It has been multiple months since my last post. However, I do not surmise that my absence has been due to a lack of activity or yearning to share. In the past eight weeks, I have been entirely off social media. Facebook has long been gone—deleted for good. The same goes for Instagram; this time, LinkedIn had to go. Forever? I'm not sure—but for the foreseeable future, yes. The inner calling to deactivate my LinkedIn account began as an experiment as, eight weeks ago, I was embarking on an over two-week road trip with my wife and two sons to visit family and friends in Michigan and Indiana. I yearned to be free entirely from extracurricular distractions - even under the guise of “working” and “networking.”
After breaking up the drive and sleeping in Toledo, Ohio, for the night, we finally made it to my Aunt and Uncle’s lake house in South Haven, Michigan. Our days were filled with long breakfast conversations, swimming in Lake Michigan, playing soccer, and grilling in the backyard—an idyllic way to wrap up the summer. Now, there were plenty of challenging moments. Trying to keep a seven and five-year-old boy from destroying my Aunt and Uncle’s house - then being in a new environment for such a long time, it started weighing on me and my wife. We began to get frustrated with each other - as it was non-stop intensive parenting around the clock.
After one particularly challenging day at the lake house, we were to all sit in the backyard at my Aunt and Uncle’s for a beautiful dinner. All the other adults were drinking, and since I no longer drink, I decided to ingest a super low-dose cannabis gummy – something I do on occasion. Dinner began, and our sons were having trouble staying in their seats, and I was getting frustrated – low on steam after a rough go of it all morning and afternoon. Then - something miraculous happened. Could it have been “gummy induced?” Most certainly - but it was something much more. Suddenly, I looked across the table to my youngest son as he was laughing and playing with his food. The sun was hitting his face gorgeously, and the trees were swaying behind him. The birds were chirping loudly - and at this exact moment - it felt like I entered my body fully for the first time. At once, I felt like part of the first group of humans on Earth’s soil - a cosmic presence gifted with the opportunity to enter human flesh and experience it through my senses. I kept looking at my youngest son, then to my wife, and then my oldest son, and they were radiating a beauty so exquisite it was painful to observe – too much to take in. But I stayed with it. A surge of feeling took over me, yet I decided to stay at the table.
We cleaned up after dinner, and it was bedtime for the kids. My wife had read the boys a few stories, and I came up to say goodnight. I was still feeling the effects and the wave of this radiating beauty and sensory awareness - and my youngest son asked me if I would rub his back. I sat on the bed beside him and rubbed his back for a few minutes as he drifted off to sleep. I went over to my oldest son, kneeling next to his bed, rubbing his forehead, and brushing the hair out of his eyes. I felt his breathing soften, and he looked deep into my eyes, and a surge of emotion came into him. I knew then that this tender love and affection from his dad was precisely what he needed. I brushed his hair with my fingers as he drifted off to sleep. As I left the room, my wife looked at me and smiled - sensing something new, and the words “You can choose love” came to me.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing from there. From there, we went to Indiana to visit a farmer friend of mine and his family for a few days. The flat midwest farmland was a welcome change of scenery for all of us. On about the 15th day, on the last leg of the drive home, we decided to stop for lunch outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We were all exhausted and ready to get home. For whatever reason, my wife and I were very chippy with one another, and lunch became a miserable, torturous hour. We finally got back in the car, and within thirty minutes, I, the driver, was the only one still awake. I could see a massive rainstorm approaching in the distance. I drove straight into the intense storm, and paradoxically, a sober realization entered my consciousness: I could not control anything except my attitude toward my life. What is most prudent in my life now is what is right in front of me–my family relationships, friendships, household projects, and hiring contractors. Not the big creative projects, large business, or artistic ambitions - the day-to-day, the familiar, the “unsexy” reality of my life. The ground of my life is what is calling to me.
Perhaps the cannabis-induced vision wasn’t just a one-off but the initiator of a slow indwelling in my own bodily, human experience. It was the birth of the spirit of me into my own body - something I have been painfully experiencing over the last few years of my Jungian Analysis. In a way, for most of my life, I’ve had this secret feeling of not quite being here, not quite being real. Through my analysis and dreams, it became apparent that while I had and have a body, what was yearning to come to consciousness and into my body was my inner child, my soul.
