Playing
and Working at Coming Clean by Dr Elizabeth McCardell, M. Couns., PhD
In this article I write about working at coming clean as
part of a life’s individuation process.
It comes in two parts: The first written around 2pm and the second part,
composed at 8pm. My reason is that the first expresses an exuberance untempered
by useful critique and the latter with its bit of reality check. Neither exuberance nor reality check are any
better than the other, for both get change going and maintaining it.
2pm
I have taken up the cello again after a six year break. I’m revisiting
the music I knew so well for the decades of music making and it is
exhilarating.
The cello sings my
soul and I love it dearly and deeply.
I hear the music in my dreams, I hear it on the wind, I hear it among
trees, in the ocean, on the streets, I hear it even in engines.
I was sixteen when I first sat down with a cello. It was exquisite. I’d
played the violin for six years and, while quite nice, it didn’t fill me with
joy. I asked my father if I could learn to play this instrument and he, dear
man, found a cello and a teacher and so it began, this love affair of mine.
Hearing and playing the music that sets one alight is part of a celebration of integration
of being who I am. Many people can identify with that, I know. Runners,
cyclists, dancers, shelf stackers, writers, even hypnotherapists and their clients, all know “the zone”.
This flow is the state of relaxed focus that energizes us and it is something
that has the power to change us fundamentally as we let go of old restrictive
mind games.
8pm
I drove to my cello lesson today in a town an hour from home, met my new
teacher, took my beloved instrument from its case, tuned it up, and started
playing. I played like a person only half awake, only partly conscious: old bad
habits and weak hands mingled with passion, as well as a sneaky
awareness that for a long time I was not using all of my brain. There was a
passage I could not get right and I was mortified that I couldn’t do it. I felt
such a fool. My teacher pointed out what I was not doing right and how I could
make it better, and he wouldn’t let up. I had to do it. I took over from his insistence and made
myself do it. I had become aware
of my own muddied confusion and wanted clarity.
This has given me an acute awareness of what my clients feel as they
begin the process of detaching from old, damaging patterns and habits in their
lives. First there may be an exuberance for the new work, but then the
realization that strategies are needed to maintain and extend new insights.
Both exuberance and plain old work are part of the transformative process of individuation.
Individuation, as
the Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung (1875 – 1961) described
it, is the bringing and integrating into consciousness the personal and
collective unconscious. It is integral to the development of a sense of
selfhood. It is also a process that continues throughout life.
Music making is a wonderful metaphor for this individuation process.
There is passion and desire for making music, for hearing it from the mountain
tops, in the wind, and under the sea (I sometimes sing trumpet voluntaries while
snorkelling), and then there is
the work: the adherence to making the making of music as clear as can be. It is
as much a discipline as a passion. We want to live cleanly because we want to
be understood, heard for who we are, and we want to speak clearly our truth
without muddied confusion, and we seek uncluttered being. Both making music and
therapy are neat ways of learning to do that, because the disciplined flow
takes us there, without losing the passion. The soul sings.
