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Synchronicity

January 24, 2017 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

What is real? Certainly not a dream. I was on a cruise ship on the 30th of December 2008 when I had a dream: a cat is walking down the street as it is carrying a dead animal in its teeth.

When I left the ship on the 2nd of January, I checked my messages. I learned that my dog, Abbie had died on December 30th of 2008. I loved my dog, Abbie. She was a wonderful companion during a difficult part of my life.

Many people tell me in confidence about having such experiences after a person or animal close to them passes away. Yet people rarely talk about such morbid matters in polite conversation.

It is just a coincidence, one might say in response to a tale such as mine. The science of Isaac Newton from the 17th century dominates biology and physics. From this point of view, the universe is assumed to be mechanical. Human beings are viewed as separate from the universe as a whole.

It is our personal experiences of synchronicity that confirm that we are connected to the great web of the universe. We are all part of the quantum field.

From the years 1909 until 1913 Albert Einstein was a dinner guest of Dr. Carl G. Jung on several occasions. At the time, Einstein was developing his theory of relativity. Jung was captivated by Einstein’s ideas that time as well as space are relative. For years, Jung pondered that relationship between time and space to the human psyche. Dr. Jung also was trying to make sense of the baffling coincidences his clients reported to him in therapy. He also had the coincidences in his own life.

It was not until 1930, when Jung finally used the term “synchronicity” publicly. In a letter on Einstein and synchronicity, Jung wrote: “It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic synchronicity”.

Dr. Jung defines synchronicity as “the coincidence between an inner image or hunch breaking into one’s mind, and the occurrence of an outer event conveying the same meaning at approximately the same time.”

Please watch this video from Manuel Costa on synchronicity:

Dreams

January 17, 2017 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

My dreams never cease to dazzle me with the insight, emotionality, and creativity that are hidden within them. I awake with such gold and jewels. My life is more beautiful, because of the time I take to exam my dream life. Our dreams are trying to convey inner truths to us. There is a reality to our psychic life that can be transformative when we embrace it.

Yet where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Virtual Reality is highly valued. Science is our religion and technology is our god. Sadly, our dreams are forgotten and discarded as useless trash. When we have the courage to explore our dreams with wisdom and respect, then valuable wisdom can be gained.

Carl Jung said at the end of his life, “I had to understand that I was unable to make the people see what I am after. I am practically alone. . . There are a few who understand this and that, but almost nobody sees the whole….I have failed in my foremost task: to open people’s eyes to the fact that man has a soul and there is a buried treasure in the field and that our religion and philosophy are in a lamentable state.”

Please watch this video by Manuel Costa about dreams:

Merry Christmas

December 27, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

What comes to mind when you hear, “Merry Christmas?” I remember growing up in the Santa Clara Valley in Northern California, USA, and experiencing the wonder of Christmas as a young child. I remember going to midnight mass at Queen of Apostles Catholic Church in San Jose a five minutes’ walk from our family home. I remember my dad’s voice singing the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah. Upon returning home, my brother and sister and I, open a present from our mom and dad on Christmas Eve before we go to bed. We awake early on a dark and cold Christmas morning to open more presents next to our Christmas tree under the bright lights of my father’s eight millimeter (8mm) camera.

What is Christmas? Jesus being born in a stable in the small town of Bethlehem in the Middle Eastern part of the Roman Empire over two thousand years ago? The angel Gabriel appears to the Virgin Mary and announces: “Do not be afraid. Mary, for you have found favor with God. And now you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High.”

What does this mean to you? How do you feel when you hear these words? They may be vibrant and meaningful. Yet they also may be lifeless. Moreover, these ancient words (translated into English) may bring up rage or fear. As we encounter this story about the first Christmas, we have an opportunity to better understand ourselves as well as our world. There are over 2.2 billion people who are part of Christianity. Yet religion is different from spirituality. Our internal experience is a core part of our spirituality. This is a vital part of what we find meaningful in our lives. If we choose, it is possible to have a different sense of the meaning of Christmas by finding a new relationship to the story of the birth of Jesus.