A few years ago, during a cold winter night during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had this strange compulsive urge to drive out late at night and steal a few large rocks. I pulled off a lonely farm road in the bone-chilling cold where I knew were some hefty rocks - and snagged one. Then, I made my way close to my parents’ home, where I knew a few large stones would be in a drainage basin. It was nearly zero degrees Fahrenheit, and I, stupidly without gloves, snagged another large rock and brought it home with me. A few days later, during my Jungian analysis session, I confessed to this rock-stealing act. My analyst looked at me, smiled, and said: “That’s it - I’m calling the police!” After he stopped laughing, he asked me: “So what do you make of this action?” I couldn’t come up with anything. He looked at me and said: “I wonder what in your wishes to steal a heavy piece of earth for itself?” It took almost a few years to understand what my analyst meant, but it all started to click.
The obsessive-compulsive urge to go out into the night and steal a heavy piece of earth for me was a symbolic act - a call from deep in my unconscious to feel ok having a piece of earth, a body, to call my own. However, psychologically, when I did this act, it felt like a crime being committed against the collective. That, for me, my soul indwelling and incarnating would feel like a horrific crime being committed.
The acquisition of consciousness is a crime (think of Job), an act of hybris against the powers-that-be; but it is a necessary crime, leading to a necessary alienation from the natural unconscious state of wholeness. It is better to become conscious than to remain in the animal state (for with pain we gain empathy; with adversity, a purpose; and with will, autonomy.) While we often look down on inflation, here we see it as the necessary muscle for emergence, “the ego is obliged to set itself up against the unconscious out of which it came and assert its relative autonomy. On a personal level the act of daring to acquire a new consciousness is experienced as a crime or rebellion against authorities that exist in one’s personal environment, against one’s parents, and later against other outer authorities. Any step in individuation is experienced as a crime against the collective, challenging the identification with family, party, church, or nation. These necessary steps of the ego do risk inflation, often times one that carries the consequence of a very fruitful fall. - Edward Edinger, “Ego and Archetype”
As I slowly come to earth and my bodily, sensual presence, part of me feels I will lose contact with the spiritual realm, the collective unconscious, and the collectivity absorb me. However, one doesn’t lose contact with one’s spiritual nature just by coming to earth and living fully in the flesh. One cannot fulfill one’s spiritual, teleological destiny without entering and living within a human body. This is best exemplified by watching children in imaginative, athletic play. There is at once a cosmic principle and a material principle - dancing round and round in their joy and movement.
Therefore, living from a childlike playfulness is living creatively and abundantly.
A few weeks after returning home from our Midwest trip, we embarked on a multi-day short trip to Ocean Grove, New Jersey, where my parents rented a beach house after the busy season. I struggle to be present year after year on these trips. I often escape into some project or fantasy of accomplishment. I am unsure why, but it has always been a struggle. However, this year, something was different. I was light, joyful, playful, and felt in a particular flow state like never before. I wasn’t dreaming of something better or striving internally away from my parents, wife, and children - I was embodied - there - all of me. What is fantastic about the Victorian architecture of Ocean Grove is that there are porches on every house - and walking the streets of this area feels different - unique. This year, I felt particularly close to my kids, engaging in their play, and it was an entirely different mode of being. I couldn’t get enough.
For so long, I’ve somewhat associated my creative output with striving for recognition, validation, and success. Creativity has been viewed as accomplishing the finishing of “products” of some kind. But what if what it inherently means to be creative is more experiential? Can one not love creatively? Can one not do mundane tasks creatively? Can living creatively not mean anything more than bringing the nature of oneself and one’s depths to each moment, each encounter, and each task?
Perhaps, if individually and collectively, we can come to know our depths and eccentric richness, we can live and create from this source moment to moment - experiencing life as something inherently playful. We can then radiate outwardly from this great pulsing center of abundance within us - not striving for external validation or accomplishment - but feeling safe enough to live as a beautiful, playful adult human being.
- David B. Godin
Beautifully crafted and deeply inspiring. Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful and profound piece.