Soulbuilding Lesson 2 – Surviving the Winter

Or: “How to surrender to change and live to tell the tale”.

In my previous blog, we began to consider the idea of change, and how resilience comes though surrendering to psychological processes that seem similar to the burning forest fires and subsequent rejuvenation of the land, or, alternatively, to the winter freezing and spring’s new growth. This is all well and good, but how do we survive the fire or the cold in the first place, so that we are still alive to experience the regrowth and new growth that hopefully comes next?

Here, I will focus on the idea of “winter” as the agent of change – coldness in all its forms – and the challenge to life that this can bring.

Winter sends most of us “underground” or at very least, indoors. We reduce our life activities to those that can be conducted without too much exposure to the cold and dark of the season, drawing closer to our fires or our central heating, and eating more rich and deeply warming foods. Animals do the same, some even hibernating – becoming unconscious of day to day life and withdrawing completely into an inner space. Plants slow the movements of their sap, and draw on food stores rather than demanding energy from the low winter sun. We all conserve our energy, and find ourselves focusing more on the inner aspects of our lives.

In legends and stories, there are often tales of the hero or heroine taking a journey into the darkness, even into the underworld. Perhaps their stories will give us some ideas about how to survive the challenges of our own psychological winters.

Long, long ago, in stories that come from Sumeria, from a time when female goddesses were still the norm, and had not yet been subjugated by the male forces, Inanna is the Queen of Heaven. She decides to journey to the Underworld to visit her estranged sister Ereshkigal who rules there.

In psychological terms we could see Inanna’s story as a quest to reconnect with the darker side of the personality, to heal the division and integrate the splitting in our psyche; a significant quest for all of us.

In order to reach her dark sister, Inanna has to pass through seven gates (seven trials), each of which removes a part of her armour, her clothing and her strength, so that when she finally arrives with her dark sister, Innana is “naked and bowed low”. Ereshkigal immediately kills Innana, unleashing her rage and hatred without boundary. However, once she has destroyed the sister who is Queen of Heaven and the embodiment of “light”, Ereshkigal is overcome with grief and hands the body back to Innana’s consorts or companions, who are enabled to bring her back to life.

Part of our “winter” experience may be this challenge to seek, and confront, our darkest and most feared self, the aspects of our self who seem to have the power to destroy us or have us destroyed, and whom we have exiled in order to preserve our apparent goodness and acceptability to others. The journey to reach the dark self is terrifying, a descent into our personal underworld, and in order to get there we must steadily remove the pieces of armour that we have constructed in the course of our lives which defend us from seeing the reality of the experience – in TA theory these could be the elements of our “script”.

So how does Innana survive – even when she seems to be annihilated by the her sister’s darkness just as she feared? The key seems to be that she has consorts or companions who stay with her (until the final confrontation which heroes often face alone, though they may be witnessed and supported), and who then reclaim her to restore her to life. How many tales have a set of companions who support the hero/heroine – often in very basic or banal ways – and enable them to complete their quest? Harry Potter had Ron, Hermione and The Order of the Phoenix. Frodo and Bilbo Baggins had their companions for their respective journeys through Middle Earth – a set of dwarves, a wizard and “the fellowship of the Ring”. Even Snow White had her dwarves – though how many, what gender and what personality traits they may have had is not as straightforward as Disney would have us believe (more on that in another story for another day).

Companions are essential. They provide us with contact, food and warmth, encouragement, challenge and witnessing. In order to endure our psychological winters, we need them above all else to “keep us real”. Just as Hermione jolts Harry out of the grandiosity of thinking that being “The Chosen One” makes him some sort of teen idol, and Samwise Gamgee shakes Frodo out of his infatuation with the power of the Ring, our wise companions help us stay grounded and focused on reality, and connected to the genuine love and warmth that we need to support us in our inner “cold and dark” rather than a fantasy of it. The story of The Little Match Girl highlights the danger of being alone and without grounding, and relying on fantasy to find warmth and light – instead of selling her matches to pay for real food and warmth, the little match girl becomes enchanted by a vision of a beautiful warm room lit with candles, with a roaring fire and plenty of food, and lights match after match to try and recapture the fantasy, finally freezing to death in the snow, having used up all her resources in wishing.

We will return to the ideas of companions who bring us wisdom, kindness and grounded authenticity again in future blogs, exploring the potential for external “real world” supporters, as well as developing our internal support team for this journey of growth. For now, you may like to reflect on how this material relates to your story – there are some pointers for this below.

Questions to reflect with:

Am I in a personal winter at the moment? Have I been in one recently?

What might my journey into the cold darkness be taking me toward?

What companions do I have for this kind of Journey into my personal Underworld?

What gaps are there in my Support Team? Do I need a wizard, a Samwise hobbit, a Ron or Hermione, or even a set of Dwarves?

Where might I find these supporters in the outer world?

How will I protect my fuel, my resources, my “matches” so that I don’t burn them up by mistake following a fantasy, instead of keeping them for my best purpose; to give lasting light and warmth to myself?