People often talk about the inner world and inner work. ‘Inner’ is not a good word to use. The reason? It obscures the relational aspect of these experiences. Both their origins and new revelations. Our experiences do not come from within. We are impacted, again and again.
Outer and the inner is one way of talking about it. The subjective and the objective, the deeply personal and the social, the psychological and the social. Consciousness. This takes us to Freud and Jung who talked about uncovering the unconscious. It’s like there’s an inner world of experience that we don’t even have access to. An inner world of complexity that Freud tried to map in one way or another with various drives. And Jung who then said there’s an objective psyche and a collective unconscious. So there’s archetypes that exist in our psyche independently. And it’s all good. I’m not going to knock any of it. Who would want to? It’s great, they’re great insights.
However, we’re undergoing a paradigm shift into the relational. That word ‘inner’ makes entry into the new ways of being more difficult. How to stay relational, systemic, cybernetic, interpersonal, sociometric?
Today we had a psychodrama session. I’ll talk about my experience in that. The theme of the group was announced by the group leaders as Spring. And there were several explorations on the stage of the wildness of spring and the nurturing that spring gives us with its beauty. As it flourishes.
I had a look on my face, which one of the leaders noticed and said, what’s that look on your face? And I said, I don’t really know. There’s something going on. How about you walk around the space on the stage and reflect on what that might be? I had really no idea what I was going to come up with. Yet, walking around the stage I soliloquised about a few experiences that came to mind. I had a recollection of Christmas as a child in Amsterdam. And I contrasted it with the experiences of Christmas in this hemisphere of Australasia.With moments we had a tree and a dark night. I was an aunty sining “stille Naght, someone from the group said, yeah, my daughter saw a picture of snow. And she said, Christmas! Of course, we have pictures of snow at Christmastime when it’s the longest day of summer or around that time. And then I said, I can see rabbits and eggs. Spring is denoted by rabbits and eggs. And we had a whole lot of rabbits hopping around on the stage and eggs. And I said, it’s all about fertility and flourishing and being born and newness. And I said, and yet, the eggs and the rabbits appear in our supermarket at Easter time, which is completely wrong, it’s autumn. Fall, when the leaves are falling.
I was experiencing incongruenc . I thought, where’s the indigenous culture? How did they talk about spring? And then I said, it’s ridiculous. The director said, who do you want to say that to? And I thought, not the Prime Minister, not the shopkeepers. I said, there must be some activists who oppose colonisation, who are in favour of decolonisation in New Zealand. And four or five people jumped up from the group. And so I had activists to talk to and I said, it’s preposterous. We can’t go on like this. Children experiencing one thing in nature and being taught something else by the culture and have that spiritual incongruence. And then we all linked up and chanted, decolonise now, decolonise now. That was my drama.
Now, the point I’m making really, by telling you about a little psychodrama, is t==hat that did not come without relationships==. All of it was possible because someone decided that spring would be a topic for the evening. A couple of other people had done some dramas about spring and its nurturing qualities. And I walked around the stage and there were comments from the audience. When I thought of something, there was a group of people who were the activists that I was imagining. And they decided that we could have a march. And so I joined the march, .
Did it come out of an inner experience? People sometimes say a psychodrama is an inner world made manifest on the stage. I don’t think so. It includes my life experience and memories of by beloved aunties who were lost to me far to soon. and it also an expression by and for the group. I exist in a world of relationships, with people dead and alive.