I can hardly wait for my hands to sink into the rich, dark earth in my garden, to smell moist soil, to experience the thrill of new seeds and the miracle of watching things grow. Since here where I live that’s not going to happen for a while longer, I’ve been digging into my psyche instead. What happens when we gently sink into the dark of our minds, the part that’s usually kept hidden? What lies in the fertile layers of our unconscious? What will we water and tend and what do we weed out? What dreams, emotions, and long-buried memories do we want to explore? Someone said to me recently, when I told her what I was doing, “Oh, dear! I wouldn’t want to know myself that well!” She was implying that the surface self she presented to the world, and that she was in charge of, was okay, but her inner self, over which she had no control, must be a seething mass of dirt, monsters, fears, neuroses, and pain. But I’ve discovered that digging into ourselves isn’t like that at all! When those other things show up, it’s as though they’re part of the great story that is each one of us. We’re the hero, an Odysseus, taking the long route home, and determined to experience every iota possible on the way. We’re the knight in an elaborate fairy-tale. The deeper we dig into our psyches, the more intriguing is the tale, the more powerful we become, the greater the treasure we discover.
