A Look at What Matters Most by James Hollis PHD PART 1 -CH’s 1-3 Fear, Ambiguity and Soul Food

By Jennifer Boddaert

For my second book to blog about, I chose a book by James Hollis, who is a Post- Jungian psychologist,
because I had read some of his other works and found them to be very illuminating. I'm constantly amazed
by reading some of these post-Jungians because I can read a single page and find that I am getting more out
of it than most other psychology books. These are not pop-psychology 3-step program type books! The way
that post-jungians tend to tackle existential questions; they use a lot of metaphor and story narrative with
archetypal imagery, which is a jungian concept. It really brings to life the messages and ideologies they're
trying to convey in such a way that I think most people can get a lot out of what they're trying to say.

It's hard for me to know how to summarize the wealth of this information, but I will do my best going forward;
it will be a new challenge for me in writing this blog. Honestly, it would be better for you to read the book,
but maybe this blog will inspire you to engage it for yourself.

First before he digs in, Mr. Hollis leaves these intentions for us:

“I have no vested interest in our becoming saner, or mentally balanced, or even useful to society.
If you the reader find a neurosis that works for you, and gives others as a bonus, then ride it for all
it's worth. We are not sure to fit in, be well-balanced, or provide exempla for others. We are here to
be eccentric, different, perhaps strange, perhaps merely to add our small piece, our little clunky, chunky
selves, to the great Mosaic of being. As the gods intended, we are here to become more and more
ourselves.”

“We are all exiles, whether we know it or not, for who among us feels truly, vitally linked the four great
orders of mystery: the cosmos, nature, the tribe, and self?

This book is written most for those who suspect that they are in fact exiles. Because of the erosion of the
mythically connecting links to those four orders of mystery, the modern is driven to look within, to treasure
personal reflection, to recover personal authority in order to find a creative paths to the thicket of
our time... when we feel disconnected from the numinous, we either try anxiously to revivify the old
linkage, drift off into the blandishments and distractions of popular culture, or suffer a crisis of meaning
and are driven inward -whether to neurosis or privately encountered meaning remains to be seen.”

“As Jung observed in his memoir, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, life addresses  questions to us, and we
ourselves are a question. If we fail to observe, and engage in some form of cogent dialogue with the questions
that emerge from our depths, then they, and our ill-considered, provisional answers, will continue to operate
autonomously, and we will live an unconscious, unreflective, accidental life.”

CH 1- Shock & Awe: That Life Not Be Governed By Fear

"It is a bewildering thing that in human life the thing that causes the greatest fear is the source of the greatest
wisdom". CG Jung

Hollis says that as children we read or interpret the world, and internalize the direct and indirect instructions that
the world, or our parents, seem to give us.

Hollis implies that even though the worlds in our childhood were not necessarily a good, or perfect, environment
we continue to tell ourselves stories of how things are in the present based on this past because these are reflexes
instilled in our unconscious and driven by our fears.

“When we are off track... noisy demonstrations are held in the amphitheater of the body... Dreams are
invaded by spectral  disturbances... meanwhile, the timorous ego,... runs from these tumults, represses,
splits off, projects, procrastinates, rationalizes, diverts, narcotizes... Admits no faults,... will resist until
resistance is futile: depression debilitates,... addiction becomes too much,... shaming sense of sham no
longer may plausibly be denied…”

As I was reading this chapter where Hollis describes that sometimes we look at our lives and wonder “How did
I get here?”, I was reminded of the song by Talking Heads:

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

And you may find yourself

Living in a shotgun shack

And you may find yourself

In another part of the world

And you may find yourself

Behind the wheel of a large automobile

And you may find yourself in a beautiful house

With a beautiful wife

And you may ask yourself, well

How did I get here?

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by, water flowing underground

Into the blue again after the money's gone

Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground

And you may ask yourself

How do I work this?

And you may ask yourself

Where is that large automobile?

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful house!

And you may tell yourself

This is not my beautiful wife!

There are so many decisions in life on a daily basis and these decisions may or may not be serving our Soul,
or deepest sense of self, so we may have moments where we wonder what happened, most especially if you
come to crash and burnout because your body/mind starts saying no and shuts down.

Hollis states that part of the therapy is that "each must grant forgiveness and grace to the other, and hold steady
in the presence of uncertainty for a considerable time," and “all it takes to recover the integrity of our journey is
to recognize that fear itself is the enemy. Not others, not history, but plain old fear; our fears... only boldness
can deliver us from fear, and if the risk is not taken, the meaning of life is violated.”

“In the end we all fear two things... The fear of overwhelm and the fear of abandonment”.

