A Salmon’s Current

“The doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.”
Herman Hesse

I apologize for the hiatus, I broke my ankle, my Jung seminar picked up and am scrambling trying to finish my counseling hours. With that being said, I decided to stop just talking about random topics so much and going over and incorporating more of Carl Jung and his and others psychological beliefs, because that’s my jam.  I thought we should dive into the middle of it and go from there, but first this post is about why we should be in the water, and the next one on Tuesday will be what we’re swimming towards.

I said in the first post that this blog was going to be “a vehicle for transition” and while I believe that, it also is saying nothing by itself.  By transition I mean go somewhere better, or really to improve myself so no matter where I go it will be better. If we want to improve ourselves, and can’t no matter how we try, then it’s obvious the improvement is more than eating right, or confronting your boss, or making different standards in your dating life.  Looking only at the thing you think will bring you success is not the answer. So what is it? How do we make those positive changes?

There is a lot of talk that the secret of change, the correct way, is to go with the “flow” of things.  It’s like a programmed mystic answer, that gives you supposed credibility but like a “vehicle in transition”,  doesn’t say anything at all.  I do believe you have to go with the flow of life, but what is that? Salmon swim upstream to breed, it’s what they do to reproduce.  It eventually kills them, but it’s how they reproduce, it’s part and end of their life cycle. Their culmination. So flowing with life isn’t just going with life’s current, it’s going with your current, even if that is against resistance. So what is resistance? And what is your current?

Resistance is the refusal to accept or comply with something.  The water is not going specifically against you, you’re just a fish that realizes going with the water, going the easy way, doesn’t take you to where you want to go.  Just like a salmon must fight against the water to return to their spawning point, a person must cut through their resistance to strive towards their higher self. Resistance in psychoanalytical terms means an unwillingness to discuss or confront a particular topic, but we could see resistances spring up everywhere if we could only bother to look.   Resistance comes in many forms, but maybe the most prevalent forms are the ones in our blind spots. Blind spots you can take as tendencies or traits that we simply refuse to admit are ours, refuse to accept and because of that we fling them onto others. One thing that marks a blind spot is how resistant we are once someone shows it to us. If we are unwilling to part with a belief that has been shown to be incorrect, that’s a huge sign we’re in the wrong current. When I talk of currents, flowing with life, it isn’t to say that there is one way that you should go.  We have currents hitting us every which way we turn. Inside and outside. Finding your current, to get there to where you need to go as well as do is what’s important.  Remember, you can change currents at any time. You’re a fish, respect that.

Plutarch is right that going inward will cause exterior changes, but it is not the panacea, the cure-all I make it out to be. I think if all you do is go inside yourself, whatever you might find could suck if you are not working on being a better you most of the time.  Being a better you looks like outward, physical changes – improving your relationships, being kind, healthy and conscious. It is what you do. I think what a person finds when they consistently look inside themselves is the want and belief to improve their exterior more.  Just as you gain more energy eating right, meditating and staying in shape, you gain energy working with and through the stuff in your head.

While we have all met a person that appears genuinely happy, we can just as easily think of a person who appears happy but isn’t really.  Working with the inconsistencies in ourselves, holding our frailties, discovering and accepting the ugly and good in us, can bring you a huge part of that fulfillment that we have tried to appear like we have.  The deeper you work, the more that will open up inside you. You will begin to meet the same figures and symbols in your dreams and imagination, and then start to see those same symbols throughout your waking life in every different medium as you can’t help but realize those symbols are shared with all of us.  Those same symbols are so all up in our heads, that we don’t see how we project them onto others and the world at large.

If we all share the same symbols, things that we were not taught, you begin to see that there is no blank slate when we are created.  You begin to get the sense that in life we are all unique, but these shared things make us all ordinary as well. No one has the experiences, values,  and thought processes of you, but we all have vastly more in common than different. Our connection is plainly visible. We all go through different versions of the same struggles, and feel that we have unique feelings that no one else could possibly have–except we all do.  We all go through the same stages and have similar awkward moments. These similarities make sense only if we are all connected. Everyone in life is on a continuum, and we are all different shades of grey.

Seeing these different shades can have a revolutionary effect.  We realize that we are all salmon just swimming our little hearts out in this big ocean of life.  We are still in a ocean, and sometimes it takes us where we might not want to go. There is the right current for us even then.  This blog is not to tell what current is right or wrong for you, to appear wise and confidently give you the answer to your problems, because that doesn’t exist.  There is an answer, and you can only find it within you.  The only perfection you should long for, as Hesse says, is in yourself.

pics by the Gentleman