Manuel Costa has been leading seminars about the teachings of Jesus for many decades with the Guild for Psychological Studies. Please watch this video and learn more about how to possibly see from a new life giving perspective:

How are you feeling?

May 31, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

”It is our feeling function that gives a sense of joy, worth, and meaning to life . . . . No one ever succeeded in finding a reason for living by the reasoning process,” writes Robert Johnson.

“It is as if we have gained the highest technical civilization in the history of the world but at the cost of losing the simpler virtues of happiness and contentment,” writes Robert Johnson.

Every country and every culture throughout the world take on a certain character. The Italians have a reverence for extraverted feeling, says Robert Johnson. This is also true for Mexico. Whereas the Germans have a preference for introverted thinking. Within each culture there are individuals with a great variety of personality types, yet a culture as a whole makes a collective choice about what is revered. The Japanese prefer introverted sensing which can be seen in beautifully manicured Zen gardens throughout Japan.

In India, introverted feeling is revered. “One quickly sees the wealth of vocabulary and corresponding consciousness in the realm of feeling but suffering from a crushing poverty in awareness of the practical elements of science, politics, and planning. One can learn by observing a society that has exactly the opposite pattern of inferiority and superiority from one’s own,” writes Robert Johnson.

Whole cultures make a typology decision. Collectively America has made the decision that thinking is the most virtuous capacity that a human being can portray. “Our superior function has given us science and the highest standard of living the world has ever known – the envy of the third world – but at the cost of impoverishing the feeling function,” writes Robert Johnson.

Apple builds the iPhone. Boeing assembles 767 airliners. These types of accomplishments come from a highly disciplined thinking function. Bill Gates writing computer software code, late at night, is the symbol of the useful, brilliant, and noble man in modern life. The person who develops mastery with the extraverted thinking function is our contemporary hero. The development of the thinking function is the focus of most American schools and universities. In the United States, individuals with a well-developed thinking function are offered the best jobs and are the best paid. The development of the thinking function and the things produced have great value for the world.

Yet when one specializes in one function, then the opposite function is neglected. One specializes in extraverted thinking by robbing from its opposite – the introverted feeling function. “One feels this coldness around people who are who are feeling wounded, and they seem to reply to warmth or relatedness in some objective or dispassionate manner that stops all feeling ‘cold’ in its tracks. It is as if such a person is unable to see over his own woundedness and contact another on a human level,” writes Robert Johnson.

Yet it is our greatest weaknesses that provides us with the means to our greatest triumphs. In the English-speaking world, thinking is the superior function. Therefore, it is in our feeling function that our salvation lies collectively.

Unfortunately, discussing the feeling function in English is a challenge, because there are no suitable words. When we lack vocabulary, it naturally follows that we lack consciousness. “Sanskrit has ninety-six words for love; ancient Persian has eighty, Greek three, and English only one. . . . Imagine what richness would be expressed if one had a specific vocabulary for the love of one’s father, another word for love of one’s mother, yet another for one’s camel (the Persian’s have this luxury), still another for one’s lover, and another exclusively for the sunset,” writes Robert Johnson.
No matter how much we think or things we buy – homes, cars, jewelry – we cannot soothe the suffering and wounded feelings. Money and power will not restore our creativity. “I am often puzzled in going to India to see people who have so little in an outer sense but have so much happiness,” asserts Robert Johnson.

Our Emotional Intelligence is highly related to the development of our Feeling Function. Please watch this video on Emotional Intelligence:

What time is it?

May 24, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

Blog 58 – Time

How do you relate to time? Are you a punctual person?

Our relationship with time is important. Some of us are more oriented to the clock. When someone prefers to use our Judging process in the outer world, then one often has a different relationship to time. One is more aware of Chronos – a sense of time from ancient Greece related to chronological or sequential time. As human beings we have evolved from the sundial to the grandfather clock to the pocket watch to the digital wristwatch. Perhaps, we just look at our iPhone for the time. People who prefer their Judging Function prefer to be timely and organized. They tend to like planning and being methodical.

