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Marie O. Davis, MA, LPC, CSP | Wholistic Counseling

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Psyche and Eros: A Myth Revealing Psychological Dynamics of Love and Relationship

February 3, 2015 by mariedavis

– By Marie O. Davis, LPC and Tayria Ward, Ph.D. –

Myths and fairy tales may rightly be understood as the dreams of our collective psyche. They reveal deep archetypal dilemmas and patterns common to human development, experienced in some form by every individual within a culture. As our dreams of the night speak in stories and images that reveal the innermost depths of the psyche, so do myths use similar language. They are the culture dreaming out loud in well-told tales. While sometimes myths feel obscure or irrelevant to the modern person, if we endeavor to understand their world of symbols and allegory, modern humans will find an invaluable guide for living a rich and soulful life.

erosWitches, monsters and dragons that appear in our myths can represent deep-seated fears, as well as unconscious shadow characteristics. Stories of abduction, separation, love, loss, envy, jealousy, or heroism reveal the psychological situations and challenges we experience. Reading the myths and locating our own story within them can help us to not take ourselves so personally, recognizing the common nature of our most intimate challenges. They show a path to action, acceptance, perspective and wisdom offering tremendous healing value. Myths help in understanding different stages of initiation, the inner experiences and spiritual helpers on the path of personal development and within our relationships.

Eros and Psyche has become a classic story regarding love and romance. It addresses patterns of development in human and divine relationships—both one’s internal relationship to Soul and Self, and outer relationships to loved ones. This myth has been widely used as a subject in literature and art as a basis for psychological and cultural analysis, capturing the imagination broadly since it first appeared in the second century in the writings of Apuleius.

The story is told in varying ways. One version goes like this: Psyche is a princess who is the most fair and beautiful in her whole land, but she cannot find a husband. When her royal parents plea for help, the Gods tell them to put her in a death chamber. They weep with sorrow but do as they are told. As Psyche lay there alone, cold, and fearful, the West Wind comes and swoops her into a castle that is beautiful and has everything, both beautiful and necessary. But she longs for companionship. After the first night, her companion, the God Eros (also known by the name Amour, and also as Cupid) comes in the dark and shares intimate conversation, love, and lovemaking with her. Psyche is finally happy.

In time, she misses her family and asks Eros if she can bring them to the castle. He finally agrees but says they can only come during the day. Once her sisters arrive they are very envious of Psyche’s new life. They incessantly ask about her lover, but come to discover that she has never seen him, since he always comes to her in the dark of the night and never reveals himself. They purport that she may be in love with an ugly beast. At their urging Psyche finally carries a lamp and a knife into the room of her sleeping lover, an act that he has strictly forbidden. The light reveals him to be the most handsome, desirable God, the God of Love himself.

Psyche is startled and spills oil from her lamp on Eros, awakening him. She has broken the rule of darkness, and is banished from the castle. Amour says he can never see her again. Psyche finds herself lost in a wilderness. In despair she pleads to the gods for help.

Aphrodite, Eros’ mother, responds but will only help Psyche if she completes the four impossible tasks that she gives her. Psyche manages to accomplish these one by one, with the aid of natural and supernatural help. At the end of these she is exhausted and collapses. Amour flies down from heaven, revives her and gives her the gift of immortality. They can now be married and have the divine love that began on Earth, in the light of heaven for all time.

We could say that Psyche in the earlier stage of the story is an idealized, not-yet-initiated aspect of the Soul. It is hard to find a functional love relationship at this stage. First we must undergo a death ritual, a dying to innocence. When Love then comes to us, though we may think that we are happy, Love’s true face is unknown. We are in a gripping unconscious situation. When the time comes to shed the light of consciousness on our relationship, all sorts of disasters occur. The God of Love disappears from us. The Goddess of Love sets out impossible tasks for us to achieve in order to reclaim love. Each of the tasks requires the aid of natural and supernatural, miraculous, helpers. Persistence is necessary. Just when we have given up in exhaustion, Love returns. We become immortal and mortal at the same time, an initiated human in relationship to divine powers.

