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Words help define who we are when they bring into consciousness what we mystically or intuitively know to be true for us. Until we have a vocabulary or words and images to describe these realizations, they remain unconscious. If others do not support, appreciate, or even acknowledge our talents or experiences, we are unlikely to value or develop them. If we do not have role models with whom to identify, we miss having people who inspire us to be truly ourselves. When someone we can identify with or respect verbalizes something that we also have thought or experienced and had feared could be labeled crazy or stupid, it is liberating. Women who were adults during and through the women's movement of the 1970s know what a revolutionary change was brought about by feminism, and how different the world is (and our individual lives are) since. This was a movement in which groups of women speaking their truth and the written word merged in synergism, resulting in a proliferation of consciousness-raising groups and information dissemination that, together, transformed society. I was inspired by the invitation to write something for this special edition by describing the relationship between the words of an author or writer and the potential effect on the reader. Feminist writing, the content in The New Times, and my books change how people think about themselves and their worldview. From different angles, we are all raising or changing consciousness and encouraging people to trust their own experience, and there is an overlap in subject matter as well. The New Times describes itself as being about holism, spirituality, and metaphysics, broad categories under which my books can fit, especially my first book, The Tao of Psychology, published in 1979 and still in print. It is about synchronicity, a word coined by C. G. Jung for meaningful coincidences and about the underlying oneness of the Tao. It brought Western psychology and Eastern mysticism together. I wanted to have "synchronicity" in the title, but it was considered too esoteric a word at that time. How times have changed! Since then, among other things, The Police had a platinum record with the title Synchronicity, and the word itself is now in general use, acknowledged as the principle through which tarot, the I Ching, runes, and other such methods of divination work. Like many feminist notions that are now the norm, many subjects published in The New Times are becoming mainstream through a similar process of dissemination and acceptance. The interrelatedness of all life, equality rather than hierarchy, feminine spirituality (which is not exclusively limited to women), intuitive and in-the-body gnosis, or soul knowledge, are archetypal ideas and can be considered spiritual dimensions of feminism. In Crossing to Avalon, I wrote about my own spiritual journey in the context of an actual pilgrimage and my growing awareness of the difference between goddess spirituality and transcendent or masculine mysticism and, in doing so, found that it helped others to remember and define their own sacred experiences. In Goddesses in Everywoman, Gods in Everyman, and my latest book, Goddesses in Older Women, which are all based upon mythology and images of divinity as archetypal patterns in our psyches, the emphasis is more on the psychological than the spiritual. However, when what we do in life corresponds to active archetypes, then life has depth and meaning — a spiritual dimension — in contrast to a life lived at the persona level, shaped by the need to meet the expectations or demands of others. Goddesses in Everywoman, published in 1984, became a mainstream book as a bestseller and helped make "goddess" a familiar, if not respectable, word. The names of gods and goddesses differ in differing mythology, but the basic patterns remain the same. In Ring of Power, Wotan was Zeus, Brünnhilde, Athena. In this book, I brought archetypal psychology of the individual together with dysfunctional family psychology. As Seattle fans of the Ring of the Nibelung know, the four-opera story tells how the obsessive quest for power (an addiction) was destructive to three generations. I think that it is crucial to recognize and change destructive "shadow" influences in the culture and family as well as in the individual. Reflection can then flow into activism, which makes change possible. Close to the Bone began as a talk on illness as a descent into the underworld. It drew upon the story of the abduction of Persephone and Inanna's descent into the underworld as metaphors for the crises of body and soul that cancer, AIDS, and other life-threatening illnesses bring to the patient and to those that care for them. Such illnesses can be turning points for the psyche as well as the body, with recovery or remission dependent upon changes and choices we make. It is a very rare person who has not lost someone near and dear and subsequently taken to heart how precious and short life is. Most of us know in our bones that we are spiritual beings on a human path, and that it matters what we do and learn here. While I was writing Goddesses in Older Women, an aha! of my own led me to write The Millionth Circle. The "millionth circle" concept was inspired by Ken Kesey’s story of "the hundredth monkey," based upon the morphic field theory, which postulates that when a critical number of any species learns something new or does something different, the whole species adopts this as a norm. For example, the first wave of the women's movement was created by the suffragettes, whose efforts to get women the right to vote was resisted and ridiculed for seventy years before it finally became law in 1920. Once gained, it became taken for granted. The second wave was led by feminists who made the ’70s the decade of the women's movement, which addressed political and economic inequalities, and whose gains are now taken for granted; young women assume that they can do anything. The third wave is yet to come. I believe that my readers and the readers of The New Times will help make it happen. There are now an estimated 45 million active American women over fifty whose vision of themselves and opportunities were changed by the women's movement. This is a huge number of women who have had access to education and employment, and had choices, roles, and responsibilities as never before in history. Among them are the bulk of the "cultural creatives," caregivers, alternative practitioners, and others whose thinking and words have a cumulative effect. Their perspectives, relationship values, ability to bring about change, and desire to give back or make a difference could lead to the third wave of the women's movement, a wave that would arise from the inherent spirituality of feminism, grow through the proliferation of circles of women, and usher in a post-patriarchal era. I congratulate the founders and staff of The New Times for the creativity, commitment, and courage that it takes to start a publication, and for the dedication and ongoing effort that it takes to put out 200 consecutive issues; for slogging in the trenches and seeing the vision from the mountaintop. May flow characterize the next phase of your publication. Thank you. Jean Shinoda Bolen, M.D., is a psychiatrist and Jungian analyst in private practice, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California Medical Center San Francisco, former member of the board of the Ms. Foundation for Women, and author. Visit <www.jeanbolen.com> for CV, schedule of lectures and workshops, and publications, and <www.millionthcircle.com> to have your circle be counted. |
My readers, and
the readers of The New Times, respond to an implicit invitation
to discover new possibilities in themselves. As any reader knows,
when there is a fit between published words and what is stirring
in one's own psyche, the words support and nourish new growth
and authenticity. The glint of recognition when words articulate
what is felt names and validates these feelings. Inner knowing
is an aha! discovery of what is not realized until we
have words for it.