People who prefer to use their Perceiving Function are more spontaneous and flexible. They seek to experience and understand life as opposed to wanting to control it. They are adaptive and change course. People who prefer their Perceiving Function are more aware of Kairos – another sense of time from ancient Greece that is related to “a time in between.” While Chronos is quantitative, Kairos is qualitative.

The term Kairos reflects an earlier sense of time before sundials or clocks. Originally, our sense of time as human beings came from the cycles of nature – summer, fall, winter, and spring. The length of a day changes throughout the year depending on the season. The weather often varies from season to season. Time is variable. Farmers plant in spring and reap in the summer. The length of the light during the day waxes and wanes. Our bodies change with the cycles of nature – a woman has a period.

Yet the clock has become an unquestioned assumption for many modern people. We have a mechanical counting which reflects a 24 hour day. Our digital time is different from the rhythms of nature. A day in late December is very different from a day in the middle of June in Kansas City, USA, or Johannesburg, South Africa as well as for most of the world. Before we developed clocks our sense of time was different – more natural.

We had a different consciousness: sometimes referred to as mythical consciousness. These ancient people were keenly aware of nature and its rhythms. They perceived time as more of a circle of death and rebirth. “The ancients are said to have perceived events as iterations of a cosmic eternal return and regeneration within a specific place, whereas we believe that events occur on an irreversible, linear timeline that is independent of place,” writes Glen Aparicio Parry.

Most of us just assume that this ancient perception of time is fairytale, but that linear time is real. We do not even consider the possibility that this ancient view of time has validity. “The idea that time and space exist as independent dimensions is a relatively recent development. For most of mankind’s existence, knowledge of time and space was dependent upon place, for it was closely tied to the observation of the natural cycles of celestial and earthly phenomena surrounding one’s homeland. Knowing when and how to hunt, gather, and eventually to plant food all depended upon a close monitoring of the recurring rhythms of a place. What we know as time and space were merged into place,” writes Glen Aparicio Parry.

Our present day view of historical time assumes that time is simply a mathematical abstraction. This belief came from Isaac Newton who asserted that there was an “absolute” time. He asserted that time was then divorced from space.

Much of our modern thought originates from ancient Greece. One needs to carefully tune in to recognize an opening of Kairos. This is the source of the expression, “Seize the Day!” Kairos is also associated with an ever moving wheel of fortune. “Kairos time lives somewhere between intervals of Kronos time,” writes Glen Aparicio Parry.

“An Indigenous sense of time, it seems to me, includes both Kronos and Kairos and then maybe something more. It is understood that all is in flux, that everything is always changing and that even natural rhythms must be closely monitored because they are not guaranteed to remain the same. Monitoring these natural rhythms and cycles helps to develop an intuitive awareness, an awareness that recognizes the opportune time to act within a given cycle. This awareness seamlessly takes into account as host of variables, which are not logical or able to be broken down or counted because they are far too numerous – but they are understood nonetheless at an intuitive level,” concludes Glen Aparicio Parry.

Please watch this video on the Whole Brain State by Dr. John Omaha:

What kind of attitude to you have?

May 10, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

“Sensation tells us something exists; thinking tells you what it is; feeling tells you whether it is agreeable or not; and intuition tells you (from where) whence it comes and where it is going,” writes Carl Jung.

Our attitude determines the direction and order of our psychological functions: sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. There are four attitudes: Introverted, Extraverted, Judging, and Perceiving. Each person who prefers introversion is primarily concerned with the inner world. Someone who prefers extraversion is oriented to events primarily in the outer world. Someone who prefers judging is oriented to the outer world in an organized and methodical way. One who prefers the perceiving attitude is open and free flowing with the outer world.

There are eight psychological types:

Extraverting sensation – People who prefer this type are primarily concerned with objective reality, with how things really are. Their constant pursuit is to “have sensations and enjoy them if possible,” says Jung.

Introverting sensation – Emma Jung (who preferred introvert sensation) described herself as being like a highly sensitized photographic plate. Every detail of a situation is observed and these can be recalled at will.

Extraverted thinking – People who prefer Extraverted Thinking are good at “solving problems, reorganizing businesses, clarifying issues, and sorting the grain from the chaff,” writes Anthony Stevens. They are often concerned with outer conditions – not theories or ideas.