Each of psyche’s tasks is highly symbolic. In one she is confronted with a huge mound of a wide variety of seeds, which she is told to sort into separate piles before dawn. It is an impossible task, until an army of ants comes to assist her with the sorting. Magically, the task is accomplished. When we are in a “seed sorting” phase of love’s initiation, we may find that we have to sort out the seeds in our psyche in short order: these are thoughts about love or responses learned from family, these from the culture, these from a couple of failed relationships, these are what I actually think, these my friends want me to think, these my partner insists upon and so forth. It can be necessary to sort it all out very quickly in order to salvage the relationship but if one persists, seemingly magical assistance occurs.

In another task Psyche must steal golden wool from violent sheep. She is sure to be killed by them, but a reed gives her good advice. She is able to gather the wool stuck in briars at the end of the day rather than be exposed to the danger directly. This advice from nature can be life saving at a psychological level.

While learning to navigate the relationships in our lives—whether romantic, familial, friendships, colleagues—all of these stories from the myth may come into play. There will be a loss of innocence required as a relationship matures. Psychological separations, tasks, challenges, and helpers arrive. Receiving guidance from the symbolic and mythic dimensions of the psyche can be salvational.

Marie and I have developed Dreams and Mandala workshops that greatly assist participants in developing communication with these soulful dimensions lying just behind the veil of more rational or conscious thought. Dreams of the night are always speaking to us from this realm, offering timely, healing, personal, and wise guidance. In these workshops we learn the language of the dream together. I have been studying dreams for 40 years now. Years of extensive investigation of the world’s religions, followed by earning a Ph.D. in Depth Psychology where I learned approaches to dreamwork developed by Freud, Jung and archetypal psychologists, have uniquely prepared me to work with people’s dreams.

Dreams are your ‘visions of the night’ that speak the language of myth and symbol. They may seem like an undecipherable mixture of random characters, events and images, but a trained ear can locate their system of logic, which is invariably a strong medicine for the heart and spirit. Once a person begins to write down his or her dreams and muse with their messages, life becomes a meaning-filled adventure of psyche’s development, a journey for the soul with access to new maps.

Marie uses alchemical mandala-making as a structure which helps uncover archetypal beliefs, feelings, and actions that we habitually ‘fall into.’ Working the dream messages while making these mandalas offers an opportunity to be more deeply present to life during situations that may ‘wake us up.’ In this technique, we collect collage images that express the issues, challenges and movement in our inner life. By ‘ensouling’ these images with meaning, placing them on paper where we can see and move them around, something alchemical occurs, internally, which improves our spiritual, emotional and psychological situation. We work through fixities, see our patterns and figure out ways to develop new skills in relationship to the issues.

The alchemical mandala is a different approach from making Eastern mandalas. The structure places pictures that represent different internal thought patterns, creating an objective way of looking at the Self and areas of life where we may feel stuck. By choosing images to represent soul gestures, we take our ‘problems’ and place them outside of ourselves to gain a different perspective on the challenging life events, giving us an opportunity to develop ourselves, change beliefs and find new responses and behaviors, especially in our relationships.

When we do the dream and mandala work in a group, each person’s narrative adds insight, texture and richness to our own. A rare kind of community is formed. The dramas presented in ancient Greece were for similar purposes—telling mythic stories that help wake up audiences to realms of meaning, mystery and magic that inform our lives.

We love this opportunity to share with others the fascinating combination of dreams and mandala work. Participants in our workshops have reported life altering experiences of insight and healing.

Psyche and Eros – Soul and Divine Love – these are the muses that give purpose and richness to our everyday lives. It is a love story we all participate in, each in our own way. Relationships form the fabric of existence; no one can do this life alone. Working with the Psyche and Eros myth, finding techniques to engage its meanings and messages, is a gift that helps bring the immortal dimensions of love and soul into the mortal arena of human existence.


Tayria Ward, Ph.D. is a dream analyst in private practice. She sees clients in her office in the Flatiron Building in downtown Asheville, and also provides phone sessions for dreamers all over the country. Visit www.tayriaward.com for more information.

Marie O. Davis, MA, LPC is a Licensed Professional Counselor with a graduate degree in Expressive Arts Therapy and has a private practice on Orange St, in Asheville. She has studied and practiced Rosicrucian soul alchemy for the past 15 years through various trainings and self-study.