“Ask yourself with every dilemma, every choice, every relationship, every commitment, or every failure
to commit, does this choice diminish me, or enlarge me?”

I think there is so much more to shock & awe, but Hollis knows that it all starts inside the self to reach a
point where our system is somewhat shocked and that our response needs to be awe & introspection,
instead of seeking to control, or we start our same neurotic cycle all over again. To some degree we need to
succumb to the Fates: not to what everyone else tells us to do, but what our bodies and souls are telling us.

CH 2 - Saving the Appearances: That We Learn to Tolerate Ambiguity

“As a species, we ill tolerate ambiguity, contradiction, or whatever proves uncomfortable, and that is what makes
the anxiety-fueled "fundamentalist" in each of us take over from time to time. When that nervous part prevails,
we violate the complexity of life, serve regressive strategies, narrow and diminish the journey life asks of us.”

“Protecting our persona, deflecting responsibility for our choices and their consequences, fitting in with collective
values all are means by which we seek to "save the appearances" and avoid the discomfort of ambiguity.”

Hollis reminds us that our ego will want to keep things as comfortable as possible, trying to order and organize and
plan everything so it makes sense. This is ok, it is merely the safety function of our ego to do this but, we need to be
careful to be aware of where our ego is taking over our soul and body needs and causing anxieties that do not serve us.

“Maturity and differentiated capacity of our personality depends on respecting ambiguity, without which
we would never grow, never question, never move out of the old certainties that once offered comfort, but
in time only ratify ignorance and oblige constriction. An ability to tolerate the anxiety generated by ambiguity
is what allows us to respect, engage, and grow from our repeated, daily encounters with the essential mysteries
of life. But the payoff goes even further. Certainty begets stagnation, but ambiguity pulls us deeper into life.
Unchallenged conviction begets rigidity, which begets regression; but ambiguity opens us to discovery,
complexity, and therefore growth.”

CH. 3 - Starving Amid Abundance: That We Consider Feeding the Soul

“It is my clinical experience that most of us do not have an abiding permission to fully claim our
own lives, sadly this means that we are often living in a fragmented, partial way. Our soul- that is,
our psyche - knows this of course, grieves, and presents us with those many protests we call symptoms.”

“The soul is an organ of meaning when life is lived in accordance with our psyche's intent, we experience
inner Harmony, supportive energy, healing confirmation, and we experience our lives as meaningful.”

Hollis tells of a man who, all of his life, had been run mainly by his early learned habit that others must come before
him: “Jordan has come to recognize the immense cost of his early code compliance, his collusion against his own soul,
and has recently been making large choices about his work life, his relational life, his spiritual life, and his a vocational
life. Just today we concluded that this man in his 60s must review every commitment, every old friendship, every
practice, and every summons, and say in a new way, "I will not serve that which does not serve me."this is not
self-aggrandizement, not narcissism; it is service to the soul. Finally, this man is learning to respect what he was called
to be, on his own.”

“Maybe all of us will learn to grapple with the paradox that living our lives more fully is not narcissism, but
service to the world when we bring a more fully achieved gift to the collective. we do not serve our children,
our friends and partners, our society, by living a partial life, and being secretly depressed and resentful. We
serve the World by finding what feeds us, and, having been fed, then share our gifts with others.”

One thing I am learning lately is that we must pay attention to our feelings and emotions. We should not
push them aside in order to do what “we must.” Instead, we must take a step back, take a break, listen to our
body, feel the feelings in our body, let what our soul is saying come into our mind, listen to it with curiosity and
honour. No matter where you are, at work, on the train, with a bunch of people, don’t lose touch with who you
are. You aren’t serving anything greater if you are denying yourself what you need. You must listen to yourself
to know what is a healthy need and what is an unhealthy need. Other people will tell you the way things
should be, but you need to know what you can and cannot do, and advocate for yourself. Stop saying “yes”
when you should be saying “no” (& vice versa).

“How often in therapy I hear people describe the fact that the values, or the venues, and which they have
invested their resources no longer provide satisfaction, no longer energize. They find themselves forcing
themselves to service what once seemed to make sense. One of the signs of the fact that the psyche moves
on, whether we will it consciously or not, is the appearance of boredom, ennui, loss of energy. When we are
doing what the psyche wants, the energy is there and the excitement is palpable. Of course it can be argued
that when we are in the full flush of a complex, such energy also supercharges our lives. But the key is to
monitor the presence of energy, symbolizing the activated psyche, over time. This discernment, this sorting,
requires paying attention to feeling states, to levels of satisfaction, to reciprocity.”

When we are nurturing our soul needs we will rediscover our energy and we will rediscover a sense of meaning
in our lives. No one else can tell you what your soul needs, you need to listen.