Introverted Thinking – People who prefer Introverted Thinking show little interest in events that take place in the outer world but basically are concerned with ideas and theories. They want to understand impersonal and objective truth. They seek justice and value fairness.

Extraverted Feeling – People who prefer Extraverted Feeling value what is culturally acceptable. They are easy to get along with. They are able to read others and then respond by caring for others when possible.

Introverted Feeling – Those who prefer Introverted Feeling have a clear sense of their internal values and generally keep to themselves. They exert influence on others by embodying their internal values.

Extraverted Intuition – People who prefer Extraverted Intuition quickly see the possibilities in a given situation. They identify patterns and connections and seek to reshape their environment.

Introverted Intuition – Individuals who prefer Introverted Intuition focus on unconscious images, like dreams and visions. They have difficulty communicating about these images and may uses abstract symbols to explain their insights.

We all have different gifts that we bring to our families, marriages, workplace, and communities. The better we are able to see each other’s gifts and collaborate together, they more we are able to accomplish together. Understanding psychological types helps us to relate well and be successful. If we observe what we do, say, and think, we will be better students and workers. Who are you?

If you want an assessment to understand your psychological type, please consider contacting me at danieldavislmft@gmail.com. Also, please watch this video by Gretchen Sterenberg on note making:

What Type of Person are You?

May 3, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

Blog 57 – Typology

“Psychological Type is nothing static – it changes in the course of life,” write Carl Jung.

“We cannot safely assume that other people’s minds work on the same principles as our own. All too often, others with whom we come in contact do not reason as we reason, or do not value the things we value, or are not interested in what interests us,” writes Isabel Briggs Myers.

All of us humans have the same psychological equipment to perceive what happens inside us as well as outside us. We use four different kinds of building blocks to form ideas about our experiences and decide how to respond to events – sensation, thinking, feeling, and intuition. Virtually every one of us is born with a preference for one of these four psychological functions in a descending order. We will use all four of these functions, but our preference will determine how much we will use sensation, thinking, feeling and intuition.

Sensation is simple to explain – how one relates with material things in the world. When a person who prefers sensation type person enters a room, he evaluates the things in it. “There is a solid black table and wooden shelves. The walls are brick, and ceiling has exposed beams.”

The thinking function is rational, cool, and logical. One who prefers thinking will interpret events as they happen, working what it means. This rational psychological function is high valued and almost exclusively taught in North American schools. Our capacity to think is tested and an I.Q. (Intelligence Quotient) labels us. Our place in the modern American world is almost exclusively determined by our ability to think, says Robert Johnson.

The feeling function is a way of judging using values. One who prefers feeling function responds to what happens with value judgment. “Awesome concert, Dude!” “This class bites!”
This name can be confusing, because the term “feeling” function is often confused with emotion or affect. Feeling, in this sense, is the capacity to place value on people, places, things, and events. For many, the feeling function is the orphan of these four and largely misunderstood and haphazardly named.

The person who prefers intuition is able to ‘see’ the whole picture, asserts Anthony Stevens. This is a mysterious process. Intuition is very hard to define. “It is an extraordinary and out of the world capacity of knowing without knowing how one knows,” says Robert Johnson.

These four functions are like radio stations, we can either use our thinking function or our feeling function at one time. Jung assumes that we are born with a preference for one of these. Due to this preference, we will often develop skills related to one of these functions. If we are not supported in our family and schools to develop our preferred functions, then we may have difficulty. For the psychological functions that we naturally prefer may be undeveloped. We are like a fish trying to fly. A fish needs to swim; this is what they are naturally inclined to do.

Balancing our brain helps us to use more of our mind. It is very helpful to learn over time to access all our psychological functions. Please consider watching this video on the importance of balancing your brain:

Museum: Art as Therapy for Teenagers and Adults

April 26, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

One of my favorite things to do with my mother, who was born in 1934 and turned 80 years old last year, is to go to the De Young Museum which is located in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, California, USA. My mom loves to go to exhibits with art from all parts of the world. My mom and I as well as other friends have seen sculptures of sub-Saharan Africa, American artists, art of the Olmec people of ancient Mexico as well as European artists – Mattia Preti, Domenikos Theorokopolos (also known as El Greco), Claude Monet, James Mc Neil Whistler (the painter known for “Whistler’s Mother”), Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin, Paul Cezanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Vincent Van Gogh – and modern artists, like Keith Haring and Jackson Pollock.