For more information call Marie @ 828/273-5647 or Tayria @ 828/329-0853

Filed Under: Events, Mind - Body Health Tagged With: ritual, ancient wisdom, holistic counseling, experiential therapy, expressive arts asheville, expressive arts in asheville, group therapy, dream work, personal transformation, symbols, dream analysis

Excelling at the Game of Life: Living to the fullest

July 1, 2014 by mariedavis

Life is a Contact Sportfeet in grass

By Marie O. Davis LPC and Tayria Ward Ph.D.

 

One of the joys of sports, whether individual or team sports, is the consistent challenge to perform at our best.   We measure that best by looking at other’s performances or by exceeding our own previous attainments and striving to improve skills with every try.

When it comes to playing the game of life, there are numerous ways people endeavor to enhance performance and develop new proficiencies. How do evaluate ourselves and make the changes that we long for?  Spirituality, therapy, self-help, journaling, reading, yoga, and multitudes of programs offer assistance. When we want to change our soul life performance – in our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors – there is a need for an objective way of testing and challenging experience.

In sports athletes learn their skills, train and get feedback from coaches and trusted sources. How do we get such feedback while learning life skills?  We are suggesting a couple of means to do this. Your dreams of the night are ever offering consistent, reliable, insightful feedback to you from a higher source of wisdom and knowing. Additionally, an alchemical mandala-making process can show you visually and with felt sense how well you are doing, and what needs tweaking next. We have become fascinated with the efficacy of bringing these two methods together in classes and workshops we are now offering.

Try this. Try writing down your dreams of the night, no matter how ordinary, mundane, bizarre or random they may seem. You’ll most likely find that as soon as pen comes to paper and the intent to listen to the language of the dream is activated, another dimension of your psyche starts speaking, offering insight and assistance in its own mysterious language. Your dreams will function like a good coach, the best coach, the one who knows you way better than your conscious mind knows you.

dream catchersWhen life keeps coming at us with challenges and we keep missing the same hurdles, falling into the same emotional and psychological patterns, attracting the same opponents, miss opportunities for advancement – dreams of the night, and the dreaming dimension of the waking psyche are consistently offering to us the most pertinent, relevant, timely, healing advice about how to understand our obstacles to improvement and how to master them. Because they speak in a language that modernity has tragically forgotten, dreams are most often, sadly, ignored. Every person and situation in your dream is a symbol, every person and situation in your life is a symbol. Learning the symbolic language of dreaming will help any person to improve performance and satisfaction in the game of life.

I (Tayria) work with clients to help them recover the language of dreams – both in person in my lovely office in the Flatiron Building in downtown Asheville and also by telephone for people who live a distance away. And I am enjoying teaching workshops and classes now with Marie Davis combining her work with the “dreaming awake” work of making alchemical mandalas.

I (Marie) learned a method for making these mandalas from Dennis Klocek, an avid student of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy. The technique uses collage images to express the issues, challenges and movement in our inner life. By ensouling these images with meaning, placing them on paper where we can see them and move them around, something alchemically occurs to us that moves and improves our spiritual, emotional and psychological situation. We work through fixities, see our patterns and figure out ways to develop new skills in relationship to the issues.

When we use alchemical mandala’s, different than Eastern mandala’s, the structure of placing images that represent different activities we do creates an objective way at looking at the self and areas of life where we feel stuck.  The soul activities that we look at are how we form beliefs, engage in a process, get our beliefs challenged, and gain insight.  By choosing images to represent soul gestures, we take our ‘problems’ and place them outside of ourselves to gain a different perspective on the life events that are challenging us, giving us an opportunity to develop ourselves, change beliefs and find new responses and behaviors.

In sports, top athletes visualize themselves doing certain actions over and over again as a way of preparing their body to perform the action in the best possible way.  Similarly, when we make an alchemical mandala, we are imaging/imagining how we are performing certain life actions –thinking, feeling, or doing – and evaluating how we think it is going and what we think we might do differently.  Achieving excellence in life is just like what athletes do in sports. We practice in our imagination how we would like to perform.

hands reachingI (Marie) also work with clients in body-centered therapy. In this work, one is supported and guided to explore automatic or habitual movements that are made when talking about specific issues or challenges in life.  By paying attention to the story that our bodies are telling, the client is able to begin to access the internal “map maker” who formed certain beliefs that may no longer serve us.  This level of working with movements and ‘communications’ that our bodies are making that are beyond our awareness is also a deeper form of seeing that parallels dream work and mandala making.  By making conscious the limiting beliefs that we are still holding onto, we gain access to more of our human facilities and skills at our disposal.

