Journeys of a Pregnant Virgin

Almost a week has passed since I last wrote here. I've always loved Marion Milner's term, "bead memories," for the experiences that glow with a particular significance. I guess Virginia Woolf would have called them"Moments of Being" in the cottonwool of everyday life. So I shall simply describe several "beads."

On Thursday and again on Sunday I went to morning services at the Grossmunster to hear Bach Chorales and Cantatas. The music was beautiful, sung by the Bach Collegium Zurich and accompanied by their orchestra. Of all my favourite composers, Bach's music conveys an irrepressible joy and energy and affirmation of life that always feeds my heart and soul like no other. It was hard not to sing along, especially during the passages I know well, but I refrained, not wanting to shock the well-behaved Swiss folk surrounding me.

Yesterday held a big bead, one of my best so far in Zurich. Last weekend I'd called a woman who is part of the older generation of classical Jungian analysts although now retired at 85, and asked if I could visit her, after two people had told me how wonderful she is. I felt a little awkward on the telephone phone but immediately liked her response. "Why not?" she asked. "But I don't know if it will be wonderful. Let's just see how it goes."

Reader, it WAS wonderful. I arrived early at 4:30 - her home was a little tricky to find and she told me to feel free to come early for our 5 PM meeting - and left at 9:30, feeling heart and soul and mind refreshed and nourished. Body too, since she kept offering me Spruengli pastry and chocolate and I kept shamelessly accepting. Neither of us could have suspected how much we had in common but synchronicities kept appearing and delighted us both (although I'm observing my reticence to go into detail, probably because I don't know how she'd feel about it). She told me funny stories about her training with Marie Louise von Franz, and shared her passionate sense that the most important thing is to experience the world freshly, with new eyes, not assuming that we know what we are looking at from past experience. Oh, but she said it so much more eloquently than that. We flew from one topic to another - what a feast of conversation - and she asked me about my desire to "get this diploma," as she put it. She wanted to know about my writing, about my work with the Jungian Women's Writing Circle, about Marion's Leadership Training program. "Why do you want this piece of paper"? she challenged me. "You already are an analyst in every important sense - do you really need it?" I heard what she was saying and really took it in (there was more to that discussion, of course, but I will leave the rest in my soul, where it needs to simmer for now). At some point - I lost track of time but probably around 7:30 - her artist friend Gabi joined us and that created a whole new conversational dynamic, also rich and deep. Literature, art, music, film, psychology, all of it in the mix, and even moments of silence, which I always love in a deep discussion.

She gave me copies of several articles she'd written over the years (although she doesn't think of herself as a writer) and asked to see my books, so we'll meet again soon. Next time I will bring the chocolate! In fact I told her Steve is arriving in two weeks and she thought we should both come out next time so that may well happen.

The lectures and seminars are interesting but there's no one there with the depth and breadth of experience that this woman has (I can well understand what Virginia meant when she told me two hours with this woman were more enriching than ten hours of seminars). Of course some lectures are better than others but I have also been quite impressed at how much I clearly learned during the course of all the BodySoul Rhythms work I did over the past five years with Marion and her team. I think at one level that my new friend is right: I have indeed already trained in analysis - just not in the orthodox way that would get me the diploma. Whether I also want to do that is still an open question for now. But Marion's way of working with dreams and archetypal energy (in particular) is so profound and deep that it's hard to imagine anything better.

At the end of our meeting last night I told my new friend that I'd found our time together a pure and rich delight, and she said, "The feeling is entirely mutual." I left feeling radiant.

Today I went to the wonderful library at the "old" Kusnacht Institute and read, and talked with several other students. It was wonderful to feel surrounded by an endless number of fascinating books awaiting my attention. Most interesting was to go through the binder that lists every dissertation completed since the C.G. Jung Institute opened more than 50 years ago, over one thousand of them. So many familiar names and so many fascinating topics, including Marion's in 1979, which was later published as THE OWL WAS A BAKER'S DAUGHTER.

Enough for now. The sun actually came out this morning and I had high hopes but by early afternoon storm clouds loomed and it was very cold. I don't know when I was last this chilled in May. I hauled out my down comforter last night. But they promise me that Spring will come again...