My mom had a series of strokes that began in 2006. These strokes made it very difficult for her to communicate at first. I later realized how much she was able to learn and understand when I took her to the De Young Museum. I asked her if she wanted to rent the device which would allow her to listen to a description of the art. My mom said, “Yes.”

I pushed my mom in her wheelchair through the exhibit as she listened with her headset. I would roll her to each painting, paying careful attention to what she said she wanted to see. At her request, we stopped at virtually every painting for 3 to 5 minutes. She listened to every recording – the entire recording – about the artists, the paintings, and the history of when the paintings were created. Often, we would enjoy a delightful gourmet lunch on the patio, looking out at Golden Gate Park. These visits were wonderful and have been some of my most joyful moments with my mom as we took the time to absorb great works of artistic masters.

Art has the capacity to transform us. Symbols are very powerful and can affect us deeply. A movie such as “Schindler’s List” or a painting, like the “Mona Lisa” moves many people very powerfully. A picture is worth a thousand words. Just one flash of an image can have a profound effect on our emotions and thoughts.

Silence is also very powerful. We are often afraid of solitude in our American culture. Our iPhone or television can drown out silence all day long, all year long. For a lifetime, we can be cut off from our interior life. We may wake up at 3:00 in the morning with an anxious dream – sweating.

In silence, we can find our compassion and creativity pouring through us. Once we thought we would never find creativity, then it comes through us like a burst of fire. The embers of creativity always lie within us smoldering. This creativity inside us is just waiting us to notice it and express it. Join Sue Renfrew in this video and learn how to meditate and contemplate about a painting, whether you are at an art exhibit in a Museum or anywhere else.

May I have your attention, please?

April 19, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

“Your focus is your reality,” says Yoda. What we put our attention on has an enormous impact on our life. It seems that now things are competing for our attention more than ever. We can sit watching television with over 1000 channels available. Then, I can pick up my iPhone and look at my email, Facebook, news from thousands of sources, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and much more. All this distraction is important to the quality of our lives.

What is attention? The word, attention, originates in the Latin word, attendere. This means to reach toward, connecting us with the world, shaping and defining. Our attention works like a muscle. If we sit on the couch and do nothing, our muscles get weaker and do not grow; they atrophy. If we get off the couch and play soccer, we build muscle. Over time our legs can get big and very strong.

We live in an era when we receive many messages every day, by text, email, Facebook, or iPhone (voice). According the Nielson, the average American teen sends 3,339 text every month. Ninety four percent of American teens go online daily. Twenty-four percent go online “almost constantly.”

“Children today are more attuned to machines and less to people than has ever been true in human history,” writes Daniel Goleman. Each time a child talk with someone or watching others have a conversation, they are impacted. The social and emotional circuitry of a child’s brain is influenced by these social interactions all day long – at home, school, athletic practice, music rehearsal, or work.

One can see teens often watching movies while they are on their iPhones. They split their attention between two or more things at once. Unfortunately, our attention is a narrow and fixed pipeline. Our attention is not stretchable. If we split our attention, we are required to switch our attention from one thing to another thing and back again. This switching of attention drains our energy. We have more difficulty focusing in a concentrated way.

Our online lifestyle is shaping our physical brains. Children and teenagers are also playing many digital games on iPad, laptop computer, television, and iPhone. Around 8 percent of children and teens between 8 and 18 appear to be addicted to computer games. When we study the brains of these young people addicted to computer games, we see that their brains appear in some ways similar to alcoholics and drug abusers.

Our ability to relate well to others is very important in our success at work as well as our quality of life. In order to form healthy relationships with others, we need to build rapport. It is a process of give and take. We talk and exchange ideas. The better we communicate, the more solid the relationship. When I have good attention, I am able to focus on what you are saying.