For example, if we believe “my needs don’t matter”, we may go through life avoiding acknowledging our basic human needs and feel deprived of love, connection or support.  By revealing this level of belief to the conscious mind, we are finally able to gain awareness our specific needs and then can take productive action to get them met.

Similar to learning to improve our game in sports, we look to utilize improved skills that will make us more effective.  Having helpful and empowering belief systems allow us to excel in life.  But if there are unproductive or unhelpful belief systems that hinder us from getting the most out of life, how do we become aware of these and change them?  Dreamwork, mandala making and body-centered therapy radically help a person in processes of self-discovery.

Like any sport, the game of life is both exhilarating and exhausting, dangerously challenging and ecstatically rewarding. Any way to learn new techniques, increase skills and challenge ourselves to develop strength and awareness is a blessing. We think these techniques are effective, exciting, fascinating. They will offer your psyche and your heart all new ways to engage in life.

For information about upcoming fall series, please contact Tayria or Marie by phone or through their website. 

Tayria Ward, Ph.D. is a depth psychologist and dream analyst in private practice who does telephone sessions as well as face-to-face work with clients in her office in the Flatiron Building in downtown Asheville. Her telephone number is 828-329-0853, website is www.tayriaward.com

 

Marie O. Davis, MA, LPC, is an expressive arts and body-centered therapist in private practice in downtown Asheville and is a part of the Asheville Healing House collective.  More information about her and her work can be found at: www.bodysoulspiritasheville.com or by calling 828-273-5647

Filed Under: Events, Mind - Body Health Tagged With: healing, meaning making, ancient wisdom, holistic counseling, stress management, experiential therapy, body-centered therapy, asheville psychotherapist, dream work, art therapy, personal growth, depression, mind body, dream analysis

Discovering the Body as a Resource Class

April 22, 2014 by mariedavis

Discovering the Body as a Resource Class is a 6 week series designed to help you manage stress and give you tools to feel confident and comfortable in your body.

Marie O. Davis, MA, LPC and Stacey Stone

Filed Under: Mind - Body Health, Videos Tagged With: asheville psychotherapy, healing, holistic counseling, experiential therapy, anxiety, body-centered therapy, depression

Grounding Practice Video

April 22, 2014 by mariedavis

Marie O. Davis, MA, LPC instructs us how to do this simple and very effective grounding practice to bring more peace and stability to your body, soul, and spirit.  Watch the grounding practice video now.

Filed Under: Mind - Body Health, Videos Tagged With: asheville psychotherapy, healing, holistic counseling, experiential therapy, trauma, anxiety, body-centered therapy, asheville psychotherapist, mind body

Psychotherapy Services Asheville

Click on one of the services below to read more.

              

Body, Soul, Spirit works young adults and adults who are seeking support to overcome blocks to growth and self-expression. Often these blocks can show up in our relationships with family, peers, co-workers, teachers, or community members. Body, Soul, Spirit Asheville provides individual counseling to address issues of:

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Anxiety and/or Fears
Grief and Loss
Cognitive Distortions
Depression
Personal Development and Empowerment
Relationships Issues
Stress Management and Relaxation
Self Esteem/Identity

Neuroscience is revealing that old habits get ‘wired’ into the brain, which is why they are so hard to change.  The good news is that they can be changed. In order to build new neural networks that will replace old bad habits- we need new, sensory stimulating experiences that cause our brain to grow and evolve. Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, and Flower Essence Therapy are wholistic, experiential therapies that can help to foster neurogenesis, making real and lasting change become possible.

The three therapeutic modalities that provide the backbone of the Body, Soul, Spirit are Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, and Flower Essence Therapy.  Other approaches that are woven into the healing process are cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness, humanistic/client-centered perspectives, depth psychology, anthroposophy, and solution focused therapy.

 

Read on to see how Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Expressive Arts Therapy, and Flower Essence Therapy can support you to achieve on the change desire……

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