shivering body.

I closed my eyes even though there was nothing to see, and plunged myself down into the blackness. As my head broke the surface of the water on my way back up, I was startled at the strange sensation. I could have been under there for hours or seconds, but it felt like an eternity. I was conscious of a deep feeling of quiet within myself, a sensation of knowing, of connection. I shifted my body to the next direction and dipped down again. Same thing, just more intense. I felt every drop of water trickle down my face as my state of awareness seemed miles deeper than it had minutes earlier. I plunged myself into the dark and wet space three more times, each time allowing myself to push myself deeper into the space.

If ever I had been “in the moment,” this was it. If ever I had understood the kinds of quotes that people like Gandhi or Jung are best known for, this was it. If ever I felt the deep, penetrating connection to something numinous, this was it. Carl Jung spoke passionately about the Conjunctio, a marriage of sorts, between the numinous and humans, between two lovers, between the sacred feminine and sacred masculine, etc. Yet, in order to experience this meeting between my Self and something bigger, deeper, wiser, etc., it required a certain sense of consciousness.

Consciousness allows me to experience the difference between myself and that “something else” as well as gives me the opportunity to have a unique, personal interpretation of that experience. Someone else would have offered a very different account of submerging in the Ari Mikva, not because it wasn’t true for me but perhaps because they are telling the experience from a different consciousness.

I am committed to understanding, or even just getting to know aspects of my own sense of consciousness, i.e. the voice in my head, the unique way I feel about things in my life, the way I personally experience my heart loving someone. This allows myself the opportunity to know the difference between what I know to be true in the world and what you know. We may have similar ways of relating to the world, but your unique version or texture of understanding will never be the same as mine. Isn’t that delightful?

Conjunctio is a love story. It is the meeting of two parts at some intersecting point where everything that is, was and will be, come together and come apart. It is the place where I experience you experiencing me and it is my consciousness that allows me to register the moment, hopefully using it to grow and connect with myself. There is something about plunging into a dark pool of water that is mysterious and interesting. However, there was something about my experience plunging into that water that changed my life because I was, at that second, able to be present for it.

There have been thousands of moments in my life when I was not fully present, but that one, I was really there. And it has helped me be more present in moments that followed because my consciousness deepened as a result. So, I want to challenge you today when it comes to being fully present, in the moment. What would it be like to encounter someone special in your life and bring your consciousness to it, your full presence, as you plunge deeper into that conjunctio, that intersection of worlds?

I have been passionately connected to my dream life since I was a very young boy, even two years old. In fact, the first dream I can recall involved me in a baby carriage staring up at a magician dressed in black with a dark fancy mustache, shifting the colors of a wand with his slight of hand as I carefully stared at his eyes, not bedazzled by the tricks. Magic. The dream to this day leaves me with an uneasy feeling.

As an early dream, perhaps this “big dream” (as psychotherapists like to describe those night visions that remain in our lives because they are in some way transformational) was one of the most influential messages of my life even if it never occurred in my waking existence.

“Beware the magician,” cautioned my psyche, long before magic was anything but the stuff of birthday parties and street side card tricks. Perhaps I had been exposed to a magic show as a baby or glimpsed the imagery of the man in the black top hat on my parents television set, however, regardless of the concrete stimulus or inception for the dream, the emotional message itself was a clear download from the collective unconscious. Wisdom for Life, 101.

This was a message conveyed to me as a young child from a realm beyond my parents wagging fingertips and fuzzy Sesame Street characters. Information that I would need throughout my life, perhaps, a “note to self” for when I was to encounter a person who implored me to watch the colors and lights, not the information deep within their eyes.

Perhaps it was self-fulfilling prophesy that I have needed to rely on this subtle skepticism for the better part of my life, a life full of teachers, gurus, and not a few magicians.

Yet, this unconscious need to look into the eyes of a speaker, teacher or guide and truly listen to their message through a trans-personal dialogue, one that transcends word or action, exists at my core and serves me each and every day as I make my way through the oftentimes complex landscape of life on this planet.

All as a result of a dream.

C.G. Jung said: “A person’s soul is a complicated thing and it takes sometimes half a lifetime to get somewhere in one’s psychological development.”

Ain’t that the truth? And yet, I believe I have not been on this journey alone. Yes, there have indeed been beautiful people with whom I have journeyed and learned from, and yet I speak of the unconscious. Both the personal and collective unconscious continually offer cautionary tales, dramatic reminders about past lessons and poignant directions with regard to my unique process, a unique link in a chain of unique links. Through these daydreams, night dreams and in-between dreams, I believe our psyches are lovingly coached and conditioned to encounter life with even more tools and insight than we gained through the sum of our nature and nurture.

If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is…