Yet we are constantly bombarded with messages, emails, posts on Facebook, YouTube videos, and texts. At a romantic dinner out, we are too often diverted from connecting with one other. I am amazed how often, I see people on their iPhones at an expensive restaurant. Yet everywhere we are tempted by the call of our mobile devise. We must be reminded by commercials and billboards, do not text and drive. Even though, we can die because of our distraction, we choose to risk our life and the lives of others to text while driving!

Distraction has become a great problem in our social interaction. In Silicon Valley, where I live, companies have workplaces have banned laptop computers, iPhones, and tablet computers from company meetings.

When we develop our ability to focus, we are steady in a crisis. When we experience the fear or frustration that comes during times of stress, we are able to stay focused on what is important. Students inevitably will experience difficulties during a semester. Yet some students are able to do their homework and concentrate on their exams. Others find many ways to avoid what is important, because they are upset.

At a party, often you can see how focus works. Some people can carry on a conversation with music at a high volume, focusing on the words of the person with whom they are talking. Another person may be overwhelmed with all the distractions around them – music, people, and things – unable to focus in on listening to the person with whom they are having a conversation.
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This ability to focus is a hidden key to our doing things well. It is our ability to focus that enables us to find our way when we experience emotional crisis, relationships challenges, or whatever problems what life presents to us.

Anima and Animus

April 12, 2016 By Daniel Davis Leave a Comment

Have you ever been carried away with a mood? We can be swept away with our emotions and thoughts. A mood can come over us, and we may look back and think, “I just wasn’t myself today.”

One way to think about these emotional storms is that there is a psychological benefit to these reactions. Carl Jung identified the animus and anima as parts of ourselves that erupt and interfere with our relationships and work. A woman has an animus, and a man has an anima. June Singer writes that “anima and animus are those unconscious part of ourselves that carry the mystery of sex which is not ours.”

How we identify with our masculine gender role or feminine gender role can vary greatly from one culture to another. It is obvious that there are – in fact – differences between men and woman. Whether these differences are more psychological or physical is debatable as well as complex. Yet it is obvious that men and women are different.

These differences show up in our dreams and fantasies. The anima shows up in a man’s dreams as an image of a woman, whereas the animus shows up in a woman as an image of a man. This is because the anima and animus are related to what is the opposite of our conscious attitude. When we mature, we develop the opposite attitude to what we cling to in our youth. “Men have dared to discover their vulnerability and their feeling side, while women – more confident now of their strengths – are beginning to take risks which would have frightened them before,” writes June Singer.

Animus is defined as a “usually prejudiced and often spiteful or malevolent ill will” or a “strong feeling of dislike or hatred.” Aminus is the masculine form of the word soul in latin. Yet the animus is not as much masculinity repressed as it is the unconscious other that a woman is prevented from being in her daily life. The part of herself that is furthest from her waking life is what makes up a woman’s animus.

Carl Jung describes the animus as a strange passivity. “In the depths of the woman’s being, the animus whispers: ‘You are hopeless. What’s the use of trying? There is no point in doing anything. Life will never change for the better.’”

When a woman is able to separate herself from her animus, she is able to see that part of herself objectively. She is able to be detached and just notice these negative thoughts and feelings. She does not fall into the false belief that these thoughts are her thoughts. When she simply observes these thoughts and realizes that her response to them makes all the difference, she is able to main a healthy detachment.

A woman’s animus assists her in becoming a complete person by shifting repressed energy into active and creative pursuits. The animus does have negative qualities such as “brutality, recklessness, empty talk, and silent, obstinate evil ideas.” Yet the animus also has a positive and valuable side. The animus can “build a bridge to the Self through creative activity.”

For a man, the anima, represents his unconscious feminine other. The anima symbolically represents the eternal feminine. For a woman, the animus represents her unconscious masculine. Conversely, the animus stands for the eternal masculine. Robert Johnson writes that the “anima and the animus function most effectively for us as mediators between the conscious and unconscious parts of personality.”

When one learns to work with the animus or anima, one discovers a certain kind of genius within oneself. Please watch is short video by Judith Peterson on the animus and learn how to work with this energy to improve how you feel, behave, and feel: